I truly believe luck is a much bigger factor in winning GF's than anyone likes to admit (though I recall Sheedy saying something along those lines in his final year at Essendon). Port Adelaide kick a little straighter in the Prelim and we're asking ourselves whether Hawthorn's era is at an end.
How does this relate to the OPs question? I think the teams that have had the most success in the post-Roos era (Sydney, Geelong, Hawthorn, and yes Roos is my marker, he totally changed how football was played) have known that you simply have to be there at the business end of the season and then the chips will fall where they may.
They have eschewed the easy narrative of 're-building' and simply given themselves a chance to play their best footy when it actually matters. I think Geelong 2011, Sydney 2012 and Hawthorns win this year are testament to this philosophy. Who is the 'best' team doesn't matter. Get top 4, get a proper crack. That's all that really matters.
Like, people who really understand the game at this level, which I confess for all my enjoyment watching it I don't really understand what really affects team performance ...
What does it say that we came within two goals of the reigning premiers this year?
From recollection we faced a somewhat understaffed Hawthorn didn't we - I think Hodge was out?
Do you take any serious positives away from having been "in touch" with that side and very nearly having beaten them?
But then how do you square that with some of the utterly turgid performances - I am not just talking about the loss to St Kilda, and hell, the one to Richmond for that matter, but some of those grinding games like GWS.
Honestly, I just don't understand how to square all these things together.
TLDR: Are we "in touch" just needing some 'mental' work, or ... are there bigger issues?
'It' means very little, just like GWS actually beating Sydney early on means little.
It more or less boils down to this:
The team with the least number of vanilla panic merchants, wins.
Playing football well is supposed to be all between the ears. Thats pretty obvious. Look at Sydney. No excuses, on the day they were crap, and it cannot be anything other than between the ears, because over the year they were better than the hawks or at least equal to..
Essendons best 22 of 2012/2013 were top 4 sides in ability, but in 2012, there was a soft tissue meltdown, the other 2 years were attitudinal / psychological problems preventing achievement of capability. In 2014 injuries exposed the lack of depth on the list and the forward line was not top 4 level. Nowhere near.
Lack of depth on the list is a bit of a catch 22 . You have to play younger players to get games into them. But if you dont field your best side, you can drop close matches.
I truly believe luck is a much bigger factor in winning GF's than anyone likes to admit (though I recall Sheedy saying something along those lines in his final year at Essendon). Port Adelaide kick a little straighter in the Prelim and we're asking ourselves whether Hawthorn's era is at an end.
How does this relate to the OPs question? I think the teams that have had the most success in the post-Roos era (Sydney, Geelong, Hawthorn, and yes Roos is my marker, he totally changed how football was played) have known that you simply have to be there at the business end of the season and then the chips will fall where they may.
They have eschewed the easy narrative of 're-building' and simply given themselves a chance to play their best footy when it actually matters. I think Geelong 2011, Sydney 2012 and Hawthorns win this year are testament to this philosophy. Who is the 'best' team doesn't matter. Get top 4, get a proper crack. That's all that really matters.
FWIW I'm somewhat with you.
Backing that up, most of the recent flags have been won by teams on their first crack. Swans won 05 then lost 06. Eagles were the ones to buck the trend going the opposite. Cats won 07 then lost 08. Hawks won 08 then wilderness. Pies won 10 then lost 11.
So it's not necessarily about being a battle hardened, experienced team - just the best team for that year.
We need to find more players, and we need to win 15 odd games, but there's no major reason we can't be in that mix.
Even though we have benefited from Free Agency, I am really not a fan of it.
As top sides, will continue to keep topping up and stay at the top.
Our year was frustrating in my eyes. You could see the games we were going to drop before we got on the ground.
Mentally, we are stuffed, and it shows. We can't click for a full game, and we drift in and out constantly during games.
If other sides are on, we can only seem to match them for short periods, which explains the closeness of lots of games.
We rarely flogged sides, and we were rarely flogged ourselves. We just seemed to be doing enough.
I think the disaster in Fremantle with the heat and sickness sweeping our club at the early part of the year, really affected us for a considerable time. We just never seemed to recover fitness wise after that, until much later in the year when it was too late.
Probably the most frustrating year I have ever experienced watching the Bombers. The inconsistency is painful and it was in nearly every game. Having said that, we rarely got flogged and were in it until the last round, is that improvement? Maybe the inconsistent play was a method of transition to a better performance over all. Let's hope ao
I truly believe luck is a much bigger factor in winning GF's than anyone likes to admit (though I recall Sheedy saying something along those lines in his final year at Essendon). Port Adelaide kick a little straighter in the Prelim and we're asking ourselves whether Hawthorn's era is at an end.
