Lets talk gameplan and tactics

[bornadog]

It'll take some time to pull together, so don't hold your breath, but I'll address the matter.

Well I will tell you my version.

* Games are won and lost in the midfield, and we really lack one more outside running mid to help Griffen and Cooney. Maybe Sherman will develop into that role?

* The midfield is playing unaccountable football and allowing their direct opponents too many possessions. Guys like Boyd and Cross need to reinvent themselves and leave the in and under stuff to Libba and Ward, these guys are the future.

* Forward pressure, something the club has been working on is still lacking.

[alwaysadog]

Well I will tell you my version.

* Games are won and lost in the midfield, and we really lack one more outside running mid to help Griffen and Cooney. Maybe Sherman will develop into that role?

* The midfield is playing unaccountable football and allowing their direct opponents too many possessions. Guys like Boyd and Cross need to reinvent themselves and leave the in and under stuff to Libba and Ward, these guys are the future.

* Forward pressure, something the club has been working on is still lacking.

Sorry my last reply was based on the idea that you wanted me to spell out the history more whereas you are being much more incisive.

I understand what you are saying and know the evidence you point to, what I don't know is what they are instructed to do and what they think they are trying to achieve, other than the simple "to get the ball".

My problem is that if the coaching staff thought they were unaccountable then making Matthew Boyd captain makes no sense. So there must be method in what seems like madness, it's just not clear to me what it is.

I think it might stem from the desire for quick ball movement which hasn't yet been worked through in practice and looks hopeless when it doesn't come off. You might recall that I wrote up a recent TopDogs meeting at which the senior recruits commented on that being the major difference in emphasis, what I didn't remember till now was that they talked about the much greater emphasis on the defensive part of the game where they had come from. It could be that we are trying something which if it works will give us an edge but isn't yet working properly.

So I agree about the perception but the analysis and the conclusion aren't so easy... although nobody disagrees that we were smashed in the clinches.

It's possible on the other hand as you suggest that the problem has been identified and the right personnel imported to fix it but it hasn't yet jelled.

I'll have to put myself through the agony of watching the game a couple of times to develop more detailed hypotheses and then to see if they seem an explanation for the problem(s)

[Dry Rot]

I could enter into a blow by blow history but in brief the context is provided by the Bulldog Bite's posts. In a nutshell, the problems last season weren't solely as a result of injuries.

Our inconsistency and our inability to do more than struggle against ordinary sides and our total incapacity to match the good sides, against whom we had been much more competitive the season before, needed analysis and explanation, but those who suggested that we should do so were cried down.

Then we got the one idea answer when everything went wrong followed by the unseemly attacks on our players, which went on for weeks.

And it's still going on. Rather than try to analyse what was going on last Sunday we've got various states of denial, because some don't want to admit all the causes of our failure, others just attack the player or players they have developed a set against.

Agreed. Sunday's game was a showreel of why we've failed over the last few years.

Some on BigFooty just dismiss all this as being rusty or Rd 1 blues, but 14 other sides got up for the round. Others look to our injuries, but even the mighty Brian lake wouldn't have been able to stem the tide on Sunday.

[alwaysadog]

Absolutely contingency planning happens - but it is generally positional and not stylistic. You train to have the best habits possible, which means relentless (endless) repetition of your style...not styles plural - because you just can't manage it. Players need to be consistent in their actions and behaviors on the field if a side is to work together effectively.

In games like the one on the weekend we could have tried some positional tweeks to get things going and I suggested three that I would have tried in the gameday thread...they were related to three problems I could see. But that has nothing to do with playing style or game style or anything like that - they were changes to personnel inside the existing structures and aimed at re-enabling our ball movement.

Contingency planning will be positional (injury / player getting beat) and at times systematic (we aren't winning clearances for example) but they are not going to be related to 'how' we play. Suggestions like 'go man-on-man' at stoppages is (I guess) an idea of a contingency strategy of sorts...it is a structural change though and really wont change the style of footy we are trying to execute. If that is a backup structure for clearances then I guess we would have used it on the weekend...as we seemingly didn't, I guess it isn't!

All of this gets away from the key point though - solving the problem. What was the problem on the weekend? Getting consistently beaten around the contested (and by extension, for the lose) ball. How do you fix this with game-style? I am pretty certain the coaches dont instruct the players just to let the opposition have the ball...yet on many occasions that seemed to be the case.

