Just finished reading every post. Full on, lids and hat off to all who contributed… Things are looking up an sounding good. Plenty of fuel foe the best 22 thread. Cannardly wait for the real thing to start. Stuff the AFLX for a joke.
Lots of talk about how attacking we looked. But how were we defensively? Its been said that that is one of the main focuses of pre-season. So is that showing noticeable results?
It’s always funny watching an intra club, you want the forwards to kick goals but the defenders to stop them so there are always mixed feelings.
By and large I thought the defensive efforts were good. The we’re many fast breaks that succeeded and when they did we seemed to have better coverage to defend them. Apart from a few bad clangers most goals were scored by good attacking play rather then mistakes which I suppose is all you can hope for.
Cheers nackers. I agree with this bit, and I felt kinda funny asking the question because of you want us to do both parts of the play well. Keep the ball in and get the ball out. Forwards to outmark the defender and the defender to spoil the forward.
Ideally you’d want to see both parts win some and lose some, but when we execute our disposal we do it very well and hit the target/kick the goal.
I think Ambrose was on Stewart as well as Draper when forward, probably why Stewart didn’t see much of it. I do remember Ambrose getting him with a couple of great tackles.
Yes I think Smith will be a lot more than a foot soldier this year, I can’t really see any weaknesses in his game. He has pace, endurance, is tough, has a bit of aggro, tackles and defends well, has good hands and disposal, is a solid mark and has over 100 games experience. I Could hardly think of a better recruit to suit our needs.
For those not there, the intensity was very high. Tackling was hard and lots of niggling off the ball. On the tagging by parish, he took it very seriously and there was lots of sharp elbow hits at the stoppages. But this bit of nastiness was all around the ground by everyone. The sessions were like a game. It was very defensive focussed with not a lot of open play and there was plenty of mistakes. I’m sure because of the pressure being applied.
I haven’t been to a training session for 4 years or so. But I was very impressed with this intensity and the talking on field. It was everywhere with the players directing traffic and teammates into position and commenting on good and bad play - mostly constructively.
Our initial thoughts were that the green team were more the ‘A’ team, but there were too many on the reds that will be in the best 22, so we couldn’t really read too much into it.
The thing that really stood out to me though was the depth we had in being able to provide 2 different sides that batted so deep, a big change from previous years
I like this new attitude " if you tag one of us, we will come at you" .
By tagging a player its supposed to make playing uncomfortable for the target.
But what if its even more uncomfortable for the tagger, and he has many others coming at him?
As long as it doesnt disturb execution of our game plan, of course.
This is following on from some drills last week that were also the most competitive I have seen. I think the tagging as mentioned may have a lot to do with it, it’s as close to a real match environment as I have seen.
The competition for spots wouldn’t hurt this either
So no pre season in 2016 and very little in 2017 after coming in late after being recruited, sat out much of the remainder of the 2017 pre season with knee tendonitis.
He is only just still learning the game, as per his 1m foot pass into BJ’s legs the other day when BJ asked for a handball.