Game Day Pre-season Game v Bulldogs Saturday 1:10pm at Ikon Park

[Agenda 21]

So we hate bmac/lmac and Chom now * me we are a fickle bunch

I'm still p155ed off at Troy Polak, for leaving.

That being said, we've since become mates.

 

[roos 10]

I will love hunter Clark

11

Hunter Clark

Age

25

Ht

186cm

Wt

83kg

Pos.

Mid

Career

Season

Last 5

D

17.5

4star

K

9.5

4star

HB

8.0

5star

M

3.6

4star

T

2.9

4star

CL

1.3

3star

D

16.0

4star

K

9.6

4star

HB

6.4

4star

M

3.1

3star

T

2.9

4star

CL

1.9

4star

D

13.2

4star

K

6.6

3star

HB

6.6

4star

M

2.2

3star

T

2.0

4star

CL

0.0

1star

next year also

 

[Agenda 21]

I will love hunter Clark next year also

If we give f**k all, then sweet. Otherwise, no deal.

 

[berniemccarthy]

I had a more critical post written, but instead I thought I'd point out two areas where I think we have improved the most.

The first was our defensive press. In open space, our defensive work was poor. We didn't pressure the Dogs enough and allowed them to move the ball too easily. That's often a sign of being outworked, which for a practice match isn't a reason for major panic. When allowed to set up, I thought our defensive work outside of our defensive 50 was great. All day the Dogs struggled moving the ball past us when we were allowed to set up. In typical Clarko fashion, early in the game we saw a lot of focus on slowing down the play to facilitate this. I noticed a lot more occasions of knocking down an opponent after they marked the ball. These little annoying things were a big part of the Hawk's identity under Clarko and it looks like we'll be doing the same.

Anyway, I'm a huge fan of the defensive structure. While I don't think we'll be a great defensive team due to our young midfield and a below average group of defenders, I do think that these structures should hopefully create a lot of repeat entries and opportunities to score from turnovers as we saw yesterday.

The second is that our end to end transition was great. We struggled mightily on that final kick inside 50, but the transition from end to end was really encouraging. In all three practice games this has been my biggest takeway. 57 inside 50s was a great result yesterday. If we keep creating that many opportunities we should find ourselves in a lot of games.

Last year it was us and the Eagles who both looked completely unable to move the ball forward. The Eagles had 37 inside 50s yesterday. For a practice match where defensive intensity is prone to drop off, I think that's a huge concern and would likely have been the position that we'd find ourselves in if Clarkson's gameplan wasn't working.

The inside 50 discrepancy gives me hope that we'll have a great chance to knock off the Eagles in two weeks. Basically we learned two things. The first is that we have a respectable defensive press and the Eagles are still struggling to move the ball. The second is that our ball movement forward works after seeing it in action against an experienced Dogs outfit, who allowed the third least inside 50s last year. There's more to the game than inside 50s of course, but that should be a major reason for optimism as we head into round one.

Plus the WC don’t have 4 giants in the forward line. But they do have capable smalls so that’s more of a concern.

 

[Moti]

I thought Jones would be WB best recruit when they picked him up. Transforms their backline. Larkey has not worked out that you stick your arse out when marking to keep your opponent away. Tell him to watch some Duck footage. Leading patterns are non existent. It’s straight up and straight back. Comben needs to lead on a diagonal. Some things are so basic you shake your head.

I hope we don’t waste Comben like we did Daw. It isn’t hard to teach forward patterns but I see no evidence that we do.


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[rm3504]

No s**t ….
I’ve been saying it for years …. We are so stagnant, kick long to a 50-50 contest and have absolutely No run off half back whenever Hall doesn’t play . You’d think by now someone at the club would also have seen it by now ? And come up with remotely a plan B ?

Haven’t had any small or mid defenders of note since the glory days of pickett, king, Blakey, pike

 

[domiroo]

Maybe Leigh can head down to training and put that directly to Clarko.

He would have been one of those smart arses at schools I think .

 

[domiroo]

I hope we don’t waste Comben like we did Daw. It isn’t hard to teach forward patterns but I see no evidence that we do.


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Different coach he’s at Essendon now to **** them up completely.

 

[Frank Thring]

I thought Xerri was doing okay until he got outbodied at a throw in by Naughton who sent it forward for a goal. That was bad.

What impressed you about his 7 possession, no mark game the most?

 

[Caracas]

My guess is that Clarko’s first focus will be on getting us consistently competitive again. Once he achieves that, he can really concentrate on our brand going forward. Unfortunately, for us, we’re too used to getting flogged.


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[Kangaroos4eva]

I think the biggest issue we had was in the middle and that is something we have to wear to some degree, Dogs have one of the better midfield's in the comp and their mid has played a lot of football with each other. Cunners is still a bit rusty, he has missed a lot of football, he will get better.

