Why has our ball movement stagnated?

[John Who]

The OP topic is all about our speed of ball movement or the lack thereof. Here's my overall observation regarding the ingredients of quick chain of play:
1. Confidence in the structure and in each other that the quick chain would lead to results.
2. Players willing to spread out, creating options for the quick movements. Hard work ethic and a sound fitness base is very much required here.
3. Quick players are needed, because a slow person can spread all they want, but they're likely to be side-by-side with an opposition player and not being able to outrun him.
4. Good skills ie. able to quickly assess the options and to handpass or kick to where the next link man is, as to allow quick play-on. No point kicking balls where it will do many random bounces into space or passing to the next guy's feet or over his head.
5. Options to kick short and to kick long, being able to mix things up. This is important because opposition teams would constantly be second guessing where the ball will end up and not able to set up their defense in a confident manner.

So from the above, I do think missing out on the key personnel is one of the major issue we have this year due to our Guinness level of injuries:
1. Smith (one of our fastest rebound defenders and one of the longest/accurate kicks we have in the team)
2. BCrouch (one of our fastest midfielders, who can attack as well as defend/tackle)
3. McGovern (one of our quickest forwards who can do pack marks as well as defend with quick chasing)
4. Betts (our quickest small forward who can crumb elite and accurate from anywhere around the boundary)
(5. Losing Cameron isn't helping with the speed situation either.)

With the missing personnel we have for the majority of this year, we have screwed ourselves badly with the lack of good skills overall AND an overall reduction in team speed. Our second tier players are being forced to increase their workload, and they were doing ok for the first few rounds, but then seem to have tired somewhat and it sets a chain of reactions in overall decrease team morale, reduced confidence in each other, and more frustrations all round. This is why we are sucking so bad in the last 6 games bar 1 really good quarter against the WCE.

It really comes to the lack of personnel right now. We need to have quicker and more skilled players if we want to be playing like the early rounds of 2017.

 

[GreyCrow]

1. Confidence in the structure and in each other that the quick chain would lead to results.
2. Players willing to spread out, creating options for the quick movements. Hard work ethic and a sound fitness base is very much required here.

Yep

3. Quick players are needed, because a slow person can spread all they want, but they're likely to be side-by-side with an opposition player and not being able to outrun him.

Ehh I would say as the lead off person you and you alone know when you are taking off. This should give you 2-5m space. That should be enough. If your match up is quicker then sure they might corrall you but you should be able to do something with the ball

4. Good skills ie. able to quickly assess the options and to handpass or kick to where the next link man is, as to allow quick play-on. No point kicking balls where it will do many random bounces into space or passing to the next guy's feet or over his head.

This comes from playing as a group , training as a group and having clear guidelines from the coaching group. As an example our ruck group plays at 3,6 and 9 oclock. Easy to set up against but better than random ball. The last point about passing/handballing at feet is confidence and over estimating distance. Used to be a thing called end to end and circle work that made you learn what distances your teammates can kick

5. Options to kick short and to kick long, being able to mix things up. This is important because opposition teams would constantly be second guessing where the ball will end up and not able to set up their defense in a confident manner.

Yep , another example is our kick outs from full back. Either down the line to Sauce or the short kick to 15m followed by the long kick to Sauce down the line.

Hopefully the debutantes have enough time to learn the processes

 

[John Who]

Ehh I would say as the lead off person you and you alone know when you are taking off. This should give you 2-5m space. That should be enough. If your match up is quicker then sure they might corrall you but you should be able to do something with the ball

This would be true if the kicker is doing pin-point passing, under very little pressure from the opposition. However, in AFL standards these days, you're constantly harassed (at least for the first 2-3 quarters), and kicks are rarely accurate. Having players with extra speed would help to offset any erratic passing by the previous player.

Another way of looking at it, is if you want a chain to start from defense to end up in the forward line as quickly as possible, would you prefer players who run at 30km/hr or players who can run at 35km/hr? Skill and speed is equally as vital if you want quick ball movements.

