jimmae wrote:
Roughly when was this dropped mark? I'm struggling to recall it.
The passage of play starts with 12:52 on the clock, right after Riewoldt snaps a behind.
Docherty from the kick out, directly honours
Graham on a short lead
Graham honours a long lead from
Lamb into the space behind
Graham, Graham has to lob the kick out in front of him and central to so he meets the required distance
The ball at this stage has moved 25 metres away from Richmond's goal
Docherty drifts up and makes a casual lead into the space left by
Lamb, and in combination with the mass of players being on the near wing, opens up some space in the corridor
Graham, identifies the zonal gap and reads that
Docherty can reach it by foot, and makes a searching lead from 60m out of Richmond's goal halfway between the boundary line and the centre square corner, right through to just inside the corner, opening the game up
Everitt, another kick ahead of the play, has identified the same gap and leads his opponent towards Graham before doubling back and running with his back to the ball, cutting out towards the wing before again cutting inside (his opponent Rance, hasn't committed to closing him at this stage, so a little of the running was for nought)
Graham executes the pass, which asks a tiny bit of
Everitt but he makes the run but doesn't quite secure the ball.
There's no sign of panic from Everitt, the only short step he pulls is to ensure he times his run at the ball mere split seconds before the mark, but he just misjudges the flight marginally and it slips down from between his hands into his waste, and that's all the time Rance needs to close and tackle Everitt as he gathers.
It's a mistake, but he didn't piss himself, and he did everything right to make Rance look second rate except nail the grab. The close-up replay even shows he only took his eyes off the footy the split second before it had made contact with his hands, and Ellis (I think) was well in his range of vision before this.
I think at worst he's tried to spend it before he had it. In the end he was too far out to score, but he did have (I believe) Boekhorst making a run into the 50 from left HF (off-screen).
FWIW, the resulting stoppage saw Docherty spray a pass to a Walker lead, which then resulted in a throw in, so we had plenty of chances to set up depsite the error.
It's a critical mistake, but there's zero cowardess in it from where I'm sitting.
Yep. Good post. Pity many posters don't actually do this kind of thoughtful analysis before making sweeping statements about their current hobby-horse (or whipping boy).
(Not that YOU don't sometimes make sweeping statements too, but then I guess we ALL do as one-eyed, passionate supporters. I just really liked what you did here).