WB Game Day V Collingwood R1 2020

[GVGjr]

We won't win too many games when our effort early on is so poor and our organisation was almost non-existent
Collingwood aren't a bad side but there is no way they should be a 50 point better team than us if we show up to play

Some observations:

Are we suffering from "the smartest team in the room syndrome" with our team selections?
Despite recruiting 2 key position players we looked undermanned
How does such a talented team can put forward games without the right energy and effort to win games?

In the nicest possible way we have some work to do before the next game right across the club

[GVGjr]

We better adjust very quickly, if circumstances allow us to.

Recent history would say that isn't necessarily a strong point for us. We can be pig stubborn with our selections

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

Recent history would say that isn't necessarily a strong point for us. We can be pig stubborn with our selections

I think/hope this result and performance as well as environmental factors will see a more holistic review

[GVGjr]

Wasn't our tackling efforts inept tonight?
I don't get how we could use the final against GWS last year as a yardstick over the summer and show up week one this season with a highly questionable effort across so many players

We weren't sharp, our skill level and decision making was highly questionable and we were very unorganized and I don't get why
On the field and in the coaches box we had our backsides handed to us tonight

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

Wasn't our tackling efforts inept tonight?
I don't get how we could use the final against GWS last year as a yardstick over the summer and show up week one this season with a highly questionable effort across so many players

If i could've banked on just one thing ahead of tonight it would've been ferocity, hardness, effort, resolve and genuine unfreindliness.

Where was it? Why was it not there?

[Danjul]

I don't think that is true.


Collingwood had 162 handballs to 118

The issue wasn't the amount of handballs, but the conditions under which we resorted to them, and then the resulting under pressure bang it on the foot no look kick that transpired.

We lost this 100% at the source.

Centre clearances: 15 to 5 Collingwood
Contested possessions: 123 to 93 Collngwood
Inside 50's : 42 to 22 Collingwood
Marks inside 50 14 to 2 Collingwood

And it was a tackle free game as a result 49 to 41 Collingwood.

We lost this at the contest, in and around the ball. Anything after that is merely a consequence.
That our handballs were ineffective is less about it being the wrong thing to do, than it is the circumstances under which the handballs happened.
I am surprised, you must have a new spin for 2020. Normally you're keen to smash our inequity in the ruck contest. Tonight, it and the set up and performance of our blokes around the source was below average for a amateur side much less an AFL side.

If we win our fair share at the souce, if not due to English's tap, then through our ability to negate at least Grundy's ability to get it to his teammate then this is at least a 50/50 game.
I can't find the stat for taps to advantage online, but I did see on TV at one stage around half time it was 12 to Collingwood and 1 to us. That is HUGE! I think at one stage it was a tap to advantage in 1 in 7 ball ups. Again that is massive.
We were as a result on the backfoot at all time, and irrespective of whether we handballed or pressure kicked it, we would've been at a severe disadvantage.

The ruck situation was predictable. And thanks for acknowledging that I have tried to help the club by pointing it out. We saw Collingwood do it twice last year. Other teams too. As soon as you saw the team announcement you and I both knew what was in store. And I think English is one of our most valuable players if used intelligently.

My handball comment is totally separate from the ruck debacle. That was also previewed last year .

The number of handballs is irrelevant. Collingwood dominated play, 45 more possessions by quarter time, so they were always going to have a lot more. They used handball differently, it was used when appropriate but foot passes were given priority.

I didn’t see the Dogs handball to outside runners at full speed (Collingwood did this well) . I didn’t see the Dogs handball ‘over the top’ or players even set up out there. They were all inside the corral.

I did (frequently) see the Dogs attempt hand passes when a kick was a superior option. Just like I saw them kick backwards without even looking forward and stuffing up what should have been a simple kick when under no pressure. I think Collingwood got a few goals as a result.

My comment was about the quality of the kicking and not the quantity of the handball. It looks like the players are not comfortable kicking and are resorting to handball to compensate, and the players are setting up with that in mind.

[Sedat]

There seems to be an automatic assumption that English will suddenly morph into a cross between Simon Madden and Polly Farmer once he puts on some size. It wasn't just Grundy who smashed him tonight, Mason Cox repeatedly out-worked him in ruck contests, and no disrespect to Cox but he is a skinny beanpole and late convert to the game. We know Witts, Goldy and others also mauled English last year when he was forced to go it alone with no proper back-up support. It cost us close games last year in the name of 'player development'.