 

[LoBu]

Yes, injuries, and we are looking to start dominating this back end of the season.

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[BRL121]

Combination of a few things:

1. Lack of fitness. This means we don't spread hard, and crucially don't provide decent options when our defenders are ready to transition the ball up the ground. We simply look exhausted when we are asked to run into space, so we don't, and we end up standing still. Often the opposition cuts off our switch opportunities before we can get into place because we are slow to run into open space and trail our opponents as a result. Just look at the lack of movement coming out of D50, it's pathetic, no wonder we get locked in our defensive half for so long

2. Injuries to key players. This means we're relying on depth players, who are either inexperienced or less skilled. Some of our transition/faster/pressure players in particular have been injured for large chunks, inclduing Smith, Betts, McGovern, Lynch and Knight. And our harder defensive gut running mids and fast breakway mids like Sloane and Brad Crouch have also been injured.

3. Lack of confidence. Partially due to the above two issues, but a lot of our players are out of form and lack confidence. We actually started the season reasonably well in this regard but fell away when relying heavily on depth players as we started losing. Players don't seem confident in their bodies due to the injury issues, which leads to less intensity, which leads to poor form. That causes us to take fewer risks, which results in slow play.

4. Midfield structures. Campo has always set our midfield up extremely offensively. We don't cover the opposition particularly well, instead the focus is on winning the contested ball, winning clearances, and getting clean possession and transition as a result. This works when everyone is in form, and especially when we are willing to pressure and win the ball. But when you lack confidence and are out of form, your intensity drops away and you're less likely to win contested ball and clearances. But then because we are set up to win with little thought for defence, when we don't win, we get absolutely smashed. The ease in which the opposition can handball through our midfield from stoppages is embarrassing, especially when they are able to get the first hard ball possession. Other issues mentioned above compound this as we are unable to close in on them defensively. The result is the opposition can transition easily from their defence and from stoppages because they are simply winning it more in those situations

But I think reason 1 is the big reason. We look absolutely cooked. We aren't running defensively. We aren't running offensively. We aren't presenting options. We aren't closing down on the opposition. We aren't pressuring the opposition. We aren't creating space and opportunities for forwards. We look spent the moment we walk out onto the ground

You've pretty much covered it. In the little I've watched over the past few weeks, before turning off early in disgust, the Crows have been unrecognisable. They look like a side which has forgotten how to play the game, whatever the underlying reasons. The big thing I've noticed is the complete lack of tackling and pressuring: that's where it all starts and the turnovers should be generated. It's pathetic. Richmond were running around like unregistered dogs, whereas we were pressured.

Also, a big turnoff for me was seeing Atkins completely squib a contest (probably why he was dropped), and last week, e.g., watching Cheney impotently plodding around escorting an oppo player (unfit?). Things are bad, and I probably won't be watching much more this year if this sort of stuff continues. does that make me a bad supporter? Perhaps, but I just can't stand watching rubbish!

 

[BRL121]

The OP topic is all about our speed of ball movement or the lack thereof. Here's my overall observation regarding the ingredients of quick chain of play:
1. Confidence in the structure and in each other that the quick chain would lead to results.
2. Players willing to spread out, creating options for the quick movements. Hard work ethic and a sound fitness base is very much required here.
3. Quick players are needed, because a slow person can spread all they want, but they're likely to be side-by-side with an opposition player and not being able to outrun him.
4. Good skills ie. able to quickly assess the options and to handpass or kick to where the next link man is, as to allow quick play-on. No point kicking balls where it will do many random bounces into space or passing to the next guy's feet or over his head.
5. Options to kick short and to kick long, being able to mix things up. This is important because opposition teams would constantly be second guessing where the ball will end up and not able to set up their defense in a confident manner.

