Autopsy Round 16, 2024: Positives and Negatives vs Hawthorn

[Bender_]

You ran away when you realised you were wrong....

Like a coward as always

The **** you talking about as always?

No one listens to you because you pretend to be some sort of insider when realistically you're full of shit.

You're an absolute clown and need to shut the **** up.

 

[GoEaglesGoSGIO]

The **** you talking about as always?

No one listens to you because you pretend to be some sort of insider when realistically you're full of shit.

You're an absolute clown and need to shut the **** up.

Didnt you say Tyler Brockman wasnt meant to play int he WAFL and was at a funeral? You ran away like a coward on that one

 

[GoEaglesGoSGIO]

Well, you're the one trying to use something Schofield apparently said to back up your point and I've given you2 things he said to refute.

You also said Pyke should've ripped up the surface due to injuries. We now have the smallest injury list in recent memory.

Then you say the players are unfit, when Schofield said they definitely aren't unfit and that isn't the issue.

So it appears you are wrong.

I didnt say Schofield is 100% right 100% of the time at all. I just said its more then fans stating that Pyke and co need to make some changes

You simply cannot point to this level of failure and blame 1 or 2 things only. I pray you are correct on that but I just dont see it

 

[Bender_]

Didnt you say Tyler Brockman wasnt meant to play int he WAFL and was at a funeral? You ran away like a coward on that one

Where was the contrary proof of that - you hearing it from someone talking on a mobile phone at the ground or some shit?

Mate you're a liar and I pity how hard you work to try and impress people on the internet that you're part of some inner sanctum.

Again nothing but regret from this engagement.

 

[bzparkes]

I didnt say Schofield is 100% right 100% of the time at all. I just said its more then fans stating that Pyke and co need to make some changes

I mean, if you're going to use his words to try and back up your point, then it'd be weird to then discount the thins he says that you disagree with then, no?

That's just straight up confirmation bias.

Obviously changes need to be made but you need to work through them properly, not straight after a bad loss.

You simply cannot point to this level of failure and blame 1 or 2 things only. I pray you are correct on that but I just dont see it

I don't think the players are unfit, rather the manner in which they end up chasing and trying to cover space due to crappy ball movement and an ineffectual midfield zone simply makes them look so.

I daresay if you look at our wins this season, then oppo fans would've said their players also looked 'unfit'.

That's what happens when you're always having to exert additional energy trying to get back after yet another sloppy turnover.

That's not on the coach during gameday but if players can't execute basic skills constantly, then it's on the coach to ensure those sub-standard efforts are unacceptable.

Due to having his favourites, Simpson simply seems unable to do this, hence the need for a new voice.

 

[Ghossein]

Dan Const also said he spoke with a current player who said he hates Simpson.

found that very interesting, wondering if its a player that has been on backchat

players certainly not playing like they want him to stay

 

[bzparkes]

found that very interesting, wondering if its a player that has been on backchat

players certainly not playing like they want him to stay

Apparently Barrass was arguing with him during the Essendon game, although it's unlikely to be him.

I imagine it's someone on the outer, who's seen lesser performers get far more opportunity for not much in the way of results.

 

[Bacchus]

12 pages on first night. We must've been bad.
Usually we're only up to about p5 by this point

It was bad - real bad

Surely it has to be the end of Simpson, the Biden comparison is a good one

 

[Cuzz09]

Gaff? Seems angry 24/7

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[Ghossein]

Apparently Barrass was arguing with him during the Essendon game, although it's unlikely to be him.

I imagine it's someone on the outer, who's seen lesser performers get far more opportunity for not much in the way of results.

have asked him but doubt he will make it known publicly

 

[Bacchus]

The coach is responsible for the team's performance. It's his job to get the best out of his players. He has not done anywhere near that for 3 years now, & probably longer tbh

What more does someone need to do to get sacked. No coach ever gets sacked if we just point to the players performing poorly. That happens for every terrible team.

Coaches make a difference & it can happen quickly. McRae, Kingsley, B.Scott have all done it recently

Simpson has been involved in driving this once great and proud club off the cliff.

Nisbett and the boards also responsible.

 

[GoEaglesGoSGIO]

Where was the contrary proof of that - you hearing it from someone talking on a mobile phone at the ground or some shit?

Mate you're a liar and I pity how hard you work to try and impress people on the internet that you're part of some inner sanctum.

Again nothing but regret from this engagement.

You called me a liar, got proven wrong, still call me a liar cos you cant admit you were wrong

Coward

 

[Bender_]

 

[GoEaglesGoSGIO]

Simpson has been involved in driving this once great and proud club off the cliff.

