Midfield Woes: Instant fix

Football Discussion Trade week Duursma head in
41

Just to clarify several dubious statements above.

We broke even with Adelaide for clearances over the whole game. In the first quarter they killed us, in the third quarter we killed them for clearances. The difference was in the first quarter they kicked about 7 goals straight, in the 3rd quarter we kicked about 7 behinds straight.

Far from BJ dropping off, he is actually our contested and clearance leader and thus one of our better inside midfielders this year . Jobe is next, then Zerret and Darcy
But, the problem is, we need to win more and we need to defend better when we lose a clearance.

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42

Medium term I think the midfield is looking healthy.

Heppel, Merret, Parish, McGrath, Raz, Colyer, Zaka, Tippa maybes being Langford, McKenna and Laverde. It has enough pace and skill and a nicely bunched in age. Just need a few contested nuts to add to it to be the workhorses. A couple of 22 yo versions of Hockings required.

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Heppell, Goddard, Stanton and Watson are good players, smart players

They just can’t run the other way. If I was a opposition player, I’d laugh and just run by. Them four couldn’t beat Sandilands in a race

We need players who are fast enough the other way

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44

Our midfield is one dimensional. Adelaide would have the group of Sloane, Crouch and Douglas, but would also move Cameron, Milera, Smith, Knight and Mackay throughout the game. We don’t seem to be moving our HB’s and HF’s like Walla, Fantasia and even McGrath, Gleeson and Kelly on the ball.

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45

No. Since you can often get the guys I mentioned ‘cheaper’. And if they don’t work out in the midfield you may still have a valuable forward.

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46

With the exception of McGrath that I can recall, we have done that.

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47

Bird is the most consistent midfielder on our list. He won’t do anything special but you know exactly what he’s going to do every week. I would have like to see him play in Adelaide and all other away games, as he will win you the inside ball majority of the time.
In the games where our backs against the wall (like the Adelaide game) I’d much rather go contested player too heavy, and make sure that we have every opportunity after that.

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48

But we do.

49

Haven’t seen Gleeson in there much, or McGrath in there at all yet.
Kelly gets chucked in there, although how much longer that lasts I wouldn’t want to bet.

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We know that McG is building to it. Kelly goes through a few times a game. So do the others mentioned.
Maybe the point of the OP was that they would like to see them go through the middle more often, I don’t know. But you’ve got to keep in mind that not everyone is multi-faceted.

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51

we’d all like more guys to rotate through the midfield, but it takes time. folks need to be patient and stick with the guys who’ve shown a potential to do it. ie: not dropping Langford.

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52

Unfortunately our preferred midfield group is one paced and lacks a defensive mindset. That coupled with the fact that we have been well beaten 3 out of 4 times in clearances and it’s not looking good. I always felt that we would have to be a pretty dominate inside team to be a really competitive side this year. If it wasn’t for this unexpected, slick transition from HB we would be in a much worse position.

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53

If anyone looks at Bird’s stats you’d see he averages tackles of Zerrett, the contested possessions of Jobe and is a clearance beast, that says you’ve got a clearance midfielder with a great defensive aspect to him sitting in the two’s.

Bring HIM in.

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54

So the thing is that we have stacks of good mids. Quality footballers who do their best work in the midfield. But we don’t have a good midfield. Last year you could see that we were growing a good midfield from within and the future looked bright. In the short term we would be adding Watson, Heppell, etc so we’d have a good midfield while the kids continue to grow, and in the longer term those kids will be the guns to save us.

Right now it doesn’t look so good though. Why is that? I’m of the opinion that it’s all balance and “structure” and getting to understand each other and the expected roles, etc.

The way I see it, we have a bunch of genuinely good ball winners. Hep, Watson, Merrett, Parish are all guys who can win the ball all day, and hurt the opposition. We also have good runners, and good defensive types, and a good ruck, so the components are there.

But the implementation is terrible.

Opponents streaming out of the middle under no pressure? That’s a structure thing, not a “guys are too slow to chase effectively” thing. If the structure was right someone would have blocked the opponents run long before they were taking the ball at pace.

There’s a few of components to the structure issue:

  1. Players knowing their role instinctively, and making sure they fulfill it - a lot of this is playing together, knowing the gameplan and your teammates, etc. This we will get better at.
  2. Having the right players to be able to implement the gameplan - we obviously can’t change the list, but we can manage what we have. I’d suggest that there are times when we load the stoppage with our “see ball, get ball” types (Watson, Heppell, etc), but we need to understand the game and know when to shut it down, and force 10 stoppages in a row. And when we need that we’d be looking to Myers, Hocking, Bird etc to be managing the structure around the stoppage, and holding the defensive “shape”. The team we put out on the weekend didn’t include these guys, so when we needed to hold Adelaide we didn’t have the right options.
  3. Having the depth to be able to run all of our options at any time - I think we can do that, but a few of our players don’t offer that much when not in the heart of the contest
  4. Having the fitness to go again and again - there’s a few who are struggling for match fitness at the moment. This will come.

