'Peaking too early' nonsense

[Gizza]

Of course there is such a thing as peaking too early. By definition your peak is your best. So if you peak mid-season that means that's the best you're going to play all season. You want to peak during finals.

 

[Richo83]

Geelong were not at their best come finals time. They were tired and the club admitted it after the finals and chnaged their preparation for 2009. Can't believe how people just ignore this.

Fine, but being tired isn't peaking too early, peaking early implies form present in a time where form isn't necessary, as if teams are exerting wasted effort. Geelong weren't tired because they peaked too early, they were tired because they encountered the very common predicament of fatigue. Another thing is that Geelong had an off day and on any other day, I'd suggest they would have beaten Hawthorn.

Of course injuries impact on form. Which is why peaking requires careful management of players. Injuries are quite often why a team peaks eraly on becasue they are full strenght without niggles. Guess what injuries are a part of footy and every player has niggles by seasons end at best. This is precisely what peaking is.

I'm not convinced this is what the op is talking about. When the media use the term peaked too early, they generally don't mean the team has been limited by injuries. Furthermore, even with adequate maintainability of injuries and the list, teams still get accused of peaking too early.

Looking at wins and losses is like looking at footy statistics and basing your argument on that. Good teams will still win games late in the season, doesn't mean they play well and are facing top teams.

Wins and losses is still the best way of determining team quality, and every team strives to win every week with their best team out on the park. Good teams will win games all over, early and late.

This is where finals sorts eveyone out. The poor form is exposed as you don't get easy games in finals and you have to beat the best each week to win the flag.

But peaking too early is not the same as poor form. If peaking too early means poor form then peaking too early just means not having form in the latter half of the season. Yet many grand finalist losers had that going into the finals. This is evidenced by you listing teams like Collingwood in 2011 who continued to win games throughout the season.

Finals are a peculiar beast. And generally they don't play out as some vast general trend based on previous results, teams will cause upsets. While generally it helps that teams win consistently, I think we're subjectively reading "peaking too early" into poor finals performances, when it could be that the team had an off day, or doesn't match up well on one opponent, or injuries.

But this vague feeling that a team that bursts out of the gates but then struggles with form later has made an error in starting well early and then foolishly ignoring later season form (as if that happens) is stupid. This is what the op is talking about, not player management or injuries but that somehow April specialists are hurting themselves for being April specialists. In essence, peaking early is purely a mental phenomenon, where injuries and other specifics are not part of this term.

 

[pjcrows]

The 2008 Grand Final loss for Geelong had nothing to do with them "peaking too early". It had a little bit to do with shithouse goalkicking on the day. They were the best team of 2008, but didn't win the premiership. Happens occasionally. North Melbourne 1998, Port Adelaide 2003 to name a few.

 

[aussierulesrules]

As with everything in life, timing is everything and footy is no different. You definitely want to time your peak so that it occurs at the business end of the season, to maximize your chances of winning it.

 

[jim boy]

Im surprised nobody has mentioned Adelaide in 2006. Dominated until about round 17, and then just disappeared. Ultimately you have to now be top 4, but once you are there, it is the form team that prevails.

 

[Hump 17]

All teams at the start of each season are at least trying to play their best football. If there best 22 is available they will play and the coach will instruct them to play the brand of football they've trained all summer to profect. If they are good enough to be in a position mid to late season most will manage players games to refresh them. The game plan stays as close to the original game plan with the personal available as possible. Last year a lot of Collingwood supporters where adamant they where in third gear and where coasting and would flick a switch when it counted. Rubbish no side plays at less than 100% deliberately so they have something in reserve.

 

[dumb]

bit of a football myth i think. there are all sorts of factors which can contribute to what might be seen as having peaked at the wrong time - but obviously that statement is only made in hindsight. clearly there's plenty of teams over the years who have won games throughout the year and then won the premiership. only if a team falls over have they peaked early, while peaking early is fine if you're able to go on with it at the end....???

 

[Duskfire]

All teams at the start of each season are at least trying to play their best football. If there best 22 is available they will play and the coach will instruct them to play the brand of football they've trained all summer to profect. If they are good enough to be in a position mid to late season most will manage players games to refresh them. The game plan stays as close to the original game plan with the personal available as possible. Last year a lot of Collingwood supporters where adamant they where in third gear and where coasting and would flick a switch when it counted. Rubbish no side plays at less than 100% deliberately so they have something in reserve.

I disagree completely. Team a is 1st on the ladder, team b is 15th. Team B is leading by a reasonable margain for most of the game by sheer hardwork. Team A plays for a quarter, destroys them. Happens time and time again. Team b isnt better, just Team A simply conserved themselves. Great teams do have that switch they can flick on. Sometimes that coasting along can bite them in the ass but alot of the time it pays off.

2009 season, both St Kilda and Geelong had ordinary form heading into the finals. Bulldogs had just beaten Geelong in round 21 and played them in the first final. Geelong had destroyed them by the first half. Likewise Saints, despite the old proverb, "winning form is good form."

Brisbane is a shining example; never finished top of the ladder in their Premiership years, yet would be awesome once Finals came along. They did enough to get there without getting too tired.

Am not saying that teams dont play to win; however good teams will and can conserve themselves when the situation is right. To say that every team plays 100% every single time is incorrect.

