Review Round 1, 2024 - Fremantle vs. Brisbane Lions

[Happy_Neale]

Half serious question - would we at all consider getting Rich back in the mid season draft? Is that even possible? He’s the closest thing to Kiddy we could get although a level or two below. Has been training with Noosa so should still be in okay shape. Might need a ‘training block’ though.

 

[McIvor]

Half serious question - would we at all consider getting Rich back in the mid season draft? Is that even possible? He’s the closest thing to Kiddy we could get although a level or two below. Has been training with Noosa so should still be in okay shape. Might need a ‘training block’ though.

His #10 is still available too.

 

[brisbanelions]

Agree with all of this and now to me is the time something that’s been missing, whatever it is gets found or before you know it the season is gone and rebuild sets in.

Nothing up to now suggests Fagan will make drastic changes and certainly not to the protected players. Yet we have started so badly, there is no excuse to hide behind now.

The game is passing our style by but we can still use that style as a chance up if we make the right changes to at least keep us up with the new game plan - speed everywhere.

We have the players on the list but never give them a shot and look, maybe for good reason but do we have to lose by giving a Smith / Sharp / Ryan / Tunstill / Reville 5 games to show what they’ve got?

They don’t all have to be at the same time either, you can stagger it and who knows, what emerges might be the new benchmark.

But the glaringly stagnated players need to be dropped to earn their spot back and if they do, then they will no longer be passengers.

I agree with you and McIvor , giving a chance to some fresh new faces might be exactly what we need right now. CREATE COMPETITION FOR SPOTS ,Inject youth and enthusiasm into a team that is off. The youngster's might just have the desired hunger to rise to the occasion then players who think they have earned their spot regardless of their performances. By putting pressure on the senior guys for spots , it may be enough of a catalyst for the senior guys to re-discover their MOJO.

I am , all for seeing what the youngsters have and seeing if there are any hidden gems like Wilmot amongst them.

 

[Berrygood]

They’re already looking tired. Add to that 2 cross-country flights and a flogging. A couple of days to freshen up won’t hurt… giving them a flogging might. They can then come back and focus on the issues, work on some things with a fresh mind over the weekend and into next week.

The coaching team can spend the days the players have off doing some proper analysis (or both the players and themselves), and come up with a plan for how to fix the issues.

Surely they can't be tired after 2 games, and why protect them after a flogging, they can't be that tender in the head. They talk about accountability, it's time to take some and take steps to improve. They should be cranky, they should be wanting to dig in. I understand the flights can be a bit taxing. I've done that trip many times, 5 or 6 hrs, it's not that bad. Sure I haven't done it after a game of footy but I'm not an elite sportsman either. And if the coaching staff need 3 days to recognise problems and formulate plans after 2 poor performances, we need a better coaching staff. They don't have to be flogged but get them in today (tuesday) run vision, rehab. Take advantage of the extra days. Starting on Thursday after 3 days off when we play the following Thursday is a week (7 days), minus the lighter day before the game, recovery after the vfl game or the weekend off for others, it's down to just 3 or 4 days of solid work. Start earlier, do some character building hard work for 5 or 6 days, then taper down before the game.

I see your point, I can understand the thinking but to me it just seems like more of the same softly softly gentle approach with the players. For Gods sake they are footballers, hard men (supposedly), I'm sure they can take it. If we had 2 good wins the time off to rest as a reward would be warranted. We haven't and it's time for tough love and hard work. More benificial in the long run and a wake up call in the short term.

 

[Grasshopper17]

Bit of housekeeping from the game day thread.

Answerth's skills haven't improved, I see.

Answerth had 15 disposals at 100% disposal efficiency according to those stats you like to quote all the time 3KZ.

 

[Grasshopper17]

We dominate locking the ball inside our 50 but we have the worst contested marking forward line in the game?? Rarely we see Daniher or Hipwood take consistent contested marks. Imagine if we had a King brother, or Lynch etc. we would win every game of footy.

Hipwood took 3 contested marks - the most on the field. Joe took none. If we are going to move the ball the way we did on Sunday (slow and boring) we need more out of both of them, as well as Oscar.

The great irony is the way we moved the ball is more likely to work with 3 tall forwards rather than 2. Yet on a day when we ended up undersized at both ends, therefore requiring quick ball movement, it disintegrated instead, leaving us horribly exposed on turnover.

 

[Grasshopper17]

Slowing it down to the point where they forget to try. Started with McCluggage's half arsed marking effort.

Yes. We discussed this last year. The key is staying mentally alert at the same time as physically you appear to have gone into "slow mode". Physiologically I guess it is counter-intuitive but it should be relatively straightforward provided that mindset is properly trained in conjunction with the decision making and skill execution.

 

[3KZ is Football]

Bit of housekeeping from the game day thread.



Answerth had 15 disposals at 100% disposal efficiency according to those stats you like to quote all the time 3KZ.

Great game from him. We’ll have more of that please. Going the bump and not the tackle was the only blemish. No questioning Answerth’s heart and endeavour.

 

[Viceregal]

The concept of Rayner's BREAKOUT GAME...A HOAX.

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Now I am pretty sure we could get that guy into a Lions jumper ... probably into the shorts ... not sure they even make footy boots in his size - is it a rule that you have to play in boots or would he be OK to play barefooted?

 

[SizeMatters]

Hipwood took 3 contested marks - the most on the field. Joe took none. If we are going to move the ball the way we did on Sunday (slow and boring) we need more out of both of them, as well as Oscar.

