He's right though, its not about playing "slow," its about defensive pressure & contested footy, which restricts our ability to play our game. Both teams that have done that this year have beaten us. This has been a major problem with Ken's game plan for a few years now, but this year has seen us handle it better.I'm not completely convinced this is the way to beat us. We've been very strong against sides that move the ball slowly because we've been able to convert that into significant numbers of repeat inside 50 entries. I think Richmond showed that the way to counter our forward half defence is to take contested marks at half back, play on quickly and then kick into space to players running at speed towards the goals. The quick play handpass to running players resulted in our backs getting a bit too close to the footy and allowing too much space out the back. I thought the player who stepped up in the 4th to stymie this tactic was Karl Amon who I thought won a number of important possessions on the western wing.
I may be over skeptical of the Saints, but I think the largest contributors to that result was Ladhams getting double teamed by Marshall and Ryder, and losing Mackenzie in the warm up, which screwed up our defensive structure.