Always Right Match Committee - Round 16 Vs Eagles 2020

[comrade]

I have no doubt Bevo believes Bevo is making the right decisions.

[GVGjr]

I suspect Rnd 1 and 2 gave Bevo a massive reality check as to where things would go for the rest of the year should we not rethink how we set up at the ruck contest.
I don't disagree that we were at best naive not addressing this position inn the offseason (for the last 4 years!!)
That's a strategic failure that the club has to acknowledge head on.
I'll be super pissed if we stick our head in the sand this off season!
But for me Kudos to the coach for trying to find alternative solutions within the season to try and mitigate.

I think there is merit in what you are saying but I also think we were a year late in manning up and acknowledging we were short on KP players before we eventually traded for Keath and Bruce and now we are a potentially a year late in acknowledging we need to address our ruck depth. Being fashionably late might work at parties but not the AFL and lets face it what is being pointed out by many here on WOOF this season about or ruck depth is what was also being pointed out at the end of 2019.
We chose to go into the 2020 season with a very diminished ruck option set-up in terms of numbers and the quality of what we had.

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

My point is that maybe the bloke that has us in 10th spot and a 46% win rate over the last 4 seasons doesn’t actually have it all under control. Why would you just blindly accept his reasoning?

Maybe because I'm not blindly accepting anything?
His reasoning on this subject makes sense as I've tried to explain.
Does it mean he or the other decision makers get a free pass for leaving us exposed. Nope.
I suspect they got enthralled by Tim's progress and thought he was better placed to handle the role.Even if that is true they are still on the hook for not making sure we had positional depth at ruck, should Tim go down.
It always looked shaky having only Sweet as the only genuine back up. Thank goodness Tim hasn't broken down and we were forced to watch Sweet come in and more than likely result in us seeing more results like Rnd 1 and 2!
The club most definitely need to be held accountable for it's strategic shortcomings with the ruck. Tactically however, dealing with what we've got, I applaud the coach for trying to find a way through what is a weakness.

[comrade]

Maybe because I'm not blindly accepting anything?
His reasoning on this subject makes sense as I've tried to explain.
Does it mean he or the other decision makers get a free pass for leaving us exposed. Nope.
I suspect they got enthralled by Tim's progress and thought he was better placed to handle the role.Even if that is true they are still on the hook for not making sure we had positional depth at ruck, should Tim go down.
It always looked shaky having only Sweet as the only genuine back up. Thank goodness Tim hasn't broken down and we were forced to watch Sweet come in and more than likely result in us seeing more results like Rnd 1 and 2!
The club most definitely need to be held accountable for it's strategic shortcomings with the ruck. Tactically however, dealing with what we've got, I applaud the coach for trying to find a way through what is a weakness.

I don’t get what you mean when you say Sweet coming in would result in performances like Rd 1 & 2? Isn’t the same ruckman in the side, except now he’s getting chopped out by a 190cm midfielder?

[Danjul]

Absolutely. I reckon Bevo would acknowledge, in a perfect world this isn't how we would like to set up.

In ...............



it's not done on a whim, there is a lot of thought driving it. And you can be sure it's not stubborness or ignorance that is at play.

If you go back and listen to Bevo's pressers when talking about Tim, whether its after he's had a good or a bad game, he always mentions stuff like 'we know what Tim brings to our side, and we also know he's got more improvement to come that will only make us better. We also know we have to put support in place to help him in the areas he's still got to improve on."

For Bevo this is a perfect world. He has had 6 seasons to build it. When the team runs out it’s his team and its composition reflects his will. And its performance is his symphony.

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

I don’t get what you mean when you say Sweet coming in would result in performances like Rd 1 & 2? Isn’t the same ruckman in the side, except now he’s getting chopped out by a 190cm midfielder?

For the very reason we keep persisting with Tim in the side.
The coach believes he gives us more value in our team, albeit a non -conventional role, than Sweet would playing in a conventional ruck role in Tim's stead.
How did Preuss look against us playing a conventional ruck role? I reckon our coaches see Sweet being a similar liability were he to play in Tim's stead.
Tim went head to head with Grundy and Marshall in a conventional ruck rile and was completely smoked.

