Autopsy The Good (lol!) The Bad and the Beveridge.

[ArNcHiSe]

I appreciate the considered response dogwatch.

My issue with so much of the Bevo criticism and calls for a coaching change are that they are anything but well considered.

I certainly don’t think Bevo should be immune from criticism, nor do I think he should have the job for life. I recognise his tenure will come to an end, I just don’t agree with the big rush to get there.

I recognise he has significant flaws and has made plenty of mistakes, particularly back in 2017, when I was probably more critical of his performance than most. I just don’t think people are currently giving enough consideration to various factors affecting the overall team performance beyond his control, nor giving him enough credit for the things he continues to do right.

Developing a great list is seemingly not a credited to him as an achievement but a justification for his removal.

It’s also interesting you talk about the ‘Bulldog mentality’ from last century that we supposedly need to cast off.

I think one of the most damaging beliefs that we need to move on from is thinking that what held us back in those days was a poor culture. It wasn’t. That belief was and continues to be a complete furphy.

Indeed , I think many of the club’s historical mistakes can be attributed to club leaders being seduced by ridiculous belief.

What typically held us back from winning more, was the far from level playing field. It was actually an amazing feat to do as well as we did and keep securing our place in the national competition considering our poor financial position. Some other wealthier clubs weren’t so lucky.

Billy Bean’s famous line about ‘Rich teams, poor teams 50ft of crap then us’ springs to mind.

Things are significantly better now, but still not entirely fair and still tilted against us. That lack of fairness is widely pervasive. So needs to be considered.

The focus on top four is also seriously overblown, and glosses over the fact that we don’t have a strong home ground advantage and compete against many teams that do. We also generally have a less than favourable draw. Such factors can make the difference in finishing positions in a tight competition.

I would argue that Bevo’s approach of getting to the finals with a strong team at the right time rather than investing too heavily on achieving a high ladder position is one of the key strategic differences that set him apart from some of his failed predecessors.

Finally, the club admin and supporter base turning on our most successful coach in the way many have, I think has been pretty poor and is arguably causing both reputational and cultural damage.

It might even make us a less desirable place for good future coaches and players.

I’m guess what I’m trying to say in a pretty long winded way is that I do think the recent anti-Bevo carry-on by some of our supporters might indeed be worthy of a modicum of shame.

There is a lot wrong and embarrassing about this post. Bevo deserves no credit for the current list, falling into F/S’s and academy picks while also underperforming so they get high picks doesn’t take skill.

This “woe is me, the competition is unfair” attitude is embarrassing and such loser attitude to have.

Finally, your “Bevo is a secret genius for underperforming” might be the funniest things I’ve ever read.

 

[Fossie 32]

Few good points I agree with here (not all) and I very much agree with your broad strokes that this board seems to have gone mad over the past week and people are thinking ridiculously. I want to add a few points.

• The general vibe is that people are acting under the assumption that we are a worse team than we really are, rather than the reality of most statistical/neutral observers wouldd have us as a power ranking approx 12th team in the league.
• Bevo has a winning record over 200+ games inheriting a poor team and with structural disadvantages you pointed out. We can safely assume he's an above average coach and five or seven of the most recent games of footy are both being weighted too greatly and being exaggerated in just how bad they are in assessing Bevo
• People are talking about underperformance relative to quality of list expectations without giving credit to the coaches' role in making the list appear talented. In an alternative universe Bont may have been a completely different player under a new coach and indeed may not be the same player if we were to hire a new coach. If a new coach appeared to "play good tactics" with a "less talented list" the coach should be judged on both elements, but will only get judged on the tactics side
• Beveridge has proven to very quickly bring a competitive team up from the brink, as not many people would have thought we would make finals four years in a row from the subsequent year at stages in 2018, and in three of those four years he showed an ability mid-year to bring us to finals from points of the season where we appeared much worse than where we are today.
• And lastly, purely from a list management planning POV, we're paying for our sins for decisions that were made thag helped us be so successful in 2021 anyway. We topped up with trading players in and mature ages, and we also built for a sustainable future by getting Darcy and JUH. The AFL has the forces of the tides forcing equalisation through the draft and salary cap, but the strength of those forces can be increased through strategies like these (see Geelong). Beveridge shouldn't be punished for list management decisions that were made in order to try and turn a finals-making team into winning a final, and the accumulation of list management decisions from 2018-2022 absolutely robbed from the potential success of the 2024 bulldogs to be given to the 2019-2023 bulldogs (and indeed with Darcy/Jamarra, the 2030 Bulldogs).

