Review Freo go down against the Hawks

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I like looking at the stats to try to counter any cognitive biases I have while watching the game. Yes, stats are not everything as the stats haters love to remind you of. But they're not entirely useless either. Lotta people hate having their biases destroyed by the stats and will thus argue they're useless. Anyhow, there's no surprises at the top of our ratings charts:
1721012623019.png
Note the much more even contribution from the Hawks.
But there are some surprises at the bottom:
1721012603572.png
Three players that stand out here are Cox, Sturt and Voss.
Voss as much as he was lauded for his WAFL performances did nothing except have four shots on goal, missing 3 of them. If we had our match selection again I would not pick him, but instead go with Reidy, which would at least have given us Treacy as a full time full forward.

Next - as much as Sturt provided some pressure, he effectively made no contribution at all. No surprises here. We effectively played a man down while he was on the field, which is soul-crushingly disappointing as we all want him to be that amazing fourth tall. Was it the change in forward structure, does he struggle with some travel, is it the loading and the knee niggle? Who knows, but when he is off he is a massive liability. Note that we all thought Walters was pretty terrible and he still somehow managed to outscore Sturt despite playing one quarter.

Then Cox. Granted he is getting up to speed, but his score is baffling. Go across that line and try to figure it out. My guess is he's been the opposite of damaging with his disposal and is perhaps playing quite safe. This is likely robbing us of opportunity to rebound quickly before the opposition is set. This is a great example of where a player looks to be playing ok, but when you look deeper, perhaps not. Similar arguments are made about mids such as Laird and Crouch, they get a lot of the ball but they can actually hurt their own team because they play too safe. Is Cox playing extrememly safe and thus hurting our ability to transition off turnover? Something to watch over the coming games.

I am hoping that Pearce's return gets our backline functioning at it's best once again. His absence has been underestimated a bit, he is our number 1 defender and Captain, thus every single other defender has had to change roles to accommodate. E.g., we would not have seen Chapman needing to play 1 on 1 defender if Pearce was available. Our offence from D50 has been significantly impacted by the loss of our #1 key back.
 
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I like looking at the stats to try to counter any cognitive biases I have while watching the game. Yes, stats are not everything as the stats haters love to remind you of. But they're not entirely useless either. Lotta people hate having their biases destroyed by the stats and will thus argue they're useless. Anyhow, there's no surprises at the top of our ratings charts:
View attachment 2049032
Note the much more even contribution from the Hawks.
But there are some surprises at the bottom:
View attachment 2049031
Three players that stand out here are Cox, Sturt and Voss.
Voss as much as he was lauded for his WAFL performances did nothing except have four shots on goal, missing 3 of them. If we had our match selection again I would not pick him, but instead go with Reidy, which would at least have given us Treacy as a full time full forward.

Next - as much as Sturt provided some pressure, he effectively made no contribution at all. No surprises here. We effectively played a man down while he was on the field, which is soul-crushingly disappointing as we all want him to be that amazing fourth tall. Was it the change in forward structure, does he struggle with some travel, is it the loading and the knee niggle? Who knows, but when he is off he is a massive liability. Note that we all thought Walters was pretty terrible and he still somehow managed to outscore Sturt despite playing one quarter.

Then Cox. Granted he is getting up to speed, but his score is baffling. Go across that line and try to figure it out. My guess is he's been the opposite of damaging with his disposal and is perhaps playing quite safe. This is likely robbing us of opportunity to rebound quickly before the opposition is set. This is a great example of where a player looks to be playing ok, but when you look deeper, perhaps not. Similar arguments are made about mids such as Laird and Crouch, they get a lot of the ball but they can actually hurt their own team because they play too safe. Is Cox playing extrememly safe and thus hurting our ability to transition off turnover? Something to watch over the coming games.

I am hoping that Pearce's return gets our backline functioning at it's best once again. The loss of Pearce has been underestimated, he is our number 1 defender and Captain, thus every single other defender has had to change roles to accommodate his absence. E.g., we would not have seen Chapman needing to play 1 on 1 defender if Pearce was available. Our offence from D50 has been significantly impacted by the loss of our #1 key back.
Think with cox he is great intercepting mark, but takes awhile to make the next play or then proceeds to kick it to his mate Ryan

Not great for our rebounding footy
 
Think with cox he is great intercepting mark, but takes awhile to make the next play or then proceeds to kick it to his mate Ryan

Not great for our rebounding footy
Exactly the point I'm making - if you watch Pearce when he takes an intercept he is immediately looking to turn that intercept into attack. Brennen has been doing the opposite, his confidence isn't there and he's passing the responsibility onto Ryan et. al. and thus he's turning a potential advantage into a disadvantage. He's wasting crucial time to attack while the oppo is not set.
 
