ZoBlitz
The Ghost Who Walks
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- #1
As a disclaimer, I actually have a legitimate reason for this preview being as late as all of my previews have been in the past. I’ve been on holidays in Brisbane for the last two weeks and I have a not-COVID illness and I also have a note from my mum. Due to all of that, I may not have time to fit in any Paul Roos jokes at all!
So, six rounds in it feels like it’s a good time to assess where we are as a team, especially compared to our season last year. Are we better, are we worse, what’s changed, have we beaten Melbourne yet?
5-1 is better than 3-3
We’ve certainly started the season much better purely looking at the old win-loss tally. Last year we had an action-packed first four weeks including a close wins, a close loss, an umpire error, being jumped by an improved side and a loss in a venue that I could do without us ever playing at again. This season we’ve managed to stash away five wins with one loss at another venue that I could do without us playing at again (although I do recommend checking out the Splatters Cheese Bar at Geelong West that despite the stupid name, has a cool concept as a cheese train restaurant. Tell them I sent ya!). While we perhaps haven’t been playing at our peak, the early season is more about banking the wins and moving on and this is our best start to a season since 2003 when we started with five wins and a draw in our first six games. So a good foundation to build from!
Neale back to his best!
Lachie had a horror season last year, suffering multiple injuries from the pre-season into the season itself and struggled for consistency throughout. Despite all this he managed to set a new record for the greatest number of disposals in a VFL/AFL final with 46 against Melbourne in the Qualifying Final. This year Neale has had a flawless pre-season and this has him back to his best. So I'm predicting he'll double his disposal record with a cool 92 disposals in a finals game this year. Any chance for us to take out the big one will need Neale to be playing at his top level.
The Bookends – Adams and Daniher
Two of our big men have certainly started the year off with a bang. While Joe had an exceptionally consistent season last year, kicking a goal in every home and away game, he’s taken it to a new level this season by kicking multiple goals in every game and is currently only one goal behind Tom Hawkins in the Coleman race. Is it just about Joe getting another full preseason under his belt or is having Darcy Fort come into the team as a ruck-forward meant that Joe can focus his energy on taking hangers and kicking accurately for goal? It'll be interesting to see how this dynamic changes when Hippy returns to the side later in the season.
Marcus Adams, after having his first ever full pre-season in his AFL career, has been a marking machine in defence. He’s rated elite in intercept marks and close to elite in total and contested marks. His consistency means that Harris can focus on doing what he does best rather than needing to be everywhere at once down back. Marcus has always been highly rated by Fagan and the coaching team and it’s good to see him finally get a clean run at things.
Bailey and Zorko, the defensive and offensive weapons
So what seemed to be a pre-season experiment to help Dayne gain fitness with his troubled achilles injury by playing him in defence, now might be more of a permanent move. Has it worked? Well, looking at the stats we’ve moved from being the 10th best side in transitioning from defensive 50 to an inside 50 entry to being the best side in the competition. Dayne may hobble around like an old man at times out there at times, but his positional change looks to have helped our defensive rebounding and it will be interesting to see how Zorko gels with the return of Kiddy Coleman from his pre-season hamstring injury.
Bailey has been deadly in front of goal this season, banging in 16 goals to be sitting top 5 in the Coleman Medal ladder despite spending some time in the midfield. His accuracy and ability to take chances have made him incredibly dangerous in the forward line. For my love of patterns, I do hope he kicks five goals this week as his weekly goal tallies this season have been 1, 2, 4, 0, 3 and 6 and it does feel like a wasted opportunity to not close off that pattern. I suppose he could kick 7 goals and then work his way back to 5 goals...
Clearances...
One strength of our game style last year was in clearances (3rd best in total clearance differential) and these numbers have dropped away this season (12th in total clearance differential). Since the Geelong loss there seems to have been an attempt to rejig our centre bounce setup as Hugh McCluggage has gone from only playing the occasional minutes in the centre square at the start of the season to a player who’s getting close to equal centre square time as Neale and Lyons in the last two rounds. And from a small sample size this seems to have helped our centre clearances as we’ve gone from not winning the centre clearance differential in the first four rounds to winning it in the last two rounds. Hugh is averaging 3.5 centre clearances in the last two rounds which would rate as elite for a midfielder. Our clearance numbers round the ground haven’t really improved, looking in particular at the Gold Coast game but...
Do clearances really matter that much?