I'm not sure about "...most statistical/neutral observers would have us as a power ranking approx 12th team in the league."
What would they base that on, our performance I guess? Which is reasonable, but I would think we are underperforming with the players we have - very few playing up to their ability and some are freakin annoying with their efforts.
I just get the vibe that Bevo has 'lost' them.

I too keep thinking of his comments about coaches having a used by date [thought he said 7 years, dunno]. Given that, how can people who say it is his time be so wrong?

Still, I hope he and the team prove us wrong - he will always be a Bullgod.

 

[X_box_X]

I have mainly avoided most of this thread because I don't like reading autopsies on this forum after a loss because they're painful.

I can only assume most have the same feelings of disappointment and emptiness as me after Sunday's performance. Usually I try to approach underwhelming performances with a glass half full approach and this is the best I can come up with.

• It's round one. Big deal. We started last season in similar fashion and we did well to recover after a poor first two games, winning six of our next seven. Sure, the season didn't go well after that, but we were pretty up and about after round ten and we proved we could turn things around.
  
  
• It's round one. Very recent history suggests most teams who go deep actually start the season poorly. Brisbane started 1-2 last year before being a kick away from the premiership. GWS and Carlton took a long time to hit their straps and they were getting pounded in the media in the first half of the season. That's three of last year's Prelim Finalists. The year prior, Collingwood started poorly before being a kick away from the Grand Final. 2021, Geelong and Brisbane were outside the top eight after the first month of the season before finishing top four.
  
  
• It's round one. Both of last year's Grand Finalists are 0-2. Plenty of time for them to recover. Why not us? No, seriously, why not us?
  
  
• Half way through the third qtr on Sunday, I actually thought we were on top in general play, we just couldn't execute. Melbourne got a goal against the momentum, we dropped our heads, the rest is history.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

I'm not sure about "...most statistical/neutral observers would have us as a power ranking approx 12th team in the league."
What would they base that on, our performance I guess? Which is reasonable, but I would think we are underperforming with the players we have - very few playing up to their ability and some are freakin annoying with their efforts.
I just get the vibe that Bevo has 'lost' them.

I too keep thinking of his comments about coaches having a used by date [thought he said 7 years, dunno]. Given that, how can people who say it is his time be so wrong?

Still, I hope he and the team prove us wrong - he will always be a Bullgod.

12th here: the aggregate of 15 different statistical models:

Power Rankings - Squiggle

AFL Power Ratings from the internet's finest models.

squiggle.com.au

Fox Footy has us 13th

https://www.foxsports.com.au/afl/af...s/news-story/a99e70047627d148b449ce4a478e3dd4

"we are underperforming with the players we have" is exactly my point. That implies an expectation of high performance, and the recognition of talented as talented also is something that is attributed to Beveridge. And at the end of the day being the 12th best team with an expectation of being the 8th or whatever isn't better than being the 12th best team with the expectation that you would be 15th or whatever, it's equal, because either way you're the 12th best team.

 

[dogwatch]

...

• 
  
• Half way through the third qtr [yesterday], I actually thought we were on top in general play, we just couldn't execute. Melbourne got a goal against the momentum, we dropped our heads, the rest is history.

You could have been writing this on Sunday 26 September 2021.
Spooky!

 

[Dogs_r_barking]

You'd hope we're too professional now to go down the Rohde/McCartney path again...

It wouldn’t surprise me if Gia got the gig. Now how would that feel.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

There is a lot wrong and embarrassing about this post. Bevo deserves no credit for the current list, falling into F/S’s and academy picks while also underperforming so they get high picks doesn’t take skill.