Nisbett and the boards also responsible.

Nisbett, the board, Simmo, the recruting staff, the fitness staff, the medical staff, the players

Its a large ass group pulling towards the same goal of failure

Its a chain of failure. Nisbett gone, recruiting, fitness staff gone. Simmo and players time has come

 

[Bacchus]

And also, stoppage structure & the way in which we move the ball has a massive impact on midfield's performance. That is on the coach

Simpson was completely out coached yesterday afternoon - had his pants pulled down and back over his head

 

[Barrybran]

Shadows? Its been 3 years of complete failure. You cant ignore the previous 2 years cos you just began

Based on that logic if Pyke quits the post then the next person can come in and keep Simmo til end of 2025? After all its too soon to "jump at shadows"

Go outside and yell at some clouds. You'll feel much better for it.

Going into our last off-season our biggest problem was injuries. Our S & C department was turned over, we've increased our training intensity and today we have just five players (including Flynn) on our injury list. Touch wood, we've resolved that problem.

This year is a learning and development year. Assess the impact of the injury list, put in place training and game day strategies and assess the impact of those, develop players and assess the quality of the list at all levels. That is happening, whether you choose to accept it or not. We'll see what the club thinks of these things in the off-season.

If you think ranting and raving is going to solve problems then I wish you luck. Pyke is a smart operator and I've seen enough already to have faith that he knows what he's doing.

Not everything will be solved in one go. It will be a process of identifying problems, prioritising, eliminating possibilities, adding/subtracting/changing resources, putting in plans, measuring results, going through the cycle again.

 

[bzparkes]

Go outside and yell at some clouds. You'll feel much better for it.

Going into our last off-season our biggest problem was injuries. Our S & C department was turned over, we've increased our training intensity and today we have just five players (including Flynn). Touch wood, we've resolved that problem.

This year is a learning and development year. Assess the impact of the injury list, put in place training and game day strategies and assess the impact of those, develop players and assess the quality of the list at all levels. That is happening, whether you choose to accept or not. We'll see what the club thinks of these things in the off-season.

If you think ranting and raving is going to solve problems then I wish you luck. Pyke is a smart operator and I've seen enough already to have faith that he knows what he's doing.

Not everything will be solved in one go. It will be a process of identifying problems, prioritising, eliminating possibilities, adding/subtracting/changing resources, putting in plans, measuring results, going through the cycle again.

Nah, had to happen in the first offseason(which he started halfway through) otherwise his appointment was a complete failure

 

[Bender_]

Pyke has done nothing for this club since being responsible for our 2015 grand final appearance, and the fans have had enough of him doing nothing for 10 years.

That's what my sources tell me when I'm hanging around in the public toilets at MRP.

 

[Hook461123]

What a hard game to watch. I don't get what we are trying to do and with such obvious problems I don't understand how professional coaches can let it happen.

We've been too tall for weeks now with no ground pressure. Darling, Waterman, Allen, BWill just aren't going to work together. There getting in each others way, they all want to be the deepest forward and none of them can win a ground ball. Thanks for your service Darling but its time you were cut. Swap out the Williams too.

We've reverted from trying to be a front half pressure team to flooding back, guarding space and trying to win the ball back in the air. Sure Gov and Barrass get a lot of intercept marks but how about not letting teams just stoll up to the 50 and kick it in without pressure. Purely a coaching tactic.

Our midfield looked slow and disinterested. No defensive effort and no burst or run. What are they focusing on? Trying to hedge their bets both ways and get beaten to ball everytime. It looks like our mids don't know when to attack or when to defend.

We have no composure, run or kicking skills from the back half. Where is our transition and overlap running? Gov played well and is an elite kick but where is the run and carry? The amount of turnovers coming out of our back half is diabolical.

We need a reset, after all the momentum Reid gave us early in the season we have reverted to a terrible, frustrating game style.

Time to go Simpson, he's obviously not going to fall on his own sword, Pyke needs to cut him.

 

[Smotie2]

I literally said we should move Simpson on but ok.

Unfortunately most new coaches turn out to be mediocre coaches. That’s the reality. Unless we get someone proven but not sure who that is.

Thanks for that unhinged rant tho it was hilarious.

Most new coaches turn out to be mediocre?

How does any club win a premiership then?

