Lessons from the 2018 finals

Ridley plays nice football. Poised, good kick makes the right option. Question is can he defend…
Francis is our McGovern. You want him playing on a non-contributor and taking 10 marks floating across.
Ambrose is a great endurance runner, but lacks explosiveness and agility to go with a De Goey.

If Woosha sticks to his theory of playing “our game” then we won’t win a flag.
It didn’t work for Richmond and they are a much better team than us.
WC clearly identified Sidebottom & Grundy as being the keys and nullified them.

2 Likes

I’ve seen enough in Ridley to suggest the can defend, jury is still obviously out though.

Francis isn’t exactly like McGovern, so he doesn’t have to play exactly like him. There might be times he has to play a little tighter, and he is capable of it.

As for Ambrose… Yeah, potentially, although he’s not that slow, but you are either giving away to De Goey in the air, or on the ground. If you want to go somebody with him at ground level, maybe Saad or even McGrath.

Not denying that the ‘medium’ forward is a bit of tricky one in our current defensive setup.

What I learned from the 2018 finals is that Franga could easily become our most important player.

5 Likes

This is a very good point, ratten would be great (i did hear he is going to the saints but also tactically he thinks outside the box) but really even a no name assistant from the hawks would be good.

Other points:

  • Must play a full zone defence through the midfield, 4 of the top 5 teams do this bar the demons, it’s a must that we implement this next season.
  • It’s great that the tall players will come back in vogue a bit, really good for the game, the smallball style isn’t anywhere near as attractive to watch. We should all be thankful richmond didn’t win the flag again, the quality of footy across the board will be more attractive to watch next season as each club tries to emulate the premier.
1 Like

What I learned from watching the finals, and reading this thread, is that there will be a lot of Blitz posters, assuming they’ve got the courage of their convictions, attending the Spring Racing Carnival wearing camouflage pants, leopard skin prints, and little tight- fitting pink fluffy hats.

Talk about slaves to fashion.

This from a GF that was decided by 5 points played by two different game styles.
If there is a lesson, apart from the bleeding obvious like defending AND attacking etc etc, it’s that a winning game plan or style is constructed around the strengths of the playing group you’ve got.

If you’ve got two very good marking forwards & two very good marking defenders, go for it.
If you’ve got a bunch of fast medium forwards, and depth in the midfield, go for it.

It helps on the day to have a variation to your basic approaches, you don’t want too many blokes to suffer acute sphincter clenching, and, again, the obvious that you want players to believe in the plan & each other.
That’s it.
Next year’s finals are a new game.
And there’s no one reason we can’t be starring in them.
Go Bombers

8 Likes

Congested forward 50s don’t happen if you move the ball quickly.

Darling had about 2 touches, zero shots to half time.

I thought Kennedy was very, very good. Twice got spoiled by nervous team mates on dead-cert leads, still had 10+ marks, 15+ touches, 5? shots and kicked 3. Worried the undersized Pies defenders.

1 Like

Fine, I’ll have a crack.
Talls matter.
Running back on the ball in the forward-line looks great, but isn’t as effective in the long term as actually having forwards there when you need them.
Anyone can put the pressure on for a quarter. Especially the first one.

1 Like

Spot on.

1 Like

What I learned.

You just got to make finals and see what happens.

No one at the start of the year picked Collingwood or West Coast to get anywhere near it. Same with Bulldogs 2016.

We might be building to something special, but you could have said that about Adelaide and they may have missed their chance. Maybe they will pinch one in three years.

Take your chance every year. Because it might end up being your last.

2 Likes

no doubt about this, but you can do things that help progress your game. West Coast nullified Gawn last week and grundy this week. These are ruckman getting midfielder numbers during the season. But West Coast made sure they had limited influence around the ground.

On Anzac Day this year, Grundy smashed TBC, not so much in the ruck contest but after the ball hit the ground and moving to the next contest, Grundy killed us. West Coast made these guys accountable, and limited their affect on the game.

Shutting down grundy meant that a guy like Sidebottom who gets all his kicks on the boundary line, had to venture closer to the contest, and he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.

Would be surprised if most teams don’t look to do this next year on top of their own game plan.

Holding your back 6 structure all the time, and getting caught with no cover on a turn over is important.
As we discovered this year, and WC showed, holding your marking targets and a fwd structure up the field is equally important.

You have to learn lessons from what others are doing well.

2 Likes

posted in wrong thread.

1 Like

I learnt that you can make a Collingwood supporter cry if you prod them enough!

2 Likes

So you’re saying we should copy WC’s game plan now.

oh.

Retrospective genius is what Blitz is made of.

1 Like

Except that one kick / decision would mean you’re arguing for the Scum game plan instead.
Are you wearing your pink fluffy fashionable hat?

The important things is that your midfielders run both ways.

1 Like

Reckon this is a pretty underrated component of a successful side.
You need to bat pretty deep in the middle to allow it but imo it only takes 1-2 guys to not run both ways to really screw you over.

1 Like