AFL Game Day - Round 5, 2025

[jazzadogs]

I guess we have to right off the Hawks as premiership contenders now because they lost a game and gave up a big run of goals.

That's inexcusable and something that only happens to bad teams.

[doggies ftw]

This round really just stamped, again, how big momentum is in footy. We act like it only happens to us but that’s far from the truth, teams are just so evenly matched that when they get a run on anyone is hard to stop, things just go their way, the umps get sucked into frees, the ball bounces their way, their running on top of the ground. It’s really very difficult to shut down especially with 6-6-6.

Not an excuse for the 9 goals we have to be better than that but with such a young, inexperienced and physically weaker team across the ground there’s really not much you can do at times it’s just not as simple as us fans make it out to be “throw Naughton behind the ball” it all starts in the middle and a spare behind the ball is mostly irrelevant in modern footy. That just means when we do go forward there’s no one there and it comes back twice as quick in space. So many scores are started at half back right now, going down a forward can make it worse if anything.

you just need to turn the tide at stoppages, lock the ball down - again, difficult because the umps are itching to pay a free for any semblance of holding the ball in. It comes back to the guys in the middle winning their position one on one, tough for us when we’re down 2 gun mids and don’t have a ruckman who really helps in this part of the game in forcing repeat stoppages etc.

also you just have to take your chances in front of goal to stem momentum, saw it again tonight when Hawks were coming in the last and Drew missed an easy set shot then hawks go bang bang, if Drew kicked that Hawks probably never even get a sniff. We just don’t have many good finishers in our side and our best is potentially out for the year. It’s so critical, even more so in that game situation when you’re being beaten around the ball and the opportunities dry up.

every single player we draft or trade in to our forward line going forward just has to be a great finisher. West, VDM, McNeil, Naughty even Darcy until this year all aren’t great finishers, they’re hit and miss. It makes things really fkn difficult Theres no easy fix for this it’s not really something people get that much better at, seems to be something you’ve either got you don’t tbh, rarely do players change this (a few rare exceptions of course) we need to transition guys who can finish into the side

in saying that I still do think there’s slight changes we can make coaching wise to lessen the impact of these runs, no magic bullet but we can improve. Simple things like stopping our backline from creeping forward to press up like we love to do. This only works when we’re on top in the contest, when we’re being beaten around the ball and losing the 50-50s you just can’t have your last line of defence pushing up so high, we’ll get done out the back time and time again. Bev has to recognise these situations and we need to make a conscious effort to change our ‘style’ and just settle the defence back to defend. It’ll make it harder for us to lock the ball in forward but it’ll allow us to better manage the ground and hopefully kill some time whilst we try to even up around the ball - then when we feel we’re getting top around the ball again, switch again, push harder from defence, lock the ball forward and go for the kill. If momentum switches again so do we, drop back defend the ground, kill time.

We have to be more reactive, Bev is very stubborn in that we want to play our way at all times, don’t worry about the opposition, don’t worry about tagging etc just play perfect football. In the modern game with how closely matched teams are and how hard it is to stop momentum this is not realistic. We need to adapt, and if Bev won’t do it we need to bring in a voice who will, even if it’s just alongside Bev in the coaches box not necessarily replacing him.

i dunno maybe we know this and try this but it’s hard to implement on the fly when you’re playing 5+ blokes who barely know their own games yet they’ve played such a little amount of footy.

[jeemak]

I think there's trade-off coaches take into account with selection and strategy/ tactics that we just don't see, so things often don't make sense.

Beveridge likes to use a couple of midfielders to work on an opposition gun, rather than straight up tag. How does the selection of a negating midfielder help us on the spread/ moving it forward when we're already a bit one paced, and need a couple of touches to get the ball inside to outside and forward?

As for the press, no coach to my mind ever wants to live in extremes like we have at times. If we can see the obvious, all of the coaches and even the players can. But like pheromones driving the paths of ants, or murmuration in how flocks of birds fly, once it starts going too far one way or the other it's hard for it not to consume the group.

[Eastdog]

Your brother is happy.

Yep he is very happy with their start.