You can't honestly believe this surely though? Like there's a belief the coach's only job is motivation and tactics? Of course he deserves credit for the list appearing talented. He runs training sessions and communicates with the players throughout the week, of course, and interacts with other elements of the football department. In fact, a major criticism of Bevo is the very fact he has done too much work in the wider football department in his time. That criticism aside, if it's true, by that logic he was even more important in making the list "appear" talented?

 

[Northernsoul74]

If you are calling me a “so-called supporter” why have I paid up for a reserved seat and a social club member for the last 10 years, have paid for my kids to have a membership every year since birth. I attend most VFL games. Last week I took my daughter to the G and this week I will trek out to Ballarat with my son. Not sure what else I need to do to qualify as a real supporter.

Ignore him. Big difference between a supporter and a happy clapper. Sadly we still have way too many happy clappers that almost revel at being”Footscray”. The west is booming, backing for a redeveloped WO, we have a solid list and we’ve wasted an opportunity to really seperate ourselves from North/St Kilda etc.

 

[Northernsoul74]

our weapon in 15/16 was our contested poss diff

we've hardly dominated in that area since

Lin Jong types as our bottom 6. I’d love someone with that desire currently.

 

[Northernsoul74]

AFL website:

Dogs' dodgy defending​

It was little wonder Melbourne took so many uncontested marks when you look at the Bulldogs' pressure rating. Their mark of 162 was the lowest for the club since 2018, with the 37 laid tackles their equal lowest since 2019.

Week 1, new season, just missed finals, we play the team we hate the most (well second most after GWS) and we serve crap up??????
Bevo is a fantastic coach, but he’s there to drive strategy, style, in game tactics and prob most important of all, motivation.
Whether it’s his or the players fault, the motivation and heart is just not there.
You can’t get rid of the players…..

That’s more than telling. I’m assuming it’s not by design so it has to eventually be on a he coaches head. He’s either not getting a response from the players or they can’t/won’t do it. There’s isn’t a professional sport in the world where you can carry indifferent effort. Lobb is a prime example of someone who is stealing a living compared to their ability.

 

[Northernsoul74]

I have mainly avoided most of this thread because I don't like reading autopsies on this forum after a loss because they're painful.

I can only assume most have the same feelings of disappointment and emptiness as me after Sunday's performance. Usually I try to approach underwhelming performances with a glass half full approach and this is the best I can come up with.

• It's round one. Big deal. We started last season in similar fashion and we did well to recover after a poor first two games, winning six of our next seven. Sure, the season didn't go well after that, but we were pretty up and about after round ten and we proved we could turn things around.
  
  
• It's round one. Very recent history suggests most teams who go deep actually start the season poorly. Brisbane started 1-2 last year before being a kick away from the premiership. GWS and Carlton took a long time to hit their straps and they were getting pounded in the media in the first half of the season. That's three of last year's Prelim Finalists. The year prior, Collingwood started poorly before being a kick away from the Grand Final. 2021, Geelong and Brisbane were outside the top eight after the first month of the season before finishing top four.
  
  
• It's round one. Both of last year's Grand Finalists are 0-2. Plenty of time for them to recover. Why not us? No, seriously, why not us?
  
  
• Half way through the third qtr on Sunday, I actually thought we were on top in general play, we just couldn't execute. Melbourne got a goal against the momentum, we dropped our heads, the rest is history.

Dripping our heads is a common theme though. I don’t view it as it’s only round 1, it’s been seasons now.Nothing changes, we regularly start the year poorly and end up reverting to what we know to get us close to finals. Wtf do we do over summer that we get to round 2 and likely knee jerk and drop a number of players because they didn’t turn up. If they didn’t perform their role/instructions they should be dropped and it should be clear that it’s going to be bloody hard to get back unless there is sustained vfl performance.

 

[BulldogMuscle]

You can't honestly believe this surely though? Like there's a belief the coach's only job is motivation and tactics? Of course he deserves credit for the list appearing talented. He runs training sessions and communicates with the players throughout the week, of course, and interacts with other elements of the football department. In fact, a major criticism of Bevo is the very fact he has done too much work in the wider football department in his time. That criticism aside, if it's true, by that logic he was even more important in making the list "appear" talented?