 

[Hump 17]

The above post does have merit but in finals another heap of factors are thrown in. Brisbane players absorbed preasure and played a style of football that suited finals. I have no doubt at all that at no time did Mathews address the players and say just take it easy today. Yeah teams do take there foot off the pedal when there up by ten goals but that's more human nature than a direct instruction.

 

[pjcrows]

Im surprised nobody has mentioned Adelaide in 2006. Dominated until about round 17, and then just disappeared. Ultimately you have to now be top 4, but once you are there, it is the form team that prevails.

We certainly "peaked too early" in 2006 (although we never had a forward line to win a premiership in the era) but I wouldn't say we disappeared after Round 17. We missed the GF by 10 points - hardly disappeared.

 

[RogersResults]

Here is a list of teams that were on top of the ladder more than 70% of the season but weren't premiers, that might amuse.

Also: Geelong have gone 13-0 three times 1953, 2009, 2011 but never 14-0.

 

[LiterallyNobody]

What do you mean you learnt this lesson in 2008? Surely your not suggesting you had bad form or were tired on GF day. You lost because Hawthorn used the rules to rush points and had someone called Stewie Dew playing for them. He ripped you guys a new ass. There was nothing wrong with Geelong at that time.

While I'm at it I would just like to say last year's premiership was the only one I realy admired from your club, it was a ripper. The '07 was a chump year (Geelong was the only team "up") and '09 could have gone either way even though the Saints were an average Grandfinalist.
If you win it this year I will really take my hat off to your team, I can't remember a year in history with so many genuine contenders.

That is the biggest load of shit ever.

Some saints supporters on here believe that if it weren't for a toe poke or Tom Hawkins' goal that wasn't, we would won the flag that year. Whether they are right or wrong is irrelevant. Coulda, woulda shoulda.

However, it is extremely arrogant and clueless comment to suggest we were an "average" opponent. We played very well for virtually the entire year and many thought for a time we would go undefeated. We certainly looked to be the first team since 2000 to do it and yes - we blew it in the end but we tried our guts out all day on GF day and in the end went down because Geelong's clutch players and their big men got them over the line simply because they wanted it more and played like it.

We wanted it too but we had numerous shots to ice the game and win the game and couldn't take any of them.

It was a frustrating day and reliving it here is pretty hard but I couldn't let this go after reading such a ridiculous comment.

I actually rate 2009 as their most impressive flag not because of the fact that I rated us more than Port 07 or Collingwood 11 (although I actually do) but because of what they had against them, how they did it despite trailing ALL day, how they never really gave up all season and how they showed up a team that was looking to break its drought and thought everything was going to fall into place.

 

[blackhead&boil]

there is such a thing as physically peaking early...

 

[NarklesHelmet]

A few posters have touched on it but I really believe the concept of "peaking too early" is linked mostly to teams tactics rather than their physical "peaking" (I would add that there is always the possibility of a freakish run of injuries wreaking havoc with list management but this does not occur so often so can be discounted from this discussion).

No matter how great a game plan is that a team has early in the season, other teams in the competition will work out a way to beat it if you give them 22 rounds to do so (us Saints fans know this only too well from 2009, even though I still think Geelong hadn't "worked us out" as such, we just choked on the day. Collingwood "worked us out" over the pre-season and took it into the next season).

This is why I think the great way Geelong went about things last year was pretty much the perfect way to do things: use their natural talents to win as many games as possible over other teams in the first half of the year while tinkering with their gameplan over the second half of the year, ready for a final assault when it mattered the most.

They played it perfectly last year and showed their opponent that, no matter how invincible a gameplan seems, there are ways around it and that a gameplan can be worked out during a season as opposed to waiting for a pre-season to do it.

Geelong's meticulous tactical planning will hopefully lead to an even more exciting and sophisticated era we may be heading into where coaches/players will have to learn a number of different gameplans and switch them completely during a match/season depending on their opponents (I don't believe that we have coaching staff and players capable of switching whole gameplans at the moment, rather some minor adjustments are made).

 

[Pevers-Legend]

You're calling other people ignorant or not studying history when you put Carlton 00 in there. The hilarity. Carlton certainly did not have a good start to 00, we lost three games in the row early on by big margins (including to Collingwood, who finished 15th that year).

That would imply I thought Carlton peaked at the beginning of the season which I never did. Well done in putting the ass in u and me.

They peaked before finals and that is all that matters.

Hawks peaked finals time in 08 and Geelong didn't.

That is the key. Peak in finals time or you have peaked to early.

 

[Axle17]

We peaked in rd1 2012. Bugger :-(

 

[Partridge]

I'm not sure what opinion i have on the whole "peaking to early" thing, i mean, you want your side playing good footy so they are in good form but i think Geelong have proved that you don't have to blitz through a whole season to win a premiership, we paced ourselves last year and were in better shape come finals then any other side. I actually think Collingwood will take a simular route, they will try and copy what we did in 2011, so don't be to disheartened about your 2012 start, because even though you started really well in 2011, you didn't come away with anything.

Geelong learnt this leason in 2008.

The only lesson Geelong should have learnt from that year was that a) you have to take your chances in front of goal, and b) never ever trust footballers at their word when selection in Grand Finals is up for grabs.

The 24 games leading up to the Grand Final that year had no bearing on the result. Apparently losing every game must be a better way to advance than winning. Ludicrous.