So from the above, I do think missing out on the key personnel is one of the major issue we have this year due to our Guinness level of injuries:
1. Smith (one of our fastest rebound defenders and one of the longest/accurate kicks we have in the team)
2. BCrouch (one of our fastest midfielders, who can attack as well as defend/tackle)
3. McGovern (one of our quickest forwards who can do pack marks as well as defend with quick chasing)
4. Betts (our quickest small forward who can crumb elite and accurate from anywhere around the boundary)
(5. Losing Cameron isn't helping with the speed situation either.)

With the missing personnel we have for the majority of this year, we have screwed ourselves badly with the lack of good skills overall AND an overall reduction in team speed. Our second tier players are being forced to increase their workload, and they were doing ok for the first few rounds, but then seem to have tired somewhat and it sets a chain of reactions in overall decrease team morale, reduced confidence in each other, and more frustrations all round. This is why we are sucking so bad in the last 6 games bar 1 really good quarter against the WCE.

It really comes to the lack of personnel right now. We need to have quicker and more skilled players if we want to be playing like the early rounds of 2017.

While I agree with all you have said, I strongly disagree with your conclusion (bolded). Next man up, and all that. We are putting a full team onto the ground and they collectively look as if they have forgotten how to play the game. The same personnel have been capable of playing well and winning previously. I don't believe that faster players will make any difference, unless they have remembered how to play the game. The underlying overall malaise is the problem, whatever the reasons. The current personnel need to work that out, including coaches. It is a club-wide problem.

The startling conclusion coming from the observations of recent weeks is that, when our signature fast-play, big-scoring mode disappears, we have absolutely nothing left and are a very, very ordinary team! We need some Richmond-like full-field pressure development to handle the finals-like situations.

This has been covered before, but I am also concerned that the farcical SANFL situation has finally had an adverse effect on our AFL side. It's not good for the supporters, and may have affected the players as well.

 

[Betts are off]

I think this year we have noticed that our strengths in 2016 and 2017 was really our CHF and CHB lines. And they were plastering over some of the deficiencies we had between the 50m archs. Having rock solid defenders flanked by elite ball users in Smith and Laird meant our transition was a joy to watch. They then had a healthy Lynch and Walker or even Gov as lead up men who either took the mark themselves or drew the extra defender and released a running MID.

Then you look at whose come into those spots to fill the void.

1) I love Milera as a half back flanker but his kicks are still very safe, and rarely break the game open like Smiths would. He also doesn't use his run and carry the same way, so instead of 30m run with a 55m bullet kick down the corridor to a leading forward, you get a 5m slow sideways run with a 30m kick to another defender. So although i think he's found his home on the HBF, he's not really like for like at all, and our game plan has suffered for it!

2) Mackay, well the guy will never be questioned over his courage, but his impulse is always to go long to a pack, and rarely to a lead up man. Our forward are not pack marks. I like Mackay's instinct to run and carry and kick long, however considering the role he was suppose to be filling, consistently kicking to a pack actually hurt our gameplan more then it helped.

3) I also like Poholke's hands so you would think Lynch's high HF role would suit him, but he always stands too way close to the mark and subsequently floats all of his kicks. Plus a fit Lynch would probably get to maybe 15 more contests then Poholke at this point in his career. So we are losing out there!

4) I love FOG, but the guy is at least 2 preseasons away from effectively playing the Walker role (let alone the allusive Midfield role people want to see him play). And when Walker is playing i feel like FOG is completely devoid of a role and looks like a headless chook.

Now some key guys are coming back, and we can actually execute our gameplan with the proper pieces I actually see us improving our ball movement over the next few months, and with better ball movement I see all facets of our game improving quickly. And as much as we all want a good draft pick, i think we need to get this playing group confident in the gameplan again!

