The gameplan is fine to begin with. It has to evolve, but I don’t expect it to change any time soon.
It’s simple. If there is a lead up target, kick it to them, otherwise get it to 20-30m in front of goal, get it to ground and let our small forwards do the work.
It forces the opposition to defend from 30m out, where as kicking to leading targets cause the turnover (which will happen) to occur higher up the ground and that’s where we get killed on the transition.
Early in the 4th quarter, the Saints defence were ■■■■■■■■ themselves with the high ball and trying to get it out of bounds or through for a behind. That’s what we want. Force the defence to defend. That situation occurred because of where the kick into the forward line was from, not the actual kick. The rest of the forward entries were from a half forward flank (closer to the boundary than the centre) which reduced the options.
My observations…
- we went too wide. This wasn’t on purpose. It was a mixture of St Kilda clogging the middle and allowing the kicks out wide because that doesn’t suit our gameplan (great identification by Ross) as well as confidence with kicking. Once a few kicking errors occurred, we struggled to be as daring.
Firstly, we do go wide rather than through the middle, but it’s normally around 15m from the centre square. Last night we were getting pushed within 10m of the boundary line. Against Gold Coast, there was a play when we streamed through the middle and then kicked to the half forward flank. Weirdly I think we got a goal out of it (maybe it was the Guelfi / Draper goal) but that isn’t the gameplan at all. A backline would take a kick to the half forward flank every day when they see a midfielder come through the middle of the ground. You can defend that easier, than a high kick to tall targets in the square. - Not enough tall targets to kick to. I hope people now realise what I meant by Phillips is important to our structure. In order for the gameplan to work, you need guys to contest the mark. They don’t even need to mark it, just get it ground. Weid, Jones and Stringer are lead up forwards. Not contested marking beasts. Inserting Voss in place of one of them won’t change that. Phillips main role is to free up Draper to be the forward target. We were doing this in training even when 2MP was fit. It’s a key part of our gameplan. Without 2MP, it’s now the only part of our gameplan. Against Gold Coast, we were afforded the time to wait for any two of Draper, Jones and Phillips to be the target. St Kilda pressure meant we didn’t have the time to wait, which meant we kicked to their third man up more often than not (Wilkie). Taking Jones off was odd but I thought Menzie or Davey would be the ones because neither of them can run out a game yet. But that would make the next point even worse.
- The forward mix was terrible and was the biggest failure. Having Jones, Weid, Stringer, Langford, (at times Perk) meant we only had 2 small forwards at the drop of the contest. Menzie and Davey just can’t do it on their own. Unfortunately, Guelfi was injured, but in hindsight Snelling may have helped with this problem.
The other problems with the forwards is Jones, Weid and String. Only Jones ran up to the wing. The rest tried to stick within the forward 50 and they almost clogged the space up for each other. There were a few times where Weid and Jones were leading to the same spot. That’s definitely not ideal. - Hep. In order to try and get some form of forward structure, it seemed Hep was pushed down back. That’s not working. He’s barely doing well off a wing. The backline is long gone for him. The first quarter, I think he was wing, but because the Saints were attacking, his opponent dragged him into our backline. The second and third, he was in the backline. Hep isn’t the person to plug a gap in the team.
- Langford being shifted all over the place. I get the reason why, because a lot wasn’t working for us. In the forward line, he wasn’t getting the one-on-one looks he was getting last week and that was mainly due to the other forwards not clearing the space the way Jones did and our other forwards did.
- Massimo. We knew his weakness before tonight. Defensively, he’s going to be isolated and exposed. Any good coach will do this. He has to work on his weaknesses and try and hurt them when he does have the ball. He also needs to settle a bit depending on where he is. He took a mark in the backline in the 3rd quarter deep in the backline, used his instincts and kicked poorly which resulted in a goal. The good thing about him is he kept going. He made some mistakes, but he didn’t go into his shell (which was my greatest fear). He’ll need a few pre-seasons to sort out how to defend though. We knew that before hand.
- Hind / Jones sub. In hindsight I wouldn’t have made a sub at all. The backline was holding its own up until Hind came on. Having both Hind and Mass in the backline meant one was going to be exposed defensively. Hind wasn’t terrible. He gave us what we needed which was run behind the ball. The Saints did a great job of forcing us to push our backline rebound through Laverde and Kelly. We know these guys deficiencies. So do opposition coaches. They prefer the ball in their hands than Ridley. Mass was getting possessions, but it wasn’t as damaging as last week (although the kick into a leading Martin in the 3rd quarter was perfect).
