COACHING: TOO THEORETICAL AND INFLEXIBLE?

[jackie_mihocek]

I’m not setting out to bag the coaches - rather I’m trying to examine their philosophy in a constructive manner.

The “Blue Collar” philosophy which has been put forward as the bedrock of our system.

This gets a big tick from me. The question is how is training attempting to implement this strategy?

We saw the lack of physical effort against St. Kilda followed by an appalling game against Geelong.

1. To my mind there is too much theoretical attention given to how we will move the ball downfield EXECUTED WITH TOO LITTLE PRESSURE at training.

I accept that we don’t want to incur further injuries at training, but we must learn to execute our skills/game plan under pressure and we must PRACTICE exerting pressure much more strongly.

2. Extra man at the contest or extra man loose in defence?

Many of you have pointed this dilemma out. To my mind the extra at the contest is NOT working. We get beaten at the contest, the opposition handballs it to the defender, who then feeds the loose man down the ground.

IF THIS PHILOSOPHY IS NOT WORKING BE FLEXIBLE ENOUGH TO CHANGE IT.

3. To tag or not to tag?

Lachie Neale killed us on Saturday. The coach explained their deliberate decision not to tag.

“We decided not to because we wanted to still keep a bit of flow and attack in our game.”

They made a thoughtful decision which showed they were aware of the problem which is reasonable. However, it didn’t work, it was clearly the wrong decision.

IF THIS PHILOSOPHY IS NOT WORKING BE FLEXIBLE ENOUGH TO CHANGE IT.

I would add that the “blue collar” approach here would be to tag strongly.

4. Goalkicking.

There was an obvious lack of scoreboard pressure because we missed easy, straightforward, shots at goal. I don’t need to list them.

There is a lot of goal kicking practice at training – much of it interspersed with drills throughout the session. No doubt this is partly to simulate the pressure of kicking when you are fatigued which makes sense.

However, it is obvious that we are deficient in this area – some players much more than others in terms of accuracy and distance.

IF THIS PHILOSOPHY IS NOT WORKING BE FLEXIBLE ENOUGH TO CHANGE IT.

To my mind this area needs much, much more time devoted to it. I think few would disagree with getting an expert like Lloyd to come and oversee a specific programme with the biggest offenders taking multiple shots at goal until they improve.

MY MESSAGE TO THE COACHES IS “BLUE COLLAR” TICK, BUT BE FLEXIBLE AND RE-EXAMINE SOME OF YOUR FUNDAMENTAL PHILOSOPHIES.

[chris_64]

If we had kicked straight and Brisbane had not, we would have beaten Brisbane.
If Brisbane had performed about the same in front of goal it would have been a 50/50 game.
If we tagged Neale, we probably would have done a bit better, but not much.

The script has flipped. Now we have to replace our best player for 8 weeks.

The issue of the extra back/ extra at the stoppage is still a live issue imo

[westozziebomber]

our refusal to pay any attention to gun midfielders is the highest level of arrogance

[astro_bomber]

Problem is we don’t have the personnel to go with a Neale, Cripps, Bont. Parish, is too ball focused and it’s too late to get him to do this. We need someone like a 4th option centre bounces mid to be this. I would get a young kid and train that as a small part of his game. I’m not saying he’s a tagger, but that’s another string to his bow. Hobbs, is someone I think we should train to be a tagger when called upon.

[Paul_Peos]

Yeah I really didn’t like the answer he gave on not tagging Neale.

A decision was made not to tag him, to keep our offensive flow… Or whatever it was.

Ok, fine. Saw the problem, made a call on it, it didn’t work out. It happens.

But the decision not to tag, is the same decision they make every single week. They always make that decision, it’s actually a part of our game plan and overall philosophy.

I don’t think we need a dedicated tagger in the team, who has a role every week. But there should be somebody in the team who can be switched to that role if need be.

And on the weekend, that needed to be.

[millagurnzie1]

@astro_bomber

Problem is we don’t have the personnel to go with a Neale, Cripps, Bont. Parish, is too ball focused and it’s too late to get him to do this.

Not necessarily true…we haven’t tried anyone in that role yet

[The_New_Coleman]

Problem is we delisted our best tagger

[astro_bomber]

I think we have. We had a very soft tag against Danger last week and also against Neale at times this week. It just didn’t work.

But you are right. Soft tags are not going to work against elite players. You need to tell the player, it’s you job to stop him for the next 10 mins.

