And we were one of the best teams defensively, so we have to be very careful when taking more risks. It's all good and well to ask Hurley/Fletch/Daniher/Hibberd to run up the field and kick some goals,or to ask the mids to take more risks with their passing or kicks deep inside 50, but get too adventurous and it will hurt us going the other way.
And it’s not like we can’t score quickly, we had some tremendous bursts at times.
I think we’ll be a bit more unpredictable this year, more changes on match day and more variation from our big forwards as they learn some new tricks.
We went short with our kicks more than anyone
We had the lowest contested possession rate of anyone
Last season was the lowest scoring effort by an Essendon team since 1971
We had the second highest kick to handball ratio in the comp
Bulldogs and Saints outscored us
… that’s a pretty good indication that we could have shown a bit more dare. And I’m not talking about defenders running off their opponent to score goals as you’ve suggested. I’m talking about taking a few more risks with our ball use, playing on from marks, and moving the ball quickly. It was easy for the opposition to get numbers behind the ball because our ball movement was sluggish. It would have been a nightmare for our forwards. The one saving grace for Essendon forwards was that we tend to use the corridor, but there was clearly too much emphasis on “keepings off” rather than quick transition.
Bomber seemed to be implying he battled with bringing the boys out of their shells all year. Started to show patches towards the end.
The two coaches are largely working off the same hymn sheet, but with a few variations. Hird’s always tended to be a bit more kick-happy and a bit less into flicking it around short. I think the number of kids we played last year (we had almost the least debutantes in 2013 & almost the most in 2014) also plays a part, bit tricky to expect kids to come in & have confidence while they’re just making their way. Again, should improve almost as a matter of course. Zerrett and Gleeson in particular have a hell of a lot of ability.
We could barely be more kick happy than we were in 2014. Last season’s gamestyle was nothing like the Geelong teams Bomber coached, where they often handballed more than kicked.
I think there was a stark contrast between our 2013 and 2014 gamestyles. In 2013 we handballed more, played on more often, and went longer with our ball use. So we were more prolific with our scoring, but we exposed ourselves to runs of goals from the opposition. We clearly made that a focus last year, and tightened up in that respect, but I think we became far too risk adverse. The result was painfully slow ball movement, which enabled the opposition to get numbers behind the ball when they lost possession. That we were 5th for inside-50s, and 12th for scoring illustrates the point. When watching replays of our 2014 season, two things have stood out to me: 1. Slow ball movement; 2. Our forwards are often outnumbered when we get the ball inside-50. The second point is a symptom of the first.
I reckon Hird will release the shackles and look to move the ball a fair bit quicker and play on more often rather than kicking over the mark. We’ve got some great long kicks in the back line in Hibberd, Fletch and Hurley. Gwilt is a raking kick too. Goddard, Zac Merrett and Myers are all very capable 50+ kicks. I’m not advocating a Knights style run and gun game plan, but we’ve gone too far the other way, and in 2014 we played a conservative, boring brand of football for much of the season.
i don’t like Goddard as a deep forward. As soon as a defender works out that his only trick is to work him under the ball the game is up. Leading hard up at the ball carrier from a deep forward position doesn’t come naturally to BJ. i would much much rather it was him kicking it inside 50 or out of our defensive 50.
speaking of rebounding from 50 i think that is where we will see more aggression in our ball movement this year, particularly if we can free up BJ across half back a bit more. Bags, Hibb, fletch, hurls and BJ are all very capable by foot and i’d like to see us trying to free up those guys at half back so they can pick off long range targets moving quickly across the center. IF we can get runners working to good positions for them i think we will be able to really open sides up. In colyer, zmerret, cooney and zaka we will have a very very nice/pacey/skillful small fwd/mid rotation going so hopefully it works out the way i hope.
i also like that Edwards is being trialled fwd over pre-season , makes perfect sense given the long list in front of him for a HBF and that davey, jetta and dell have all moved on in recent times.
We still panic kick inside 50 far far to often. Too many of our guys fail to keep their head over it and dispose correctly when they know they are going to get drilled. WE must improve in this area, particularly in the way we move the ball away from stoppages. I feel like i say this every year though.
