How did Polkinghorne train? How far away is he? I reckon he’ll be one of our important top ups this year.
It's an interesting question whether we should pursue the run and gun through the middle approach. It definitely is preferable to the slow ball movement of going safe around the perimeter, or crossing the ground slowly to find space, and attempting to come in from the so called "fat side". WC did the latter to us repeatedly last week, and it was very successful early. But that is because they outran us when the options became available in the space. We like the run and gun and it looks fantastic when it works. But we telegraph it so clearly, and sides with good numbers protecting the middle area close in on the ball carrier and we often turn it over due to the pressure. It can be a numbers thing, but more often it is a skills thing. If your hands and decision making are fast enough and good enough, and you survive the opposition's attempt to take it off you through the middle, easy goals beckon when you finally kick, provided you have a forward or two who has either stayed at home, or run quickly enough to get into space ahead of the ball. Our problem is we lack the necessary skills to survive the pressure. I remember when Geelong were the top side and we tried to pressure them as they ran it through the middle. They didn't look that much different to the way Knights used to have us play, they just did it better, and their skills and speed of hand to get it off before a tackle was superb. It is a high risk, high reward style, but you just have to have the skills. At this point we haven't. The question is, do you persist even when you look bad by turning it over, and hope to develop the skills required to do it well, or do you go conservative and move it slowly but safely, acknowledging you don't have the skills to take the risk and succeed. It is what the modern game is all about.Depends on what provides the reward. Slowly safely hasn’t done us any better than kamikaze style. We can’t deliver into the forward line, and haven’t been able to deliver into the forward line in recent memory. That’s our problem IMHO.
Very good points. Theres nothing much revolutionary in the game plans these days, in earlier times innovative coaches introduced the paddock, copy cat coaches adopted the flood and forward press from other sports. For a time they got big advantages until other coaches worked out the best counters to these game plan elements. Now as far as I can see, all the game plans are pretty much the same. Probably the biggest “new” thing is the 3rd man up, most effectively used by Blicavs at Geelong, but with Danger and Selwood^2 running rampant, they probably dont even need that…
Today each teams game plan is analysed by specialists, each opposition players tendency to use one side or the other, tendency to telegraph, tendency to sell candy etc etc are all analysed. In the end its down to above average ability of 22 players to beat their man and effectively dispose of it to advantage, skills which which reinforce each other
We are very clearly behind in all those areas.
Any real game plan requires skills, chemistry, trust and experience, and we trail all other teams in most of those areas.
Once our guys can back each other to win their respective contests we can move to the next stage, at the moment we are second guessing ourselves too much.