When posters say "Plan B" - What do they mean??

[mjp]

Re: When posters say "Plan B" - What do they mean??

Footy has not been progressed/enhanced by disallowing runners.

Disagree.

Coach during the week. Play on match day. About the only rule changes I DO like are the interchange limit and the minimisation of runners...

[Bornadog]

Re: When posters say "Plan B" - What do they mean??

Disagree.

Coach during the week. Play on match day. About the only rule changes I DO like are the interchange limit and the minimisation of runners...

I know we both disagree on this one. I also can't see the point of interchange limits

Why don't you like it?

[mjp]

Re: When posters say "Plan B" - What do they mean??

I used the term 'Plan B' incorrectly in a post after the game...

So I think instead of 'Plan B' what everyone means ('cos this is what I have seen from the responses) is just an improved 'what-if' strategy assessment - and one that is pretty well understood by the players (particularly the leaders in each line).

'What if...' we lose a key defender?
'What if...' we lose another key defender?
'What if...' midfielder 'x' is limited by the oppo?
'What if...' we can't generate any run from the backline?
'What if...' oppo forward 'x' kicks 3 or more in a quarter? In a half? In WHATEVER period of time? And in what circumstances???
(eg. Do relayed free kicks count? Do 'Joe the Goose' goals count?? Is is a raw number or is there a 'key'??)

You get the idea...I guess there are two sides to the equation:

1/. What makes their game 'GO'? And if it's going, what steps do we take to stop it??
2/. What makes OUR game 'GO'? And if they stop it, what are our plans to do something about it??

See - when I listen to Bevo post game he pretty clinically identifies where things went right and wrong - no trouble. But I guess I would love to know who is running the 'war room' (I hate that term but you know what I mean) to challenge the coaches and work out what the STEP BY STEP plans are for the day.

eg. English goes down. Lobb rucks. Simple right?
- But what if Lobb has already kicked 4 goals and is our best forward? THEN who rucks? Maybe the answer is still Lobb? Maybe the answer is "Lobb rucks - but we take a look at things on the day and Gardner (for example) is option 2"...

I don't know. I'm 100% sure the MC does this but I don't know who runs it...and it did seem on the weekend that whatever the plans were, we didn't really execute them effectively. Then again - as I have said - at 3/4 time we were still in front and maybe the decision was to simply ride it out, let our best players play and they would get us over the line...

If that was the plan I'm actually fine with it...we lost so it isn't optimal (for that game) but it does send a pretty clear "Hey - we are going to back you guys in to dig us out of this hole/get us going again" message which is a long-term positive...the last thing you want when the pressure comes on is the players looking around for some kind of coaching master-stroke...what you want them to do is say "This is our issue...let's dig in" and then if changes happen around them, they CONTINUE to dig in...

Hoping all of this makes sense.

Plan B is a myth.

[Grantysghost]

Re: When posters say "Plan B" - What do they mean??

I want them to hold up a sign with a picture of the West Gate Bridge so they know to...
Go. Slow.

Traffic joke.

[mjp]

Re: When posters say "Plan B" - What do they mean??

I want them to hold up a sign with a picture of the West Gate Bridge so they know to...
Go. Slow.

Traffic joke.

I prefer the following:

Sydney Harbor Bridge.
Not as Long
Or as Tall
As the West Gate Bridge.
Fact.

[bulldogtragic]

Re: When posters say "Plan B" - What do they mean??

This should be Plan A.

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

Re: When posters say "Plan B" - What do they mean??

This should be Plan A.

I was going to add if this was Plan B, I'm hoping the MC quickly make it plan A!

[JanLorMill]

Re: When posters say "Plan B" - What do they mean??

Plan A Long bombs to Caleb then plan B long bombs from Caleb

[AshMac]

Re: When posters say "Plan B" - What do they mean??

when i think of plan B, i dont think of a whole new gameplan - rather tweaks to it inside 4 quarters. Agree there needs to be an element of predictability and players need to maintain an element of flow. So rather than a Plan B - i always refer to the change im after as a pivot.

For example:

- tag a midfielder who is tearing us apart. Happens all the time! Either English is dominated or we just cant get first hands on the ball and their spread is too good. Regardless - target the playmaker and clamp them down for 10 minutes.
- when defenders are injured and our key forward is being dominated by the opposition key back - put our best defender not playing as a defender in defense rather than an uncoordinated giraffe
- move one of our forwards up the ground when they havent touched it half way through the second quarter. to be fair, this has happened recently with jamarra and naughts - felt like it took too long

Im sure there are plenty of examples people here can give of where we have pivoted in games. Honestly, i dont see many of them, just a stubbornness around our skill and gameplan

[doggies ftw]

Re: When posters say "Plan B" - What do they mean??


This.

It doesn?t necessarily mean we flip the switch to a completely different ?plan? I think it?s just an often used phrase to mean changing it up, or doing something different.

What that looks like? Well I think it could mean different things every week depending on the circumstances at the time.