If English is to have any chance at becoming a valuable and consistent ruckman, plonking him in there for 80% of the time against the big boys is not the way to go about it IMO. He looks for all the world to me like someone who is much better served by sharing the load with another ruckman. Whether that is Sweet, Trengove or someone else remains to be seen. He can certainly cause problems up forward, and can also link up well around the ground a-la Dean Cox. I have grave reservations that he will be our Grundy or Gawn - he just doesn't have the body positioning nous of the stronger ruckmen, nor the leap timing of the athletic ruckmen. And whe he is getting towelled up (too common an occurrence for my liking) he loses all confidence in the other facets of his game that are usually strong.

I really want to be wrong on this.

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

The ruck situation was predictable. And thanks for acknowledging that I have tried to help the club by pointing it out. We saw Collingwood do it twice last year. Other teams too. As soon as you saw the team announcement you and I both knew what was in store. And I think English is one of our most valuable players if used intelligently.

My handball comment is totally separate from the ruck debacle. That was also previewed last year .

The number of handballs is irrelevant. Collingwood dominated play, 45 more possessions by quarter time, so they were always going to have a lot more. They used handball differently, it was used when appropriate but foot passes were given priority.

I didn’t see the Dogs handball to outside runners at full speed (Collingwood did this well) . I didn’t see the Dogs handball ‘over the top’ or players even set up out there. They were all inside the corral.

I did (frequently) see the Dogs attempt hand passes when a kick was a superior option. Just like I saw them kick backwards without even looking forward and stuffing up what should have been a simple kick when under no pressure. I think Collingwood got a few goals as a result.

My comment was about the quality of the kicking and not the quantity of the handball. It looks like the players are not comfortable kicking and are resorting to handball to compensate, and the players are setting up with that in mind.

"I hope handball is removed from the training program. It destroyed the player setup tonight. 4 short hand passes gives the opposition time to corral the ball movement and caused fumbles. It also draws more of our players into that zone, Taking them out of relevance and allowing opponents to form an outer perimeter"

Your words above.

I contend handball was only a problem due to the circumstances we were placed in, due to our inability to gain ascendancy at the source. We've always been a handball heavy team under Bevo, and McCartney. The issue is less the handball, than the circumstances under which we are forced to employ it.
We were on the back foot every time we were fortunate enough to gain possession. Whilst we no doubt missed opportunities to kick to our advantage, this was born less from our proclivity to handball than it was our inability to win proactive ball use in the first instance.
We are always prone to getting caught flatfooted with our handball game, when our mids and followers are soundly beaten to the punch, as the contested ball and hitouts to advantage show.

We are a handball team, that has been our go for a while. The bigger issue is whether that is still a viable option. If its not, then with Dunkley and Macrae in the trench we've got some issues, especially if English is not the tap ruck Messiah we hope he is.

We didn't hit outside runners because we were not able to. We were constantly on the back foot and forced to defensively handball, repeatedly and we got caught out a lot. At best this meant Dunkley and Macrae were forced to invoke the almost forgotten Matthew Boyd no look kick..

So the quality of the kick was a result of the quality of the handball which was a result of the inability to gain anything approaching 50% of the contest.

Grundy and the Collingwood onball unit was in my opinion the main issue.

I am still coming to terms with trying to understand how ineffective Bont was. That was the other elephant in the room.

[jeemak]

Taps to advantage or any other ruck advantage can at a minimum be negated if we have a midfield group willing to do it. Tonight we didn't, many times last year we showed we could when we were committed to the cause.

Nobody who is sane would have actually thought English improved exponentially over the course of the preseason to guarantee the issues we saw with him last year wouldn't have been there tonight. I expected him to struggle, it seems our midfield either backed him in too optimistically or were sleeping at the wheel. What I saw from the midfield suggests they were suffering from the latter issue, We gave away silly free kicks which is a big sign, and were sloppy and didn't tackle.

The good news is all of this is related to something that can be changed with a different mindset. Our blue chip midfielders need to get their hands dirty and provide cover for everyone else who is helping them to try and get a result.

[Sedat]

Our handball game suffers when there is real heat applied inside. And teams that have been effective at dismantling our run and carry have been able to do it by attacking both the player with the ball and the next in line to receive the handball. Collingwood ruthlessly exposed this tonight, which completely starved our forward 50 and get them far too many good looks in their F50 (hence they took 14 marks inside F50 to our 2)

We need some defensively-minded mids who can provide a better balance between our all out kamikaze ball movement and also putting some time into opposition mids. Hello Libba.

