CON:
jimmae, in round 3 wrote:
The consistent thing for mine last night was a lack of concentration and awareness in the midfield in regards to defensive play.
One thing that bugs me in particular is how we approach a contested ball on the ground: five of our blokes get involved in the immediate contest to say (at most) Essendon*'s three. Unfortunately it's not simple maths in such a situation, in fact more bodies makes it even more difficult to scramble the ball out because no one's in space. So if the dons get the ball, they have two blokes in space without an opponent (see Lovett's goals), and if we win the ball, we handball it to another guy who's hot and he gets gobbled up immediately or releases a disposal under pressure, which usually ends in a turnover. This is how you play footy when you're tired, not five minutes into a match, and it staggers me how a team which lacks that elite level of pace doesn't position more players to receive in space.
Further to that, we over-commit numbers to marking contests, forward runs, and more. Other sides send maybe 2 into a marking contest to our 4, and their smalls crumb and kick a goal/clear the ball, or we run off our opponents to crowd our own half-forward line and if there's a slight skill error trying thread the needle to a target, they usually have up to 3 free on the rebound.
Other teams recognise this crap and game plan around it. So we stream forward, the midfield opponents zone off and shut down all our lead targets, well the ones we don't crowd out or push wide on our own.
What needs to be stressed on the training track and in the team/player talks is that some blokes just need to sit back in midfield unless a huge opportunity opens up, and let the forwards and select midfielders push forward in numbers, so that way we can actually react defensively in the midfield when there's a turnover. That way we have blokes who could actually drop back in time or pressure the blokes streaming down the corridor, instead of leaving all the work up to defenders one-on-one because the modern game isn't heavily weighted in their favour.
That's just my observation anyway, right or wrong.
You could almost use that again.
Pro: Now we know we can't play man on man footy.
Inept performance by the men in the box.
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