Blue Vain wrote:
Walsh wrote:
Paddycripps wrote:
Walsh wrote:
Paddycripps wrote:
All jokes aside, Walsh, can I ask you, in what areas do you feel our coach could potentially improve?
Listening less to idiots about defensive football and sticking to his guns and drill a team to his brand and beliefs.
To win flags you need to be ahead of the curve.... all past curves are done and dusted and they're not coming back. Teague has given an insight to what he thinks will play finals in future and he needs to stick to it.
The lack of football people on the board is alarming.... there isn't any - they are all business nuffies. If these nuffies say play more defensive or else then Teague should have the courage to tell them to GAGF.
OK, so the ability to defend isn't an area of improvement for the coach?
I am glad we are clear on this.
Defence will come with line up stability and cohesion between the players. We are going to continuously get slaughtered if skinny bodies keep playing midfield they are not capable to stop the supply. Hasn't happened in five years and not going to happen next year if we persist with these players.
You can't built a game plan on offence and then retrofit defence.
The game style needs to integrate all phases off the game together. When we win the ball, we rightly spread and creates options to free up space, to maintain possession and to stretch the oppositions defensive structure. Good teams maintain a defensive structure behind the ball and they have options ahead of the ball with strategies to maintain possession. We kick it to Harry (he's overwhelmingly the number 1 forward target in the AFL) and we fail to man up defensive options outside off that hit up zone.
So we kick it to Harry, the opposition know where it's going, we collapse into the contest and the opposition march the ball out pick off our defenders who are attempting to lock the ball in and they kick goals.
You talk about Teague wanting a one on one defence. Good luck with that. The opposition are consistently outnumbering us as they bring the ball back. That has little to do with skinny midfielders. It starts from turnovers in our forward line and a full offensive philosophy with no strategies in place to protect its failure.
Walsh is absolutely right that midfield quality (& depth) is a priority.
However, this is not a mutually exclusive priority.
We also need to shore up our defensive capabilities (across the field, including the midfield).
Teague’s attacking plan is good. BUT, he should have also focused on teaching an effective defensive structure, esp after the opposition run-ons from last year.
The fact that he didn’t, or couldn’t get it through to the players is probably the biggest reason he has failed this season.