 

[AsterixTheGaul]

Funny how zone defence where players are 5 to 20 metres off their opponents makes it look like it’s a lack of effort

Funny how badly our passing (both hand and foot) lead to turnovers and makes it look like a lack of effort. I’d be interested to see how many turnover chains and clangers that Duggan was involved in

Funny how you bring back Allen who is so out of touch and with poor structure around him that the forward line is too tall, too clumsy and too slow

Until Simpson addresses the elephant in the room on ball movement, we will be likely to play a brand of football resembling a festering turd.

My first game since returning to Oz and it was painful to be at Optus

Simmo was blindsided by what he knew. WTF. He will need to turn that around otherwise Pyke will have no choice but to replace him for next year

 

[Matera92]

Little has changed which has led to a continuance of disappointment and underachievement in the on-field performance of the club.

So how does this team repeatedly end up with such an embarrassing output?

The unfortunate answer is that the club today has by far the worst tactical setup that I have ever seen from any team.

It is at once compromised in both defence and attack and tries to remediate that by running the midfield into the ground, hampering the ability of that group to impact significantly during the latter part of matches. The gameplan has overwhelmingly pruned back its offensive capability to maintain defensive cohesion in the face of opposing counterattacks.

Opponents have come to learn that creating an outnumber through the corridor and linking disposal to shorter targets, rather than kicking long, rips apart the defensive zone of West Coast, creating an easy avenue to goal.

With the benefit of hindsight, the reluctance to modify the system in both directions was a time bomb that was always going to explode eventually once individual brilliance was no longer sufficient to deliver on-field results.

So where are we now? The club has completely broken down in defensive structure; whilst at the same time is completely unable to transition from defence into attack.


We keep hearing about how the club apparently needs more energy – however it remains questionable whether that will do much to address the tactical problems currently faced by the club.

Let’s face it, allowing an opponent 129 uncontested marks goes beyond whatever level of energy that the team may have – it only happens when your tactical setup is utterly incapable of containing the opposition.

It has little to do with energy when the opposition is able to walk through defensive holes in the middle of the ground, because the zone prioritises marking space over players, to the point where once opposing ball gets to the centre square the defence is opened up so comprehensively that it all but guarantees a shot on goal from directly in front.

The Telstra Tracker figures for the aerobic performance of both teams in this match against Hawthorn are similar, which dispels the obvious myth that the loss was due to being comprehensively outrun or due to a lack of effort by the players.
One team ran effectively, engaging dangerous positions; the other ran wildly to guard redundant space.

View attachment 2035692​

Considering the club continues to obsessively select squads that are overly tall, such instruction to run when the team currently features a midfield full of players that clearly remain underdone in their conditioning, combined with less rotational support, is a recipe for a dropoff in midfield output (both offensively and defensively) to occur during matches.

Should it really be any surprise then when the club concedes so many easy points late in matches?

View attachment 2035693​

As you can see, opponents are able to burst out of the blocks against West Coast as the system allows them to dominate possession. In response, the Eagles invariably push additional numbers up the ground to fill in holes, chase space and rally briefly; but all the extra effort in chasing shadows wears the team down, leaving the opponent free to re-gain dominance of possession during later stages – this time however, with much lower pressure being applied against them, the opponent is able to convert that dominance into easy goals on the scoreboard.

Only Richmond have conceded more points during last quarters this season than West Coast.

View attachment 2035695


This is a team with a ruckman that averages less than 75% time on ground, combined with a playing squad that incorporates 6-7 other key talls, in addition to midfielders returning from injuries.

And yet the approach is to somehow out-work the opponent and close out space, primarily through aerobic effort, in order to pin them down and gain territorial superiority.

Running is simply not a strength of this West Coast team, especially so when selection keeps finding places for unnecessary numbers of key-sized players – so expecting it to cover more ground than the opponent as a means of maintaining defensive cohesion is utterly foolish – and unfortunately will more often than not, lead to disappointing outcomes of the type that we been seeing of late.

Having more “energy” won’t make B.Williams or Flynn into an 85% time on ground ruckman, much like getting Jones to run 13km+ up the ground chasing grass won’t help the team to win ground balls in attack.

It is one thing to work hard, gut run and show effort – but if that extra effort leads to little in outcome other than early fatigue which allows the opponent to take hold of the game – then it just becomes dumb football.


Hawthorn ended up scoring 14 goals:

• 8 came from West Coast turnovers
• 9 came from chains that began in the defensive half of the ground

All the flaws in the system were laid bare - the Eagles gave the ball away going forward and then simply could not prevent the Hawks from generating attack out of defence.

