Neuvo Classicos

[Captain_Jack]

Some astute observations from one of the more observant Blitzers, Blummers32 strikes again! This time from Review Round 9/2025 Ess V Sydney (chickens in a bin) thread in the Hangar.

@Blummers32

@Bomb_Doe

But we couldn’t sustain it in the second half and the last qtr was a massive struggle. We had no control of the ball or the game. We tired and tackiling went

I don’t totally agree with this.

Here’s my notes…
We started the game on our terms. Our three talls is a set way we want to defend. We want to have a mismatch in our back line and trust the midfield to put enough pressure on their midfield for us to exploit the mismatch.

What happened today was the mismatch was Reid on their third tall (who was usually a small). By us having talls in our forward line, meant Sydney couldn’t switch one back to prevent the mismatch. So the only way the small could do was to run up to the contest and drag Reid out of the backline. Sydney couldn’t do it. We handed off opponents incredibly well between Hayes and Reid and it always forced Reid to be loose, so as long as there was pressure in the midfield, we’d always win out back there.

At the other end, they tried to loosen up Blakely, but because Caddy was so dangerous he couldn’t hand over the opponent. And we also split 2MP and Caddy from each other to prevent the handover and make sure they didn’t get him loose.

It took them until the 3rd quarter to get Blakley loose but he wasn’t hurting us. At the other end, their forwards worked better to prevent Reid from being loose. So Hayes was loose a few times and McKay was loose too. That’s why that 3rd quarter was an arm wrestle.

Where it switched was when Hayes went off injured. Reid had to take the tall and that meant Prior ended up being the loose man. This didn’t work in our favour at all and we couldn’t switch opponents. Sydney started playing a smaller forward line and continually kept enough separation to prevent favourable hand overs. Also, our midfield pressure was pretty good. Not great but good enough to not allow them to run into space.

The 4th quarter was where Blakely was always the loose man. And he made us pay and the Sydney midfield also put some pressure on us for him to be able to run the ball out. They also realised that just kicking forward wasn’t the right option, so they handball through the midfield and got some run. And when they got forward, it was Prior as the third man and whilst his positioning was okay, he just didn’t provide movement out of our backline.

When Blakey went off injured, I was assured we’d win. They were then forced into our predicament where they couldn’t find the correct loose man option and instead had to defend. We also played more one on one and didn’t allow the loose man.

There was another tactical situation that worked well for us until it didn’t. Grundy and Goldy were playing a kick off each other. The difference is that Grundy preferred to go to the pack down the line to help with the marking contest there. Goldy saw it and started finding himself about 30 metres to the inside of the contest completely free and we used him. Again, Sydney allowed Goldy to do it because they didn’t think he’d hurt them. But his foot skills are good enough to keep the ball moving where we wanted it away from a Grundy contest. Then they tightened up on this. Not by Grundy staying closer to Goldy, but by the midfield playing a tad off their opponent and shutting down the easy kick to Goldy. By the second half of the game, they’d completely shut that down and we had to find another avenue forward.

I didn’t think we ran out of legs or didn’t give effort. This was a better opponent who got the game on their terms, were able to use their leg speed and handball through the corridor and put us on the backfoot.

I didn’t think we’d win the game, but that was a very disciplined defensive game plan that was executed beautifully. Even the centre bounce contest was different. The clearance numbers didn’t matter because they never got a clean clearance. Neither did we, but it was more in general play where we were able to create the loose man and move the ball well down the ground.

There were times when we tried to go too quick. McGrath does it a lot. I’m reminded of what Hoyney says on his Champion Data SEN segment that fast doesn’t always mean good. If you have the right players in place forwards of the ball, then yeah, go quick. We were able to get out the back a few times on Sydney today and that last Blakey punch for our only score in the last was exactly that. We took a big chance to move the ball quickly and it took their loose man to break up a certain goal.

I’m now getting what our backline is trying to achieve and more importantly how our forward talls are an important part of that. We must have three tall defenders for it to work though. It won’t work against every team as we are effectively creating a mismatch and gambling that we get the benefits from it. A team like Collingwood who push all their forwards up the field and work back heavily with run will be tough to beat.
It also needs midfield defensive pressure. We didn’t have it against Adelaide and that’s why we were exposed everywhere. Without it, we’re screwed. With it, we’re a half chance.

I have other notes. In particular how our midfield covered ground better and almost baited Sydney into making errors in the first half. Again, a high risk high reward situation, but it helped us in the first half. When they cleaned up their disposal in the second, it made it tougher.

I just want to catch some of the highlights again, because I’m not sure I can explain what we were actually doing differently from other weeks. I just want to see if it was more skill errors by Sydney, or us baiting them.