Always Right Match Committee - Round 16 Vs Eagles 2020

[bornadog]

I'm not disagreeing on the face of what we see, but does it make more sense that those who are in possession of all the data, form and analysis internally are pretty well placed to make those choices? I think thats where YHF is coming from and I'm in the same camp. Totally understand your position, and since 2016 it's a fair one. But I don't think we have left too much in the sheds; Lewis Young certainly baffling and doesn't augur well for his future with us does it. (Hope im wrong).

One of the issues is the circumstances the players find themselves in this year.

Without having the VFL this season, player development has been stifled and many players have been unable to show they should be promoted. Guys like Lewis Young who is still only 21 will be around next year as you don't let talent like his go easily, especially a player who is 197cm.

We also don't know how the Hub is effecting certain players mentally. Being away for so long and stuck in a hotel room is not easy. It is different if you move interstate and live in a house or apartment with your possessions around you.

I am just treating this year as a very unusual situation, and whatever happens happens and I am not going to be too hooked up in the selections.

But Why TF is Roarke playing

[jeemak]

But if we win all of the next three we're going to have had a better home and away season than we did last year from a numbers perspective.

Crazy year.

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

I'm not disagreeing on the face of what we see, but does it make more sense that those who are in possession of all the data, form and analysis internally are pretty well placed to make those choices? I think thats where YHF is coming from and I'm in the same camp. Totally understand your position, and since 2016 it's a fair one. But I don't think we have left too much in the sheds; Lewis Young certainly baffling and doesn't augur well for his future with us does it. (Hope im wrong).

And I'm not too dissimilar either.
Its one thing to at least accept what Bevo is doing is borne from hard analysis and strategic thought, and quite another to validly question whether the totality of what the club and Bevo is doing us is ultimately the best way forward.

Short of us winning the flag this year, I am firmly of the belief we need to have some hard conversations.
The fact Bevo is having to employ a non conventional ruck set up around the ground is testament to us knowing we have a profound deficiency there.
As several people here have pointed out, we've for whatever reason left ourselves exposed for several seasons in this area.
That hints at either:
* a blind spot in our list management, either over-estimating Tim's readiness and or the ability of backup inTrengove, Schache's ability to provide sufficient cover.
* cutting hard enough along the fringes of our list.
* rejuvenating and refreshing our assistant coach positions.
* Communicating honestly with supporters both about expectations and player development (ie match reports, injury updates on non-selected players.

I want a conprehensive review of our entire football operation function.

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

I get selections look funky.
But unless we really think Bevo and the match committee are licking psychedelic toads at match selection meetings...Why aren't we applying Occam's razor and asking ourselves ' Why aren't guys like Lewis Young, Cavarra, Sweet, Greene et al being selected???

Is it more likely the MC are morons and willing to stake their careers on unfair prejudice or favouritism, than it is those players aren't meeting selection criteria?
Why aren't we applying acid on those guys for not forcing the match committee's hand?
The fact Gowers, Gardner, and Roarke Smith are preferred right now, to me screams that the others aren't demonstrating their readiness.

[GVGjr]

I get selections look funky.
But unless we really think Bevo and the match committee are licking psychedelic toads at match selection meetings...Why aren't we applying Occam's razor and asking ourselves ' Why aren't guys like Lewis Young, Cavarra, Sweet, Greene et al being selected???

Is it more likely the MC are morons and willing to stake their careers on unfair prejudice or favouritism, than it is those players aren't meeting selection criteria?
Why aren't we applying acid on those guys for not forcing the match committee's hand?
The fact Gowers, Gardner, and Roarke Smith are preferred right now, to me screams that the others aren't demonstrating their readiness.

For me, I go back to last year. Selections looked unbalanced for the first five games last year and we had Dunkley locked in as a forward which was hard to fathom. There were a couple of others as well.
Once we got past those experiments and the structure of the team started to make sense our performance noticeably improved. We looked strong at the business end of 2019 albeit a humbling loss in the first week of the finals
This year it's been a riddle with our selections since the start and our performances have been erratic throughout.

I don't think anyone is saying that Bevo and the MC are morons but the results we've produced and the inconsistent way we have performed indicate that the approach we have been taking is not working.
I'm not overly fussed on selections like Gardner because he is showing something but I've yet to read anything that can support the ongoing selection of Bruce and the fact that we continue to play him especially when there are plenty of options is more than a little concerning.
Why is form being used to explain why some players haven't had a look in and yet ignored for Bruce?
Schache gets dropped after one game in the wet when perhaps conditions didn't suit him and Bruce gets a free pass each week.

