This season so far to me has the feel of the start of season 2018. We’d brought in Neeld over the offseason (from memory) and he’d turned the gameplan upside down, and it sapped all the aggressiveness and drive out of the side, and we stopped trying to move the ball and started inteminably sharing it around in the back half til we coughed it up. We got rid of Neeld a couple of months into the season and we saw near-immediate improvement, but the damage was clearly already done.
The loss of Merrett and the absolute gutting of our forward stocks in particular by injury this year hasn’t helped us win games, but we’ve had plenty more problems than that. We’re seeing many, many blokes somehow forget how to do what they do best. Hind isn’t rebounding, Ridley isn’t intercepting, Draper isn’t winning clearances, and the side as a whole has just catastrophically forgotten how to tackle.
To me, that stinks of gameplan and coaching. It looks like we’re trying to learn to play to some sort of structure that the players don’t understand, or don’t believe in, which doesn’t cater to their strengths, or some combination of the three. Blokes aren’t playing their natural game to their natural strengths, are second-guessing themselves, and are bumbling around getting in the wrong places. And i wonder how much of the poor defensive work we’re seeing is a product of that. Are we trying too hard to push forward in numbers and lock the ball in our forward line through forward pressure, and is that the reason everyone is so keen to stream forward at every opportunity and neglect paying attention to the defensive side?
I dunno. But you don’t forget how to play footy in a couple of weeks. Having two of our best pressure players (one of whom is the reigning B&F) injured and 3/4 of the forward line in the same boat hasn’t helped structure, but we went through this in 2018 when Daniher the Lesser and Fantasia were out. You can work around missing players, you can’t work around a broken gameplan or coaching setup.
We look confused and everyone afraid to play their natural game. Naturally aggressive/creative players all look so … timid. Ridley looks a shell. So does Draper. Hind. These guys were offering so much last year and now they all look a bit … lobotomised.
I just can’t buy that these guys don’t care, that Darcy Parish or Andy McGrath are so not hungry enough to chase an opponent.
Maybe I am completely naïve. But it seems to me a complete failure by the coaching staff. Again.
Just don’t laugh and smile as soon as the siren sounds, and you have just been completely embarrassed. It’s only 2-3 minutes where you have to refrain from doing it.
It certainly fits a pattern. New person comes in, tries to implement defensive structures, players ■■■■ the bed through incompetence or petulance, person stops trying or gets fired, players get to freewheel into 8th and get hosed.
Actually now might be the time to be thinking about Damien Hardwick as coach. This current Richmond team has had its day; it’s at the point where it needs a re-set. Richmond won’t want to let him go, and Hardwick will think (at least initially) that he’s the one to do the re-set, but really Richmond should be looking for a new coach as well as a new crop of players.
He should have been appointed when Sheedy left; choosing Knights over Hardwick was one of the very worst among the many, many mistakes made by the Board over the years.
The time is absolutely right for Hardwick to become coach of Essendon. Right for Hardwick, but most of all right for the club. He was a hard footballer and he’s a hard coach. That’s what we need. Hardness.
In defence of Hind, he can’t really rebound because, when the ball goes into our defensive 50, it often ends up as a score. Let’s not forget that we have conceded more points than any other team this season. This also impacts Ridley being able to intercept. Hard to leave a man to help others out considering the speed it is coming in.
If we played an extra man in defence, like the premiers, the games of Hind and Ridley would benefit, but Rutten wants to show faith in our system, his system.