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UseR2006
Premiership Player
- Aug 2, 2020
- 4,046
- 11,077
- AFL Club
- West Coast
100%
Was also down at the Ponsford end on the second tier so had a good view of most of the ground.
We do not work hard enough to provide options for outlets from the 50 arc onwards when get have the ball in d50.
Players are like statues, they don't move and when they do, tend to get ignored for contests down the line.
The amount of times we dump kicked it to Gawn was just annoying.
In contrast the Dees had a clear instruction to take the kick out as quick as possible, move it quickly as we sit off our direct opposition too far to impact all the damn time. This then results in easy shots for them because our forwards are pushed so far up the ground that they end up in no mans land all the time.
View attachment 2041838
example: What the F are Barrass and Gov doing all the way out here.
Another issue (among the many) is our mids do not work anywhere near hard enough.
From stoppages if they don't win the clearance they act as though "oh well our bit is done, time for the backs" They'll jog, throw out token arms, chase for a second or two then deem it not worth the effort, palm off responsibility to another player, etc. You get the drift.
Here's an example of what I mean.
It doesn't take much, this is from the first quarter when it's nil all and the game should be at its hottest. Shameful.
The other way our work-rate hurts us is when we do have the ball on transition. when we hit targets and have plenty of space we look OK, but that's never gonna happen all the time. often we get the ball look up and no one is working to make space so handballs and kicks go to players under pressure or worse direct to the opposition.
It's not all work-rate though. It's hard to be enthused when the coaches pull out amazing thoughts like "Why not have a developing key forward/ruck as our Sub" or "Let's have darling help with cbd ruck work". If Darling isn't doing well enough as a forward then he should be out of the squad until he performs. The post match presser explanation for these two moves was infuriating. "We just wanted to try it out".
I'm all for experimenting but he never explains what he was hoping to achieve with the moves. What did you hope to gain Simmo by having a key fwd as a sub and Darling as a ruck?
The saddest thing for me is a lot of the smaller things that we were doing really well with in our wins have gone out the window since the earlier Melbourne game. Things like the team getting amped for smothers/tackles/pressure acts, celebrating goals and the preceding plays leading to goals. The closest we got today was with Reid having a crack at Gawn and Ginbey getting into Tholstrup when he was roughing up Hough. Outside of those two instances we were pretty limp.
All of the above things have been persistent not just in todays game but pretty much consistently in every loss this year. This is on the coach as it's not a once off, it's not just something that will improve in the next week or two. We may have flashes of awesome when our opposition let us but until things change at the top these things will continue.
Reposting here as it's also all the reasons why I think Simmo needs to go and effective immediately.