Nah I agree with it, just chopped it out in the formatting.

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|♥♥♥♥♥♥| http://www.blueseum.org |♥♥♥♥♥♥|

Very difficult job for Ford to get a playing group which includes so many underdeveloped youngsters through a whole season.

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There's so much I could say...

There was a good snippet in the paper over the weekend where Dal Santo mentioned the way he breaks tags is through relentless running, basicly just runnning the tagger completely off their feet.

He sympathised with Marc Murphy and co. saying that he used to be in the same position as they are now, playing in a battling side at the beginning of his career and not being able to run as hard for as long as he now can. He said it takes several years in the system to build up the fitness base to be able to run out the game so strongly. I think it was a good lesson he and Harvey handed out to us on Friday night on where our guys need to get to with their running.

That's what Braddles used to do, I remember late in his career he used to jog around the centre square before the bounce so his opponent didn't get a rest.

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"We used to sit around and talk about how bad the game plan was." Anthony Koutoufides

From experience comes fitness.

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#DonTheStash

Bump...

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This is a somewhat more mature Collingwood team that flies its players overseas for altitude training. Paul Ford's job has just begun.

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29 different attributes,
And only 7 that you like;
20 ways to see the world,
Or 20 ways to start a fight.

I still dont think its Paul Fords fault we cant run out games or appear to not run out games

coaching and structure is pathetic

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*(grow - fun - gah)

Yeah but whatabout your whataboutism.

grrofunger wrote:

I still dont think its Paul Fords fault we cant run out games or appear to not run out games

coaching and structure is pathetic

Structure was fine, caoaching on the other hand...Seems to me that Pagan cant make decisions on the run, when it becomes a game of chess he seems to lose every time!!!

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Blue blood is running through these veins!!! Go Blueys!!!

Let's see...

Our final quarters in the first 4 rounds yielded an average of: 3.5 goals (or 26.25pts)

Our final quarters in the last 3 rounds yielded an average of: 1.33 goals (or 11.33pts)

There's no real pattern of rise or fall among our first three quarter goals/points tallies over the first 7 rounds, but it's hard to deny the drop off in the last 3 weeks.

There has to be a reason, and I'm not sure it is solely the coaching panel's responsibility???

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The fact that the players are treading a familiar path in these situations should be considered a factor. The mind controls the body.

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29 different attributes,
And only 7 that you like;
20 ways to see the world,
Or 20 ways to start a fight.

It may be simplistic, camel, but I'd say those last quarter fadeouts have coincided with the loss of Nick Stevens.

That's one less midfielder in our rotation, which means that the other guys are forced to share the load amongst them. Which means their output drops off.

Funny how Pagan always bemoans the lack of midfielders, yet still hasn't worked out how to use the bench to our midfielder's advantage.

Exactly, this is what I said about last weeks game. We're not rotating our midfielders and they're running themselves into the ground.

I can't recall Carrazzo being rotated through the bench at all today. If he was it was for a very short amount of time. He could barely put one foot in front of the other towards the end of the game.

Likewise with our other ball carriers in Scotland and Simmo.

I remember Brent Harvey doing a similar thing to Franchina one day at the Dome. Franchie was knackered and had to ask someone else to mind Harvey while he got his breath.

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"The ability to speak doesn't make you intelligent." Qui-Gon Jinn 15-05-2005

"there’s more chance of me becoming the full forward for the [Western Bulldogs] than there is of any change in the Labor Party." Julia Gillard 18-05-2010

Yeah, I'd say that's a reasonable factor, and it may be too hard to pinpoint it to one single issue, but our last quarter stats are damning.

I was so transfixed on highlighting the last 3 weeks I should have been highlighting the last 4, which includes the West Coast game...

Over the last 4 weeks our combined final quarter scores were: 5.14 (avg 11pts/qtr)
Over the first 3 weeks our combined final quarter scores were: 13.17 (avg 31.67pts/qtr)

Can anyone see the other damning stat from our last quarters over the entire year that point to either a physical or mental fadeout, or both?

Yes, our goalkicking accuracy. It's been woeful all year at 92.112, but when you look at our quarter by quarter goals/behinds tally you'll see that by and large the first three quarter are (still below standard) 50/50, whereas our last quarters have been by far our most inaccurate...

Season to date goals/behinds scores:
Qtr 1 - 23.23
Qtr 2 - 24.32
Qtr 3 - 27.26
Qtr 4 - 18.31

Oops! WTF is going on?!!!

Is it just our kids not having the mental strength to play 4 full quarters?
Is it the pay off of playing 4 tough weeks of NAB Cup fixtures?
Is it poor coaching?
Is it poor physical fitness?

One thing is certain, it's not bloody good enough!

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Or maybe the way that the planets were aligned ...

Well, you can waste a lot of energy running around in circles not knowing what to do at kick ins, then chasing tail all the way down the field.

Both the Blues and the Bullants seem to be the worst in their respective competitions in last quarters. The fact that this problem plagues both sides tends to negate theories built around:
* the players hate the coach, and their lack of passion is demonstrated by their giving up in the last quarter; or
* the game plan is especially draining on the players (as the styles adopted by DP and BM are somewhat different, as DUC noted in another thread); or
* the rotations are badly handled, resulting in players tiring badly in the last quarter.

The commonality appears to be our list. It is tall and young. Both teams are quite tall, which isn't surprising as half of the Carlton list is 190+cm. And both sides are quite young and inexperienced for the same reason.

Is the problem a natural consequence of having taller players who need a lot of physical development to reach their potential? Are smaller guys like Murphy more likely to be able to run out a game when they are young?

Or is there a problem with the fitness program? I wouldn't be remotely knowledgeable enough to comment on that aspect, and I cross my fingers and hope that this is not an issue. No doubt others have a much better idea and can comment.

But you'd imagine that at the top of DP's wish-list at the beginning of the season was that fitness would increase to prevent the sort of fade-outs that led to our loss against the Eagles last year.

Yet it would hardly come as a surprise that the loss of our best midfielder and possibly fittest player this year (Stevo) and the increase in the number of young players would make that wish hard to achieve.

I think it's the nature of having a tall, young list.

Most players take 3 or 4 pre-seasons to be able to run out a game fairly strongly. The reasons for this vary. We've got a huge chunk of players who fall into this developing category, and its reflected in our 4th quarter efforts.

I think bench rotations would minimise this, but when you're openly admitting this is a development year, why wouldn't you leave some kids out there and build up their match fitness over the season (within reason).

I'd be looking for rotations to become more prevalent in the next two seasons regardless of who will be coaching, as players like Kennedy, Hartlett, Gibbs, Murphy, Grigg, Aisake & Setanta see their fitness levels rise.

Having said all of that, the game plan, or at least how it is executed, does seem to take a toll. We seem to have players running forward excessively, whereas you can see that certain teams prefer to encourage their players to remain in sections of the ground (eg. between the arcs, forward of the centre square, etc). This over-commitment to our forward thrusts also goes a long way to explain why opposition sides can get a clean break on the rebound: they just do the smart thing and a few players sit back in the midfield in a nice paddock on the wing.

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29 different attributes,
And only 7 that you like;
20 ways to see the world,
Or 20 ways to start a fight.

Keep grasping at those straws Mav.

The fact is our rotations ARE inept.
You can dress it up how you want but the facts are there.
Keep deflecting though. Some posters may believe some of this nonsense if they are too lazy to do their research.

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.