We have good leading forwards, which we need to make use of .

Think the commentary mentioned on last quarter Treacy was screaming for the ball, perhaps outside 50 or on the wing but instead our defense kept chipping it to each other until Aish coughed it up..
 
Exactly the point I'm making - if you watch Pearce when he takes an intercept he is immediately looking to turn that intercept into attack. Brennen has been doing the opposite, his confidence isn't there and he's passing the responsibility onto Ryan et. al. and thus he's turning a potential advantage into a disadvantage. He's wasting crucial time to attack while the oppo is not set.
When he was at his best it was because his disposal was usually relatively quick and damaging. That’s deserted him for the past couple years, not just since coming back from injury. Was missing all of last year.
 
When he was at his best it was because his disposal was usually relatively quick and damaging. That’s deserted him for the past couple years, not just since coming back from injury. Was missing all of last year.
I've never considered his strength as a quick decision maker even prior to latest set of injuries .
 
I've never considered his strength as a quick decision maker even prior to latest set of injuries .
Quick was probably the wrong word, more so used to make really good decisions with his disposal. Can’t remember him doing it much at all last year except for the practice matches, but he was definitely a better decision maker in the past.

I probably pay closer attention to his game than most on here, and I just remember at his best he always managed to find space for a much more damaging disposal, which I always found amusing that someone as big and slow as him seemed to always have so much time and space seemingly from nowhere.
 
I don’t mind the sub. The lack of magnet switching by Jl is annoying.
Fyfe struggling? Get him forward.
Sicily scoring? Get Voss back as extra man and have Fyfe swap.
The reaction to Sicily forward was so slow.
Mitchell saw Fremantle were struggling with I50 even with Sicily there, so he gambled rightly and put Fremantle’s arrogant to the test.

This.

It’s a really concerning trend for our losses that an Oppo coach knows they can sling a damaging player forward late in games and JLo will either be too slow or too incapable to react. Think Sicily on the weekend, JHF against Power, even in the Tigers win we had no way of stopping Bolton who should have had six.

JLo needs to be better on game day or prioritise a lockdown defender who absolutely sacrifices their entire game to halt momentum.
 
This.

It’s a really concerning trend for our losses that an Oppo coach knows they can sling a damaging player forward late in games and JLo will either be too slow or too incapable to react. Think Sicily on the weekend, JHF against Power, even in the Tigers win we had no way of stopping Bolton who should have had six.

JLo needs to be better on game day or prioritise a lockdown defender who absolutely sacrifices their entire game to halt momentum.
Ok, what do you propose he should have done? I really don't see many available options given Pearce was out.
 

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Don't know about Sicily..one of his goal was opportunistic and we had players there that should of seen it across the line..

Other pack mark we had three other players there including Jackson..surely one could have come across and smashed that over the line
 
Cox should’ve been on him tbh
Ryan was playing on him no? One of his goals came from super quick ball movement, one from a soccer on the goal line, and the other from a mark that should’ve been spoiled but also wasn’t really a matchup issue.
 
Ryan was playing on him no? One of his goals came from super quick ball movement, one from a soccer on the goal line, and the other from a mark that should’ve been spoiled but also wasn’t really a matchup issue.
Chappie gave up one of them. Was tugging on Sicily's arm. From memory he gave away the free but Sicily was going to get it anyway. I remember thinking that Chappie should've given up on the body and launched for the intercept instead, as he was slightly ball-side.

Watching the replay: Chapman was obviously unsure about what to do with Sicily, eyes flicking between Sicily and incoming ball, and focused on restricting Sicily's positioning (holding). As it was Sicily had already got to about the right spot, but was a bit off-balance, so Chapman could have taken the opportunity to give up the hold and go for the spoil or even mark.
 
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Interesting the comments from the MELB game that the Ds mids knew they were going to lose the taps with Gawn out, so adjusted their game.
Hmmm maybe we could make that adjustment when we come against rucks who monster Jackson.
Great point. In the second and again in the last I was shouting at the TV for our mids to stop setting up as if we were going to win the knock.
They have to be able to read what is happening
 
Cox is clearly not yet confident again, especially by foot.
After such a long layoff (and that hammy scar still looks like a shark bit him) it can take a few weeks to get up to speed again in the heat of the AFL. In terms of the big picture it's why it's so valuable as in now with time to rebuild him.
 

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Review Freo go down against the Hawks

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