You literally only need to look at our current crop of Bulldog recruits from other clubs and every single one credits ''meeting one on one with Bevo'' who ''convinced them to come across''

How often does that happen at other clubs?

Ofcourse Bevo has a huge hand on our list.

 

[stefoid]

You can disagree if you like.

Tigers hyper pressure football around the contest and inside fwd 50 was developed on the back of what we were doing in 16. That’s what happened.

Feel free to use an article by a random Age journalist to determine a differing view on it.

As you say, they probably also took inspiration from Bevo turning the team/club around in such a short time.

We cant take credit for that, the pies were heavily into doing that before we started doing it. It may have been a characteristic of richmonds play (and a few other teams including us), but not the defining one. Im talking about how they brought the ball up the field as opposed to us. You can unlock these articles by turning on devleop mode on chrome and then turning off javascript (google it) but Ill copy and paste it here because its very relevant to our current situation.

===

At the peak of the pandemic, relations between Richmond and the AFL became strained.
Damien Hardwick wasn’t keen on some COVID-19 restrictions and made his dissent known. The league wasn’t rapt, either, when Sydney Stack and Callum Coleman-Jones escaped their hub and found trouble at a kebab shop in the seedy precinct of Surfers Paradise.
But if the game’s benchmark club and governing body had tense times in 2020, the AFL should be grateful that Richmond’s bold on-field approach has prevailed in 2022.
Much as fans of other clubs might have found Richmond’s outbreak of supremacy irritating or worse, everyone who cares about the shape of the game on the field should be thanking the Tigers for providing a template that has produced a better-looking, watchable spectacle.

Richmond’s season is precariously placed, having lost another nail-biter on Saturday - this time to lowly North Melbourne - underscoring their luckless season.
But where the Tigers have clearly won out overall is in the contest of ideas about how to play the game.

Jack Riewoldt celebrates a goal against the Kangaroos on Saturday.CREDIT:GETTY IMAGES
The Richmond of 2017 unleashed a new game style in which they moved the ball forwards, taking territory and applying immense defensive pressure at the contest. They did not chip sideways or backwards as they had in their awful, stunted 2016.
The alternative model was exemplified by the Eagles, who played keepings off, using width and a patient use of excellent kicking skills in their formidable peak of 2018.

Loading
By 2021, however, West Coast’s method for moving the ball had become redundant, as teams worked out how to defend the switches of play. The Eagles were the worst team in the competition for moving the footy from their defensive 50-metre arc to their attacking area - a ranking that remained for much of 2022.
This year, Collingwood and Gold Coast have adopted Richmond-like game styles, embracing imperfection and chancing their arm to move the footy forward. They’ve used the corridor, reducing superfluous disposals.
It is a lean and mean style that imbued the Pies and Suns with a confidence in each other and also a belief that they can storm home from behind; neither has sacrificed much in defensive capability, either.
Drilled by Hardwick’s former lieutenants Craig McRae and Justin Leppitsch, Collingwood are unrecognisable compared with the team that went backwards, in every sense, last year.

Loading
Across the competition (up to round 18), backward kicks are down by 10 per cent on 2021, as coaches come to terms with the fact that if you don’t move the ball quickly, you’ll be marooned in your defensive 50m area, unable to penetrate the cluster of the opposition’s forward press.
Geelong, too, have quickened up movement of the ball, cognisant of the need to take full toll of their foremost weapon - the combination of Tom Hawkins and Jeremy Cameron in attack.
The Cats scored 33 per cent from moving the ball from their backline last year. This time, after a readjustment, rebounds from the backline account for 39 per cent of their scoring.
This straight-at-goal method, instigated by Richmond of 2017-2020, is an act of faith in one’s players. The coach must accept, as McRae and Stuart Dew have, that there will be turnovers, mistakes and counter-attacks.

But it is a way that has won Collingwood, Gold Coast and even Geelong more games than had they remained mired in a conservative approach.
The AFL could say, with some justification, that two rule changes - the six-six-six formation at centre bounces and the stand rule that freezes the man on the mark - have helped teams attack, as scoring has lifted from about 80 points to 83 points per team per game.

