Bigman’s Training Reports

[Floating Doughnut]

I don’t disagree Keane plays from behind …. but don’t most KPD’s these days ?

Push in the back …. great bodywork ….. tomato tomata

Best I can come up with

Leagues top 20 Defenders who played 10+ games 2024 in 1v1 contests had .

Rated by number of def 1v1 contests had per game and their loss percentage of those contests.

ie : Butts our best having 2.9 1 v 1 contests per game @ a loss ratio of only 25%

Wozz only loses out 18% of the time in his 2.5 contests.

 

[Carmo]

Why are we a lowly ranked intercept marking team?

Cmon man, this is pretty basic.

We put our extra at the contest, other clubs put their extra in defense. Having an extra number there makes it tonnes easier to come off and get the intercept.

How can you and others not get this very very standout obvious aspect of our game plan into your heads despite being footy tragics? Friggin goldfish, one week of not watching us play and you seem to forget it.

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

Cmon man, this is pretty basic.

We put our extra at the contest, other clubs put their extra in defense. Having an extra number there makes it tonnes easier to come off and get the intercept.

How can you and others not get this very very standout obvious aspect of our game plan into your heads despite being footy tragics? Friggin goldfish, one week of not watching us play and you seem to forget it.

Was an open ended question

I have my theories

Was interested to hear from others. In particular whether people think it's by choice or just a product of personnel

 

[Carmo]

Was an open ended question

I have my theories

Was interested to hear from others. In particular whether people think it's by choice or just a product of personnel

Oh, ok, well sorry I was probably a bit unnecessarily rough on you then. When you gonna tell us your theories?

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

Oh, ok, well sorry I was probably a bit unnecessarily rough on you then. When you gonna tell us your theories?

I like your one blaming Lachie Murphy

 

[CutAboveTheRest]

Anyway back to the OT - thanks for all the work you're putting in bigman. Loving these reports mate.

 

[George Kramer]

Cmon man, this is pretty basic.

We put our extra at the contest, other clubs put their extra in defense. Having an extra number there makes it tonnes easier to come off and get the intercept.

How can you and others not get this very very standout obvious aspect of our game plan into your heads despite being footy tragics? Friggin goldfish, one week of not watching us play and you seem to forget it.

Except teams don’t put their extra in defence, they just leave their defender in defence. We make them an extra by pushing Murphy up the ground to try and win contests.

Genius coaching

 

[Scorpus]

Was an open ended question

I have my theories

Was interested to hear from others. In particular whether people think it's by choice or just a product of personnel

I think it's as simple as our midfield is routinely beaten. It's not necessarily a defensive pressure issue, it's that we are beaten offensively too.

A team with better stoppage structures and better midfield transition will get cleaner (and sometimes faster) entries to their forward line that negates intercepting. Our opponents typically having better ball users and better decision makers in the midfield, along with more athletic types, creates that difference along with our strategy.

 

[cmndstab]

I think it's as simple as our midfield is routinely beaten. It's not necessarily a defensive pressure issue, it's that we are beaten offensively too.

A team with better stoppage structures and better midfield transition will get cleaner (and sometimes faster) entries to their forward line that negates intercepting. Our opponents typically having better ball users and better decision makers in the midfield, along with more athletic types, creates that difference along with our strategy.

Pretty much this. I think that we have prioritised winning the ball at the contest, and the downside of that is that if we don't win it, we get absolutely torched on the outside, leaving our defenders to deal with the consequences.

 

[Scorpus]

Pretty much this. I think that we have prioritised winning the ball at the contest, and the downside of that is that if we don't win it, we get absolutely torched on the outside, leaving our defenders to deal with the consequences.

The stats show we are only good at two specific things: hard ball gets and gathers from hitouts. Everything else about the contest we are pretty poor.

(All of the following are us vs opponent differentials.) We're 12th for contested possessions, 16th for loose ball gets, 10th for post clearance contested possessions, 14th for clearances. This leads to us being 15th for score launches and 14th for xScore. We're just 15th in scoring from our forward half.

So we're pretty good at gaining possession from hitouts to advantage, and good at gaining possession from contested ground balls. But all the other stats suggest we take absolutely zero advantage of that - and it certainly doesn't translate into scoring opportunities for us.

 

[FR0GGY]

Good god.....

You don’t actually thing George thinks Tom is still with us do you?

 

[George Kramer]

I think we don’t have one dedicated intercept marker but overall we have a bunch of defenders who can take an intercept mark, would be interesting to see team stats.

Why do intercept defenders hurt us? Because of the way we push a forward up the ground like Murphy who the opposition don’t give two shits about matching up on. Early on in the season it was our slow ball movement which gave them extra time to flood our defence and eventually we just bombed, that’s 100% shit coaching.

Next is lack of pressure on the opposition despite pushing the extra player up around the ball, meaning they had cleaner movement making it harder for us to intercept. That should change significantly with Peatling, Draper, ANB, Cumming. Early on it was due to playing a slow vanilla midfield, again shit coaching.

Common theme? Shit coaching.

 

[Jeffcrowe]

Lever
McGovern
Doedee if he gets injury free.

Yep talking our current team

 

[Jeffcrowe]

I think it's as simple as our midfield is routinely beaten. It's not necessarily a defensive pressure issue, it's that we are beaten offensively too.

A team with better stoppage structures and better midfield transition will get cleaner (and sometimes faster) entries to their forward line that negates intercepting. Our opponents typically having better ball users and better decision makers in the midfield, along with more athletic types, creates that difference along with our strategy.

