Siegfried wrote: Forgive me if this has been discussed elsewhere, I am overseas and and haven't spent so much time on here of late. But I did want to bring something up that has concerned me all year. I know that this has been mentioned here and there in part, but I think it warrants a proper discussion.
And before I spell it out, let me say that while I have my own personal views, I don't want this to be an attack on anyone particular in the football department. I write this purely as an observation, and would appreciate a discussion based on observation and thought/ideas, rather than attacking individuals.
It seems to me that our game style is to play wide, around the boundary. I purposely didn't write game plan, as I don't know what the coaches instruct the players to do. But certainly on the field, the players tend to go wide most of the time, and it seems that the first thing they do when in possession is look to a boundary option. I wrote this even after the Richmond game in Round 1, that even though we slaughtered them, I was concerned at the way we hugged the boundary, and that against better opposition this would cause problems.
The result of this is that against the better teams, who zone and clog the space in front of the kicker, we become static. We get no movement. This was evident again last week against North (I watched thanks to Justin, and dad sent the DVD). Being up against the boundary, in order to have any forward momentum, you have only a small area to go to, and it is easy to defend against. So we end up going sideways or backwards.
This flies in the face of our strengths. Our strengths are our midfield, and Fevola. By playing the flanks, and chipping around slowly, we don't get the most out of our mids. It also means that when we move into our forward 50, we are coming from the boundary. There is only one area to which we we can kick. Fevola has to lead wide, Setanta follows him, they end up in the same spot. How many times do you see Brown/Bradshaw or Franklin/Roughhead contesting the same ball? Occasionally, but not often. Fevola and Setanta should be leading to different parts of the forward 50, but they can't, because they both know (as does the opposition) that the incomnig ball is only going to hit one area. The number of times last week they were competing for the same ball (and Setanta seemed very concerned about getting in Fev's way) was terrible.
What this also does is make it really easy for the opposition to sit a loose defender in front of Fevola. They know exactly where Fevola is going to lead to, so they sit in the space. Doesn't help us.
Imagine if you will that we tried to own the corridor. Yes, there is a risk of being hurt to a greater extent if we turn the ball over. But if we backed our strength (Judd, Murphy, Gibbs, Simpson, Stevens...all generally good users of the ball), played through the corridor, we get run, momentum, the opposition doesn't have time to flood numbers back or to zone (and yes, against Hawthorn, Adelaide and St Kilda, you need to work quickly through their zone to do this). But also, it means we are entering our forward 50 from the middle of the ground. This means that Fevola can lead straight up, left or right. It means he can go one way, and Setanta can lead in the other direction. It means the defender playing loose and sitting in the hole, doesn't know which hole to sit in, giving Fevola much more space to work in. And if he sits in front of Fevola, then we can hit up Setanta in the other area. It opens up our whole attack, playing to our strengths.
Thoughts?
Very well put...and it's due to our negativity going into a game.
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(although our pressure was really....really good)