The Pies have adopted Richmond’s forward-facing game plan to great success this year.CREDIT:GETTY IMAGES
But the predominant view of several senior and assistant coaches canvassed by The Age is that while those rules have helped, the shift in philosophy has been more important. “I just think that teams have got a different mindset,” explained one senior coach.
“Teams are trying to keep the ball in motion,” added an experienced assistant coach from a Victorian club. “Richmond really was the pioneer of forward handball and transition.”

Loading
That crowds have been down, compared with 2019 (the last pre-COVID season), seems largely due to the breaking of rituals, especially in Melbourne, and an ongoing reluctance of some fans to risk the coronavirus, or even flu, when you can watch games with a glass of Pinot on the couch.
The look of the actual game, however, has improved markedly since 2019. There are simply more games one can bear to watch.
Many of the numbers don’t show the shift from slow to fast play footy. Inside 50 entries and play-on percentages have not increased.
One number, though, does demonstrate a different game (besides fewer backward kicks).

In 2021, there were 102 runs of five or more goals without a reply, a number that was almost exactly the same every year since 2018 (not counting the reduced season of 2020).
This year, up to this round, we had already seen a staggering 127 run-ons of five goals or more. Momentum changes within games have never been so dramatic nor plentiful. Scoring from centre bounces is up from 10.4 points (per team per game in ’21) to 11.2.
Momentum, as the coaches know, is harder to halt when there’s a six-six-six rule, when you can’t “hit the boundary” or dive on the ball. Teams can still slow the play by chipping the ball around, but in today’s game, you’ll eventually have to kick down the line to a contest.
A small irony lies in that the progenitor of the faster game, Richmond, have become something of a victim of their own method.
This year, the Tigers have blown seemingly match-winning leads - against Carlton (round one), Sydney, Gold Coast (40 points) and Geelong, and they led against North Melbourne in the last quarter on Saturday. Their heavyweight bout with the Cats, in which they wiped of a six-goal deficit, only to surrender a 17-point lead in the final quarter, was probably the season’s best.

So, they’ve lived and died by the surge. But for what you’ve done to repair the great Australian football ugliness, thank you, Richmond.

 

[ArNcHiSe]

You can't honestly believe this surely though? Like there's a belief the coach's only job is motivation and tactics? Of course he deserves credit for the list appearing talented. He runs training sessions and communicates with the players throughout the week, of course, and interacts with other elements of the football department. In fact, a major criticism of Bevo is the very fact he has done too much work in the wider football department in his time. That criticism aside, if it's true, by that logic he was even more important in making the list "appear" talented?

You’re acting like he took a bunch of unknown players and made them superstars. He has been handed a bunch of top 10 picks. And if you think that he is a reason that the list is so highly rated, why aren’t they playing better?

You literally only need to look at our current crop of Bulldog recruits from other clubs and every single one credits ''meeting one on one with Bevo'' who ''convinced them to come across''

How often does that happen at other clubs?

Ofcourse Bevo has a huge hand on our list.

You’re right, it takes real skill to recruit James Harmes and Bramble from other clubs.

 

[stefoid]

AFL website:

Dogs' dodgy defending​

It was little wonder Melbourne took so many uncontested marks when you look at the Bulldogs' pressure rating. Their mark of 162 was the lowest for the club since 2018, with the 37 laid tackles their equal lowest since 2019.

Week 1, new season, just missed finals, we play the team we hate the most (well second most after GWS) and we serve crap up??????
Bevo is a fantastic coach, but he’s there to drive strategy, style, in game tactics and prob most important of all, motivation.
Whether it’s his or the players fault, the motivation and heart is just not there.
You can’t get rid of the players…..

How do we account for that? were we so inept that not only we failed in our efforts to be more offensively minded without the ball, but in that failure, we also failed to defend our opponents? yeesh

 

[RedWhite&Blue]

2005 R5 vs. Adelaide. Grant's 300th. 28,000 people go to the game (it remains our second-biggest crowd against an non Sydney/Brisbane interstate opponent, or in the 2017 season immediately after the flag). So one of the more passionate, one-sided Bulldogs crowd. Darcy turns back the clock and kicks six despite spending half the game in the ruck, dominating in a way that Bulldogs fans saw in the 2001-2 period when he was one of the game's best. We get the win, but Darcy tears his ACL the following week at that cursed stadium down in Geelong.

