Ben Rutten - Back to the grindstone (Part 1)

Love Cale but he returned round 4 vs Bris.
He’s been amazing, but Frang played vs Melb.

And we conceded over 100 against the dees

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I wonder if sticking to structures and communication is the biggest issue they have with Franga in the backline atm. I can’t recall ever seeing him pointing his fingers, which as we all know is key to the Goddard role.

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apart from the melbourne game and discounting the gws game as whatever the ■■■■ that was, it’s coming down to roughly only 10 goals against a game. of course there are some factors you have to take into account, some games teams could have had better conversion rate and scored more.

but they do seem to be able to consistently restrict opposition teams to a rough ish amount.
haven’t seen that in an essendon side in quite some time.

I reckon the first qtr and a bit on anzac day was due to the guys getting overwhelmed and falling into old bad habits.
at one stage for what seemed like 5 mins i saw collingwood set up with their defensive wall in their forwardline and they had 5 loose players, 3 of which were loose close to the 50 meter mark, players were pushing way too far into defense.

I think once they get a get out of jail option going forward watch out.
moving the ball forward at all cost and on instinct alone will work half the time, and when it’s not working they need a designated way of moving the ball forward other than bombing it to packs, esp from kick outs.

get that figured out, fix 50% of the skill errors and this team can roll anyone.
whether they can or will remains to be seen.

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Just noticed Cale has only one All-Australian. Would have thought at least three. He’s elite of the elite, and harder to play than McGovern

With the media’s darlings in Rance and Lever out, Cale should pick up a spot on the AA team this year.

Lever has never been All Australian

What is actually remarkable about these guys is that they are all VERY good 1 on 1 defenders too.

I dont feel nervous when any of these guys are in a defensive position. And they can quickly turn any position into an attacking one.

If it wasn’t for the saga and swinging him forward for a couple of years, he likely would have 3 or 4 AA nods.

There aren’t many KPDs who are elite intercept marks as well as being nearly unstoppable 1-on-1 players and virtually none who can take contested intercept marks in 1-on-1 situations.

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Not related to his AA selections, but I still remember when they swung him forward in 2015, how quickly the opposition defenders were crapping their dacks and giving away silly frees because they were terrified of 1 on 1’s with him.

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Moving forward robbed him of one, maybe two more AA’s. (Plus, the obvious gap year.)

I reckon he’s still one of - if not the best - one on one defenders in the game.

Edit: Pretty much what Hirdmentality said.

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and yet Fletcher only got two All-Australian. How does that happen?

Silvagni
And Pavlich

Isn’t the unconfirmed consensus that we scrapped the Rutten defence after round 2 and let our players play to their strength?

I’m calling straight up that it didn’t happen like that. We’re averaging ~75pts against over the last 5 weeks and our defensive structure without the ball is much better than last year. Even when we turn the footy over, we’re better able to defend the mistakes. I’d suggest they simply re-emphasised the focus on actually winning the footy first.

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and I thought from a Worsfold’s presser he indicated they were working towards incorporating that defensive stuff and were doing so. It may be more about doing it in smaller steps so players can cope and their natural game is not affected.

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Our side seems to get stuck in the details of any new game plans and become overly conscious of what they need to do. The coaches seem to have framed the game plan in a way that encourages instinctive play WHEN it makes sense. “Playing with freedom” from what I’ve seen means playing instinctively in attack and methodically in defence. Best of both worlds.

Where we fell over against Collingwood was being too focused on our preferred attacking strategy. The 45 degree kick into the middle might be our ideal path to goal, but when the opposition crowds that area we need to consciously look for areas of the ground they’ve left sparsely defended and punch through there.

in the 2nd half there was more than enough space to take those kicks… we just ■■■■■■■ butchered them completely. Full chopped the footy. Still only lost by 4 points though, such was our improved defensive structure and ability to defend the ground with the footy in hand.

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there was more than enough space in the first half too, but as you say the butchering of the ball will cost you.

atm we are all just guessing.
we supposedly scrapped the attacking part of ruttens richmond gameplan that was to play for field position alone when attacking, which ironically was never richmonds gamestyle.

but unless you are apart of the club or gameplan development who knows what has actually changed, we can only guestimate at what we see.

I don’t think having more freedom to play on instinct however follows through to the defensive side of the game as much.

case in point in the first qtr i noticed the players first reaction whenever collingwood won the ball from a stoppage was to start running backwards, even though they were handballing the ball across the ground trying to get an open player.
so they ended up not influecing the ball carrier, and they weren’t able to make it back to defence to help them out, so it was weird watching.
then when they did cause a stoppage too many players were pushing up to the contest leaving 4-6 loose collingwood players behind the ball.

That’s why i hope beyond anything that thursdays game shows them that setting up the way they did for the second part of the second qtr and beyond that they can match any side in the comp.

then all they have to worry about is cleaning up the disposal, hopefully telling certain players to play within their skill scope, and legit this side could be anything.

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