- Discipline. Skills hurt kill us, but discipline totally killed us. The two 50m penalties were on us. Regardless of whether they were there or not. It turned two tough shots on goal into gimme goals. They were the first two goals of the game. One a few minutes in the other 5 minutes later.
- Goal square goals. Aside from the 50m penalties, they got another two or three goals from the goal square. One was after Mass mis kicked, it went to the saints, Mass remained in nomads land, it went straight through Hep and they got a goal.
- 30 minutes of footy lost us the game. The first 15 minutes and the middle 15 minutes of the 4th quarter. One thing that was a positive was after the first 15 minutes, we were able to slow the game down, settle and minimise the damage. That actually began happening half way through the 1st quarter, not waiting until the break to sort it out.
Last year, that would have been a 7 or 8 goal deficit and the team wouldn’t have found a way to slow the game down. - Ruck. Marshall actually was held at bay. I thought he’d be a lot more damaging. In a way, they do the same thing we’ve been doing which is let Marshall drift forward and be a marking target. I thought we nullified that. Marshall still was influential, but I didn’t think he dominated the game.
- In the past, a five goal deficit meant we would have dropped our heads, said it was all too hard and given up. I liked that in both the GC and St Kilda games, we didn’t give in when the opposition got out to leads. The effort is there is try and keep the margin close. The application isn’t, but that was to be expected.
- We played to the opposition rather than our gameplan. And it showed at the selection table. We were short against Gold Coast last week, and we went in shorter this week by bringing in Weid and Stringer for BZT and Phillips. I get that the Saints didn’t have a ‘key forward’, but Caminiti and Cordy would drag players out of their 50 so that their smalls could pressure our defenders and also get some one-on-one plays. Their backline was still taller than ours and worked well to free up Wilkie for intercept marks. I know people think he’s a spud. He’s not. He’d get a spot in any teams backline and they’ll work a way to exploit his strengths which is intercept marking. His kicking is also very good. We needed to play a forward line that forced their defenders to defend. Instead we had a very stagnant forward line which played into Wilkie’s strengths.
- Midfield. This needs to be highlighted. They found a way to work even though Setterfield was well held in the first quarter. It forced our hand to try and get our midget brigade going and they found a way to arrest momentum. I didn’t feel that last night, the midfield let the backline down.
- Forwardline. As bad as the mix was, I think it did well. You have to remember 2MP is out and Stringer was brought back a week too early. They are our two leading goal kickers of the last two years. That’s pretty much a 4 goal head start. Which was the margin in the end.
- Holding the defensive structure. It was a loss, but the defensive structure has been far better than last years cluster fark. It doesn’t always work and the players are trying work their way through it when the circumstances change, but it is holding up well so far. Again, that type of game would have been a 10 goal loss last year.
- Essington. In all honesty, we’re seeing far less of it. We’re yet to play the better teams so there’s plenty of time for Essington to show up this year. But so far, effort is there and there were moments in all games when the opposition was looking good, we lost a bit of confidence and the opposition had a good 20 minute patch of footy. There have been Essignton moments, but it doesn’t end up consuming us. For me, arresting the momentum and not letting it last a full half is improvement. Hopefully it stays that way.
As far as next week is concerned…
Phillips needs to come in. We need a tall target to kick to in our forward line.
We desperately need a third small forward. Menzie and Davey aren’t up to it yet. The forward line works better with 3 talls / medium sized and 3 smalls. Hopefully Guelfi can get back in.
It’s either Stringer or Langford in the forward line. Both just don’t work. If we go with Stringer, then Langford needs to go back. If Stringer doesn’t work, sub him out and push Langford forward.
Is BZT back next week? If not, we need to give Baldwin a shot. The backline balance was out. Having Hep, Mass, Hind, McGrath and Redman back there just didn’t work even though the tall matchups were covered. Keep it simple, 3 talls / medium sized and 3 smalls. Hogan, Himmelberg and Riccardi are going to need to be respected. And that’s before we get to the Green matchup. Daniels is also an undervalued pest of a defensive small forward.