Agreed, think its probably an attitudinal thing more than anything.
I dont think we incessantly kicked/ handpassed it in the D50 because it was a directive from neeld. IMO we allowed teams to bully us through allowing them to put way too much pressure on our ball carriers without us giving any back, and it just broke our confidence during the match itself, resulting in us playing conservatively.
Midfielders lose confidence and dish it off to Hurley/ Hooker/ Goddard to hopefully cut through the opposition zone with a spearing kick or a long bomb, as opposed to the mids themselves having the guts to try and cut through it themselves by hand or foot.
Now we apply more pressure, we make the opposition turn the ball over, their zone isnt able to be set up as well, mids have the confidence to move it forward, and the defenders have time to actually defend and not be lumped with the impossible task of trying to cut through the oppositions zone.
IMO pressure is everything in this game nowdays, everything. The flow on effect from applying pressure impacts every single facet of the game, defensive and offensive. Its no surprise that weve been one of the best pressure teams the last two weeks, and as a result the opposition hasnt really ever posed a threat to us.
IMO the next challenge will be when Hurls and Daniher come back in, firstly in ensuring the team doesnt just use Hurley as a crutch to get us out of a pickle when the opposition sets up a zone, and also not being too Daniher-centric.
I truly think that Neeld probably wasnt the greatest coach, but he was probably a bit of a sacrificial lamb more than anything- the true benefit from sacking him is spurring the team into action, not necessarily ‘cutting out the cancer’, as this forum would say.
One thing I noticed was coming out of the backline. Instead of trying to pinpoint a pass to a 1 on 3 (which is invariably what you race in modern day zoning), we were doing the high rugby union kick. Fantastic tactic - gave us time to get numbers to the drop off the ball and make a contest.
Every week, every ex player turned commentator emphasises the importance of attitude, intent ie all of the mental stuff. ‘Playing one week at a time’ has been usurped by ‘the game is played above the head’.
On Blitz, we ignore this and like to pretend that the coaches have a lot more game day influence than they really do.
Neeld’s sacking was a trigger, not because his input was so negative, but because this dramatic event changed the attitude, emotion and intent of the players. We haven’t learnt to implement a new game style in 1 week. What we see now was always the plan; it’s just that we are, at the moment, being able to impose our style for long periods during the game.
You’re confusing game style being played on any given day with the game plan. What we’re doing now was always the plan - listen to Hep & co - the game plan hasn’t changed - nothing about how we play has changed as a direct result of Neeld going. We didn’t implement our game plan early in the season for many reasons - most of which have already been identified.
It is just so stupid to look at how a losing team plays and then equate that to their intended game plan. We intended to lose the stoppage and play in our back half. We intended to miss the target. We intended to kick backwards.
We ARE kicking it longer to contests, but we actually have players FORWARD of the ball so we have confidence it’s not going to be an instant turnover. Even when both sides are playing a loose man (like Saturday) our forwards are giving a contest and our midfielders are working hard to get forward and take advantage.
Our midfield is better balanced and playing with an agressive mindset. Bellchambers is tapping aggressively and our players are aiming for quality clearanves. When we don’t win it we are tackling like madmen. Heppell has responded to the responsibility of being our big dog in the middle, and our high number of rotating mids means we are running out four quarters strongly (Kelly, Shiel, Coniglio barely touched it in the 4th). The Myers bashing has been done, but he is strictly Heppell back up from now on (ala Bird and Watson last year).
The funny thing is, I think a lot of this was planned over the summer, but somehow we lost track of what we were supposed to be doing. Neeld has been a circuit breaker.
With you on this. Worsfold and Harding seem to work in close collaboration in the box based on limited vision I see. In the past Worsfold seemed like an isolated figure with maybe Neeld 2 metres away holding the phone ( 2016/7) or not visible at all (2018 )
Since Neeld left, we REALLY have taken up the ( forward) pressure game. Prior to that all those losses were off the uncontested off the half back score launch game plan ( which is still a component of our game plan leveraging off Conor and Saad )
Completely disagree, the game plan clearly changed to the 2017 version just the pressure has been better to go along with it. Ask anyone that is an observer of tactics and game plan, it was as clear as day in the first minute of the geelong game how we structured up was completely different.
Don’t discount the change to the game plan made necessary by Joey going down and Hooker going down back . Prior to that the “twin towers” forward game plan was the focus of our attacking strategy and it was a failure in early 2018 and probably accounts for 2 of the more narrow losses. Key changes like Stringer spending more time forward, Baguley and SMack now make the forward line totally different.
Things shouldn’t be getting filtered to the coach on game day from assistants, things get filtered from the board to the football department and coach.
What Balme did at Geelong was have the monthly meeting with the board, Bomber didnt do it. And when the board asked questions if Balme thought he could get the answer from the assistants or himself instead of Bomber he would ask. He minimised the communication between the board and bomber and let bomber focus more and more on the on-field stuff (his strength)
Don’t forget Bags played forward against Hawks and did well in Q1. The change of personnel up forward is working but the better execution of forward pressure is not a new plan. The other key difference is our mids have gone better for past 2 weeks. As cats & GWS are weak in the ruck, belly has given us 1st use, so we have had some better delivery forward. Good example was when smack came into the game in Q4 during our dominant 10 minute burst.
There’s no doubt the absence of Neeld has released them and they’re playing with a freedom that wasn’t present previously.
It has been some kind of trigger to energise people across the club.
Great pick up. Definitely a tactic (not sure we were deliberately doing it or not) but you could see the high ball allowed a fraction more time to get a body on the loose man or get a forward to push back and create a contest. It also helped that the conditions were a bit greasy and smoky (wtf). Actually looking to see whether it’s implemented this week against the worlds greatest defender in Rance. Hopefully someone kicks it on his head and Smack takes the opportunity to level him!
I was chatting with Nicko down the coffee shop today (Daniel Nicholson) and asked him about the Jack Fitzpatrick tweet. He concurred completely and said Neeld was hopeless, behaving like a school teacher. He said Dean Bailey was easily the best coach he played under, and that he didn’t regard Cameron Schwab highly.