I think we will see plenty of natural improvement in our forward line this year, i am less confident in the ability of the midfield to iron the kinks in their disposal under pressure. However, the former should outweigh the later and we will see a marked improvement IMO.
There were several games last year where we had our foot on our opponents throat but simply failed to put them away because of our forward line efficiency.
Looking for someone to break the 35 goal a season barrier in 2015.
35? Stuff that, l want 2 players to bust through the 50 goal barrier this year.
The emergence of the Twin Towers on the forward line complements the H2 in the back line. Are we finally starting to see the emergence of another fab 4? Looks more likely than not.
We could be saying at the end of this year that Hird’s master stroke could be the move of Edwards to forward line…looks a much more dangerous player from training reports…Kicked about 4 today.
I tend to think that last year we had a more defensive mind set early on, hence the slow movement that was mentioned earlier as well as the low scores early on.
Add to that the inexperienced forward line and having an AA CHB as your CHF didn’t help either. When he went back into defence he got his confidence back and he then transferred it to when he played forward again.
It is a much better structure with Carlisle and JD up there with the resting ruckman + the crumbers. Now if we can just move the ball quicker and give them a chance we will be ok.
Now if we can just move the ball quicker and give them a chance we will be ok.
You’ll be pleased to know that this has been a major focus in training drills post christmas.
Definitely. I still believe that the fade out thing is a myth.
2011 - we didn’t really find any consistency at all. And I think we won 3 of our last 4 going into the elimination final
2012 - we know what happened there, injuries smashed us. Barely had 22 fit men by the end
2013 - well, we you get told after round 17 you won’t be playing finals then it is hard for the players to keep going.
Now if we can just move the ball quicker and give them a chance we will be ok.
You’ll be pleased to know that this has been a major focus in training drills post christmas.
Definitely. I still believe that the fade out thing is a myth.
2011 - we didn’t really find any consistency at all. And I think we won 3 of our last 4 going into the elimination final
2012 - we know what happened there, injuries smashed us. Barely had 22 fit men by the end
2013 - well, we you get told after round 17 you won’t be playing finals then it is hard for the players to keep going.
I’m bullish: a combo of Daniher, Carlisle, Hurley, Ambrose, Edwards, Langford, Laverde, Bellchambers, Winderlich, Chapman, Giles and rotating mids. I think this year is shaping up as our best for aeons.
Now if we can just move the ball quicker and give them a chance we will be ok.
You’ll be pleased to know that this has been a major focus in training drills post christmas.
Definitely. I still believe that the fade out thing is a myth.
2011 - we didn’t really find any consistency at all. And I think we won 3 of our last 4 going into the elimination final
2012 - we know what happened there, injuries smashed us. Barely had 22 fit men by the end
2013 - well, we you get told after round 17 you won’t be playing finals then it is hard for the players to keep going.
I’m bullish: a combo of Daniher, Carlisle, Hurley, Ambrose, Edwards, Langford, Laverde, Bellchambers, Winderlich, Chapman, Giles and rotating mids. I think this year is shaping up as our best for aeons.
Concur, for the first time in many years we have some talent and many options.
2 of the 4 he kicked today were absolutely mouthwatering - Exhibit A: Dances around Hibberd in a Cyrilesque fashion and slots it from 45. Exhibit B - Check-side on the run from 35 after 2-3 bounces.
And we were one of the best teams defensively, so we have to be very careful when taking more risks. It's all good and well to ask Hurley/Fletch/Daniher/Hibberd to run up the field and kick some goals,or to ask the mids to take more risks with their passing or kicks deep inside 50, but get too adventurous and it will hurt us going the other way.
And it’s not like we can’t score quickly, we had some tremendous bursts at times.
I think we’ll be a bit more unpredictable this year, more changes on match day and more variation from our big forwards as they learn some new tricks.