And as I have previously said, Bevo's explanation of the ruck set-up saying we are forced to do what we have been doing didn't wash either. Was it 2015 when Bevo used Ayce Cordy mainly for centre square contests for 7 straight weeks and then having him move forward for large parts of the game? In recent weeks we seem to be doing something similar with Tim English.

This has been the strangest season for team selections I have ever seen. We can blame it on covid-19, hub life, a compressed season, some players not performing and of course the old faithfuls of injuries and age and experience etc but whatever way I look at it we seem to be late to the party with the selections. Lets hope that it's just the plan we are using, whatever it is, that isn't quite working yet but lets also revisit that toad thing at the end of the season

[comrade]

Look he's ultimately going to be judged harshly if he fails to improve things in the next 12 months. Its a results driven business. But it just rubs me the wrong way when I hear some people attribute his decisions in simplistic terms. Eg he has his favourites, or he is just stubborn, or any other perjoratives thrown about that try to indicate he's not applying good rigour in his decisions.
The decisions may ultimately prove to be wrong, but I am confident they're not derived from a lack of rigourous thought or without him seeking feedback or getting buy in from the players themselves.

Good post, and you're 100% right. It is a results driven business, and in the end over a long enough period of time, it's pretty simple to know if your decisions are correct or not. You either perform and win more than you lose, or you don't.

The results over the last 4 years suggest that either the decision making is faulty, or the data/reasoning that supports it is.

Bevo is clearly an intelligent person and a strong leader but I think it's obvious that he's also complex and prone to emotional responses (examples including his scorched Earth approach to Michael Talia, his public faux pas that tanked Stringer's trade value etc) and I think you're overlooking completely natural human vulnerabilities to cognitive bias such as having preferred players (confirmation bias i.e. seeing what you want to see), stubbornness (sunk cost fallacy) etc.

Basically, I agree that he is using rigour/data to support his decisions but like anyone, he is human and so therefore his thinking can be faulty and his interpretation of the data prone to bias, and based on the results he has produced over a long period of time (4 years) the decisions being made are wrong.

I don't want Bevo gone, but I fully agree that a complete football department review needs to be conducted and big changes need to be made to the way decisions are being made and executed on.

[1eyedog]

Of course Bevo is all those things you don't become the senior coach of an AFL team being a simpleton. The throw away lines posters use on this site in response to team selections is borne out of the fact that we get scant information on why particular players are selected over others. What would be great, and really a quick exercise for Bevo, would be to put out a general summary of our fringe players stating what they bring to the team and what their strengths are. I'd be interested as a paying gold member on what out strategies are (strengths / what role each individual player does for the team and what they need to work on in a constructive and positive way) for the following players.

1. Bailey Dale
2. Josh Schache
3. Ben Cavarra
4. Will Hayes
5. Jackson Trengove
6. Lewis Young
7. Roarke Smith
8. Ryan Gardner.

If members could be sent a brief summary on each of these fringe players it would go a long way to dispelling the myths around selections and thereby removing much frustration amongst members and supporters.

Surely after throwing cash at the club as part of our 2020 memberships we could get a half annual members letter detailing the above?

[merantau]

Our year is on the line. If we are switched on we win. If not we can start planning for next year. What I will find incredibly frustrating is another performance like last game, where we demonstrate emphatically that we can make good sides look ordinary only to find a way to lose in the end.
It does worry me that we can get off to a dream start, as we did against our nemesis, Geelong, and still lose. That says something about the mental side of our game. It's in part a measure of our inexperience however, I think there's more to it than that but I don't know what it is.

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

Of course Bevo is all those things you don't become the senior coach of an AFL team being a simpleton. The throw away lines posters use on this site in response to team selections is borne out of the fact that we get scant information on why particular players are selected over others. What would be great, and really a quick exercise for Bevo, would be to put out a general summary of our fringe players stating what they bring to the team and what their strengths are. I'd be interested as a paying gold member on what out strategies are (strengths / what role each individual player does for the team and what they need to work on in a constructive and positive way) for the following players.

1. Bailey Dale
2. Josh Schache
3. Ben Cavarra
4. Will Hayes
5. Jackson Trengove
6. Lewis Young
7. Roarke Smith
8. Ryan Gardner.

If members could be sent a brief summary on each of these fringe players it would go a long way to dispelling the myths around selections and thereby removing much frustration amongst members and supporters.

Surely after throwing cash at the club as part of our 2020 memberships we could get a half annual members letter detailing the above?

Couldn't agree more that the club are doing themselves a disservice by not providing more to engage with supporters,especially now that we have zero visibility on player form outside of the selected 22.
In the absence of information its only natural people are going to make presumptions and query why player's arent being picked and others are persevered with.