I think one of our biggest issues is we only have one plan, or one method. If it?s not working we never try different things to turn the game around we just expect the problems to go away and fix themselves, sometimes they do - most of the time they don?t. We?re reactive not proactive.

We stick to our one method of scoring which to put very very briefly & simply is win the clearances, use handballs to find space and try to target long deep entries. Push the defence up super high to lock it into our forward half. Now if teams are dominating us in the middle, do we settle our defence back a little bit more to protect them? Do we drop a loose behind the ball? No never, we just keep pushing a forward up to the stoppage and hoping we start to win the clearances again.

Multiple goals out the back of our high defensive press? Maybe adjust them back a bit? Nah push higher!!!

If we have an opposition interceptor dominating in the back half do we try to rotate the talls, and drag them up out of the 50 with shallow, short entries to make space for a different, or smaller player? Or to get them into the game at half forward? Nope we keep on kicking long & hoping for things to change. Maybe we’re dominating clearances but getting dominated by an opposition interceptor, could we try losing our plus one at the stoppage and seeing if we can man them up? Nope

Bont got a hard tag? Send him to full forward? Full back? Put him in the fkn ruck ffs, nope let?s just see if he can turn it around. Whilst on the other hand opposition mid got 25 & 2 at half time, maybe send a lockdown player to him? Nope he can?t keep that up in the 2nd half?

Oppositions pressure causing mass turnovers with our handball game around the clearances, maybe shift the approach to a more direct, kicking based game until we can tire them out and get back to our standard approach - nah just keep on handballing.


We never do these things, and that?s why people complain about no Plan B.

I posted this almost 2 years ago to the day….

Its still all completely valid - these issues aren’t new, a lot of people could see them a long long time ago (ie the high press)

[azabob]

Plan B is do Plan A better. Fairly sure Ange Postecoglou said that.

[1eyedog]

I just want to ask a question.

When posters say we have "no plan B" - what does that mean and what do you WANT to see??

My thoughts are as follows:

- Players need to be PREDICTABLE to one another in order for a team to be successful.
- If "Plan B" is (for example) to play possession footy for 5-mins and settle things down...well - I don't really think that's "Plan B". That's just a 'red time' or 'park the bus' or whatever you want to call it temporary strategy...and most of the time, strategies such as that are predicated on ONE simple premise - you can get the ball and 'find a mark'.
- If "Plan B" is a genuinely different game-style (eg. If Geelong '22 version could flick a switch and become Geelong '21) then how would you:
a) Coach it?
b) Effectively communicate it on match-day?
- If "Plan B" is structural (move Naughton behind the ball) I get it...but what is the trigger and what are you asking him to do when he's down there? Go for marks inside D50. Seal the edges from F50 exits? It doesn't matter just do something??

I really struggle with the whole "Plan B" concept as it is hard enough to get a group of plays to coherently play in ONE style...a 5-minute "slow things down" I get. A planned "change this structure" I get. But a whole new game-style? I just don't think that's realistic.

For what it's worth, on the weekend vs the orange I thought the key thing we needed to do in the last quarter was actually KICK a goal...and goals come from two things:
1/. Stoppages - so we needed some repeat stoppages inside F50.
2/. Intercepts - so we needed to LOCK DOWN behind the ball and really seal the edges.

In the last quarter, we kicked 1.2. Weightman and Jamarra kicked points. Dale (who was amazing btw) kicked a goal. That's it.

What would "Plan B" have looked like in terms of game-style that would have changed this?

I'm not trying to be critical of coaches, players or posters here - but if you had a time machine and could go back to 3/4 time, what changes would you make? Please break the changes up into:

1/. Structural and or positional.
2/. Game-style.

On the day we won hitouts, clearances and centre clearances. We won contested ball. The Orange beat us for Uncontested possessions (primarily hand ball receives). We had more marks inside 50 than them (16-12) and significantly more 1%'ers (65-49).

GWS beat us for inside 50m tackles (7-22).

As I think I have pointed out in the past, I'm not a huge believer in individual stats reflecting the game but that's were it all sits.

Do you think we do actually have a plan B and a plan C and a plan D each week depending on who we're playing? Sure we have a system in place but I'd be highly surprised if there weren't different things we're trying to do in-game and week to week despite some supporters thinking Bevo only has one way.

[FrediKanoute]

Plan B is do Plan A better. Fairly sure Ange Postecoglou said that.

And that worked out well......

Plan B in my view is recognising that your basic game plan is not working for whatever reason and changing to a different approach, maybe more offensive or defensively minded. So if they opposition have scored three in a row out of the centre square, you tighten up. If they are getting runners off the back of a contest and running into an open forward line, you adjust he press.

[Mofra]

And that worked out well......

Plan B in my view is recognising that your basic game plan is not working for whatever reason and changing to a different approach, maybe more offensive or defensively minded. So if they opposition have scored three in a row out of the centre square, you tighten up. If they are getting runners off the back of a contest and running into an open forward line, you adjust he press.

Sounds like the old basketball coaching adage.
You only have two levers as a coach - speed the game up or slow it down.

Everything else is just a means to achieve that.