We went short with our kicks more than anyone
We had the lowest contested possession rate of anyone
Last season was the lowest scoring effort by an Essendon team since 1971
We had the second highest kick to handball ratio in the comp
Bulldogs and Saints outscored us
… that’s a pretty good indication that we could have shown a bit more dare. And I’m not talking about defenders running off their opponent to score goals as you’ve suggested. I’m talking about taking a few more risks with our ball use, playing on from marks, and moving the ball quickly. It was easy for the opposition to get numbers behind the ball because our ball movement was sluggish. It would have been a nightmare for our forwards. The one saving grace for Essendon forwards was that we tend to use the corridor, but there was clearly too much emphasis on “keepings off” rather than quick transition.
Bomber seemed to be implying he battled with bringing the boys out of their shells all year. Started to show patches towards the end.
The two coaches are largely working off the same hymn sheet, but with a few variations. Hird’s always tended to be a bit more kick-happy and a bit less into flicking it around short. I think the number of kids we played last year (we had almost the least debutantes in 2013 & almost the most in 2014) also plays a part, bit tricky to expect kids to come in & have confidence while they’re just making their way. Again, should improve almost as a matter of course. Zerrett and Gleeson in particular have a hell of a lot of ability.
We could barely be more kick happy than we were in 2014. Last season’s gamestyle was nothing like the Geelong teams Bomber coached, where they often handballed more than kicked.
I think there was a stark contrast between our 2013 and 2014 gamestyles. In 2013 we handballed more, played on more often, and went longer with our ball use. So we were more prolific with our scoring, but we exposed ourselves to runs of goals from the opposition. We clearly made that a focus last year, and tightened up in that respect, but I think we became far too risk adverse. The result was painfully slow ball movement, which enabled the opposition to get numbers behind the ball when they lost possession. That we were 5th for inside-50s, and 12th for scoring illustrates the point. When watching replays of our 2014 season, two things have stood out to me: 1. Slow ball movement; 2. Our forwards are often outnumbered when we get the ball inside-50. The second point is a symptom of the first.
I reckon Hird will release the shackles and look to move the ball a fair bit quicker and play on more often rather than kicking over the mark. We’ve got some great long kicks in the back line in Hibberd, Fletch and Hurley. Gwilt is a raking kick too. Goddard, Zac Merrett and Myers are all very capable 50+ kicks. I’m not advocating a Knights style run and gun game plan, but we’ve gone too far the other way, and in 2014 we played a conservative, boring brand of football for much of the season.
what happened was we went short and wide far more than we went long. I just don’t think that was the concept.
And all year Bomber seemed exasperated that he couldn’t get them to consistently be aggressive/assertive enough, to put sides to the sword.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest the way he wanted them to play was with more aggression, going quicker & going longer, more directly - rather than that being the idea behind it. More like 13’s ball movement.
Even though Bomber’s (clearly) a better coach on record, and even though he has his fingerprints all over it, it’s still very much Hird’s side and they respond better, with more urgency, to him than Bomber. I think he’ll get something closer to the game plan out of them this year.
Carlisle injured and Ryder gone doesn’t help at all, essentially it means you hedge your bets on Daniher who still needs another year of season confidence…
If i was coach I’d be looking at fine tuning small forward skills to be more efficient and asking more effort from midfielders to deliver more goals, to refine skills.
I’d be positioning Hurley up forward to assist Daniher as a decoy.
People forget how handy Davey was as a small quick forward option, very reliable and consistent.
I honestly have never understood the lack of potential being applied to Ambrose.
It seems a lot of posters tend to think that Ambrose is nothing more than someone who will bust open packs.
I think he is one of the better prospects on our list and has a huge ceiling to be honest. He has a lot of what we need that not many other players on our list posses.
He is a super athlete, who is a dead eye in front of goal, who is built like a brick shithouse, who can run all day and is as hard as nails.
He is exactly what we need in our forward line to complement Daniher and Carlisle but appears to be quite easily dismissed by many on here.
All he has to do is improve his marking and we have a player. Getting more of the ball and creating better leads will come with experience but some of the things he possesses just cannot be taught.
Ambrose has reduced his weight this year. This should improve his initial acceleration and apparent speed, but will reduce his ability to crunch the opposition like he did last year. He needs to work on a couple of things to make him a more complete player. Marking. Its still not reliable enough. Ability to pick up a ball on the ground.
IMO They have it wrong. His goal kicking is good. Lloydy needs to teach him how to hold marks.