That game plan still fails though. Teams simply don’t take that many contested marks to make a game plan reliant on them successful. Since 2021 we’ve played that way and it never worked. And as far back as 2021 we played fast and overlapping at times and looked good. The only problem was sustaining it for long enough. And instead of being brave and wearing the bad as we developed, we retreated to the attacking plan that is designed yo make defending easier.
Yes, I've always wondered why our side seems to think "just keep kicking it to contests and then win all the contests" is a strategy that can possibly win.
Other sides seem to make an effort to generate loose players. We just assume we'll take contested marks all the way down the ground.