I appreciate the compliment, and I do tend to be less reactive than some.
I don’t think anything I said in this post was too far off. I expected us to finish between 7th and 12th, rather than bottom 4, as many thought we would. I suspect that will still be the case.
Despite capitulating late this year, which is disappointing, hopefully our last 2 rounds aren’t the total write off games we had in the last 2 rounds last year.
The 1 point win last week wasn’t as good as it seemed, and neither was the 1 point loss this week as bad as it seemed. It was a pity we couldn’t buy a goal in that last quarter.
The way I see it, Brad still hasn’t settled on which position he wants individual players in, or our best 22, and it seems to me that we’ve played a few different game styles over this season. We did well in the first half of the year playing a highly contested brand of footy. A bit later, when our forward 50 efficiency was questioned, Brad commented to the media that we could fix forward 50 efficiency, but questioned whether the downsides of doing that would be worth it. Soon after that, we changed to a less contested brand. To me, it looked like we went away from the contested brand we’d built our season around, and tried to play like we were a team that had already mastered the basics, and was trying to play with more polish. I think that was a mistake, and I think we looked far better the last couple of weeks, going back to our more contested brand. We’ve also moved to more 1 on 1, rather than guarding space, which seems to suit the way we play better.
The way I see it, Brad said from day 1 that he didn’t want the job if the club wanted finals success in 1 or 2 years. He said he’s a development coach, and developing a team takes years. To me, it looks like we’ve become a better defensive team than we were under Rutten, and we’re trying to see what game style best suits the makeup of our team. At the same time, we’re trying to find our best 22, and our players’ best positions as well. Personally, I wouldn’t expect us to have that all nailed down until well into next year. And we still have more development needed on some of our younger players, and some gaps to fill in our team balance in trade or the draft.
The positives for me:
- We have better depth than we’ve had for years
- Injuries have been lower than most years
- Tackling pressure and 2 way running is better on a team and individual level than is recent times
- We’ve won many games with teamwork and game style, rather than rely on individual brilliance, which led to very inconsistent results in the past
I am disappointed with some of our recent games too. And I’ve been sad after some games. But I’m not as angry as some. And I can see enough growth in the group to have some hope for the future. I think we started a long way behind the top teams, and we still have a ways to go. Progress is often not a straight line, and can take awhile to all come together, but history also teaches us that it can come together quite quickly at times too.