[Remi Moses]

We do need a second ruck
But that second ruck needs another string to his bow
The days of just lumping the second ruck in the forward locket are long gone
English is still raw in ruck years . Interesting times coming

[comrade]

For the very reason we keep persisting with Tim in the side.
The coach believes he gives us more value in our team, albeit a non -conventional role, than Sweet would playing in a conventional ruck role in Tim's stead.
How did Preuss look against us playing a conventional ruck role? I reckon our coaches see Sweet being a similar liability were he to play in Tim's stead.
Tim went head to head with Grundy and Marshall in a conventional ruck rile and was completely smoked.

They’re basing their decisions entirely on a hypothetical, and have no real results or evidence to back it up. If the best they can come up with is Dunkley, forgive me if I have doubts on the decision making abilities of the same coaching group that got us in this mess in the first place.

[comrade]

We do need a second ruck
But that second ruck needs another string to his bow
The days of just lumping the second ruck in the forward locket are long gone
English is still raw in ruck years . Interesting times coming

That’s what we’re doing with English after the centre bounce. He doesn’t even contest the ruck when it’s inside 50.

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

For Bevo this is a perfect world. He has had 6 seasons to build it. When the team runs out it’s his team and its composition reflects his will. And its performance is his symphony.

I'm going to do my best here to ignore the melodramatic narrative you are so keen to weave and simply say as I have done above; yep Bevo and club are 100% accountable for the decisions made over multiple seasons in leaving our positional stocks so low in the ruck.

We are in this predicament because either they:
* drank their own bathwater in believing internal hype about where English's progression as a tap ruckman was at,
* or thinking that Trengove, and or a combo of Scache or Bruce could provide adequate cover.
Massive club failure; not just Bevo mind you, the whole football and recruiting department.

A caveat maybe that we don't know that they have tried to get cover in the off season. We aren't a destination club and have missed out on many other players we've targeted.

But I'm not about to smash them for trying to deal with the hand they've got. Maybe there is another way, but the thought process and the analysis given of how it has panned out stacks up as a legitimate strategy.
I'm confident there is rigour behind the tactic.

Sometimes I wish we'd thrown Sweet in earlier or persisted with Tim as a conventional ruck this year just to see how people would react to us being 15th instead of still a chance to play finals!!

[Remi Moses]

Last weekend he didn’t and I agree he should have contested more
I get it mate you want the coach gone
We get your continual shit bagging Of him
It’s getting a bit monotonous and tedious to be honest . Before you come at me with the rose colored glasses B/S
I’ve criticized him in posts on here , but you and a few others are just relentless
I’m getting off here because it’s getting very big footy

[DOG GOD]

So your okay with just listening to what outsiders say, because it lines up with your view, but not willing to hear from someone inside the club who might give some perspective on why we're doing what we do?

I make my own decisions and have my own views. I’ve said all along it’s a farce, well before I heard dunstall etc tonight. They obviously think the same way as I do. I’m quite willing to hear from someone inside the club about what we are doing, but the club has put themselves in this situation.

[bornadog]

For the very reason we keep persisting with Tim in the side.
The coach believes he gives us more value in our team, albeit a non -conventional role, than Sweet would playing in a conventional ruck role in Tim's stead.
How did Preuss look against us playing a conventional ruck role? I reckon our coaches see Sweet being a similar liability were he to play in Tim's stead.
Tim went head to head with Grundy and Marshall in a conventional ruck rile and was completely smoked.

Some great arguments put forward YHF, and I totally agree with what you have written.

I for one don't believe our losses were due to the ruck, there are a variety of reasons for every game.

[bornadog]

I make my own decisions and have my own views. I’ve said all along it’s a farce, well before I heard dunstall etc tonight. They obviously think the same way as I do. I’m quite willing to hear from someone inside the club about what we are doing, but the club has put themselves in this situation.

Well why won't you listen to the coach explain?

[comrade]

Sometimes I wish we'd thrown Sweet in earlier or persisted with Tim as a conventional ruck this year just to see how people would react to us being 15th instead of still a chance to play finals!!

We did play English as a traditional ruck, all the way through until a few weeks ago when it was clear he was completely cooked. In fact he had one of the most dominant games of the season against Essendon and since then has steadily gone down hill. Throwing Dunkley into the meat grinder has been a seemingly last ditch effort to provide support and change things up.

And why would we be 15th? Didn’t you say the ruck is just one aspect of our game plan and to have some nuance about its influence on our results?