Braithy wrote:
Beverdige allowed us to win stoppage (where we had an extra man) but he cut off the corridor and backed his extra defender (most of the time jones) to intercept/ turnover and then run/ spread hard from the contest and hit us coast to coast
In the first qtr beveridge used more man to man and clogged the flanks which allowed us to look inside and take the corridor. Since we haven’t used the corridor all year this opening took dogs by surprise.
That is by definition, dogs coaching adjusting. And us (Voss) just watching it all unfold and not blink like a deer in the headlights at the oncoming car.
It's unbelievable that in a sport where the best players are commanding salaries north of $1m per season that a coaching team on big-bucks do not anticipate the counter-move type responses from the opposition coaching box. A game played out over 100+ minutes of playing time. There will be many moves and counter moves in any game unless one team feel no need. If you lost the game and felt no need to make changes then you are lost in modern AFL. When you play chess you hope you opponent doesn't see your next three moves at your peril.
When I went to games in the 80s and 90s and we were a consistent 'top of the ladder' team, it was common to see each quarter was a different game inside each game, even parts of quarters would be games within the game of a quarter. We'd have a dominant goto forward or intercept defender or centre bounce idea and the highlights-reel player(s) would tend to change from one quarter to the next.
that was smart, keep the game plan moving along, be predictable enough for forwards to anticipate our ball movement but unpredictable enough that they can't simply sit on a key player to grind our game plan to a halt. It feels like we are getting ground to a halt in the 3rd and 4th quarters when we are in front or right in the contest. If we are simply playing catch up as the oppo relax with a four goal buffer at half time it can make us look better than we are too.
That has to be be partially a fitness issue, surely? I do recall those finals we won in 2023 in the dying moments, no lack of full-match fitness and mental strength in 2023. So we have to also take into account the opposition working us out, across the seasons and within games. We did what it took to win with the same players we have today, largely. Feels like old man time is catching up with a few of them, Acres, Doc, Cottrell, Fog,… Others are younger and still need to build their tanks and stamina for the full four quarter game.
There's one Parko coaching strategy that is an exception to the rule I'm suggesting here, and that was when Blues against the who the Hun liked to call "chess grandmaster" Sheedy who was constantly making changes, if only to try and confuse the opposing coach I suspect.
Parkin just gave each of our starting 18 a man to play on and wherever they went on the ground just to go with them, (e.g. Glenn Manton → James Hird mid, forward, back, wherever just stay with him) . If they came off, our player came of with him. It worked like clockwork and made Sheedy look stupid I thought, which is why I remember it s fondly. Someone here will remember the game, I think it was H&A and I watched from the outer at 'Optus' but not so sure now, so long ago. IIRC Manton had a much better game than Hird that day, he seemed to save his best form for Hird.
Parko was blessed with talent that only money and good connections to SA & WA can recruit, and a rubbery salary cap! We need to adapt to the times. I don't think Tigers were as good a list as the three premierships they won would indicate, I think they changed their game style to take advantage of the rule changes the AFL were introducing to counter the zoning and flooding game plans that had dominated. Their forwards played on at all costs and so won a lot of frees, while opposition defenders were penalised for holding the ball in a way the Tigers forwards and mids were not penalised when forward of the centre square. it just added up to a style that the AFL wanted to reward in the 50/50 umpiring decisions, as so rewarded they were. Of course they had Dusty, some gun mids, and a few very reliable defenders but not a remarkably impressive team c.f. Lions 2024 IMHO.
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