Perhaps I worded it wrong. I’ll try again.
Last year we weren’t going to win many games of football. So a style was developed that when we lost we wouldn’t lose big.
I’ve no idea whether this happened or not. It just makes sense to me. In the same way that you will hear coaches say ‘We want to play attractive football’
Im over the lets play attractive nice football…ive never heard Adelaide Sydney geelong as described as nice attractive football.
The club has been NICE for far too long harden toughen up the football and we may get somewhere.
Let’s be honest you set out to DELIBERATELY and MALICIOUSLY prey upon our sensitivities.
Exactly right. If we can improve our midfield depth and break-even in the midfield more often, this team will be hard to beat. We made it to 7th on the back of a pretty average midfield, imagine what we can achieve if we can improve that area of the ground. Easier said then done, however.
Coaching is no longer about game day flexibility or multiple game plans or spraying the players at half time. It’s about evolving a structured game plan (team defence + multiple ways of scoring) which is relentlessly rehearsed during preseason, building an intricate knowledge of each player’s role, so they know what they are expected to do, and what their team mates will do in the crash and bash and chaos of game day. This predictability of their team mate’s position or next action is difficult if players are moved around a lot, a tactic which was wonderfully successful for Sheeds in the '80s.
Like Hirdy said, the team has to work together as one entity to outnumber the opposition by method. You achieve this outcome with a clear, coherent message to the players, not by ranting at them. Minimal changes of position and minimal change to the game plan are made as players need to become experts in their specific role within the game plan which they have trained for, for months and years. The exception is towards the end of a game when a player might be thrown forward or back to snag or save a goal.
The game plan is focused on one outcome which is building to the next premiership and should have nothing to do (especially for a large club like us) with trying to market our brand to the public.
Wouldn’t it be more like: a good opportunity to work on our defensive game to minimise heavy losses, with the offensive stuff to be incrementally brought in in coming seasons once the defensive strategies are learned? Kinda like the way Carlton played this year. That’d be a more logical tactical approach than thinking of fan engagement.
Then we could look at this year and see we’ve attempted to implement the offensive side to balance it, but perhaps tipped the scales too far to make offensive gains and now bleed a lot bigger opposition scores in games.
We only really got blown off the park a couple of times this year, but this was mostly due to having a potent forward line of our own, defensive lockdown methods seemed to go backwards this year overall, I feel.
That was epic. I’m in WA and it was big news.
Snippet
Speaking on Perth radio last night, Worsfold angrily lashed out when Hardie criticised West Coast’s tactics and team selection in the wake of the club’s humiliating 135-point loss to Geelong.
Worsfold told Hardie he was building a team that would be capable of premiership success and that it took “special character to be part of a premiership team, unfortunately you weren’t”.
Hardie - who played in a WAFL premiership with South Fremantle, but never tasted ultimate glory in the AFL - said: “We got to a prelim … I died trying with the Bulldogs in '85”, Worsfold replied: "I would question that."
Farking bam. Funny as. I hated Woosha at the time (obvisouky being an eagle) and thought he was being an ■■■. But Brad Hardie is a bottom feeder.
I think he did a great job last year. Not sure I’d reference it as being about fan engagement, more so about using what he had at his disposal to give the players some belief week to week of some sort of chance to win in a terrible situation. By doing that, it flowed through to the fans as well.
He set up the broader aim according to the prevailing circumstances, and did it well.
There’s a lot of Malthouse in that exchange. Malthouse believes that Hardie refused to play a selfless role on Leigh Matthews in the last term of that prelim despite instructions at 3/4 time and that it cost them a GF spot.
I don’t think we are far off.
With a big fish in and some changing of the guard within the team our midfield mix will differ dramatically next year to be far more effective at winning footy and pressuring opposition.
For example - key 8 mids this year
Watson, Heppell, Goddard, Myers, Zerrett, Zaka, Parish & Colyer (4 slow)
Vs
Kelly/Stringer, Heppell, Parish, Langford, Zerrett, Zaka, Colyer & McGrath (2 slow)
*Goddard to JKelly’s HBF. Myers traded/VFL
What you are talking about is strategy. The strategic game plan. (As opposed to the strategic plan for the team or the club.)
There is still a role for game day tactics. And I am sure that is what they are doing week to week in the opposition analysis.
However it is when your game day tactics, as part of your overall strategy, are not working that there is sometimes a need to reassess.
Game day tactics need to flexible to counter the opposition game day tactics, whilst still adhering to the strategic game plan.
Biggest mistake he made was saying midway through the season that we would improve in the 2nd half.
Looking at the average age of the team (excl BJ, Kelly & Jobe), this was never going to happen, we ran out of puff as the season got longer.
While we beat what I consider to be fellow 5-8th bracket teams like WCE, Port & the Cats, we never beat any of the top 4 teams like Sydney, Giants, Crows or Tigers, so where we finished on the ladder was about right.
Personally I reckon that Sydney loss in Rnd 14 ‘broke’ us for the year & we never fully recovered or recaptured our form after that. Gleeson was the most shattered player of the whole team after that game & to his credit played his guts out on the weekend & attempted to redeem himself - if only the rest of the team took the same attitude.
Also people cracking jokes about Woosha getting the team to coach itself on the field, well that’s exactly what Bomber did at Geelong (hence why that numpty Scott got gifted a flag in his 1st year) & Clarko did at the Hawks - & both coaches did it from Day 1 of arriving at their new clubs, they didn’t flick some magic switch all of a sudden when they became top 4 teams, it was ingrained in both those teams from the start to ensure they became top 4 teams.
Worsfold score = 7/10
How do you know that I don’t know?
People that generally know don’t go on BB and bag the club.
Thats the nature of these online things. How is anyone to know if you’re legit? It goes both ways and can take a long time to earn ‘trust’.
Radical!
I used to dream of us having an average midfield, then someone said you just have to dream bigger darling. Get Kelly and Stringer.
In fairness, it is a very easy thing to make fun of …continuously…and even the least of wits has no difficulty doing so…continuously…
Then, … ??? Crickets.
Joined 5 minutes ago, … posted nothing worth reading thus far.
90% of your contribution has just been bagging the club, it’s hierarchy, and our entire Coaching group, especially Neeld.
All evidence points to knowing zero to this point I’m afraid.
Yeah, it probably goes back to a few wits on here belittling Bomber T’s achievements at the Cats where they used to say ‘anyone could have coached that team, they ran themselves’ without thinking how that was actually achieved.