It's a good point, and by the time players come into a club at 18/19 etc, their traits are ingrained so a coach only has so much influence.
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I don’t think we’re suggesting it can be worked into the players. I think we want to recruit players who naturally have it.
I don't think it is about mongrel.
It is about effort and passion and putting your body on the line. The desire to want the ball and doing everything you can to get the ball. Guys like Picken were not mongrels, but his desire and effort to get the ball was second to none.
This talk about we are to nice is rubbish, it has nothing to do with effort. You can be nice, but when you go for that ball, you give it everything. Big difference.
Have a look at Biggs, he wasn't a mongrel, but boy he gave it everything:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXft...nel=XuanTruong
Like a team of Dylan Addisons? So you'd potentially forego a player with better skills for example than one who just cracks in? Having both in spades is like finding the pebble you just threw into the lake even with a high draft hand.
This type of list balance is extremely difficult. From my perspective you either get players with a high level of skill, or, because they don't have a high level of skill they need to make up for it with determination, attitude and a heavy attack on the ball.
Most times you don't even know you have a player who can crack in until they develop. Take Gryphon for example, pure outside evasive player who runs all day turns into a contested ball animal half way through his career. So yes, I think it can be worked into players.
We don't even need a team of these types of players we need someone down back with mongrel = Cordy, someone up forward with mongrel = Naughton and win at all cost players in the middle = Libba and West.
For me this thread stinks a bit and it flies in the face of all the respect that Bont has earned during his career starting with Michael Firrito all the way up to the GWS tactics over the past few years.
He nearly killed Haynes ffs I mean what sort of player do you want him to be?
The hard part for us is finding who is surplus to needs from a positional perspective, what and who we can get for them at the trade table, and who we can draft to immediately help fix our tendency to not show up at times.
I mean we all get it's a problem, possibly by varying degrees, but a problem anyway. But who do we ship out and who is available to bring in?
It's all good and well to say we should load up on these gritty players, but when push comes to shove it's actually really hard to get them in because everyone is looking for them just as much as we are.
Agreed. And as has been showed above all of ours have been rookies and there are limited spaces even there. I may be confusing a player that cracks in with the OP that wants players who play to win but because list balancing is so hard, especially in the AFL, I feel you simply have to develop the best game plan around what you've got and coach limitations out of players the best you can.
Oh thats easy.
Schache is behind Bruce, Naughton, English, probably JUH for a forwardline that doesn't even like playing more than two talls.
Hayes is a running winger who we refused to play even when our running winger was out for most of the season and even when he did play we left him on the bench for most of it.
Cavarra is a small pressure forward who we refused to play even when we had a glaring need for one.
Young plays a position we suck at, but he didn't get a go there and bizarrely at the start of the season we seemed to like the idea of playing him as a key forward despite the abundance of talent we had there already as covered by the Schache point.
Anthony Scott has been talked up as "putting pressure on midfield places", and we seem to be trying to find a role for him considering his role in defence last week, yet he is behind Treloar, Bont, Macrae, Smith, Dunkley, Hunter as first choice mids and we are going to have a hard enough time trying to fit Lipinski, Butler and West in the side ahead of him.
The point is it isn't hard to find list spots if we just stop clogging it up with players we refuse to play or players we already have an abundance of.
Nothing. Because nobody rates them, including possibly us. Thats the point.
No one specifically, although I have argued to mixed reviews for someone who can fill a role like Frawley or Kyle Hartigan, but we should turning our list over a lot more and making players fight for their spot on the list. I'm down for the argument "you can't teach the desperation into players" but making them actually earn their list spots could give them a kick up the arse. We've basically given multiple seasons of AFL wages to Roarke Smith, Ben Cavarra, Brad Lynch, Fergus Greene, Lewis Young, Will Hayes, Lukas Webb, Declan Hamilton, Jordon Sweet, Buku Khamis, Callum Porter etc for no return and no justification. If we were a bit more cut throat maybe there'd be a bit more desperation to retain their jobs from some of our list.
I am not questioning the 'mongrel' component of ANY of our players. Quite honestly, I could care less about this and I'm surprised the thread has turned into one where I questioned our players willingness to sacrifice individual stats for the good of the team into one talking about 'mongrel' and whether or not Rian Griiffin was a 'Contested Ball Animal'...
The players I mentioned at the start as being 'MISSED' and not replaced - Matty Boyd, Picken, Smith, Biggs and Morris - all had some of what is being referred too as mongrel in them...but there is more too it than that simple cliche.
It is the ability to impact on games without the ball - through pressure and sacrifice. Maybe Biggs doesn't belong in the same company as the others - and i have been as critical of Smith as anyone on this board - but each of them had a willingness to climb the light-tower at the MCG if it meant preventing an opponent getting an easy touch. I think Morris had 3x kicks in the GF and could very well have been our most effective player.
Since this has suddenly turned into a Bont thread - without wanting to compare Bont to Cotchin, I don't think there is any doubt that key amongst the Richmond post 2016 'revolution' has been the willingness of their captain to sacrifice personal numbers for team outcomes. Now, in the Tiges 'model' Dusty is the star/best player (not Cotchin) so the comparison probably doesn't hold since we need Bont's output WITH the footy as much as ever...
Or do we? Maybe - but what I do know is we need him to lead the way through accountability and defensive actions...did anyone say the words 'guessing' and 'guarding space' and use it in the same sentence as the names 'Bont', Macrae, JJ or English? These guys read the ball well so rather than taking an opponent they make assumptions about what the opposition are doing and run 'there'...when it works, it works. When it doesn't, well.
I don't know the answer. I wish I did. I just watch with interest as we recruit Sam Lloyd, Josh Schache and (this is unfair as he hasn't played) Adam Treloar to fill the gaps left by those players I mentioned earlier. The new players are all GOOD players - I have no issue with that. They are highly skilled players. But I just wonder if they have the same willingness to self sacrifice as those who came before. The point has been made 'how do you recruit "THAT"'. Well, I don't know. But someone does 'cos we had them all on our list.
It might be easier to list the guys who do "guard space".
I'm convinced Daniel does - hence he often found himself against taller opponents when he first shifted to defence.
Hunter does despite criticism to the contrary.
Wallis does, even if you can measure it with a sundial.
Vandermeer and Richards do with limited examples.
Naughton kind of does, but he really does pressure the ball carrier well for a tall.
I'm running out of names.
Wait, is guarding space good or bad?
LOL.
Guarding Space = BAD.
Unless you are going a 'full zone' in which everyone guards space. But in a game like football when possession is retained without opposition in the event of a mark, you can start in a zone but an opposition play-on simply has to trigger an effort to find an actual opponent.