I thought I'd take this post from Juddanaught09 from mess that is this weeks Pros/Cons thread and start a discussion on what we assume Ratts is trying to teach our players.
Juddanaught09 wrote:
I think the most concerning thing is that we don't know how we want to play as a club.
One week we play fast, attacking and free flowing football, the next week were are overly defensive
One week we try to play with finesse and over use the ball, the next week we play direct and move it quickly
One week we play the flanks, the next we go straight up the middle
One week Fev is the main man, the next week we are trying to share it around
One week we are accountable, the next week we think its up to our opponents to chase us
I realize that each week our opponent is different, the ground is different, etc, but to me we seem to have no idea as to what sort of football we want to play.
Yes we are young, yes we are coming from a long way back, and yes we are getting better, but I agree that much of the improvement is organic, rather then educated. I hate to use other clubs as a model, but I'm going to anyway. When Knights took over Essendon*, he went in with the game plan of playing fast, exciting, attacking football, and even though they got smashed a couple of times, he stuck with it, recruited towards it, and made its clear that it was the way he wanted to play. Now whether that style of football is right or wrong, we don't appear to be developing a 'style' at all.
I think that with anything in life, you need to start with the finish line in mind. I'm not privy to what goes on behind the scenes, so I hope that I am wrong, but we appear to be going with the flow and waiting for things to work themselves out.
It seems to me that the players are not given a singular type of game style to play (as opposed to Essendons fast paced style only).
I think Ratts is trying to get there heads around a number of different styles that changes depending on who we are playing and how an opposition are playing during a particular game.
So far this year, I think the playing group has clearly struggled at times knowing exactly what situation they're in during games and what they should be actually doing.
Is this maybe a case of information overload and perhaps a scaling back of tactical instruction is required and revert to a simpler (singular) gamestyle (Essendon*?) or, if the above theory is correct, continue on with the education and hope the players cope with all the 'education' and respond positively to it in the short/medium term?
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