It was painfully obvious that we have some players who run harder when the ball is in their vicinity than when they are defending territory.
Stringer was the most glaring example, but we had at least a half dozen occasions when I saw players give up before the play was complete. Geelong players never stopped until the whistle was blown. Keeping at it is critical, you never know what the inferred pressure might do.
Zaharakis was our best defensive midfield runner I thought and ended up deep in the backline on two or three occasions, one out with his opponent with mismatches. That may have been by design on geelong’s part but he certainly put the miles in.
I actually think that good teams play counter attack footy against us. It’s as if they know we will stuff a kick or handball and turn it over. At that point we are screwed because we have run hard forward.
They don’t have to be Nostrodamus to know that. We often don’t put more than a few possessions together before turning the ball over. Our kicking skills have for years been execrable. Why in the world this has not been fixed at training is yet another EFC mystery.
Our work rate is good when we win and bad when we lose.
Geelong ran harder than us for the whole game except the last part of the first quarter. That’s why they won.
The important question is, Why don’t we turn up ready to play at 100% full intensity every week? Why do we drop it off every couple of weeks? It’s been the same problem for the best part of 20 years and there’s no sign whatever that it’s about to change
It is possible that more players than Fanta were effected, even slightly by “the virus”, which has effected our work rate the last couple of weeks.
Hopefully we get our forwards back, our health back and come home with a full sail.
We have been exposed in work rate for quite some time, this why we always play a spareman at the contest… so we don’t get exposed for numbers around the football.
During 2018 I felt we had a running problem, and that it was a big reason why we lost regularly on the MCG.
I liked the recruitment of Jok, to improve our list in this respect…and now that I’ve come to realise how good a runner Ham is, I give that draft pick a big tick.
I started to doubt my theory when we beat MELB and BRIS this year on the MCG…but it all came back on Anzac Day. In Q1, before any fatigue could really be blamed, I saw COLL tear us apart with their sprint efforts. I remember watching Smith fall behind his opponent, and being surprised that he was amongst those that couldn’t keep up…I think that COLL did slow down after that Q1 burst, and we then kept pace with them much better.
So…I wouldn’t personally write off all the numbers as a data error.
