The difference between insanity and genius is measured only in success.
I doubt that will continue - certainly we've tried hitting shorter targets I50 recently, but that 3-week sample also reflects 90, 67 and 70 point wins against bottom-10 teams.
We've run riot in those 3 games, and with the exception of the first half against St Kilda, with virtually no opposition pressure. So I think as Liz alludes to, it is a dramatically different story when we are against the pressure of quality opposition, particularly in finals. When under immense pressure you're obviously going to be more likely to kick long and not find those shorter targets as easily.
We're just not good enough by foot to try and slice up quality teams like Hawthorn have done. Nevertheless I think we are far less one-dimensional up forward given the current personnel there, which is important for the finals.
I think bombing in long against Hawthorn has been our downfall, with Gibson, Frawley and co sitting back there waiting. Often buddy facing a 2 or 3 on one scenario. What makes it interesting in my opinion is we starting doing this after the Hawks game. Next time we face them it will be very interesting. They will not be use to our different style of play and how will they adjust???
My main concern would be that if we try and hit all these shorter targets against the pressure of a Hawthorn, we'll turn the ball over repeatedly and they will tear us up the other way.
I don't know the exact stats, but we are still right down the bottom (ie. worst) in terms of turnovers - it's just that our defence has been so good, we've won so much contested ball through the middle, and our forward line (when functioning) is dangerous, that our lack of polish by foot and resulting turnovers haven't hurt us as much.
But that has been playing a certain, fairly conservative way - I think that changes if we try and get too fancy trying to pick off short targets all the time once we're up against decent teams.
It needs to be a balance, but Hawthorn are actually vulnerable against tall forward lines so long as you can get the ball in there quickly enough, and have forwards who can take contested marks. It's only when you give them time to get numbers back and/or zone off by moving the ball too slowly that they are dangerous in that regard.
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