Review Round 16, 2024 - Brisbane Lions vs. Melbourne

[Grasshopper17]

I feel like that's not really true - we put in a hell of a lot of effort in the second half and especially in the last. We didn't fall across the line, we worked our way back from a four goal deficit.

Yes, maybe it's just me but I will happily watch a replay of last night's game ahead of, say, our 6 point win over Adelaide last year. Yes both games were close but we arguably played closer to our best in that game last year.

The key difference to me is that last year we were literally hanging on at the end, and I think many of us left the ground feeling a bit hollow about that win, whereas last night we came from behind, came really hard too and there was a great deal of elation. I'd rather watch that and feel those emotions all day long.

But I'd still prefer to win every quarter and dominate from start to finish

 

[Grasshopper17]

Joyce did not look out of place. Well done.

This comment has copped a fair bit of "reaction" which is fair enough, but I thought Joyce improved in the 2nd half to the point where he was at least not completely disgraced. In his defence he's our 6th string tall defender so our hands are tied in that sense.

 

[Grasshopper17]

Reckon we may have learnt what it takes to win a premiership tonight.

By all means play an attacking game that may result in you getting burned on turnover, but when it is your turn to defend you do it like your life depends on it. Think we saw that on numerous occasions in the last quarter.

That feeling when someone describes in 50 words what took you 1000

 

[bungalow_bill]

I come here to say this. Watching the game back he was pivotal so many times.

He has seemed to put his head down and bum up this season. Any niggles or little melees he doesn't want a bar of. Just jogs back to position and minds his own business.

This attitude worked for McEnroe as well in 1984. Had his best year ever focusing on just his tennis and mostly keeping his notorious temper under control.

 

[rye]

bit odd people are singling out mckenna to me... felt like his kicking was pretty effective last night and he has been building some decent form over the last few weeks. maybe a bit of angst about wanting brain in the team? he was quite good to my eye.

thought it was strange how often we were using starce's kicking last night. even stranger that he hit some really good ones. maybe his kickings improved out of sight over time.

bailey was by far the worst player on the ground. morris got subbed out without having a impact but bailey was a net negative last night.

 

[luthor]

Interesting voting in the "5 best players against Melbourne" thing.

Irrespective of your opinion of Hugh's overall output in the match, I find it curious that 24.8% of us couldn't find a vote for the bloke that stepped up in the clutch moment of the game and actually WON it for us with a sublime kick for goal.

 

[3KZ is Football]

In terms of McKenna, given Answerth is out for 5 weeks I think, no need to drop him for anyone. Our defense is like 3rd or 4th in the comp, so something is working well so until Answerth is good to go, probably no need to look at messing with it.

We are definitely in the window and last night I reckon might be the final piece of the puzzle we've been looking for. We've got WAshcroft back and he will only get better, the kids all stood up when it counted and we ran down Melbourne who for a long time now have been doing exactly that to us.

I'm telling you, this has 2001 written all over it.

Hope you are right. Then 2025 can have 2002 written all over it and 2026 can have 2003 written all over it.

 

[Grasshopper17]

If we kicked just the easy goals it could easily have been six goal win or more with very little stress involved.

Funnily enough expected score was about the same as the final result:



It's interesting to look at the breakdown of expected score per shot as well:



We averaged only 2.83 expected points per shot. 3.12 from set shots and 2.58 per shot in play. And Melbourne's were lower again. These are very low; the AFL average this season is 3.23 overall, 3.52 per set shot and 2.86 per in play shot.

This says to me that while, yes, both teams were able to generate shots at goal pretty regularly, they weren't high quality shots - they were either from range, from out wide, or under pressure.

For much of the game we kicked long to contests inside 50, sometimes deep (usually good, but perhaps not best practice against Lever and May), sometimes shallow (rarely good). This seemed to be a deliberate tactic and I'd be fascinated to know the rationale behind this, after we went to such lengths to try NOT to do that in a Round 5. Even tho we were generally able to bring these balls to ground, any shots we were able to take from these entries were often hurried and under pressure.

So, to your original point, yes we missed a lot of easy shots, but we also kicked a whole host of hard ones. The last two of course, but also Joe's in the 2nd quarter when we were under the pump. Charlie's set shot in the 1st quarter would also have been low percentage from that distance.

I'd much prefer to see us getting easier shots inside 50. Something we rarely do is switch across the half forward line when held up outside 50... When we do switch it tends to happen no/little further forward than the centre line. This could be something worth exploring; it may open up a leading lane on the open side of the ground that's not necessarily hemmed in against the boundary.

 

[Grasshopper17]

Probably need to add also that yes we also butchered a handful of opportunities which should have been easy goals where we didn't even get a shot at all.

Those ones show up as a big fat "0" on expected score, so perhaps not the full story, and these may be included in the "easy goals" you referred to.

 

[Grasshopper17]

Anyone have our stats from the final qtr? Disposals, contested, marks etc

I don't always do this but I remembered to take screenshots of the AFL app at the end of each quarter during the game.

According to these screenshots we had 69 kicks and 39 handballs in the last quarter, compared to their 51 and 32.

Contested possessions were 29 to 35 in Melbourne's favour, but uncontested were 74-43 to us. This supports the general view live at the ground that we were absolutely running over the top of them.

Marks were 37-19, of which 2-1 were contested.

Couple of other stats of note... Inside 50s were 16-9, 4-0 tackles inside forward 50 and 3-0 marks inside 50.

 

[Grasshopper17]

Answerth would be perfect but has horrible disposal

Tell us you haven't actually watched any footy this season without telling us you haven't watched any footy this season.

 

[Grasshopper17]

So very similar to our midfield.

Dunkley? Berry?

