I know you say it in jest, but you’re being disingenuous to our coaches.
It’s one thing to identify what we are doing and to identify what the opposition are doing to combat it. Especially from a raised seat where you see the pattern of play. But it’s an entirely different thing for the players to be able to work their way through it at ground level without that perspective. And that’s before it actually works or not. Or whether you’ve given it enough time to work (or not).
Coaches down on the bench will not see the spacing being created and get more of a players perspective than they would up in the coaches box. They coach differently down there. Some work well (Vossy, Kingsley and McRae) others work better in the coaches box (Longmire, Chris Scott, etc.).
One thing I’ve noticed more under Scott than previous coaches is that the players are communicating better in groups of 3 or 4 and reacting to the opposition team’s tactics and how they try and counter what you’re doing. It started as a backline in 2023 and it has gradually grown across each other group with every year. It doesn’t mean they get things right every time, but I do think this coaching group is trying to build more flexibility into as many players as possible so that when things don’t go our way, they aren’t sent to the bench or hidden out on the ground somewhere. They have to figure it out on the fly during the game. That’s player ownership and what Worsfold never was able to implement because the players were already set in their ways and weren’t restricted by the 6-6-6 rule, how long runners were on the field, where they could go and what times they couldn’t be used. Covid happened in 2020 and it was obvious that experienced teams who knew how to work together knew how to handle the game in a more isolated environment (both training and on gameday). And Rutten couldn’t do it either because the players needed time to learn to make the decisions on the fly during games, than rely on playing a spare man in the backline from the bounce. Or being guided positionally by the runner.
Also, in 2023, we were holding up signs more often or a lot of communication was coming from the bench for the team to play certain ways. Especially late in quarters. Now the players don’t need those signs as much, they’ve trained it enough that they just see the situation happening and decide to slow things down or speed the game up, to play a tad more attacking side of the contest rather than boundary side, etc. It doesn’t mean they’ll make the right decision every time and there isn’t just 1 right way and 22 wrong decisions. It’s not that rigid. But they are learning different gears to play during the game instead of just one way.
Before Scott, we’d struggle to arrest the opposition’s run and have to wait until the end of the quarter to change things up. Now we adjust within the quarter. It doesn’t mean we will never see a five goal run ever again. But we minimise it so it doesn’t become a 7 or 8 goal run.
It’s also clear to me that the players are actually learning and adapting from the coaching group. Both from game to game and across a season. It is more of a next man up thing than a ‘we don’t have player X so we’re farked’. Under past coaches, we’d adjust something defensively through pre-season and it’ll fail miserably and it would take a month to revert back to a style that works for that group. With these coaches, there have been terrible performances, but the response after it was different to previous years. Even after they make some structural adjustments. Under Scott, we had the defensive first grit in 2023, the forward press last year and now we’re something in between and we do switch between the modes (play a high press when the opportunity is there, then fall back to a default) which is difficult to see on tv.
And we are more of a grind it out team than a flashy offensive team (like the Fantasia and Tippa forward with Saad and McKenna back). I prefer what we are doing even though it looks ugly at times. For me, it looks like a Sydney of the last 20 years style where the talent on the list didn’t need to be like our 2000 team of stars all over the field. They just worked hard, were disciplined and stayed in the game long enough for the better players to then take their moments when they were there. It also means when ■■■■ goes wrong, we get smashed and when ■■■■ goes right, we sneak in with an ugly win, which affects our percentage at the end of the season. Richmond followed a similar pattern before their premiership run and Geelong are morphing into a defence first style too (in their own unique way). Back when Bomba was coaching, they dominated the midfield and the contest. Under Scott, it’s more group based and doesn’t need as much firepower to actually work. Through the 2010s, with Dangerfield and Selwood, they could follow a similar theme. Now they are functioning with a good spread of a midfield and Danger doesn’t need to be in the middle to impact the game. What we’re doing will work better under finals pressure eventually even though the Collingwood fast ball movement and risk taking is great to watch. They themselves didn’t play that way in the finals when they won their premiership. And it was more of a defensive first game style rather than a run, play on and all costs style.
No offence to @BakerWasAStar as he looks at the game differently to the tldr ‘we were ■■■■ and that’s it’ brigade, but I’m actually certain that the coaches and assistants would be far more detailed in their match breakdowns than we’d ever be. They are critical in a teaching way of the players and they don’t need to divulge the criticism publicly the way we expect them to. They also provide positive feedback too (even after terrible performances) as you’d be absolutely stupid to point out every failure in a player and not acknowledge the good they do. And they don’t mull over it for days on end either. They go through it, spend a day identifying it, then move on to next week’s opponent. No human being could handle that level of negativity, let alone a sportsman. Only sports fanbases act that way. It is what it is.
Where watching it on tv makes it difficult is that what happens in a particular moment is a build up of many decisions made in the twenty to thirty seconds leading up to it. Certain mismatches occur because a handover was made to get something positive running our way, but then a turnover occurs, the midfield is out of position and can’t pressure the opposition and our mismatch turns in their favour because the kick can be to their advantage. Other times it’s a player kicking to where he thinks the player is going to go, but he doesn’t continue the running pattern, the kick is a bit off and it turns in the opposition’s favour. The funniest thing is hearing people say ‘just kick the farking thing’ or ‘stop playing hot potato and hanballing so much’. But at the ground you look up field and the opposition have setup for you to kick to the contest. They want you to kick it quickly because it gives them a favourable advantage. It doesn’t mean it’ll always work their way, but if they force it 10 times, they’ll get 7 in their advantage and make you pay half of the time for it. Whereas we have 3 going our way and we scramble it more often than not.
Media also screws some of this up. Kane Cornes did it to Scott a few years ago where he pointed out that Merrett was too attacking on a particular ball up when he should have held back. And he was intimating that it wasn’t good leadership. And he showed the vision. Then Scott said, nah because it was a set play amongst the ruck and midfielders to free Merrett up for an attacking play but positionally another player didn’t back him up just incase it didn’t go our way. So it was a high risk high reward play that didn’t go our way. The decisions made don’t always work simply because the opposition is there trying to get their advantage at the same time as you are. I like that Longmire and Simpson on AFL360 go to lengths to explain that every coach sees similar things before showing their analysis.
I think the players have bought in to Scott and the coaching groups way more than any coach since Hird and Bomba. Effort, fitness and game plan aren’t as much of an issue as under Worsfold and Rutten. I still don’t think we get where we want with this group under Scott, but the foundation is there for another coach to build on. And I’m fine with that.
I think we’ll still have deficiencies that are tough to cover. A lot has to go right for us to just get things on our terms, but that’s pretty much 80% of games every week.
I can say any player drafted will be a failure and be proven correct with time. The stats are heavily in my favour. If they win a Brownlow, they are failures because they couldn’t win a premiership. Or they are terrible leaders because they couldn’t drag a group of 21 other players to a win. Same with a coach, every coach selected is more likely to be a failure. And you’d be proven right. The only measure of success for a fanbase is a premiership. Everything else is failure. It is what it is.
And I’m sure we’ll have the second half season let down and everyone will go into ‘burn the farking thing to ground and start again’ mode that every sporting fan group does when we don’t look like winning a premiership any time soon. That is what sports fandom is.