So overall off be tweaking the balance, and making sure that the right components are in place when they need to be. I’d be getting a couple of Myers, Bird or Hocking into the team. Not at the expense of pace or excitement, but rather rotating guys like Stanton, Watson, Kelly, Baguley and Goddard.

And then I’d be looking at more excitement on the outside, because stuff everything i just said, we just need to get Long in there once his suspension is done.

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55

Yep - Bird looks the best option to strengthen the midfield right now. Hocking & Howlett looked underdone & I can’t see Myers addressing the defensive issues our midfield has. Bring in Bird & rotate Goddard & Heppell off half back to cover for the loss of McKenna. Longer term we are suffering from only adding 2 genuine mids from the last 6 drafts. Now maybe McGrath longer term moves into the midfield or somebody like Mutch becomes the late pick gem we’ve hoped for but right now it looks like our midfield will get weaker before it gets stronger. Goddard & Watson are still our best clearance winners & Stanton still 1 of the few on the list who can run all day. We desperately needed to add some prime aged midfield talent but I fear we have missed the boat to some extent with so many players already poached out of the expansion clubs. We really needed Myers, Melksham & Kavanagh to be hits as well as some value from our second & 3rd round picks (Steinberg. Jerrett, Ashby, Long). We seem to always have gaps in the list, a good draft here & there but too many misses compounded by the draft sanctions & players leaving during the saga.

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From memory, most (if not all) the matches that Bird played last year, we won the clearances.

He and Merrett were a dynamic duo last year.

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57

Game from end of 2016

IMG_2942.PNG750×938 233 KB

Kelly also had 26 possessions. Goddard didn’t play. Simpkin had 24 possessions.

Basically our midfield consisted of one genuine slow in and under tractor in Bird, who laid 9 tackles mind you and that was that.

Our main starting mids would have been Zerrett, Zaka & Bird.

The dynamic needs to change back to similar setup. As such we can’t go into centre bounces with Watson, Heppell & Zerrett.

One of Watson or Heppell only, complemented by Zerrett and someone else who has a turn of pace about them.

Zaka has had responsibility taken off his shoulders it seems from centre bounces. Put him back in there. 40 possessions 6 tackles.

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58

With regards to our centre bounces, people might find it handy to know the mix from the Adelaide game.

Q1
Leuenberger, Parish, Watson, Goddard
Leuenberger, Parish, Watson, Goddard
Leuenberger, Parish, Watson, Goddard
Leuenberger, Zaharakis, Langford, Goddard
Leuenberger, Zaharakis, Langford, Goddard
Daniher, Langford, Merrett, Watson
Leuenberger, Watson, Zaharakis, Merrett
Leuenberger, Zaharakis, Watson, Goddard
Leuenberger, Zaharakis, Parish, Goddard
Leuenberger, Parish, Langford, Goddard
Leuenberger, Langford, Parish, Watson
Leuenberger, Langford, Tippa, Watson
Leuenberger, Merrett, Watson, Tippa

Q2
Leuenberger, Merrett, Watson, Goddard
Leuenberger, Merrett, Watson, Goddard
Leuenberger, Merrett, Watson, Goddard
Leuenberger, Parish, Colyer, Goddard
Leuenberger, Watson, Tippa, Goddard
Leuenberger, Merrett, Watson, Tippa
Daniher, Tippa, Merrett, Heppell
Leuenberger, Watson, Merrett, Fantasia
Leuenberger, Watson, Fantasia, Goddard
Leuenberger, Merrett, Fantasia, Goddard
Leuenberger, Merrett, Langford, Goddard

Q3
Leuenberger, Parish, Watson, Merrett
Leuenberger, Merrett, Parish, Watson
Leuenberger, Merrett, Parish, Watson
Leuenberger, Tippa, Parish, Goddard
Leuenberger, Watson, Tippa, Goddard
Leuenberger, Watson, Heppell, Goddard

Q4
Leuenberger, Merrett, Parish, Watson
Leuenberger, Parish, Merrett, Watson
Leuenberger, Langford, Parish, Goddard
Leuenberger, Parish, Langford, Goddard
Daniher, Langford, Merrett, Goddard
Daniher, Merrett, Heppell, Goddard
Leuenberger, Merrett, Heppell, Goddard
Leuenberger, Merrett, Parish, Zaharakis
Leuenberger, Parish, Heppell, Zaharakis
Leuenberger, Parish, Zaharakis, Goddard
Leuenberger, Parish, Zaharakis, Goddard

By number that’s
Leuenberger 37
Goddard 26
Watson 23
Merrett 20
Parish 19
Langford 10
Zaharakis 9
Tippa 7
Heppell 5
Daniher 4
Fantasia 3
Colyer 1

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59

You also need to acknowledge Luenburger. His tap work was very good last year. IMO the best tap work we’ve seen since David Hille had that season when he should have been All Australian.

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Seriously, if the whole team ■■■■■■ chased and harassed Adelaide properly in the first half then we wouldn’t be having this conversation. It’s not necessarily a personel thing, it’s the defensive mindset.

You generally see big upsets when the lower ranked team all of sudden applies manic pressure. Also its pretty rare that a team has immediate success the 1st year learning a new gameplan. It’s not rocket science.

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