I got that totally wrong (my memory is shithouse) - Gilbee took the kick in and ran it the full length of the ground...

 

[threenewpadlocks]

You’re acting like he took a bunch of unknown players and made them superstars. He has been handed a bunch of top 10 picks. And if you think that he is a reason that the list is so highly rated, why aren’t they playing better?

He was "handed" three top 10 draft picks: Bont, Macrae, Stringer. But what's not to say that he didn't make them into superstars? Bont, for instance, immediately became an excellent player from his very first games under Bevo - six brownlow votes in his first two games in his second season.

Thinking that ... player development ... doesn't exist ... or that the coach has no role in player development ... is kind of ridiculous.

 

[ArNcHiSe]

He was "handed" three top 10 draft picks: Bont, Macrae, Stringer. But what's not to say that he didn't make them into superstars? Bont, for instance, immediately became an excellent player from his very first games under Bevo - six brownlow votes in his first two games in his second season.

Thinking that ... player development ... doesn't exist ... or that the coach has no role in player development ... is kind of ridiculous.

But that’s the point, he isn’t good at player development. Is Weightman reaching his potential? Naughton? Jamarra? Smith? Busslinger? Richards? West? Darcy? Do you honestly think that Bevo will help Saunders and Croft reach their potential? The only player that looks like he reached his potential was English and even he looks like he has gone backwards this season.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

But that’s the point, he isn’t good at player development. Is Weightman reaching his potential? Naughton? Jamarra? Smith? Busslinger? Richards? West? Darcy? Do you honestly think that Bevo will help Saunders and Croft reach their potential? The only player that looks like he reached his potential was English and even he looks like he has gone backwards this season.

What their "potential" is, or any perception of it, isn't identical today as it was the day that they were drafted. AFL players aren't players in a sports video game that have a magic hidden "potential" number.

From day one there's a possibility that any player, irrespective of how high they were drafted, will never meaningfully contribute to AFL level. That should rightfully be baked into their "day one" potential.

Otherwise you're trying to have it both ways.

By your logic, you shouldn't discredit coaches for failing to develop a Will Phillips type because "they never had the potential anyway", because they've never demonstrated it meaningfully on an on-field level. But of course coaches should be criticised somewhat for the failure of a player like Phillips.

 

[Charlie Bucket]

We cant take credit for that, the pies were heavily into doing that before we started doing it. It may have been a characteristic of richmonds play (and a few other teams including us), but not the defining one. Im talking about how they brought the ball up the field as opposed to us. You can unlock these articles by turning on devleop mode on chrome and then turning off javascript (google it) but Ill copy and paste it here because its very relevant to our current situation.

===

At the peak of the pandemic, relations between Richmond and the AFL became strained.
Damien Hardwick wasn’t keen on some COVID-19 restrictions and made his dissent known. The league wasn’t rapt, either, when Sydney Stack and Callum Coleman-Jones escaped their hub and found trouble at a kebab shop in the seedy precinct of Surfers Paradise.
But if the game’s benchmark club and governing body had tense times in 2020, the AFL should be grateful that Richmond’s bold on-field approach has prevailed in 2022.
Much as fans of other clubs might have found Richmond’s outbreak of supremacy irritating or worse, everyone who cares about the shape of the game on the field should be thanking the Tigers for providing a template that has produced a better-looking, watchable spectacle.

Richmond’s season is precariously placed, having lost another nail-biter on Saturday - this time to lowly North Melbourne - underscoring their luckless season.
But where the Tigers have clearly won out overall is in the contest of ideas about how to play the game.

Jack Riewoldt celebrates a goal against the Kangaroos on Saturday.CREDIT:GETTY IMAGES
The Richmond of 2017 unleashed a new game style in which they moved the ball forwards, taking territory and applying immense defensive pressure at the contest. They did not chip sideways or backwards as they had in their awful, stunted 2016.
The alternative model was exemplified by the Eagles, who played keepings off, using width and a patient use of excellent kicking skills in their formidable peak of 2018.