How does this relate to the OPs question? I think the teams that have had the most success in the post-Roos era (Sydney, Geelong, Hawthorn, and yes Roos is my marker, he totally changed how football was played) have known that you simply have to be there at the business end of the season and then the chips will fall where they may.
They have eschewed the easy narrative of 're-building' and simply given themselves a chance to play their best footy when it actually matters. I think Geelong 2011, Sydney 2012 and Hawthorns win this year are testament to this philosophy. Who is the 'best' team doesn't matter. Get top 4, get a proper crack. That's all that really matters.
FWIW I'm somewhat with you.
Backing that up, most of the recent flags have been won by teams on their first crack. Swans won 05 then lost 06. Eagles were the ones to buck the trend going the opposite. Cats won 07 then lost 08. Hawks won 08 then wilderness. Pies won 10 then lost 11.
So it's not necessarily about being a battle hardened, experienced team - just the best team for that year.
We need to find more players, and we need to win 15 odd games, but there's no major reason we can't be in that mix.
Don't discount the entry of Gc and GWS into the comp and the badly tainted drafts. This had the effect of allowing sides that were either in the mix or extremely close to stay up for a longer period than they should have, if the sides below them were able to access high draft picks as they should have. Geelong, Collingwood, Hawthorn had already built ther lists and only needed to top up for success. North and us as examples needed access to high draft picks at a time when the draft was compromised to be able to place significant pressure on these top sides. The exceptions were probably St Kilda and WBulldogs who were poorly list managed. Basically while the Hawks and Geelong should be commended for good list management, they also got a pretty good leg up from the AFL
Before the season started, I expected a top 6 finish and at least a finals win.
As much as I’m disappointed about not achieving that, I do have a understanding that the ASADA pressure took a massive toll on the players.
From a game-plan/tactics point of view, we still have that obvious problem where our mids boot the ball long inside our F50. This has been happening since Knights, Hird and Bomber. How long does it take to fix it? Surely one pre-season with a good mids coach is enough?
We have plenty of good inside ball winners, but our outside run and execution is not ‘Top 6’ material. I remember the GCS game, where the GCS ruckman would punch the ball out to space and their mids would run onto the space and deliver I50. The likes of Watson, BJ, Howlett, Hep, Myers and Stanton were simply too slow.
An amazing stat is how Colyer was ranked no.1 at the club for kicks inside 50 despite only playing half a season. We need more players like him, and should be a major priority heading into the trade/draft period.
Why did we fade out late in games? Is it a mental thing or fitness? That Melbourne game still haunts me. Ended up costing us a lot of games including our most important one. Needs to be addressed too over the off-season.
Football form is a fleeting thing. Lethal is famously quoted as saying he doesn't look back further than the last 2 weeks. Anything beyond that is not as relevant. Some Blitzers think it is just a matter of finding the 'on' switch inside our players heads, flick it and everything else will take care of itself. Wrong. There is also the opposition who are trying to do the exact same thing. Football comes down to being able to impose your will on the opposition for longer than they can and getting results for being able to sustain the pressure. The Swans looked like thye were going to do that on Saturday in the first 10 minutes of the GF, but that was all they had. The Dawks hit them hard with some decent tackles and the Swans had no answers after that. When players start looking around and wondering who is going to lead the way, you know the team performance is in trouble. Geelong were the most formidable, now it is the Dawks. Takes time to put it all together, even then GFs come down to a lot of intangibles and variables, that all need to be aligned for success.
Football form is a fleeting thing. Lethal is famously quoted as saying he doesn't look back further than the last 2 weeks. Anything beyond that is not as relevant. Some Blitzers think it is just a matter of finding the 'on' switch inside our players heads, flick it and everything else will take care of itself. Wrong. There is also the opposition who are trying to do the exact same thing. Football comes down to being able to impose your will on the opposition for longer than they can and getting results for being able to sustain the pressure. The Swans looked like thye were going to do that on Saturday in the first 10 minutes of the GF, but that was all they had. The Dawks hit them hard with some decent tackles and the Swans had no answers after that. When players start looking around and wondering who is going to lead the way, you know the team performance is in trouble. Geelong were the most formidable, now it is the Dawks. Takes time to put it all together, even then GFs come down to a lot of intangibles and variables, that all need to be aligned for success.
