I’ve been to a few training sessions myself and I personally wouldn’t call it slow, I would say it is more conservative short kicking, using angles until we get out of the defensive half. I agree our skills haven’t been up to it in the past, but the only way to get better is training it.
We know we can sling shot out of the back half using run and dash but that isn’t going to win us finals. We need to practice and train different methods for different circumstances and team defenses.
Our kicking out of the back half and kicking into forward 50 have be extremely poor in the last few years, so I encourage the news we are practicing more precise kicking and not just long bombs in hope.
Why am I suddenly having vivid flashbacks of moments such as snelling’s short, unpressured kick to cahill to try to get him a goal on debut, only to see the ball kicked to high, over his head and turned over… or parish’s short backwards pass in the last 20 seconds of a quarter against the Eagles intercepted and turned into an eagles goal
Yeah, I have some nerves on a short passing game too, but like I said, doggies do it well. But it’s also true our kicking skills may not be up to it
I have a feeling the plan is going to be centred around lowering the eyes out of defence and getting the ball to the half back line and going long down the line so that the contest is happening near our half forward line as opposed to on our half back line where we would look to kick long to a contest from full back which allowed teams to suffocate us last season.
There may be a chance that we have entered match-sim stage of preseason, and are trying to bed in a ball-movement system that will increase in speed as it becomes more instinctive/intuitive and skilled.
Yeah it will be interesting to see how much we develop the kids.
Sounds like Cox might get a run on the wing at some point, maybe.
Perkins could get fast tracked and play quite a few games.
Harrison Jones and Ned Cahill will probably feature a lot more.
I think many blitzers will be upset that we aren’t playing “the kids”, but we will be developing and getting games into players like Draper, Ridley, Zerk, Redman, Francis, Parish, Laverde, Langford, McGrath, Stewart, etc.
While we probably want to get a nice high pick I can’t see us not playing the best players available. I’d say we might see some frustrating games where the coach refuses to make ‘obvious’ changes because we need to stick with the gameplan.
I’m predicting we get around 8 wins. We won’t be very good, and we don’t really want to win too many, any less wins would be bad for morale and erase any confidence we are on the right path.
I’m convinced we will surprise everyone and play finals, I’ve tethered my emotions to that and I’m feeling fairly good about it, Doubt the boys let me/us down.
And I find it pretty exciting that if/when that group reaches their potential then there could be quite a sudden improvement. Even if say, Langford and Draper could somehow work themselves into contention for brownlow votes, it would make a huge difference to the teams prospects. (I guess if you are in contention for brownlow votes it usually means your team won so maybe that’s not the cleverest example)
Yes, good to hear they’re doing a tonne of work on the possession game. Desperately needed given the embarrassment of being chronic turnover merchants in recent times. Obviously, no Saad, McKenna hurts the rebounding game but chipping their way out of defence and banging it long to the advantage of forwards or 1 on 1 type scenarios should serve the team well.