Thanks for that and I agree with what you are saying in most things, I think my plan B stuff is what you call structural changes ala the Wallace Lock Down for when we were getting smashed.

I agree with the problem you identify but solving it wasn't going to happen during Sunday's game, but the apparent inability to stop the opposition, or get our hands to the ball, or to even slow their clearances seemed the most debilitating aspect and it is a surprise that no apparent action to this end was taken.

[alwaysadog]

Agreed. Sunday's game was a showreel of why we've failed over the last few years.

Some on BigFooty just dismiss all this as being rusty or Rd 1 blues, but 14 other sides got up for the round. Others look to our injuries, but even the mighty Brian lake wouldn't have been able to stem the tide on Sunday.

Dougie Hawkins once missed a round one thrashing through injury and remarked sometime later with a wry smile that it was a good round to miss.

I wonder if Brian feels much the same.

[LostDoggy]

but even the mighty Brian lake wouldn't have been able to stem the tide on Sunday.

You sure about this one? There's a reason why the guy is the no.1 mark from opposition kicks in the comp -- we've always given up a LOT of inside 50s to the opposition, but with Lakey there it always seems a bit less threatening; he reads the game so well he can make up 30, 40 metres while the ball is in flight to get to a contest, and by keeping the opposition score down and close (when we're getting peppered) we're always a chance to turn the momentum around (although probably not enough to overturn a 50-point loss in this particular case).

Everyone already calls him a star, but I still think he's MASSIVELY underrated -- would have been the difference between us winning and losing many, many times over the past two years, more than he's ever been given credit for.

Also, because he holds his marks so well, we actually tend to win possession back from opposition inside-50s, which allow us to rebound -- Lakey also runs and kicks the ball out of defense as much as anyone else in the team, so would have been a massive hole in getting the ball out of our defensive half, especially now with Harbrow gone, and Gilbee and Hargrave injured. That's four of our main rebounding players from the past two years missing -- no wonder I'm reading about 'turnovers' from kicking out of the defensive 50. It would be like St. Kilda losing Gilbert, Fisher, Goddard and Ray all at the same time.

[Dry Rot]

You sure about this one? There's a reason why the guy is the no.1 mark from opposition kicks in the comp -- we've always given up a LOT of inside 50s to the opposition, but with Lakey there it always seems a bit less threatening; he reads the game so well he can make up 30, 40 metres while the ball is in flight to get to a contest, and by keeping the opposition score down and close (when we're getting peppered) we're always a chance to turn the momentum around (although probably not enough to overturn a 50-point loss in this particular case).

Everyone already calls him a star, but I still think he's MASSIVELY underrated -- would have been the difference between us winning and losing many, many times over the past two years, more than he's ever been given credit for.

He's not underrated by me. Remember when the Lions spanked us last year?

Even Lake couldn't compensate for the general incompetence further up the field then.

Sorry, all our senior players bar Murphy were crap on Sunday. AA fullback Lake can't compensate for that.

[LostDoggy]

One thing I noticed heaps on Sunday was the way all the Bulldogs players were on the offensive side of stoppages and if we didn't get it out first, we were 3-4 players down defensively. Happened quite a few times, dunno if they were used to always getting the ball handballed to them, or all just lazy and not wanting it run/defend.


And stop with kicking it to the boundary. Hopefully this isn't a new game plan we are going to stick with

[MrMahatma]

Sunday felt very much like, same $hit, different day. A pre-season of talk, the hard yards, some new recruits, but it just felt like we had no way to turn the game around once we lost it.

We looked like a team that was past it. I don't for a second think we are. I think our list is better than last year, but whether it's tactics, or application of tactics, we just weren't able to make it happen - and I think that's been the problem over the past few years.

[Mantis]

We were never belted by Collingwood in rd 1 last year, up until the mid point of the last qtr we looked a very good chance to win, the major turning point was when Will ran across the mark to give Collingwood an easy goal, then junk time Davis kicked another and it was over. We went into this game with no Morris and another 2 or 3 of our defenders crook. We weren't as bad as it was made out to be.

Against St.Kilda in rd 6 we totally outplayed them, but for some strange tactics (far too cautious with the ball) we should have won comfortably. Had Gia iced the game when he should have we would have won by 5 goals.

