I understand they gave Fletcher a rest in the middle of the year as his running levels were too high
Analysis Wing Attendance Megathread 2023
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BuntonRules
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- Dec 30, 2008
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Not having a go, and it may well have helped, but it is a long time till GF day.
Didn't that also have something to do with Wilmot moving back into defence, Ashcroft getting injured and Clug moving inside more?
Wilmot moved back to cover Rich and Clug was mostly playing as a half forward rotating into the mid (from memory, this thread would tell us haha)
Where Wilmot best position is, wing or HBF is up for discussion. But we have alot of half back depth, and chose to still move him back there ahead of them, and none of those wing players could get a game (Sharp, Prior). Fletcher was a revelation when he came in, his efforts were excellent and he is clearly going to be a good player going forward. It was clear by the end of the year our Wing stocks were (as seen by the coaches):
Berry > Fletcher > Ah Chee > Wilmot > Sharp = Prior
No doubt Fletcher will be a player going forward, and I liked Ah Chee's efforts in the back half of the season too, but it's a contributing factor that our wings aren't mids getting pushed out like you would probably hope.
- Mar 12, 2003
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I find this fascinating. Where was Dev Rob playing when he kicked his goal? That had "fat side wing" written all over it.
What this thread doesn’t take in to account is rotations that are made during the game between goals, and positional changes that might occur.
DevRob might have started the last centre bounce as a half forward, one of the wings rotates off at the next stoppage near the interchange boundary, Zorko comes on and waves DevRob up the ground and on to a wing.
- Mar 12, 2003
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Yeah this is the thing. In fact I want to talk about Dev a little bit here.
I very rarely take any note of positions etc when I'm at a game, cos invariably I get caught ball watching
But I did notice that Nick Daicos lined up at half forward at the start of the game.This is a great way to shake any tag that might be coming his way. It's also a great way to get one of our guys playing on him who doesn't want to be playing on him (McKenna/Coleman/Wilmot).
Dev Rob started on the bench. He should have started on a wing, in place of Zorko, who was named on the wing, and gone to Daicos as soon as practical. If Daicos is starting in the middle it's complicated because do you really want 2 of your 3 starting midfielders playing defensive roles? The common argument is a resounding "no", but centre bounces had not exactly been a strength of ours this year anyway. We conceded 3 goals to 2 from centre bounces on the day so you could argue that this was the difference in the game. (Altho you can say that about a lot of stats when you lose by 4 points)
Anyway nobody really tries playing 2 tagging roles simultaneously anymore. But this doesn't mean it wouldn't work... in fact, I'd suggest the fact it doesn't get done means nobody really has a clear line of sight on whether it actually would work or not.
All of this means you can't really run with it in a Grand Final for the first time... it needed to be tried in-season. And it should have been. Plenty of teams you can run two tags on... Port (Butters and Rozee), Bulldogs (Bontempelli and Liberatore), Melbourne (Petracca and Oliver), Carlton (Cripps and Walsh) etc etc. You don't need to do it for a whole game... just passages of play where maybe you have conceded 2-3 goals in a hurry. Maybe you are playing in front of a hostile crowd and don't want to leak a few early goals. Or maybe you're playing in your first Grand Final for 19 years
Anyway I digress. That's only if Daicos starts in the guts. If he started at half back, Dev starts on the wing and swaps immediately with Ah Chee, who was named at half forward. Simple.
If Daicos started at half forward, as he did, little bit more complicated. Dev goes straight to Daicos, freeing up one of Coleman/McKenna/Wilmot. Ah Chee comes up to fill the wing role and we play 5 in our forward line.
Now Collingwood have a decision to make. Do they leave it 6 on our 7 ahead of the ball, potentially creating congestion in their forward line? Do they bring Daicos up to stoppages (more likely)? If they do we still have a spare behind the ball unless they swap Daicos with somebody to go forward (possible). Even if they do that, Daicos still has Dev for company, and they no longer have their spare behind the ball.
Or they keep their spare behind the ball, which lets us decide whether we want to equalise ahead of the ball by sending a midfielder forward, or we sit Coleman/McKenna/Wilmot off the back of the stoppage and chain out of congestion by hand. We don't really play that way though and that is one aspect of our game I would like to see improve between now and March. But that requires run which I'm not sure we have and that I will elaborate on when I (belatedly) find my way to the review thread.
Easy to say in hindsight but pre-match I agreed with those here who said he should go to Daicos. So that's what I would have done with Dev. Thought he played a great game regardless but would like to see us take better advantage of the fact that he's so disciplined defensively without being prone to those brain fades some of his predecessors (hi Mitch
) used to have.Similar threads