The great irony is the way we moved the ball is more likely to work with 3 tall forwards rather than 2. Yet on a day when we ended up undersized at both ends, therefore requiring quick ball movement, it disintegrated instead, leaving us horribly exposed on turnover.

Sorry I should have stated we are awful at contested marking inside 50 .

I get we got blokes who fly for marks etc but gee our fwds looked really slow and passive. Didn’t offer much at all. Witches hats!

 

[Grasshopper17]

Our game plan is .

I think (hope) what we saw last Sunday was a team struggling to adapt to not having a guy like Coleman able to help us kick our way through an opposition zone. Instead we took the conservative option, over and over again, going long down the line to an outnumber. Ultimately we will probably look to change up our game to accommodate some more run and carry. But this will take time to implement, as players need to become accustomed to new positions and new patterns etc.

Having said that, I would prefer us to spread the ball more laterally when confronted by a spare man behind the ball. This dictates that we will also have a spare man SOMEWHERE on the field. We need to utilise that spare man, and make him so influential that eventually the opposition has no alternative but to man him up. Multiple switches, wear them down mentally and then break them through the middle when the zone loses its discipline. Then we are back to one on one and we can revert to plan A. Fact of the matter is that even the most organised zone still has truckloads of gaps in it, provided the team in possession has the discipline and cohesion to work together to create space for the next receiver(s).

Unfortunately, from what I have seen in the last couple of seasons, and early this season, we lack the fitness to carry out either plan over any great period of time. Hopefully I am wrong and this really is something that will take time to bed down in Coleman's absence.

With regards to Sunday's start, I wouldn't be reading too much into it. The first 25 minutes of the Carlton game was scintillating, whereas the first 25 minutes of the Freo game was laborious and we got lucky. Look at our 4 goals - Hipwood from outside 50 would be a 30% chance (on expected score, not Hipwood personally), then we get that rushed behind free kick, Zorko gets a 50 and Bailey (of all people) takes a contested mark at the top of the goal square. Why were we even kicking long to Bailey at full forward anyway?

Then quarters 2 and 3, we just kept coughing up intercept marks and Freo exposed us on the counter attack, often through the corridor. It's like all the AFL coaches had a symposium over summer where they all decided they were going to play through the corridor way more often, and we somehow didn't get an invite. So it looks like we've been a bit slow on the uptake there - whether it's strategy, work rate or both is hard to tell on TV.

But I mean some of these stats make no sense. Beaten in clearances, smashed out of the middle, less intercepts... yet we ended up with more inside 50s. So there were at least aspects of our intercept/transition game which worked. Just the final connection to our forwards needs to improve, and while yes, it would be great to see Joe and Eric compete better aerially (and I think a 3rd tall forward will also help), I think we have more to gain by improving our ball movement, although this is more complex and will take longer to get right. I'd like to think we have used our longer break to address this, but who knows

The other thing that really stood out to me was our missed tackles. Some of it was truly amateur/schoolboy stuff, and we've seen this before. Freo laid 67 tackles to our 55. Combining that with the tackle %'s that Fages mentioned at the press conference (74% v 53%), this indicates that Freo had 91 opportunities to tackle, while we had 104. This ratio matches up pretty closely with the clearance numbers, indicating that Freo were first to the ball most of the time. Also we fumbled a truckload, and it was ironic hearing "Fages on the mic" from one of our training sessions, during the half time break, giving Cam Rayner tips on how to avoid fumbling the ball at ground level. Advice not well heeded it seems.

I think physically I'd like us to be bigger. I said the same thing this time last year, and even though it didn't really hurt us too often for the rest of the season, we don't really have one of those Petracca/Stringer/D Martin/H Young kind of players who are able to fend off and break out of tackles simply due to their sheer size and strength. And how often does a guy like Jack Viney have his tackles broken? Being bigger means we will stick more of our tackles AND stand up better, get hands free etc when we are tackled. But that horse has bolted and won't be something we can really address til next off/preseason.

So ultimately a lot of whether we're able to address all this in-season (and in-game) really comes back down to the attitude of our players, particularly our engine room, and whether we're prepared to roll up the sleeves and get filthy when things get a bit tough. Neale is no born leader but he at least tries in that regard, and his absence was more notable on Sunday than in any other game I can remember.

I appreciate I'm way late to the party here and everyone (including me) has already moved on to the Collingwood game. But after spending most of last week haranguing politicians on social media I still thought it was worth getting some of my thoughts on the game into writing.

 

[Grasshopper17]

Is it out inside 50 kicks or is it our forwards (or lack thereof) that creating intercept galore for these freo spuds ?

Yes.

 

[Gadzorks]

This feels like 2019. Could be awesome, could be a train wreck.

I expect see sawing momentum with both teams having periods of complete dominance. Or not .

 

[Grasshopper17]

Yes. We discussed this last year. The key is staying mentally alert at the same time as physically you appear to have gone into "slow mode". Physiologically I guess it is counter-intuitive but it should be relatively straightforward provided that mindset is properly trained in conjunction with the decision making and skill execution.

Further to this I came cross this quote from Virat Kohli. Absolutely sums up what I think we're talking about here:

 

[On the quiet]

Half serious question - would we at all consider getting Rich back in the mid season draft? Is that even possible? He’s the closest thing to Kiddy we could get although a level or two below. Has been training with Noosa so should still be in okay shape. Might need a ‘training block’ though.

No