I reckon that is the exact way Rutten and co want us to play: “no easy transition and forced them into hurried possessions which lead to turn overs”
We zoned, we run hard, we pressured, if we didn’t execute perfectly we worked our arses off to rectify it, we closed down space, we out tackled, we wrestled momentum back, we went when it was our turn, we slowed down when we needed too
Rutten and Sheil both said it was nice to see the hard work they are putting on the track got some reward.
Indirectly… I reckon it did?
Our midfield setups all year have been dogshit with him in it. Stale, flat, and every other club seems to know our setups a lot better than we do. Him out forced a rethink and rejig, which Caracella has otherwise been seemingly not keen to explore.
Love it.
This one is great too
I was watching on tv only, but I still saw a zone, closing down space, guarding of space. Not to say we didn’t change it. I think we worked harder, worked together, chased, harassed, pressured much much better than the past
The only reason this comes up is because we’ve won our first game in over a month and we’re all trying to point at what is different. Naturally, some players had to step up to fill the gap Parish left and they did (especially Caldwell). Of course, at face value all the players who move up in the role-chain and appear to be more effective, but I don’t think this is a net positive at all. If Parish plays last night, we still win by a similar margin.
Parish is still our best player at extracting the ball from a ground-level contest, which is why he has played all of his best footy in the centre. To move him or leave him out of the team is shooting ourselves in the foot. His disposal will only be more exposed more in outside roles.
The more I reflect on the match, the more I am pinning it on St Kilda being rubbish. Most midfields would have looked good against the Saints the way they played last night, there was almost no pressure. Thankfully the players realised this early, gained some much-needed confidence to transition the ball quicker than previous weeks and put on a decent score.
It’s interesting looking at the Blues game.
That game we had 20 more tackles. This is a very simple metric to see if the team is having a crack. And no it doesn’t indicate that you’re just chasing tail. Early in the year we have been way down. (30 tackles total against Sydney v 75 in this game.) Also tackles I50 were 18-7 our way. Another indication of the pressure we were putting on.
We had as many scoring shots as the Blues. As usual we hurt ourselves with our inaccurate kicking.
And of course, their easy coast to coast goals. Address that and we are a much better team.
Last night, again we won the tackle count. And tackles inside 50. But it looked like we were playing closer defensively.
It’s possible that the Saints got ahead of themselves and thought they would steamroll us. But we are definitely improving in many of the key stats that we were lacking in earlier in the year.
Perhaps Truck had a sneak peek at the Bomba Thompson thread. Doesn’t have to be over complicated.
It’s a snapshot of where the club is at. It’s got marketing experts trying to monetize the last living dollar of its supporters.
Our club has been corportised beyond belief and football is just something Essendon does that helps in the real purpose of the club: to make money.
Agree with you but @percebushby has a fair point.
I’m loathe to be too critical of Parish he being such a good collector of the contested footy. Think it was on 360 that either Kingy or Montagna pointed out this very point too, Darcy often just slamming it on the boot and we get turned over.
But yeah, whether he being out was the difference yesterday is unlikely. We pressured them all round the ground and in close which we’ve not done well enough all year. If he was out for 5-6 weeks and we monstered other midfields and delivery out was consistently higher quality I’d say let’s think about it.
I didn’t attend the game live so this review comes from what I saw - and didn’t “see” - on TV.
What I pleasingly didn’t see were easy, bruise free transitions from our F50 to our D50 where a couple of free opposition forwards would mark completely unattended for easy goals. It has happened all year (including our previous wins) but didn’t happen last night that I can tell.
From what I can tell Rutten decided to flip his putrid game plan on its head - we went from “high defensive press” (where the HB line would press right up to the HF line when we went forward then watch helplessly as the ball went right back over and/or around them) to “set up behind the ball” where our back 6 basically played in D50 and didn’t press to our HF line. I saw Redman, once, early press high and kick a left-foot behind early but that was about it. He got what must have been a career high 31 possessions because he stayed predominantly on the defensive side of centre with fellow defenders for company.,
That’s change #1. This induces change #2 - for the first time this year, I saw us regularly want to run past a defender who had a mark and free for a handball and then drive carry & kick the ball forward. This was what Hind does naturally well and did well with last night (a couple of mistakes not withstanding), but his natural instinct has been suppressed all year by Rutten’s preferred, previous game plan. This also yielded a positive byproduct #1 - Ridley played his best and most confident game of the year playing largely on King at FB. I suspect this is because he suddenly wasn’t one of only 2-3 defenders having to play against 5-6 forwards and feeling hopelessly outnumbered as easy ball comes down to his opponents.
Change #3 was to move the ball forward and almost all costs through the midfield and quit the ridiculous sideways handball to a player under even more pressure. It was run and kick forward or even handball forward. This change works in with change #4 which is our our HF line positioned itself. For me, it was the best part of how we played as it induced easy, forward intercept goals of the type I have barely seen all season.
As St.Kilda kept trying to exit our forward line we played mainly man-on-man, even when out wide. In the end they were forced to try for a hurried switch back into our F50. Our HF line - and this difficult to tell exactly not being there - position itself inside the centre square about 60m from our goal, mainly in the corridor. This had two more positive byproducts. Byproduct #2 was that those players stopped a sideways switch by the Saints higher up the ground. Byproduct #3 was that those HFs only needed to run 20m-30m forward the sideways switch into our F50.