Desire is the number 1 key. After listening to many premiership players talk about success in their era's over the last fortnight, all of them said they were hungry and motivated to ensure success. JJ alluded to it re: 99/00.. i heard a Cats player say similar leading into 2007.. a couple of hawks players from this era and the 80s also spoke the same language (in separate interviews).
(The hawks player from the 80s basically said they were extremely motivated and ruthless in 88 after losing 3 flags in 4 years... I'd never considered that one...)
Big pluses for this year.
1. We didn't get flogged by Hawthorn
2. We didn't get flogged by Geelong
Big minuses
1. Got flogged by Sydney, twice
2. Got flogged by Freo
Think we improved but only marginally
We did have the squirts when we went to Perth. Whilst I"m no doctor, I'm pretty sure, flying 4 hours to Perth to play a game of footy in the Perth heat isn't the best treatment for gastro.
Based on our form leading up to that game I swore we were going to take it up to them. That was a sh*tty bit of luck.
'Nearly' beating somebody rarely means much, and it certainly doesn't in this case.
It does mean that on the first occasion in 4 years that we actually faced Hawthorn when they were somewhat vulnerable, and we were in good form, we still didn't take the chance.
I think people are underselling our year, we improved a heap over the season and I think we became more professional and consistent as the year progressed.
Couple of things to consider, if we didn’t have brain fades against Saints and Melbourne. Win one of the two close ones against hawks or cats and beat instead of draw with Carlton we are Top 4. Beat both the hawks and Cats we are top spot!!
The issue is how can we improve next year to take it to the level of Hawks on consistency both within games and through the season. Of which I think we have gone a fair way to improving.
Losing Ryder will be a big change, but adding a TBC and Kommer will go some way to counter that.
The thing that will have every team worries next year is how heavily we can score. Play our top footy for four quarters and we beat the Hawks!
I also have a theory with the Hawks, they were on a mission to prove that Buddy was not what made them great. And those players wanted it bad. They showed the footy world that it’s all above your head. You don’t need a freakish talent to win flags, just a team on a mission!
Hurls 20 (yes, pinch hitting - i think he will become elite next year and monster them).
After this, others will chip in with 10 to 15 for the year like Hepps, Colyer, Howlett, Myers, Zaka, Stants, Winders...
I think an X factor is Demps, and like others I'd like to see him play from the wing as i think he could really impact the scoreboard and kick 20+
So with just the guys listed above with 1 goal plus a game that'd be 11 goals.. with a few others chipping in i'd hope we'd be kicking scores of closer to 90 points a game which would win us alot of games with our defence.
Big pluses for this year.
1. We didn't get flogged by Hawthorn
2. We didn't get flogged by Geelong
Big minuses
1. Got flogged by Sydney, twice
2. Got flogged by Freo
Think we improved but only marginally
Discount the Freo loss. It was hot and a large part of the club had suffered from a virus. Agreed, Sydney losses were real and painful. You need to believe you can beat a side. Clearly Sydney continues to be a bogey for us.
Apropos of the Freo loss. If lunches are provided by the club, they better make sure there is absolutely no chance of food contamination or contaminated plates/utensils etc. Food poisoning can strike down a whole group. The club must ask itself how so many players got gastro before the freo match.
we played one extraordinary qtr, 2 bleh ones and a draw even qtr and lost by under 10 points. that shows fix up the first half and who knows what happens.
The problem is it's happened more than once against the top teams now, that we start the first half poorly due to the extreme pressure of finals hardened teams, come out play a blinder 3rd qtr and draw even in the last. only the freo game in 2013 was the only game with us winning a tight one however.
In the context of what does it equate to across a whole season, very little, we can't sustain 4 qtrs of good foory from week to week, let alone across a whole season.
Good teams dropping a game here or there means nothing when they know how to turn up at the right time of the year.
Hurls 20 (yes, pinch hitting - i think he will become elite next year and monster them).
After this, others will chip in with 10 to 15 for the year like Hepps, Colyer, Howlett, Myers, Zaka, Stants, Winders...
I think an X factor is Demps, and like others I'd like to see him play from the wing as i think he could really impact the scoreboard and kick 20+
So with just the guys listed above with 1 goal plus a game that'd be 11 goals.. with a few others chipping in i'd hope we'd be kicking scores of closer to 90 points a game which would win us alot of games with our defence.
If Bellcho is the number one ruck - there is no way he'll kick 20 goals.