 

[Enviable Tradition]

I very rarely start threads, this is very exciting for me

Okay, for the 2016 and 2017 seasons, our ball movement was arguably the best in the competition. Sometimes we'd miss shots on goal, sometimes our aggressive style would lead to us leaking goals, but the one thing you could rely on was that the Crows would generate potent forward thrusts all throughout every game. This, at least to my untrained eye, was down to one thing: we would deliberately set up to do it. Whenever we got the ball, or even looked like getting the ball, we'd have players sprinting everywhere, making leads, heading towards goal, whatever. Our players would play on safe in the knowledge that there would be a free player, and if worse came to worse and nothing was available they could safely go up the line and play for the boundary.

This year (and last year's grand final) it feels like pulling teeth every time we try to go forward. And I don't mean into our forward 50, I mean forward from any spot on the ground. We seem to just stop and wait for an option, none is forthcoming (there are often options 25m away or so but we seem loathe to take them), and then eventually we just do a bomb down the line and pray for a contested mark. In the rare occasions we take them, we do the same thing, expecting to take a string of contested marks all the way down to the goal square.


So what's gone wrong? I don't buy that it's personnel, that can change how effective you are at something, but not whether you do it at all. Is it that the players ahead are not generating enough run? Is it that the player with the ball isn't taking risks, or not pulling the trigger quickly enough? Have we changed how we're setting up so that we're not in a position to generate run once we win the ball? IE allowing defenders to zone 20m ahead of us and just intercept us as we try to break forward? Or, is there just something fundamentally exploitable about our style of play that just two clubs two years to work out and now it's never going to work against good teams anymore?

Not generating enough run - honestly, this is what it looks like to me. How many times do we see players mark the ball, look up and just see a few players jogging with their man and nothing else. Whatever happened to having players just zipping left and right? If a handful of players do it, one will get free more often than not, that's just how footy works.

But we don't do it. What's the reason? Poor fitness? Lack of confidence?

Not taking risks or pulling the trigger quickly enough - this is what I thought earlier in the season, but honestly, these days there are barely any good risks for us to take. Maybe we stopped taking them and so players stopped busting their ass to lead?

On the other hand, not sure why we don't take the 20m kicks. As a club we seem to prefer to go 50m to a contest than 20m forward to a free player. I understand, every time you kick the ball you run the risk of it not coming off right. But if a player gets free and you don't reward them despite no better options, after a while players stop working to get free.

Changed our setup - I'd buy this if we weren't leaking goals like a sieve. It doesn't feel like we're setting up well defensively, so we should at least be offensive. Instead it feels like we're in no man's land, not set up well enough to attack, but likewise not well enough to defend. We're 18th in the comp for laying tackles this year, we seemingly can't get near our opponents when they have the ball, but every time we have the ball we can't find any free options. Something is wrong.

Has our gameplan been worked out? - At the moment, it seems that clubs have figured out that they can just set up a wall ahead of play so we can't break free, and then back their speedier players to beat us on the rebound. I'm not sure whether that means our style of play simply isn't going to work, or if we're just doing it poorly.



Whatever it is, we've gone from a team that was highly enjoyable to watch, whether we won or lost, to a team that is supremely frustrating to watch. Somehow we've gone from a team that made scoring look easy (albeit to the detriment of our defence), to a team that makes scoring feel impossible at times.

What's the answer? Not sure.

You ar basically like Port in 2015/16

Teams worked out that you are going to play on fast no matter what (we did it with run, you did it with fast ball movement) so they just set up behind the ball and wait for you to kick it down their throats.

Like Port you need to work out how to play short and slow, lowering the eyes to find the loose players when everyone is sitting deep so and when and how to chop and change between the two styles depending on what the defence is doing.

It takes skill, experience and time to be able to do both when required.

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

 

[kulak]

1) I love Milera as a half back flanker but his kicks are still very safe, and rarely break the game open like Smiths would. He also doesn't use his run and carry the same way, so instead of 30m run with a 55m bullet kick down the corridor to a leading forward, you get a 5m slow sideways run with a 30m kick to another defender. So although i think he's found his home on the HBF, he's not really like for like at all, and our game plan has suffered for it!