Modern football analysis has moved away from stressing the importance of clearances when trying to dissect what makes a quality football side. It’s worth noting that our clearance differential numbers were better than Melbourne’s last year (Lions finished 3rd, Demons were 6th) and despite Melbourne being unbeaten this season their clearance differential numbers only rank as 10th (and we ranked as 12th). So, what stats should be looking at to judge how a side is travelling?
It’s worthwhile looking at what Melbourne have excelled at in the last two years – contested possession differential (1st in 2021 and 2022), marks inside 50 differential (1st in 2021 and 2nd in 2022), metres gained differential (1st in 2021 and 2nd in 2022), inside 50 differential (1st in 2021 and 2nd in 2022) and scoring shots conceded per inside 50 (1st in 2021 and 2022). So how do we look in comparison? In contested possession differential we ranked 3rd in 2021 and 4th in 2022, marks inside 50 differential 6th in 2021 and 4th in 2022, metres gained differential 3rd in 2021 and 2022, inside 50 differential 3rd in 2021 and 10th in 2022 and scoring shots conceded per inside 50 2nd in 2021 and 2022. Probably the most concerning of these figures is the amount of inside 50s we’re giving away to the opposition compared to last year which we’ve managed to deal with our solid backline unit but the rest of the numbers look fairly consistent between the two years.
So, what does this all mean?
Sydney, they are very annoying
It’s very annoying that Sydney haven’t had many down seasons in the last couple of decades. At least one advantage of Gold Coast coming into the competition is that we don’t have to automatically play Sydney twice anymore like we seemed to do back in the day. Whenever you start to write off Sydney for the next few seasons and pencil them in for a long rebuild, they manage to unearth some quality players and then they are playing finals again. Very irritating! And they look to be right in it for a top four spot this year. On the plus side I once won a completely oversized Lions branded rain jacket at a Lions event at the Oxford Scholar by correctly predicting which team would be kicking the next goal (just kept picking Sydney until I outlasted all the optimists who thought the Lions would eventually a goal in that first quarter. Nup). While we have beaten them a couple of times in the last two years, we still owe them a number of thrashings after their previous streak of 11 wins against us.
SCG
We haven’t historically played well at the SCG since the premiership years. Admittedly it’s hard to read how much of that was due to us being a terrible team for a long time and Sydney generally being a good side in the same time period. Much like Kardinia Park, it would be nice to finally break the hoodoo of the losing our last six games and only winning one of the last eleven games we’ve played at the ground. I do remember when Sydney turned their season around against us in 2017 when they were 0-6 and even then I had no confidence that we would win that game. And we didn’t. And then Sydney made finals. And we didn’t. Ah well.
Heeney, my favourite non-Brisbane player
I don’t know what it is about marking, goal kicking mid-forwards that I’ve always had a soft spot for. In particular I’ve always rated Isaac Heeney as an incredibly smart player with superb skills who always seemed unable to reach his potential due to him always being affected by one injury or another. So it’s been exciting to see his big start to the year where he’s being dobbing goals from all over the place and looking exceptionally dangerous. I would assume that Starcevich will take him first up which will be great to watch and hopefully Starce has better luck with the umps this week compared to the Gold Coast game where he had two marks that should have been paid taken away from him. He helpfully managed to not give away any 50 metre penalties arguing about them so good work.
Millsy, that’s what I’m calling him
Another Sydney player that’s hitting some quality form after an injury affected pre-season is Callum Mills, who put together a huge game against Hawthorn last week where he had a big Supercoach score and probably had a few disposals and clearances and contested possessions and other less important stats. Shutting down or at least negating Mills’ influence will be exceptionally important if we want to get the win.
Do two paragraphs (well, one and a half if I’m honest) about Sydney players count as “quality analysis of an opposition side”? If I had more time I’d pretend I’d have better knowledge about players that aren’t in/or targets for my Supercoach team.
Sunday twilight games?
They suck.
Anything else to add?
I hate them.
Prediction?
While I don’t believe in “season defining games”, this could be a game that defines a season, at least in terms of one top four hopeful getting a leg up on another challenger. I expect it will be a hard fought but hopefully an entertaining game with actual goals considering both sides sit in the top three for points scored this season. I think we should be good enough to deal with the historic hoodoo of playing Sydney at the SCG.
Lions by 18.
PS.
Phew, I feel better now.