Most people over looking the main reason , ie our defenders aren’t great markers outside of Keane

He’s able to take intercept marks despite the game plan stuff

Do think our midfield pressure in 2025 will be better and more consistent without drop offs in 2025 with some of the speed we will have in there Peatling Rankine Draper , and it could help us take more intercept marks

 

[Jeffcrowe]

The stats show we are only good at two specific things: hard ball gets and gathers from hitouts. Everything else about the contest we are pretty poor.

(All of the following are us vs opponent differentials.) We're 12th for contested possessions, 16th for loose ball gets, 10th for post clearance contested possessions, 14th for clearances. This leads to us being 15th for score launches and 14th for xScore. We're just 15th in scoring from our forward half.

So we're pretty good at gaining possession from hitouts to advantage, and good at gaining possession from contested ground balls. But all the other stats suggest we take absolutely zero advantage of that - and it certainly doesn't translate into scoring opportunities for us.

We definitely had a horror season last year and just weren’t at the level

Would love to see those stats compared to 2023 to see where our biggest drop offs were

 

[Kane McGoodwin]

Most people over looking the main reason , ie our defenders aren’t great markers outside of Keane

He’s able to take intercept marks despite the game plan stuff

Do think our midfield pressure in 2025 will be better and more consistent without drop offs in 2025 with some of the speed we will have in there Peatling Rankine Draper , and it could help us take more intercept marks

I think as a collective group our defenders are decent marks, but we don't have a dominant marker like some other sides.

Keane, Murray, Worrell, Michaelanny & Hinge all decent overhead... but none outstanding.

 

[Kane McGoodwin]

You don’t actually thing George thinks Tom is still with us do you?

Post doesn't make as much sense given the previously prior one was deleted.

 

[Jeffcrowe]

I think as a collective group our defenders are decent marks, but we don't have a dominant marker like some other sides.

Keane, Murray, Worrell, Michaelanny & Hinge all decent overhead... but none outstanding.

Agree

Keane could get there

 

[Carmo]

Except teams don’t put their extra in defence, they just leave their defender in defence. We make them an extra by pushing Murphy up the ground to try and win contests.

Genius coaching

Teams don't have to manufacture an extra against us, true, because we do it for them, but at times they still do it anyway and we will be two down in our forward line.

Also, other teams manufacture the extra when they play each other, so they would do it even if we didn't do it for them, which I often find pretty boring to watch because it becomes a battle of half back lines, with a lot of scores coming from luck, like a weird direction bounce of the ball rather than systematic method.

 

[Carmo]

The stats show we are only good at two specific things: hard ball gets and gathers from hitouts. Everything else about the contest we are pretty poor.

(All of the following are us vs opponent differentials.) We're 12th for contested possessions, 16th for loose ball gets, 10th for post clearance contested possessions, 14th for clearances. This leads to us being 15th for score launches and 14th for xScore. We're just 15th in scoring from our forward half.

So we're pretty good at gaining possession from hitouts to advantage, and good at gaining possession from contested ground balls. But all the other stats suggest we take absolutely zero advantage of that - and it certainly doesn't translate into scoring opportunities for us.

12th, 16th, 10th, 14, 15,14,15 and we're about 15th most.experienced. You'd never expect any really inexperienced team to dominate, so aren't these results about par? Neither good nor poor?

 

[Scorpus]

12th, 16th, 10th, 14, 15,14,15 and we're about 15th most.experienced. You'd never expect any really inexperienced team to dominate, so aren't these results about par? Neither good nor poor?

The problem is our midfield is very experienced. O'Brien, Laird, Crouch and Dawson are four of our most experienced players.

 

[Carmo]

Best I can come up with

Leagues top 20 Defenders who played 10+ games 2024 in 1v1 contests had .

Rated by number of def 1v1 contests had per game and their loss percentage of those contests.

ie : Butts our best having 2.9 1 v 1 contests per game @ a loss ratio of only 25%

Wozz only loses out 18% of the time in his 2.5 contests.


View attachment 2187589

Interesting to see how many ppl we have in the list of 1v1 contests compared to other teams, which highlights our unique game plan and how our defense doesn't ever have the extra like others do so we have so much more 1v1s.

 

[Carmo]

Most people over looking the main reason , ie our defenders aren’t great markers outside of Keane

He’s able to take intercept marks despite the game plan stuff

Do think our midfield pressure in 2025 will be better and more consistent without drop offs in 2025 with some of the speed we will have in there Peatling Rankine Draper , and it could help us take more intercept marks

Think that's a bit rough, all of our current crop of defenders are passable with their marking.

In the past we had a defense that was undersized height and strength wise (Doedee, Kelly, Otten) and was pretty slow, which hampered our intercept marking ability.

Still have some slowness (Butts (not terrible tho), Borlase) but Murray is ok and Keane is very quick for his size and players like Max and Worrell are fast for their size and match up on oppo well, good mid sizers, and then ppl like Hinge, Milera say Jones are quick to very quick for defensive smalls.

 

[1990crow]

The problem is our midfield is very experienced. O'Brien, Laird, Crouch and Dawson are four of our most experienced players.

All reports are Laird is not training with mids.
That has to help players like Soligo, Rankine, Peatling, Rachele, Curtin etc get time.

 

[Carmo]

The problem is our midfield is very experienced. O'Brien, Laird, Crouch and Dawson are four of our most experienced players.

The problem is that they aren't in there full time and another problem is contested possession stats, just.for one example, are generated from places other than the midfield so it does capture the youth effect from the rest of the team.