2) Mackay, well the guy will never be questioned over his courage, but his impulse is always to go long to a pack, and rarely to a lead up man. Our forward are not pack marks. I like Mackay's instinct to run and carry and kick long, however considering the role he was suppose to be filling, consistently kicking to a pack actually hurt our gameplan more then it helped.

Completely agree with these two points.

They could almost be read as contradictory - Milera is bad for focusing on retaining possession; Mackay is bad for focusing on metres gained.

Really what it tells us is that Brodie Smith’s 55 metre tracer bullets to a teammate are not replaced by slotting in another player and asking them to play a similar role. It’s a rare skill.

 

[Betts are off]

Completely agree with these two points.

They could almost be read as contradictory - Milera is bad for focusing on retaining possession; Mackay is bad for focusing on metres gained.

Really what it tells us is that Brodie Smith’s 55 metre tracer bullets to a teammate are not replaced by slotting in another player and asking them to play a similar role. It’s a rare skill.

I thought that why I was writing it. I'm super excited to see Milera compliment Smith. That 30m low fast kick of his to release Smith will be great. But at present he plays more like a less confident Laird. Mackay is probably the most like for like in terms of game style, but just doesnt have the tools/mental speed to execute that role at anywhere near the level Brodie can. Very hard player to replace!

 

[kulak]

I thought that why I was writing it. I'm super excited to see Milera compliment Smith. That 30m low fast kick of his to release Smith will be great. But at present he plays more like a less confident Laird. Mackay is probably the most like for like in terms of game style, but just doesnt have the tools/mental speed to execute that role at anywhere near the level Brodie can. Very hard player to replace!

I AGREE

 

[PykeDream]

Another possible factor:
More and more teams are playing "Richmond-ball" which involves clogging the s**t out of the middle of the ground. Collingwood do this, Melbourne do this and other teams have tried. This forces us to go wide and often to a contest. We also don't have any crumbers to rove the ball and keep it moving forward.

GWS play a similar style to us and they've also struggled at times.

Went to WCE versus GWS last weekend, and what struck me is how GWS were so reliant on difficult contested marking efforts down the line in order to create scoring opportunities in the latter stage of the game.

Lobb and Himmelberg were taking some absolute blinders while outnumbered, but the crux was that they just had to work so damn hard to score goals, and as a consequence they lost as West Coast's path to goal was based on chaotic, unpredictable ball movement forward i.e. Willie Rioi's fluke mark to score the sealer.

It was a mirror image of our play against Richmond. Nearly every time we got the ball inside 50, it was a consequence of managing to execute a chain of difficult skills - a few pinpoint kicks and a number of strong marking efforts. Richmond applied such pressure that once they did have the ball, our midfield defensive structures were lagging to badly that in using the ball, a few simple kicks to a player in space were all that were required to get the ball in front of goal.

If all else failed, they could just bomb it on Riewoldt's head, knowing that even though he's a snowball's chance in Marble Bar of actually outmarking Talia, he just needs to get the ball to ground for their smalls to swarm.

 

[beartoo]

There's a lot of good analysis in this thread, but I'll add what I see as a possible factor. If you think back to the Neil Craig days you will remember late in his tenure he over-trained our team to the point where you could see they had difficulty running the 1st lap after they came onto the ground. Remember those infamous hard training days on the eves of games? What don't some sports' scientists understand about the need for recovery?
It seems to me that the 2018 team has similarly had the arse trained out of it and it isn't a case of not wanting to run, it's being too stuffed to do so.
There are a number of other mitigating factors as outlined above.