We have a bit of an issue with the midfield structure at stoppages, we can't have Cunners, Jy and LDU all go for the ball, lose the contested possession to one opposition midfield and then allow the ball to get flicked out to one of two guys loose on the outside. It is something we need to tighten up, that lead to a lot of easy and uncontested inside 50s against us.

Second issue, when we win a stoppage and just hack it forward instead of looking to hit up some mids, we have to get better at demanding the wings or half forwards pushing into the square to become better options and we must demand the mids to look for a team mate, the vast majority of our inside 50 entries were too shallow and were picked off. Because of that Larkey stopped leading because he had no time to make a lead, the ball gets dumped onto boot before we give forwards the opportunity to lead. We need to hold on to the ball and move it with handpass until we get into a favourable position to launch an inside 50. We had 57 vs 64 or something like that but there was a massive quality difference of inside 50s. That is something we need to get better with.

I don't know who was smoking crack but that "gameplan" to not contest a defensive 50 stoppage with a ruckman cost us 4 goals, at least. That better not be a feature of the H&A season, if i saw Hawks doing that i would be thinking that they are tanking, to do it against a side that has 2 ruckmen who play forwards was insanity.

Playing loose defenders in the D50 is not a huge benefit if the loose players can't get to and impact any contests, against a team like the dogs that can move it with accuracy if given time and space it is the wrong strategy. You have to bring numbers from the forward line to congest the half forward line and be able to put pressure on the ball carrier and the intended target. This was the model to beat Hawthorn when they were good, you had to starve them of uncontested marks and had to be able to stop the loose ball possessions and stick tackles. Defensively we were poor, couldn't stick tackles, couldn't put pressure on the ball carrier, this is a big limitation of undersized players. Small players can be effective tacklers with momentum but if you are flat footed you are just going to be pushed off.

We STILL do not have a great system of moving the ball from D50 to the middle, just look how congested our half back line is to the opposition every week, we have too many people who don't transition quick enough and just stand around and they are either not a good option and are flat footed so by the time the ball gets to them they will be under the pump as soon as they get it. We need space for someone to run into it, it is such a basic part of the game and it is something we are hopeless at and it just puts us under a lot more pressure than we need to be, there is a lack of natural movement on a turnover or rebound. How many times was Bonar or McDonald or Ziebell involved in a play where they were rebounding and were part of any kind of fluent movement of the ball to someone in the middle of the ground? Zero times? Shezel was more proactive in defensive transition during stints in the backline. Guys, you can't have less of a clue than someone fresh out of the juniors...

The stuff we were s**t at is easy to address, the problem is that we have been saying it for years and we aren't seeing enough improvement. Dogs are able to exploit our deficiencies, it will be different with other clubs, most don't have the same kind of firepower in the midfield and the forward line.

Curtis was really great, he looks dangerous, he gets the ball outside forward 50 as well. He is great. Died of frostbite with a lack of quality entries.
Zurhaar is trying, but he hasn't had a lot of impact
Comben and Larkey need to be able to compete better and bring the ball to ground when they are not in the favourable position, they allow their opponents to get too many marks, many of them uncontested.
Stevo did some nice things, but goes missing for too long.
Perez made too many mistakes

I was pretty disappointed in the Cunners/Simpkin/LDU combo, not enough accountability, too many people going for the ball. You need to be way more defensive against the Dogs in the middle.

I thought Powell was pretty good, he was probably the most effective midfielder we had in terms of running through the middle and making better decisions, he gave more time for the forwards to make a lead and he had better quality inside 50 delivery because of it. Just picking the ball up and booting it is a bit timid, it is Polec footy. The U in LDU is starting to mean U-turn, he just gets the ball and does a circle and just fries the options he would have had if he went forward. I think he is paranoid about being rundown as often as he was last year and is a symptom of the midfield not working hard for each other to protect space, a lack of repeat efforts. I am not sure how much Clarkson has looked at this but we need to get Ratten off of the part-time roster and into full-time midfield coach because we have a lot of talented mids coming through and they need to be educated in the right way to structure and play the game.

I think if you get rid of the no-rucking goals and we get better at the defensive pressure, we would significantly cut that amount we lost by, we tried, we just have to work smarter so we get more bang from the energy we expend. I am still pretty optimistic that we will improve this year if we don't get murdered with injuries. We need to raise the bar because too many players atm are not what I would call AFL standard at present and we need to get a better outcome from the minimum impact someone has in a game.

Tend to agree with your primary points and the problems are mostly fixable. I think the stats that Reginald posted prove that there has been genuine improvement.

My impression was that while there are some structural issues up forward, most of our problems were fitness, learning a new gameplan and individual errors (or decision-making/execution) contributing to a few of our structures falling down. All fixable across time.