This was an interesting discussion on the non-Lions page. Up until last night I would have agreed with briz in comparing our midfield to the Sydney midfield in only wanting to run one way and not being prepared to get down and dirty when things are going against us. But I thought the fact we were able to turn things around and largely go toe to toe with Melbourne's midfield after half time was a promising step forward. A well rounded midfield can play in both these gears.

 

[Sproj]

Our goal should be to have 44 A graders on the list and we are a long way off that.

We aren’t the Melbourne Storm here.

 

[beatnik]

Gawn has been in my nightmares for years

We got the win over him though so I'll take it

He’s given an incredible amount of leeway with physicality not afforded to other players…I love the guy but geez, he’s like the Lebron of the AFL

 

[Ray Button]

Quite pleasing to see that we finally learned not to "kick it to Gawn". He was credited to only two marks, one at least being from a Melb kickout.
He had nowhere near the influence in general field play he's had in the past.

 

[On the quiet]

I'd keep Payne away for next week and the Optus trip to make sure his foot is right. Rest for 3 weeks or play in 2s and come back in against Swans at Gabba so Joyce gets a 3 game block to get familiar with the pace of the game in 1s.

If we're finals worthy, then having a fit Payne is more important than testing his foot out on the hard surface of Optus. So if Payne's not playing Optus then we shouldn't be picking him next week as well, so there is some continuity at least for Joyce.

It's not going to help either player if we did Payne (Adelaide) / Joyce (Optus - West Coast) / Payne (Swans).

Have to agree, surely we beat the Crows at the GABBA and don't risk Payne on the hard surface of Optus. Not easy for Joyce to just come into a high pressure game when not playing at that level for over a year, I think he will be better this week

 

[On the quiet]

He’s the same size as starce coming over another Acl

Lester is playing great football although how long will it last? Gardiner is most likely retiring after this major injury and Joyce should stick to the reserves

Realistically Payne and Andrew’s are our main KPD in the 1 on 1 sense, we have some good intercept players you’re not wrong although without Payne/Andrew’s the Curnows of the world are even more of a scary proposition


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i think Dizzy still has two more years on his contract so I see him playing next year. Doedee with three ACL's is a concern as he is contracted for another 3 years, but hopefully he can recover. I not 100% certain, but recently there is a NRL player from one of the sydney sides that came back to NRL after 3 ACL's.

 

[NotQuiteJezza]

i think Dizzy still has two more years on his contract so I see him playing next year. Doedee with three ACL's is a concern as he is contracted for another 3 years, but hopefully he can recover. I not 100% certain, but recently there is a NRL player from one of the sydney sides that came back to NRL after 3 ACL's.

I saw Dizzy still on crutches and Linc walking without the other day. Hoping both play on next year.

 

[On the quiet]

He hardly won a 1 on 1 and butchered disposals. Next.

He seemed to be playing much further upfield than Payne usually does, which concerns me when there is a quick turnover. Yes, he made some mistakes but not easy having not played AFL for over a year. I am not sure we have too many other options at this stage.

 

[On the quiet]

I saw Dizzy still on crutches and Linc walking without the other day. Hoping both play on next year.

I think both will play on next year and have a role, but I would not include them as automatic selections

 

[Elixuh]

Have to agree, surely we beat the Crows at the GABBA and don't risk Payne on the hard surface of Optus. Not easy for Joyce to just come into a high pressure game when not playing at that level for over a year, I think he will be better this week

Payne needs to play against wce otherwise we will be murdered.

 

[Nunez]

Payne needs to play against wce otherwise we will be murdered.

He'll be back this week I suspect.

 

[Nathan Barley]

Funnily enough expected score was about the same as the final result:



It's interesting to look at the breakdown of expected score per shot as well:

View attachment 2034420

We averaged only 2.83 expected points per shot. 3.12 from set shots and 2.58 per shot in play. And Melbourne's were lower again. These are very low; the AFL average this season is 3.23 overall, 3.52 per set shot and 2.86 per in play shot.

This says to me that while, yes, both teams were able to generate shots at goal pretty regularly, they weren't high quality shots - they were either from range, from out wide, or under pressure.

For much of the game we kicked long to contests inside 50, sometimes deep (usually good, but perhaps not best practice against Lever and May), sometimes shallow (rarely good). This seemed to be a deliberate tactic and I'd be fascinated to know the rationale behind this, after we went to such lengths to try NOT to do that in a Round 5. Even tho we were generally able to bring these balls to ground, any shots we were able to take from these entries were often hurried and under pressure.

So, to your original point, yes we missed a lot of easy shots, but we also kicked a whole host of hard ones. The last two of course, but also Joe's in the 2nd quarter when we were under the pump. Charlie's set shot in the 1st quarter would also have been low percentage from that distance.

I'd much prefer to see us getting easier shots inside 50. Something we rarely do is switch across the half forward line when held up outside 50... When we do switch it tends to happen no/little further forward than the centre line. This could be something worth exploring; it may open up a leading lane on the open side of the ground that's not necessarily hemmed in against the boundary.

I think Melbourne had numbers behind the ball but setup on the half back line and when our ball movement was good enough we kicked over where they had extra numbers and got it to about 20m out where we had an extra eg. Charlie's second goal

 

[On the quiet]

Payne needs to play against wce otherwise we will be murdered.

Not so sure. I don't rate Darling, so if he plays deep put Joyce on him, and Harris to Allen (who I do rate), but is coming back from a long term injury. Whilst I think Payne is athletic enough (when fit) to mark Waterman, it should be Starc or perhaps Lester. Our mids need to win the contest, and whilst Eagles have improved, if Lions are serious about going deep into the finals should beat eagles.

 

[Section 5]

Does anyone have the teams pressure stats for each quarter.
The one that has i think anything over 200 is good.
Our 2nd quarter would have been horrendous but interested in the other 3 quarters.