Two of our goals illustrate this: the first goal of the game to Jones when the Saints under pressure, out wide tried to hurriedly switch to Battle about 30m-35m from our goal. Jones was about 60m put. Wright (who I thought had a great game bar one set shot miss he should have nailed) smartly stayed near Battle and affected the spoil. Jones read what was happening and immediately sprinted forward, pounced on the crumb and calmly measured and snapped a classy left goal. The other was a goal in Q3 to Wright. Again, the Saints were under pressure when exiting out wide and Sinclair (I think) went for a switch to a free team mate at the top of our F50. Perkins inside the centre square (his positioning stopping Sinclair from switching to a team mate higher up the ground) read the Sinclair, sprinted forward and spoilt the pass, knocking ball forward into space about 30m from our goal. Wright read the situation, ran forward from deep forward and, like Jones, had ample time to calmly collect the ball and snap around his body for an easy goal. Such easy snap goals are very un-Essendon like in 2022 and were probably the best highlights on the night.
Other quick observations:
Let’s see how we play next week… .
Watching the replay I really believe it wasn’t the Saints playing bad and was about us applying manic pressure, moving the ball forward instead of backwards and sideways and putting in the effort because I am still at a loss to who I thought were our best 3 players, you could have given votes to at least 15 blokes on the team
Stringer is a presence on the field, opponents seem genuinely scared of getting tackled by him in the forwardline and he causes absolute mayhem at the centre bounce as he’s just such a beast, makes a huge difference to the team, he’s been putting in the forward pressure we’ve needed
Draper was magnificent this game, so many highlights and seemed most of his touches resulted in great things for us, his enjoyment of the game and love for his team mates makes us such a better club
Caldwell is showing the potential we knew he had, absolute guts and courage never shirks a contest and has great hands
Shiel is playing like the player we traded for, and he speaks really well, liking him more and more
Redman is cutting out the stupid ■■■■ and being more accountable on the defensive end, played a ripper game
LAV, has to be AA backman, so dependeable
Riddley still seems out of sorts but showed flashes of old Riddley. Playing him as a spare weakens his effectiveness, he’s a one on one defender and his skill is outmarking passes to his direct opponent.
Perkins could have had a bag of 5 and just oozes class, we got one here.
Ham is just woeful
Hind is recapturing his form and giving us that spark off HB that was our brand the last few years
Jones makes our forwardline so much better as a second option to take defenders away, but also knows how to rove and get free, him and Wright were great together and worked well at ground level
Wright you have to watch the replay to see how he had little deft moments where he set up a lot of goals and had an impact outside of his scoring
Massimo is a gem and you can just tell he will be a cult figure and fan favourite, that kick of his is bellisimo, one of the most impressive debuts we’ve seen in a while
Phillips isn’t a great ruck, but he isn’t a bad ruck, but he does all the things you need a ruckman to do and he gives us aerial defense and a target, he’s also a massimo massive human being and he actually uses this to our teams advantage, we always look a lot better when he plays
McG is an AA medium defender, he saves goals, he repels attacks, he’s a smart footballer, if we were a smart club, we’d leave him there, he can completely vanish whoever he is matched up on, and is great at cleaning up ground balls in defense
Martin and Durham are such great pickups, Durhams overhead marking is a great surprise addition to an already decently valuable contribution to the team, also fearless and workmanlike
Loved Martins passion when he kicked that goal from 50
Maybe Rutten reads blitz because for the first time this year, when we were going forward we left players out on the wings and the oppositions HBF so if they got the ball back of us in our f50, they couldn’t sling shot out. Only took half a season to correct this, but hope it stays this way.
The whole game looked like the Saints trying to do what teams have been beating us have been doing with rebounding out the wings, but this game, they had efc players covering the man up the ground and multiple harassing and attacking the ball carrier.
We very much looked like a different team, playing a different game style, and at no time strangely, was I yelling at the TV about how stupid our zone is.
Whatever happened to the zone, I hope it killed it for good
Players seem to have trauma bonded over the shitshow which has been the last few months which is building character of the team as a whole
I thought we wouldn’t win more than 5 games this season, but i’m starting to feel like it could be at least 6.
Lid slightly ajar
Thanks BWAS, hopefully we stick with this
Totally fair. If we were missing Parish and consistently put together better performances, I’d accept there’s a discussion to be had. It is just tiresome to see such huge conclusions being made with such little evidence.
The non manning of the mark was also a real change - both AFL & VFL. Allowed players to work back to defend rather than be left there standing like a statue.
I’m not sure I agree with this assessment. we still had two half backs very high and poised to try and intercept but not totally over overcommitted. I would say they were often about 10 metres behind the back of the square and ready to push up on to somebody receiving the ball very quickly and suddenly. We actually forced a lot of turnovers this way. The other 4 defenders certainly did seem to hold their depth better
It’s an adjustment from having the half backs flat footed on the paint of 50 sure but it wasn’t a complete abandonment of the game plan, rather it was a tweak we should have made at least 2 months ago IMO. Ditto retreating off the mark to cover runners from behind in our front half. It’s actually totally infuriating it took us until round 14 to work that one out
Also we kicked/ handball to player in transition rather to stationary. Got timing of ball movement correct.
Could it be that the backline didn’t have to overcommit because the midfielder’s held their zone better?
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