its all nice and well to say we need a wholesale change in our gameplan, but do we really have the personnel to be able to make the change? Our younger blokes no doubt in the medium term I believe can be led along that sort of path, but the older blokes especially really do know only one style of footy. I think the game plan is somewhat now redudant, but I dont think it is completely broken. It no doubt now is a burden against the better teams, and in the medium-long term I definetly want to see us change the way we play (Which no doubt will happen, as all teams go through different phases), but in the short term I want to see us have maybe one last shot at a real tilt for the flag, and I dont think wholesale changes will help us at all.
I am simplifying it greatly but there are four things that imo need to change desperately and I reckon we would look a different team, even though we could conceivably (Except for point 2) stick to a fairly similar gameplan.
1)
Get the boys revved up before the game (Not at 3/4 time when we are 40 points down) so that they hit the ground running. Right through this great period for our club, we have so often let teams get away from us only to fall short at the death. Id be very interested to see the stats over the last 3 or 4 years (say 2005 to now) on how many games we have lost when we have led at say 1/4 time. Id be very suprised if we werent somewhere up around 65-70% of these matches won. For we are a good leading team. We have been good at creating pressure and holding onto the lead, but not good at chasing teams down (The great exception to this imo apart from Davis in 05 was the Saints prelim in 05).
2) Take a leaf out of the book of Geelong and also now the dogs and the Hawks and
play on (As a lot have been saying) at all costs. It is the way footy works best in the current situation and rule setup. We may not be good enough for it, but we can look mighty dangerous when we do it and can pour on a lot of points very quickly. The lack of trying this really bugs me, because I know we can do it well- as we have seen in patches of games when we have to throw the floodgates open to do it to try and chase the game down. And when you consider we have the backline to do it imo- Malceski, Mattner and Kennelly (Fitness problems aside for the moment) are three damaging players running out, Leo Barry always is willing to take players on and still does alright more times then not, and Richards and Bolton also are not at all bad distributors and runners of the ball. We could do it imo and make a success of it. But for this to work with our current gameplan we need the following, imo most important point.
3)
RUN HARDER AND WORK HARDER! We simply dont run hard enough to create leads, and far too many of our players (especially bringing the ball back in) are far too stationary. Whereas in 05 our skills were fantastic and we could take almost every mark on a lead of only 1 or 2 metres on an opponent, now we make many mistakes. The way to combat this though is to work far harder round the ground and get on real leads. Watch Geelong especially and so many players get on leads where they are 5 metres minimum away from their opponents and have run 50 or even 100 metres to create space. If you work hard and run hard, even if you stuff up there is a fair chance you can get the ball. Now I fully acknowledge we probably dont have the leg speed in most players to do what Geelong can, but its not to say we cant still imitate them quite well. We simply dont work hard enough, and with the slower tempo 3 years ago and better skills we got away with it, but now we are getting shown up as teams like the Pies simply shut down our midfield and our precision game does not work. Its a myth imo that our gameplan of precision passing is incompatible with playing on quickly- if we worked hard enough around the ground (And granted moved the ball quicker after taking marks) then we could still successfully use a precision sort of game.
4)
Learn to KICK STRAIGHT. We have so often been wasteful in front of goals. I dont care if they have to be up to midnight every night for 2 weeks, get them out there practicing set shots and on the run attempts time and time again until every player who is every up forward can kick say a minimum of 4 out of every 5 on a fairly regular basis. For while we have been comprehensively outplayed by the Hawks and the Pies, especially against the pies if we had of kicked straight we could of still had a shot when we got our roll on in the last quarter. The outstanding example of this this year was the Dogs against us. We dominated most of the match, but they barely missed a goal all day and not only kept themselves well and truly in a contest they should have lost but won it fairly comfortably in the end.
It all sounds so simple when I read it back to myself what I just typed and I know it is not, but I really feel a decent improvement in these 4 sort of areas could make a huge difference. We could still base our gameplan on tight controlled footy, but if we looked to take them on when we have the ball we could conceivably cause a lot of teams problems. For even though there are teams that have our measure now (Especially the pies), it is more down to the fact that we dont go out to take teams on enough, when we have the potential to do it very well. For I think the Pies now just think "Ah well block up the middle zone with lots of players, crowd their space and theyll soon enough @@@@@@ up and turn it over and we'll smash em on the counter attack." If we go out from the first bell and try to, not even necessarily all the time just sometimes try to take them on and move it quickly, I think you put a seed of doubt in their minds and that is when you can unsettle their game plan, and make them play into our hands.
Thats my very elongated view of it all. A new gameplan will have to happen in the long run, but a few changes all of which I think we are capable of and we could yet give it one last big shake for now.
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