Loading
By 2021, however, West Coast’s method for moving the ball had become redundant, as teams worked out how to defend the switches of play. The Eagles were the worst team in the competition for moving the footy from their defensive 50-metre arc to their attacking area - a ranking that remained for much of 2022.
This year, Collingwood and Gold Coast have adopted Richmond-like game styles, embracing imperfection and chancing their arm to move the footy forward. They’ve used the corridor, reducing superfluous disposals.
It is a lean and mean style that imbued the Pies and Suns with a confidence in each other and also a belief that they can storm home from behind; neither has sacrificed much in defensive capability, either.
Drilled by Hardwick’s former lieutenants Craig McRae and Justin Leppitsch, Collingwood are unrecognisable compared with the team that went backwards, in every sense, last year.

Loading
Across the competition (up to round 18), backward kicks are down by 10 per cent on 2021, as coaches come to terms with the fact that if you don’t move the ball quickly, you’ll be marooned in your defensive 50m area, unable to penetrate the cluster of the opposition’s forward press.
Geelong, too, have quickened up movement of the ball, cognisant of the need to take full toll of their foremost weapon - the combination of Tom Hawkins and Jeremy Cameron in attack.
The Cats scored 33 per cent from moving the ball from their backline last year. This time, after a readjustment, rebounds from the backline account for 39 per cent of their scoring.
This straight-at-goal method, instigated by Richmond of 2017-2020, is an act of faith in one’s players. The coach must accept, as McRae and Stuart Dew have, that there will be turnovers, mistakes and counter-attacks.

But it is a way that has won Collingwood, Gold Coast and even Geelong more games than had they remained mired in a conservative approach.
The AFL could say, with some justification, that two rule changes - the six-six-six formation at centre bounces and the stand rule that freezes the man on the mark - have helped teams attack, as scoring has lifted from about 80 points to 83 points per team per game.

The Pies have adopted Richmond’s forward-facing game plan to great success this year.CREDIT:GETTY IMAGES
But the predominant view of several senior and assistant coaches canvassed by The Age is that while those rules have helped, the shift in philosophy has been more important. “I just think that teams have got a different mindset,” explained one senior coach.
“Teams are trying to keep the ball in motion,” added an experienced assistant coach from a Victorian club. “Richmond really was the pioneer of forward handball and transition.”

Loading
That crowds have been down, compared with 2019 (the last pre-COVID season), seems largely due to the breaking of rituals, especially in Melbourne, and an ongoing reluctance of some fans to risk the coronavirus, or even flu, when you can watch games with a glass of Pinot on the couch.
The look of the actual game, however, has improved markedly since 2019. There are simply more games one can bear to watch.
Many of the numbers don’t show the shift from slow to fast play footy. Inside 50 entries and play-on percentages have not increased.
One number, though, does demonstrate a different game (besides fewer backward kicks).

In 2021, there were 102 runs of five or more goals without a reply, a number that was almost exactly the same every year since 2018 (not counting the reduced season of 2020).
This year, up to this round, we had already seen a staggering 127 run-ons of five goals or more. Momentum changes within games have never been so dramatic nor plentiful. Scoring from centre bounces is up from 10.4 points (per team per game in ’21) to 11.2.
Momentum, as the coaches know, is harder to halt when there’s a six-six-six rule, when you can’t “hit the boundary” or dive on the ball. Teams can still slow the play by chipping the ball around, but in today’s game, you’ll eventually have to kick down the line to a contest.
A small irony lies in that the progenitor of the faster game, Richmond, have become something of a victim of their own method.
This year, the Tigers have blown seemingly match-winning leads - against Carlton (round one), Sydney, Gold Coast (40 points) and Geelong, and they led against North Melbourne in the last quarter on Saturday. Their heavyweight bout with the Cats, in which they wiped of a six-goal deficit, only to surrender a 17-point lead in the final quarter, was probably the season’s best.

So, they’ve lived and died by the surge. But for what you’ve done to repair the great Australian football ugliness, thank you, Richmond.

