Review v WCE 2024

[Clone_Hirdy]

A bottom team is a team at the bottom of the ladder.

[RockyIV]

[Tagger]

@simmo41

something different i am seeing this year vs the worsfold/rutten era is that despite a lot of skills errors and umpires and what have you that have carried across from those years, we are finding a way to win

It’s funny you say that, as I associate the Worsfold era (especially 2019 and 2020) as us limping over the line in many games to win unconvincingly

[Albert_Thurgood]

@RockyIV

@Albert_Thurgood

Especially when you compare him to our real #1 draft pick.

Durham>Cox/Perkins/Reid

They are first rounders, not #1 picks.

[bltn]

Why do you need to put McGrath down ?

He’s also very important to the side and having a terrific season.

[Clone_Hirdy]

He was having a terrific season. Was putrid yesterday. Back to the old McGrath.

[Chris_1993]

Really? I thought he had a stinker of a first quarter but was pretty good after that.

[bltn]

He wasn’t putrid.
I was at the game.
He made a couple of bad choices by foot which were noticeable.

Some of the ground balls he wins are chef’s kiss, and he impacts aerial contests.

[Fairybread]

@Vander18

Sydney we only lost by 30 points they didn’t smash us like port

Funny isn’t it. Sydney “smashed” us by 30 points but we didn’t “smash” WC by 30 points.

[Tombob]

I’m not really a Twitter guy but just can’t believe how much rubbish we are getting re our draw on the way home.

Only one game away in Melbourne for the rest of the year…yeah yeah yeah.

Do these people not know we have already been to Sydney, Adelaide twice, Perth & Gold Coast.

It’s my fault for getting sucked in but fair dinkum…

[Klawdy]

@Clone_Hirdy

Was putrid yesterday. Back to the old McGrath

Man, you’ve gone full Negative Nancy. He made a couple of mistakes but was far from putrid.

[Clone_Hirdy]

He was terrible yesterday. He was great early in the season, but has been average since the North game.

[Fairybread]

Training drills for our players this week:

1. Judging how far 15m is.
2. How to handpass to a player’s midriff, not their feet or 3 feet in front of them.
3. How to stop handpassing/kicking to an opposition player from 2 feet to 5 metres away.

[Paul_Peos]

[Bacchusfox]

@bltn

He made a couple of bad choices by foot which were noticeable

What about his two handballs direct to WC playerss who scored goals ? He was putrid at times and good at others, need him to be consistent. Same with Martin, as he looks elite and then does something very poor. His mistakes are rarer than Maccas

[Houli_Dooli]

@wannabe

That comment from Reimers is salty AF.

He’s right though. Need to get wins against looks at schedule - Geelong and Pies then we will have credibility…although we may also knock them out of the top 6.

[Mendozaaaa]

They should tust rename that whole channel CTEnterrainment. Absolute knuckle draggers.

[bltn]

@Bacchusfox

What about his two handballs direct to WC playerss who scored goals ?

Do you have the timestamp for these ?
I only remember Ridds’ HB that was sharked by Chesser for a goal.

[davethedon]

@Bacchusfox

. Same with Martin, as he looks elite and then does something very poor. His mistakes are rarer than Maccas

Martin has a slightly higher rate of turnovers per possession. And a lower disposal efficiency. They have virtually identical m gained per disposal.

[Blummers32]

I still don’t know what to make of the game. I’m writing it off as a game of experimentation.

We did the following different to everything during the year:

• played Draper as the sole ruck.
• played Martin predominantly forward with some centre bounce attendances.
• played only 1 small forward (Guelfi). And for some reason, he was on one of their key intercepting defenders.
• played Caddy with 2MP, Stringer, Langford and Jones. That’s a tall farking forward line as it is.
• played Jones more as a half forward / wing.
• A similar back 6 setup to last year. Hep, Kelly, Laverde, Redman, McGrath, Ridley and McKay (instead of BZT).

And that resulted in…

• poor transition out of our backline. We were at our worst this year. It was similar to the Bulldogs game last year, just with an opposition that couldn’t close us down.
• no fast rebound out of our backline.
• no close out off the half back line of the midfielder coming out of the clearance towards goal.
• absolutely no forward pressure whatsoever. This was totally different to what we got out of the Carlton game.
• more of a ‘free wheeling’ game where we had our offensive plays but lacked the structure to contain the opposition when they got the ball back from us.

I don’t think the results were form related or because of the bye. It’s obvious to me it was structurally related. We changed a lot of setups for the game and even though we won pretty comfortably (I never thought we’d lose that game - which is a positive in itself) it feels like it pushed us away from a pattern of play that modern football is more like.

Collingwood, Geelong, Hawthorn and West Coast has won a premiership with that pattern of play in the last decade. The Bulldogs snuck a premiership out of snappy quick hand balling in close to draw midfielders into an area, then get it out to their outside runners. The other teams won it on the back of locking the ball into a part of the field that they could counter the opposition setup (Richmond had forward press, Melbourne had more of a midfield zone/press) or a ‘defence first’ mentality (Sydney).

I hope we set up similar to the way we were pre-bye. That gets us to the style and pattern of footy that is a high chance for us to win games against other top 8 teams. I don’t see us consistently playing that pattern of play and competing with top 8 teams. We’ll get cut up going the other way.

Having said that…
I do think that pattern of play does have its moments. And have no problems switching to that style of play during games if we think it’ll force the opposition to react to us differently and give us a small edge to change the pattern of play into our favour.

I’m very interested to see how we setup against Geelong.