[handypoint]

Gleeson in the rAge made a good point of Longmire tagging Dangerfield out of the game losing Mills.

We have let Danger then Neale run riot.

It would have been worth I think trying to tag Neale for a quarter.

But then I think we generated enough scoring shots/i50s to win on Saturday. We just sucked at goal kicking.

So Neale wasn’t really the biggest of our problems despite his stellar game. It was more us shooting ourselves in the foot.

[jonovdp]

Our goal kicking is very frustrating.

But I don’t buy into the belief; “if we kicked straight, we’d have won.”

Brisbane shut the game down in the last quarter…. If they were behind at 3 quarter time, they would have hunted for the win.

The way we were playing, Brisbane still would have won.

[millagurnzie1]

Kick straighter and negate Neale and its likely we would have won that game (not that we necessarily deserved too).

The coaching cost us the game. It’s rare that you see this narrative in the media, but many sources have indicated they believe the coaching group let us down on Saturday. That is ■■■■■■■ damning and the club should be putting a lot of pressure on the coaches to answer why they didn’t react and how they will do things differently in the future to help mitigate.

[alex.f.94]

@The_New_Coleman

Problem is we delisted our best tagger

Dylan Clarke was garbage LOL.

There is little evidence to suggest he was even good as a tagger. Think he played a good game on cripps once but thats it.

[handypoint]

@jonovdp

Our goal kicking is very frustrating.

But I don’t buy into the belief; “if we kicked straight, we’d have won.”

Brisbane shut the game down in the last quarter…. If they were behind at 3 quarter time, they would have hunted for the win.

The way we were playing, Brisbane still would have won.

Yes and no. We generated a lot of ball. We won most stats categories except goal kicking.

Of course it’s easy to say Brisbane have another gear. They are a very good footy side. Had we kicked away with straight kicking it might have been us shutting the game down….

We had all the footy in the first. Neale hardly touched it, not because we were tagging him but because we were winning the footy. In part because I think Stringer had petrol in the tank.

We need Harry Jones back in that forward line and Franga(who I think is developing into a very nice swing man) to be used behind the footy.

[BakerWasAStar]

Nailed it precisely and perfectly - more and more Rutten is showing he is inflexible in his thinking continuing to persist with what doesn’t work against most teams but especially Top 4 teams.

What’s that old definition of insanity that paraphrases something Einstein once said?

I’ll recall it here mathematically:

Insanity = doing the same thing over and over whilst expecting a different outcome.

[simmo41]

@jackie_mihocek

1. To my mind there is too much theoretical attention given to how we will move the ball downfield EXECUTED WITH TOO LITTLE PRESSURE at training.

I accept that we don’t want to incur further injuries at training, but we must learn to execute our skills/game plan under pressure and we must PRACTICE exerting pressure much more strongly.

take the midfield group to melbourne zoo.
chuck a ball into the gorilla enclosure.
start the stopwatch.

[BillyBewick]

Our coaches seem to be way too conservative and rigid in their thinking. Very adverse to taking risks so as to not confuse or unbalance the playing group.

Guelfi could’ve been an option to niggle and run with Neale when he started getting off the leash instead of wasting away on a hff being a non contributor for the whole match perhaps?

[millagurnzie1]

@BillyBewick

Guelfi could’ve been an option to niggle and run with Neale when he started getting off the leash instead of wasting away on a hff being a non contributor for the whole match perhaps?

I was thinking the same thing.

[chris_64]

@BakerWasAStar

Nailed it precisely and perfectly - more and more Rutten is showing he is inflexible in his thinking continuing to persist with what doesn’t work against most teams but especially Top 4 teams.

What’s that old definition of insanity that paraphrases something Einstein once said?

I’ll recall it here mathematically:

Insanity = doing the same thing over and over whilst expecting a different outcome.

Well that might be true in a physics experiment where the conditions are the same every time, but it excludes the possibility our players might get better.

Remember, 2 years ago Brisbane was about the same as Essendon now. They drafted and traded and there was intrinsic growth of a range of players.

Its too early to tell if the coach is a dud imo. The team over performed last year, they could again. Thats going to be due to intrinsic growth in any given year and a coach that can get that out of them.

[BakerWasAStar]

Two years ago Brisbane made the Top 4 - in fact, they have made the Top 4 the last 3 seasons.

So, two years ago they Lions were well ahead of where we are at now.

[chris_64]

I stand corrected. Then we were playing a really good established top 4 team, but they didn’t thrash us.