When you need a goal...

[JackCJohnston2000]

I think players, no matter how "talented" they are, forget shit when they are under pressure.

Now, Freo weren't providing much physical pressure. But I think there was a lot of perceived pressure as Freo kept building and putting on points.

That and the "**** it, Darcy is down there somewhere" approach and all of a sudden, you have an incredibly dysfunctional forward 50.

And then because of that, you turn the ball over and you can't defend because you've committed to locking it in and then not even 6 Matthew Scarlett's down back could save you...

[kruder]

I think we need to get better in forcing the turn over when they have field position much easier to turn it into a score than the standard lock it in the front half game which we have been doing for years now.

That game yesterday was very reminiscent of the Bevo era, Im not convinced that brand works with talls, they need space not congestion. I think you need different modes of pressing much like soccer.

[Bornadog]

Interesting observation, have you ever made that reference before?

Not sure if you are being sarcastic or not, but I may have mentioned it a thousand times

[SonofScray]

I mentioned this in "the moment" thread.

Seriously we either have 0 footy IQ as a collective or the bang it in keep it in mantra is just so drilled they can think nothing else.

Game scenario training surely covered this particular type of defense.

We just had to move it around outside 50 and open up the lanes.

The very first play we switched it beautifully through Kennedy and Darcy ended up on it with a goal. That's the play.

It is the entire foundation of Bevo’s approach to the game. Volume inside 50 is paramount, but it’d be nice to have some economy with it.

[jeemak]

It is the entire foundation of Bevo’s approach to the game. Volume inside 50 is paramount, but it’d be nice to have some economy with it.

We used to do it somewhat out of necessity, maybe we think with a few key outs we're at that point again, or maybe the players just shat the bed under pressure.

When we lose our minds two things stick out to me. We go bees to the honeypot around the ground, and then kick it long to packs repeatedly. We did both for a lot of Sunday's game, it was infuriating and like a sober person backsliding through a bender.

[lemmon]

It was the same in the final minutes against Collingwood, but having Lobb, Naughton, Darcy and English all flying for the same ball inside 50 makes no sense to me. It just creates more congestion and they end up spoiling each other. I get that it's most likely English and Lobb following their men forward to equalise numbers, but surely there's a better way to do that than every player on our side that's over 6'4 camped 30 metres from goal and asking for it on their heads.

I thought Freo defended really well and it seemed like they were content to sit on a lead from 3/4 time, but I would've liked to see us put some speed on the game at that stage and move the ball more quickly so our forwards had some isolation.

[NAUGHTY100]

To be fair, I don't think we allow an easy exit - most of the exits are hard earned. The problem is that if they get through, well, they're gonna score.

Our inside 50 count doesn't really describe the sheer amount of time the ball was inside our forward half but we NEVER looked like scoring...

So true i though their exits were hard fought and at times i thought that we would get the intercept before they drove out , but as you said once they breached that last man their entries was a matter of when they would score not if , and the opposite was that we entered our forward 50 so many times but i was never confident of scoring with each entry .

[Go_Dogs]

Great discussion. Our forward craft sucks. I’m not sure how we fix it in the short term. Even before numbers arrive we have a broken plan a lot of the time (or is it just poor execution). Unsure.