 

[John Who]

While I agree with all you have said, I strongly disagree with your conclusion (bolded). Next man up, and all that. We are putting a full team onto the ground and they collectively look as if they have forgotten how to play the game. The same personnel have been capable of playing well and winning previously. I don't believe that faster players will make any difference, unless they have remembered how to play the game. The underlying overall malaise is the problem, whatever the reasons. The current personnel need to work that out, including coaches. It is a club-wide problem.

The startling conclusion coming from the observations of recent weeks is that, when our signature fast-play, big-scoring mode disappears, we have absolutely nothing left and are a very, very ordinary team! We need some Richmond-like full-field pressure development to handle the finals-like situations.

This has been covered before, but I am also concerned that the farcical SANFL situation has finally had an adverse effect on our AFL side. It's not good for the supporters, and may have affected the players as well.

I don't think we're arguing much, just emphasising different viewpoints of the same issues. Sure, the same (or thereabouts) players were able to play some nice footy against Swans and Tigers in the earlier rounds this year, and ANY personnel is capable of playing on and performing quick chains, which we had done. Agreed.

The issue I'm focusing on is that: can the personnel who we've put on this year do a consistent job of pulling quick chains much like 2017? And the answer would be categorically NO. Lack of continuity of the gameplan/structures, lack of confidence, lack of fitness from underdone players, AND a lack of genuine pace and skill, which makes our ball movement not as pretty as it had been in 2017.

 

[Scrogdogg]

While I agree with all you have said, I strongly disagree with your conclusion (bolded). Next man up, and all that. We are putting a full team onto the ground and they collectively look as if they have forgotten how to play the game. The same personnel have been capable of playing well and winning previously. I don't believe that faster players will make any difference, unless they have remembered how to play the game. The underlying overall malaise is the problem, whatever the reasons. The current personnel need to work that out, including coaches. It is a club-wide problem.

The startling conclusion coming from the observations of recent weeks is that, when our signature fast-play, big-scoring mode disappears, we have absolutely nothing left and are a very, very ordinary team! We need some Richmond-like full-field pressure development to handle the finals-like situations.

This has been covered before, but I am also concerned that the farcical SANFL situation has finally had an adverse effect on our AFL side. It's not good for the supporters, and may have affected the players as well.

All sorts of things can have an adverse effect on a club. The farcical Crows SANFL scenario is just one of them. Maybe getting too theoretically sophisticated with the thinking attitudes and processes of football players is another. Back to basics is not a dirty cliché. Agree with you on full-field pressure football. It is where it all starts because dealing with the other team is key to modern football.

 

[kulak]

Went to WCE versus GWS last weekend, and what struck me is how GWS were so reliant on difficult contested marking efforts down the line in order to create scoring opportunities in the latter stage of the game.

Lobb and Himmelberg were taking some absolute blinders while outnumbered, but the crux was that they just had to work so damn hard to score goals, and as a consequence they lost as West Coast's path to goal was based on chaotic, unpredictable ball movement forward i.e. Willie Rioi's fluke mark to score the sealer.

It was a mirror image of our play against Richmond. Nearly every time we got the ball inside 50, it was a consequence of managing to execute a chain of difficult skills - a few pinpoint kicks and a number of strong marking efforts. Richmond applied such pressure that once they did have the ball, our midfield defensive structures were lagging to badly that in using the ball, a few simple kicks to a player in space were all that were required to get the ball in front of goal.

If all else failed, they could just bomb it on Riewoldt's head, knowing that even though he's a snowball's chance in Marble Bar of actually outmarking Talia, he just needs to get the ball to ground for their smalls to swarm.

Correct. Living in Sydney I have been to many Giants games and since Cameron came in it has always been the same.

It is like watching the Gary Ayres Crows where we had a once-in-a-lifetime midfield of Roo, McLeod, Goodwin, Edwards, Johnson - and the best we managed was a prelim.

 

[Ramify]

Could be right but its about turning his head into the middle of the ground as the 1st option

I get where u are comming from now. Could also force him to get a right.

 

[StonesThrow]

Cos we haven't had our good players play together