 

[FootySmartSimpson]

Haven’t had any small or mid defenders of note since the glory days of pickett, king, Blakey, pike

Sinclair, McMahon, Pratt, Rawlings, M. Williams. We have since then, just not in recent times.

It seems that you are either a KPP or mid and we will try turning you into something different when drafted to North.

 

[rickety]

Haven’t had any small or mid defenders of note since the glory days of pickett, king, Blakey, pike

Troy Makepeace was handy. Pratty went all right too. Imo.

 

[FootySmartSimpson]

Troy Makepeace was handy. Pratty went all right too. Imo.

Thanks. Troy was a bloody handy footballer. Would love a Pratt, Makepeace or McMahon in the team right now.

 

[Frank Thring]

Thanks. Troy was a bloody handy footballer. Would love a Pratt, Makepeace or McMahon in the team right now.

as time goes on, average players become better.

 

[speedy]

What a buzz kill...still.
It was really disappointing seeing our midfield demolished like that.

 

[ferball]

What impressed you about his 7 possession, no mark game the most?

He was physically hard at it I spose, but I think you're misunderstanding the concept of relativity here.

Doing okay means he was better than I thought he'd be. Being outbodied by someone three inches shorter and nearly 15 kgs lighter sums up where he is at.

 

[Tas]

Tend to agree with your primary points and the problems are mostly fixable. I think the stats that Reginald posted prove that there has been genuine improvement.

My impression was that while there are some structural issues up forward, most of our problems were fitness, learning a new gameplan and individual errors (or decision-making/execution) contributing to a few of our structures falling down. All fixable across time.

We also lack that ability to tighten up when there is a bit of a run-on, halt momentum. Some guys, particularly in the middle play the same way regardless if we are doing well or going poorly. We need to be less robotic/predictable in that sense.

Also, we seem to have a number of players in poor form, who go missing a lot and are struggling to have an impact and it is guys like McKay, Zurhaar, etc. who we have greater expectation to be leaders. Kids like Powell, Curtis, Sheezel, etc are playing good footy. We need our experienced players to play a more significant role.

 

[RobZombie]

Thanks. Troy was a bloody handy footballer. Would love a Pratt, Makepeace or McMahon in the team right now.

If Loose McMahon was in this team, tao would be calling him Fatty McShitmen and everyone would be chuckling along in agreement.

 

[The acurate one]

If Loose McMahon was in this team, tao would be calling him Fatty McShitmen and everyone would be chuckling along in agreement.

Nah harsh Rob, anyone who can square dance at a retirement home, can present anyway he likes.
Huge fan Of Mr Loose.

 

[The acurate one]

If we give f**k all, then sweet. Otherwise, no deal.

Yes well I am not sure that is how it works, could be wrong. But I have seen many final offers posted on the BF and never yet has an opposition club agreed to terms set out on the BF.

Benny bustling Brown was a minimum two first-rounders and Brady even showed Melbourne those posts on BF. Said look here, it states two first-rounders at a minimum.

Then it all turned to shit yet again.

 

[Reginald0]

Needed height in the backline
Corr
Speed in the Mids
Wardlaw
Bit of zip on the wings
Tucker

Just gotta keep moving those magnets once we get a full squad

 

[Hitatarget]

I was at the game on Saturday, somehow managed to watch the whole thing and also surprisingly managed not to throw anything at that bulldog supporter that chanted after each goal.
Im not sure if it's been mentioned, but the biggest issue i had with the game was our Key forwards
Larkey refused to take front position which resulted in almost all entries directed his way been cut off, the vast majority of the time he refused to lead at the ball carrier and even worse he refused to give an option down the line. Comben was unsighted up until the 3rd quater, but was good once he got going. Very hard to keep the ball in the forward half when you KPF aren't creating a contest to prevent the ball from been flung back out

 

[Caracas]

What a buzz kill...still.
It was really disappointing seeing our midfield demolished like that.

I’m hoping against hope that we were experimenting a bit more in the midfield on the weekend, which was a major contributor to having our colours lowered. Last season, that was the single area where we were strong - without Cunnington. You like to think, we’ll be very competitive in the midfield this season overall. The big query will be how we handle the spread after that. We fell down big time on that indicator last season.


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[Johnny99]

What a buzz kill...still.
It was really disappointing seeing our midfield demolished like that.

Treloar 212 games
Bont 193
B. Smith 84
McCrae 202
Libba 195

Total games 886 games
Average 177 games per midfielder

LDU 71 games
Cunners 229
Simpkin 116
T Powell 31
Will P 16

Total games 463 games
Average 92 games per midfielder
Take out Cunners and the Average games per midfielder drops to 58
But in the next couple of years, George Wardlaw will replace Cunners.

If you consider the stats above, you will realize the Bulldogs are just so much more experienced and advanced than us. You cant criticise North. you cant get disappointed.

You just need to be patient and give them games.

Its the only way to get back to where we belong...