A defender playing on his small forward opponent is a tag I believe.
Betts did get a metre of space on a couple of occasions and set up a few goals so it might not be a tag. Its only a tag when it works. Also McGrath didnt do any pinchy pinchy or mouthing off. Thats very important when tagging.
McGrath needs to learn to hard tag and not let Betts get that metre of space.
Also Dangerfield. It really annoys me when I watch every AFL game and people forget to tag him.
Woosha and tagging.
Tagging, as some define it as a specific run-with accountable player in the midfield.
It’s not only a dark art, but a highly specialised skill set in the modern game.
I’m assuming no one wants a return to the Shane Heard days - the modern rotational midfield can’t afford that.
A tagger has to not only negate, but they have to hurt the opposition offensively in some way.
I’d argue that there are only a couple of quality taggers in the whole AFL at present.
Scott Selwood is one, and maybe Coniglio.
Some bottom teams use them - eg Curnow at Carlton, but look at where it gets them - mired at the bottom (competitively ha ha)
We can sometimes use a tagger on a specific player and have done, but usually because there’s a good match up - eg the slow as a wet week Pendlebury, or the not very fast and I’ve never been tagged before Seb Ross.
At other times we have no one with the required pace, inside nous, endurance etc.
So we’ve gone the Swans option of rolling accountability - occasionally it’s worked - often it hasn’t.
This is part of our general midfield weakness / learning curve.
To berate the coaches for not tagging when we don’t have a tagger is similar to criticising them for not playing Dangerfield or Kelly in our midfield to fix our pace problem.
Suggest who we should have used or who we should develop as a tagger. (Personally I think only Clark, on our current list, might become a genuine quality tagger who doesn’t cost the team in other ways)
Or we accept that the art of locking down opposition mids is another area where collectively the team needs to improve…
I reckon Tippa following Johannisen around all day would have been worth a shot.
And you know what?
Wouldn’t have had to have been all day.
Have him stick with him for a quarter, and then see what happens.
There was one game this season where we had Colyer run with someone and it worked pretty well. He’s strong, fast and a good tackler so you can see how he could be difficult to deal with for the right matchup (Sloane, Johannsen, Neale).
I guess one of the problems with running a tagger is what do you do when the tag is not working… in the recent crows v cats game Sloane smashed Selwood from quite early on. I guess in that case scooter is not useless enough to be too much of an albatross but what if it was Crowley or MacAffer or someone like that?
I think I’d rather the output from Walla than the limited effect he would have on JJ. Walla is a very dangerous and damaging small, but he is not faster than JJ, not stronger, and can’t compete in the air. That would be a terrible tag, in my opinion.
That’s why Blitz is so wonderful.
Because I think other teams had showed us exactly how to beat the Bulldogs, and we gave up on following that plan because Johannisen ran away.
And Tippa can play forward and back.
And he would have buried Johannisen’s ■■■■ every time he even thought of trying to get the ball, and still run off him and made him look stupid.
As it was, we gave up, because Johannisen ran way, AND HE TORE US A FARKING NEW ONE.
To the surprise of no-one except the coaching box.
But yeah, ■■■■ it, Tippa’s too important to waste on winning.
We were in the top fours when kicked pout of the finals because it was “not a good look” we gave not been convicted of anything, now even any positive tests. NO TB4 to be found anywhere.
Johanissen was good that day but the damage he did was as a forward.
McKenna played on him and was beaten. McKenna is a very logical match up for Johanissen lining up forward. Knocking that match up is benefit of hindsight talking. Yes its right but its easy to say with hindsight.
Apart from the goals in the first quarter and half where McKenna played on him and failed to beat him (including once when McKenna stood a meter from him and didn’t realise Johanissen was competent overhead which lead to a goal) I didn’t think he hurt us that much.
Looks like he just had a good day in terms of efficiency rather than getting a heap of it. The goals he kicked early are how he hurt us that day.
Assuming he had about 7 touches whilst forward, I very much doubt that Walla have done any better than to keep him to 11 touches once he rolled out in the midfield (midway through the second I think).
Plenty of other sides let Johanissen get a heap more of it then we did.
Benefit of hindsight would see us put someone other than McKenna on him. To me its more McKenna getting beaten by a good talented player.
Per Footywire:
Johanissen Season Highlights
27 disps (18 kicks 9 hballs) and 6 marks in Rd 22 17-pt loss to Port Adelaide at Eureka Stadium
18 disps (12 kicks 6 hballs), 4 marks and 4 goals in Rd 19 30-pt win over Essendon at Etihad Stadium
29 disps (16 kicks 13 hballs), 3 marks and a goal in Rd 10 40-pt win over St Kilda at Etihad Stadium
24 disps (15 kicks 9 hballs) and 7 tackles in Rd 9 23-pt loss to Geelong at Simonds Stadium (19 May 2017)
26 disps (22 kicks 4 hballs) and 5 marks in Rd 8 8-pt loss to West Coast at Domain Stadium (12 May 2017)
24 disps (17 kicks 7 hballs) and 3 marks in Rd 7 5-pt win over Richmond at Etihad Stadium (6 May 2017)
28 disps (18 kicks 10 hballs) and a goal in Rd 5 32-pt win over Brisbane at Etihad Stadium (22 Apr 2017)
29 disps (12 kicks 17 hballs) and a goal in Rd 3 16-pt loss to Fremantle at Domain Stadium (8 Apr 2017)
30 disps (18 kicks 12 hballs), 7 marks and 2 goals in Rd 1 14-pt win over Collingwood at the MCG
But…really?
Tippa burying Johannisen for a quarter wouldn’t have helped?
Giving up when he ran away was better?
He didn’t friggin’ destroy us when he was allowed to do what liked?
Benefit of hindsight?
Really?
When three other clubs have showed us what shutting him down does?
We didn’t have to ‘tag’ Johanissen. He was playing in the forward line. Our defenders were playing on him i.e. defending him or ‘tagging’ him. That is what defending means.
He got fark all disposals that day but fluked 3 goals from outside 50m and another brilliant snap. Missed a coupled of those and we wouldn’t even be talking about it.
Are you listening to yourself Wim. You’ve lost the plot on this. Yes he was good. But McKenna can’t “tackle” a bloke when he’s leading up to the footy for a mark. McKenna got caught on the lead and failing to get a fist in. But given that Johanissen is the fastest player in the AFL off the mark, then I’d have thought if anyone on our list had the explosive pace and a chance of getting a fist in on the lead it would be McKenna.