S.Mitchell simply instructed his team to perform the following:

• Run the lanes
• Look for the short option
• Generate extra numbers in the corridor
• Move the ball quickly at every opportunity

Really simple stuff. But that is all that is necessary to break the Eagles’ defence. There is nothing novel about what Hawthorn did; indeed, it now seems to happen every week.


With the offensive capability teams now have at their disposal due to the recent rule changes, the days of being able to zone space through the middle are gone – if an opposing player is there somebody must go to them and mark up.

The dominance of “space” zones that are analogous to those utilised in soccer and hockey and are based more towards containing or directing opposing ball use in a certain way, is over. In their place are basketball-style “track” or hybrid zones, where players will track man-on-man with an opposing counterpart when play is in certain areas of the ground.

The first hurdle the club must overcome on the road to redemption is the abandonment of the zone defence as it currently stands.

The second hurdle relates to the ease in which opponents are able to accumulate possession. West Coast are worst in the competition when it comes to opposition dominance of ball.

View attachment 2035696​

This Round 16 match was the fourth time in 2024 that the club found itself losing uncontested possessions by more than 100; that's now consecutive weeks and 3 of the past 5 matches. In just one match this season (Round 10) have the Eagles won in uncontested possession.

With the team struggling to break even in the middle, the go-to response by the Eagles post-2018 is to cannibalise the forward line and repurpose it as additional cover for the under-pressure defence. The result is West Coast forwards often end up spending significant periods away from where they would usually be expected to operate and forward half pressure unsurprisingly drops off a cliff. A prime example is the current use of Chesser, Jones and L.Edwards, who have become the latest re-tread versions of the redundant aerobic sweeping “Masten” role – occupying so much time in the defensive half of the ground that they are no longer facilitating any forward function at all.

Of course, limiting the attack in such a way creates its own set of problems that are arguably far worse than the problem it is setting out to address. It is here that opponents are able to reaffirm their transition game, counterattacking from defence and where the club’s own ball movement from the back half suffers a lonely, withering death.

Rather, one should work to prevent the opposition from creating those midfield extras in the first place.

The third piece that requires correction is offensive ball movement (or the lack thereof).

What is the point of trying to control possession if no ground is being gained? As we as fans are all too aware, much to our frustration, the West Coast will voluntarily lose territory not just once, but multiple times in a match, trying to manufacture a slow switch in play that will never open up the opposing defence and only results in additional pressure being placed upon the Eagles’ defence that was completely unnecessary.

But for what reason is the retreat in the first place? No other club in the entire competition exhibits such risky activity that is so lacking in reward. Perhaps that is because there is a lack of options to kick to as the West Coast forwards are spending so much time up the ground to cover space defensively that they are often unavailable as offensive targets up forward. Thus the current situation is brought about, typified by slow, predictable ball movement that does not pose a threat to the opposing defence, ranking dead last of all teams for generating scores from the defensive half.

Get players ahead of the ball, stretch the opposing defence and provide those defenders with something to be worried about that creates uncertainty in terms of their positioning – that is how you create the opportunity for swift and direct ball movement that can tear a team to pieces.





Now it should be noted that all of the above is a near exact copy simply updated for this match and season from a post I made here back in 2021.

That it can detail so much of what is wrong today should be suffice enough to sum it all really.

The same issues have been described in detail since 2019 and yet they keep on repeating.


Nothing will change until the coach does.

Nah it was all about lack of synergy.



















(Seriously good read tho)

 

[Bacchus]

Any alarming bits of play people noticed or wanna bring up.

In the 4th quarter Bailey Willians thinking he couldnt make it back to the defense basically walking towards defensive 50. Hawks moved the ball slowly and took a contested grab. A contest Williams could have actually gotten too

That play in the last where Allen was on the wing in a marking contest, lost it and ended up a 3 on 1 with Hawthorn with Brockman running forward of the ball and someione else running for a handball receive. Once Allen lost it both just dropped their heads and let him compete 3 on 1.

Play in the 3rd where I think it was Duggan decided that on the 50m line he was going to blind tap it behind his head too move it forward. Reality is the moron just didnt want to get tackled. Led to a goal from the turnover

Feel like I could bring up 20 more to be honest

Was Cripps who did the horrible tap.

 

[Wooshaaaa]

Yeah, what I would suggest is that despite the odd clanger, he actually had a pretty good game.

But again, i know a lot of people don't share my opinion on Witho so I'm not fussed it you disagree.

The odd clanger

Get real and go watch the game again. No one shares your view. He is useless. 6 turnovers, 1 tackle and a couple of 1%.



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[Ghossein]

pyke did 9/11