The rest, well Collingwood slogged us for 3 qtrs in rd 11, but when we changed tactics late in the 3rd qtr we got back into the game, Geelong belted up an under-manned and virus riddled team in rd 20 and then it all fell apart in the finals when we were banged up, but we did lead St.Kilda at 1/2 time in the PF by a goal (which if not for some shoddy finishing & an inexcusable mistake from Boyd should have been 3 or 4 goals up, and perhaps a big enough lead to hold onto.)

So where to from here.... Without actually getting in the nuts & bolts of the problems it seems that you have identified that we have some major issues so perhaps you can lead off.

[Topdog]

Mantis I actually agree with most of the above. My problem is that we have these issues every year and at some point you have to wonder if it is actually luck of just piss poor mental toughness.

[Mantis]

Mantis I actually agree with most of the above. My problem is that we have these issues every year and at some point you have to wonder if it is actually luck or just piss poor mental toughness.

Probably a bit of both.

It's going to be a really interesting few months as we watch how we respond to a new style of footy and we will get a really good feel for where we are headed by the decisions the MC make.

[LostDoggy]

Just watched some of the second and third quarters -- the thing that stands out a lot (and I think others have mentioned it) is the 'swarm' style midfield press, but lacking a key ingredient: 'sweepers' 20-30 metres on the defensive side of the swarm, leaning towards the corridor. An Essendon player would just sit in the middle of the oval and present as an 'out' option all the time when the ball was in dispute, if a bomber player could kick it out of the swarm into the middle the player was usually by himself and could create a numbers overload by running forward. A 'sweeper' type position would negate this danger created by swarming (swarms leave space behind them that can be exploited if the swarm doesn't win the ball).

Linked to the 'sweeper' issue, the back 6/7 was also playing far too deep: the half back line should probably have been pressing up towards the middle, thus playing the sweeper role (kind of like an 'umbrella' spread out behind the swarm) and the full backs zoning 20-30m behind them. Sure this leaves a big space in our defensive 50, but a team has to get through a whole bunch of players before they can kick into that space (and we can have a deep lying but mobile full back -- hello Tom Williams -- to clean up behind our zone, and contested possession in the middle will mean less clean forward 50 entries anyway -- the space the Essendon mids had to line up their passes into their forward 50 made them all look like millionaires). This is kind of how Collingwood set up last year to ensure that if anyone got through their forward press they still wouldn't find easy possession in the middle of the park -- I think St.Kilda call it 'playing in three-quarters of the field' or something like that. We, on the other hand, looked like what we call in soccer a 'broken team' ie. forwards racing forward, defenders sitting back deep. This leaves a LOT of space in the middle once a team breaks through your 'swarm'.

A large part of it was probably just not having mobile defenders like Lake, Harbrow, Hargrave and Gilbee, who move up and down the field comfortably, have good disposal skills, and would have been occupying the space behind our swarm that Essendon exploited so fruitfully. Markovic is a lot less mobile than the above, and when you throw in defensive debutants like Wood and Stack, and a 'pure' defender like Morris, the overall tactical cohesiveness is going to be lacking (I know Morris organises the defence, but more from a inside 50 positional standpoint -- Lake tends to be the one pressing the half-back line up).

With Wood out next week I would be tempted to drop a mobile, marking midfielder back into the half-back line, with instructions to play high, hold position and attack any loose disposal coming over the swarm (and drag the back 6 up with him, especially the half-back line). Griff has played this role in the past to great effect, but I think some have suggested Crossy as well, although his distribution/disposal may be a worry. Hill can also take a contested mark, so may be an option. We are missing Gilbee and Hargrave much more than we know.

ps. Oh wait, wasn't Murph playing half-back? He needs to be the one holding the line then, and playing a bit more positionally rather than worrying too much about a direct opponent. (a bit like how mjp mentioned that Collingwood keep Maxwell free regardless of who they're playing)

[LostDoggy]

Anyway -- I think we just have to decide if we want to be a zoning team or not. We can't have the forward half of the team zoning and swarming like crazy, and then having the back half of the team staying largely man on man. It's zone and press (or swarm or whatever) and the WHOLE team is structured to supporting it, or don't bother.

[LostDoggy]

Another quick point. Our game plan should be to not stop running. Too many players standing waiting for the ball to come out to them. Run for it. Don't stop running. Run till you puke.

Saw Murphy up close walking off at half time, he didn't even have 1 drop of sweat.