It’s why I wanted Ross Lyon as coach. There is no way we’d set up so naively and be wide open like this. He’s the best defensive coach in the AFL for a reason. What you need is:
Players that are super fit to run both ways
Players that are disciplined and prepared to sacrifice their own games for their teammates and the good of the team.
100% buy in from the players.
A coach that is able to get his message across to the players in terms of how he wants them to set up and play. What the non-negotiables are and most importantly, holding players to account regardless of their standing within the playing group.
Lyon does all of these to the letter. Anyone who doesn’t play his way doesn’t get picked. Simple.
Because the situation is different. 99% of the game, if someone’s 70m out from goal and they kick it 30m backwards to a defender with mediocre skills, you’d absolutely take that in exchange for having someone extra to contest the long kick to the top of the square. Going man on man with a guy who poses no danger whatsoever isn’t a good use of personnel. If you’re 2 points down with a minute to go, that same backwards kick is probably more dangerous than the long kick to the top of the square. Uncontested mark, 5-10 seconds off the clock, zero risk of a turnover, it’s a nightmare.
Zones concede the less dangerous possessions and positions in exchange for, when done well, defending the more dangerous possessions and positions more reliably. If all the opposition wants to do is hold the ball, those less dangerous possessions become just as dangerous, so the premise of the zone doesn’t apply.
agreed. the club doesn’t seem to understand the fundamentals of zone defence. we’ve just seen other clubs do it and copied what it looks like without understanding how it works.
We want to rush the ball forward, because then we get more one on ones, and score higher etc. And we do. But also, if we fail to mark, or bring the ball to ground, it hurts us going the other way, because we aren’t set up to defend the transition.
There are 3 ways, in our attacking method, to be less vulnerable to those rebound goals. We need to either:
Hit more targets by foot, so make sure our best ball users are delivering inside 50, have more midfielders that are good kicks, or blaze away early when we have an outnumber, or a player free. Also, forwards working together to create space, then lead into that space helps a lot
Have quality smalls that can hunt the ball and put pressure on the opposition players inside 50 if they don’t win it outright
Recognise when we don’t have a good one on one target, and either find a shallow target, or wait until our backs are fully set up to lock it in before kicking it to a contest
Personally, I think elite pressure small forwards make a massive difference in stopping rebound scoring. Year after year you’ll see teams that only have a single tall target, due to injury, make do with a smaller forward line, and do better because of it, but they always go back to 2 (or more) tall targets when they have the personnel, and often score less. More small forwards = less predictability about where the ball will be kicked in, and more pressure on the kick out, which leads to missing targets while trying to exit defensive 50.
The Swans kicking was magnificent. Low, hard and often to advantage of the player, not just where they stood.
I was at the Port vs Rich game (it was a free lunch) and the one good thing that Port did was kick to advantage. They put the ball 5 to 10 m in a position of the receiver where they could just keep running. None of this stop / start stuff and Richmond just fell to pieces (as we would have).
Three Swans heading downfield in a full-on sprint, two Bombers running at 3/4 pace. It’s that simple. Who hasn’t notice our half-ar5ed defensive running? Extract the digit. Simple.
As an aside, sometimes I find it frustrating how little technical jargon there is in the AFL. When discussions like this are going on it’s kind of annoying to have no vocabulary to describe the shape of a zone, or who’s supposed to be doing what. Absolutely, American football sounds like wank when you say “man outside cover six” or whatever, but it does describe where the defense is standing and how they’re going to play.
Sure, we’ve got all sorts of effort and physical attributes issues, but do we even try to get to similar positions as good teams? Are we trying to do a different thing, or the same thing but we’re worse at it? A picture could be worth a thousand words, but also a word can be worth a thousand words and has the advantage that you don’t have to go find a picture.
Our players simply have to work harder when they don’t have the ball. What I am hoping for is when Brad does match review with the team and has his 1:1s with the players he’s telling them “If we see you not working harder when we don’t have the ball versus when we do have it you will be delisted and we will find someone who does value this part of the game…” or words to that effect.
Caldwell and Perkins are two who have immense AFL talent but that’s 2 weeks now where I question their willingness to run back hard on defence. A strong canter won’t do it and doesn’t pass the eye test. Richmond built a 3peat with players born with less talent but a hunger and will to chase and tackle. We need more of that…