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

There seems to be an automatic assumption that English will suddenly morph into a cross between Simon Madden and Polly Farmer once he puts on some size. It wasn't just Grundy who smashed him tonight, Mason Cox repeatedly out-worked him in ruck contests, and no disrespect to Cox but he is a skinny beanpole and late convert to the game. We know Witts, Goldy and others also mauled English last year when he was forced to go it alone with no proper back-up support. It cost us close games last year in the name of 'player development'.

If English is to have any chance at becoming a valuable and consistent ruckman, plonking him in there for 80% of the time against the big boys is not the way to go about it IMO. He looks for all the world to me like someone who is much better served by sharing the load with another ruckman. Whether that is Sweet, Trengove or someone else remains to be seen. He can certainly cause problems up forward, and can also link up well around the ground a-la Dean Cox. I have grave reservations that he will be our Grundy or Gawn - he just doesn't have the body positioning nous of the stronger ruckmen, nor the leap timing of the athletic ruckmen. And whe he is getting towelled up (too common an occurrence for my liking) he loses all confidence in the other facets of his game that are usually strong.

I really want to be wrong on this.

That Cox hammered him was disconcerting Sedat.
I do think that having some decent support, (and Schache, Young or Bruce ain't it) is something we need to consider.
This is something our coaches and recruiting team need to workshop very quickly.
This is going to be a weird year, and we might need to make this a focal point for finding out if this is our achilles heel. It seems to be.
Sh1t I still can't believe that for whatever reason Roughy left us. How a Bulldog's supporting, premiership player felt the need to leave our club boggles my mind.

[Sedat]

Taps to advantage or any other ruck advantage can at a minimum be negated if we have a midfield group willing to do it. Tonight we didn't, many times last year we showed we could when we were committed to the cause.

Nobody who is sane would have actually thought English improved exponentially over the course of the preseason to guarantee the issues we saw with him last year wouldn't have been there tonight. I expected him to struggle, it seems our midfield either backed him in too optimistically or were sleeping at the wheel. What I saw from the midfield suggests they were suffering from the latter issue, We gave away silly free kicks which is a big sign, and were sloppy and didn't tackle.

The good news is all of this is related to something that can be changed with a different mindset. Our blue chip midfielders need to get their hands dirty and provide cover for everyone else who is helping them to try and get a result.

Oh I agree with this 100%. The mindset of our mids tonight was nowhere near even a basic acceptable standard - Smith the standout exception. They were embarrassed by their opponents in every facet tonight. I expect them to bounce back hard next week, as they have done previously when putting in a collective shocker.

[Happy Days]

It's been a couple hours and like seriously Dogs what the *!*!*!*! (drunk btw).

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

Taps to advantage or any other ruck advantage can at a minimum be negated if we have a midfield group willing to do it. Tonight we didn't, many times last year we showed we could when we were committed to the cause.

Nobody who is sane would have actually thought English improved exponentially over the course of the preseason to guarantee the issues we saw with him last year wouldn't have been there tonight. I expected him to struggle, it seems our midfield either backed him in too optimistically or were sleeping at the wheel. What I saw from the midfield suggests they were suffering from the latter issue, We gave away silly free kicks which is a big sign, and were sloppy and didn't tackle.

The good news is all of this is related to something that can be changed with a different mindset. Our blue chip midfielders need to get their hands dirty and provide cover for everyone else who is helping them to try and get a result.

100%.
I really do think we drank our own preseason training bathwater regarding Timmy's development. Everyone in house was saying how Timmy had progressed exponentially over preseason. Umm. That's great.. BUT.. who was he up against???
If we placed our gameplan in the hands of Timmy's progression, then we were clearly caught out tonight.
The selection of Gardner indicates we felt that Collingwood's forwards would not be getting quick ball forward. It indicates we thought we'd halve contests at the source and were willing to back our defense on that basis.
Instead we saw the ball scream towards their forward line allowing no one to get set, and letting separation occur where Gardners lack of pace and Keath's inability to be a lockdown defender cost us.
We can recover. But it comes from with some humility with regard to English's tap ruck ability right now. We need to utilise English's competitive advantages around the ground (against most ruckmen) and also set up for the fact that Tim is probably not going to win many taps.

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

It's been a couple hours and like seriously Dogs what the *!*!*!*! (drunk btw).

I hear you HD.
I was very sure, even at Thursday I would refrain from uncorking my reserve bottles.. I failed.