Putting the structure aside, the big problems so far this year have been getting absolutely creamed in the contest around the ground and the inability to prevent scores once the opposition goes inside 50. They’re related. It's easy to just lay it at the feet of our midfield, but our half backs and Hunter are all well down on CPs across the first two games compared to last year's averages, and with the way we press up and bring our half backs into the midfield contest and rely on them and our wingmen to halve contests to prevent easy transitions, we can't afford to have 4-5 players in those roles all down on their impact at contested ball. How much is mental and how much is strategy, I don’t know.
Happy that at least Bev acknowledged this issue in his presser, so hopefully we tighten up this week and bring a bit more heat/thought to our approach those contests.
“Ultimately what happened last week is we let some ball through contests that they kicked to too easily, it got through and they just saw an open forward line.”
“I’ll back our boys in, they’ll do a better job if they get pressure on the ball… it wasn’t necessarily the midfield it was those balls that were kicked to contests and they won them and they got through… we halve or win more of those defensive longer balls and it’ll help out key defenders out enormously.”