Of course we claim credit. As we should. Tigers took our system and made it their own.

You can keep posting the same irrelevant article over and over if you want to. All good

 

[Charlie Bucket]

There’s enough to be upset with Bev about already. Claiming Bevo hasn’t developed a 2nd year Busslinger is hilarious.

Jesus christ some of you Bevo haters go all loopy as shit when the team isn’t going so well.

 

[ArNcHiSe]

What their "potential" is, or any perception of it, isn't identical today as it was the day that they were drafted. AFL players aren't players in a sports video game that have a magic hidden "potential" number.

From day one there's a possibility that any player, irrespective of how high they were drafted, will never meaningfully contribute to AFL level. That should rightfully be baked into their "day one" potential.

Otherwise you're trying to have it both ways.

By your logic, you shouldn't discredit coaches for failing to develop a Will Phillips type because "they never had the potential anyway", because they've never demonstrated it meaningfully on an on-field level. But of course coaches should be criticised somewhat for the failure of a player like Phillips.

You would be right if it was 1 or 2 players but it’s pretty much every player the Bulldogs have drafted in the first round since Bevo has become coach. Either that’s the coaches or the Bulldogs have on the worst teams at drafting for nearly 10 years. Which one is it?

 

[stefoid]

Of course we claim credit. As we should. Tigers took our system and made it their own.

You can keep posting the same irrelevant article over and over if you want to. All good

Sigh. Youre so tediously of a certain type of poster that drags on the forum. Never ever fail to post snark if someone disagrees with you.

Its a trump-like mix of arrogance and insecurity that simply cant handle lack of affirmation.

You know how adults interact Charlie? One says something and another says a different thing and they leave it at that..., and they dont have to go nyah nyah afterwards!

 

[Charlie Bucket]

Sigh. Youre so tediously of a certain type of poster that drags on the forum. Never ever fail to post snark if someone disagrees with you.

Its a trump-like mix of arrogance and insecurity that simply cant handle lack of affirmation.

You know how adults interact Charlie? One says something and another says a different thing and they leave it at that..., and they dont have to go nyah nyah afterwards!

You responded to my original post telling me I was wrong, and then proceeded to share an article from Jake Niall as proof.

You then doubled down on that with your second response.

Not sure why you’re now upset with how I responded.

 

[Fossie 32]

12th here: the aggregate of 15 different statistical models:

Power Rankings - Squiggle

AFL Power Ratings from the internet's finest models.

squiggle.com.au

Fox Footy has us 13th

https://www.foxsports.com.au/afl/af...s/news-story/a99e70047627d148b449ce4a478e3dd4

"we are underperforming with the players we have" is exactly my point. That implies an expectation of high performance, and the recognition of talented as talented also is something that is attributed to Beveridge. And at the end of the day being the 12th best team with an expectation of being the 8th or whatever isn't better than being the 12th best team with the expectation that you would be 15th or whatever, it's equal, because either way you're the 12th best team.

Eww they rate GWS and Melb highest.
They don't say how they arrive at the aggregate result and Fox just say ......

"What are the Power Rankings? This is our attempt to rank every AFL club from best to worst. We take wins and losses into account, but also the quality of opposition faced and whether teams are likely to get healthier or improve going forward. It’s a little bit ‘who’s hot and who’s not’; part predictive, part analysis of what’s happened. If Team A is above Team B, we’d probably tip A to win if they were playing at a neutral venue this weekend".

So they don't say what the ratings are based on other than W/L record and form. Are they accounting for potential best performance / expectation and do they mean current rating or predicted end of year position? The Fox one seems a combo of all of that

I would say while being 12th isn't great any time, it's better to be 12th with expectation of 15th rather than 8th as hopefully it means the side are trying harder / developing better and / or being better coached.

Sorry, I'm not sure what you are saying with >>>

"we are underperforming with the players we have" is exactly my point. That implies an expectation of high performance, and the recognition of talented as talented also is something that is attributed to Beveridge.

Are you agreeing we are underperforming given our list?
What is you expectation of our ladder position if we were performing to the best of our abilities?
I would have thought 5th to 7th, possibly higher if we found the magic spark again.