Macca19
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Well it turned out to be a disappointing start to the season for Port Adelaide. Its hard to take positives out of a 75 point loss, but we move on to face the West Coast Eagles. West Coast are coming off a quality tight contest against North Melbourne, overcoming injuries to Chris Masten and Mark LeCras, as well as having Nic Naitanui pulling out pre-game to win by 4 points at Subiaco.
Port has had the wood on West Coast at AAMI Stadium for years. West Coast have only won the once against Port Adelaide here, way back in 1998 and even that was by under a kick after Darryl Poole hit the post with a tough shot from near the boundary with 30 seconds left. Otherwise, we have always played well against West Coast here, even in our poor years we've still found an extra yard to get over the top of them. We beat the comfortably in their premiership year with a young Pearce dominating and Shaun Burgoyne playing close to the perfect game of football. We came from behind to beat them in a close final in 2007. We had our first 100 point victory over them in 2001. This is a game the club expects to win, though some would say West Coast are due...
GAMEPLAN
West Coast rely heavily on a winning midfield to win games of football. It sounds straight forward and I guess it is, but their chances rely on Dean Cox and Nic Naitanui feeding their youthful midfielders first use of the ball. When they get the ball in quick to their open forward line then they can be hard to beat. With plenty of runners and two very good forwards in Mark LeCras and Josh Kennedy, when in form they look fantastic. Unfortunately, those days have been few and far between in the last couple of seasons.
They play predominantly down the wings, playing wide and allowing for their superior rucks to win the ball back if it goes out of play. They look to switch regularly across half back, moving the ball quickly to the opposite side of the ground to open up their opponents and find a clear path inside the forward 50.
ALL ABOUT THE SKILLS
West Coast’s main issue has been poor skills. In 2010 they had undeniably the worst skills in the competition. We saw this first hand in Round 2 where they gifted us the game after making turnover after turnover. The short style of play they try to play relies heavily on pin point accuracy with their foot passes and at this point in time, they do not have the skills to pull this off, leading to turnovers, goals to the opposition and lost matches. It is the one thing holding back the Eagles from improving back up the ladder.
Nothing I saw in the pre season matches suggested this would be significantly improved in 2011. In the match against Collingwood in particular they made a number of critical errors which ultimately cost them the game. Their inability to get the ball forward often enough due to turnovers in the middle proved costly. Even under no pressure they miss targets and under pressure they resort to high long bombs forward which are easily dealt with by the opposition. Against North Melbourne it was a similar story, with poor skills and decision making seeing them blow a 20 point lead in the space of 5 minutes during the third quarter. Players such as Ebert, Scott Selwood, Schofield and Sheppard need to improve their decision making under pressure.
COMING OUT OF DEFENCE
They have Hurn and Schofield usually deal with kick ins, and their main option is to kick long to a flank group of 2-3 teammates including one of Cox, Naitanui or Lynch, depending on who is in the ruck at the time. They look for the big mark from the ruckman, who then will switch play to the other side of the ground.
They seem to favour playing down the left hand wing with 43% of their forward movement in the NAB Cup and 57% against North Melbourne played down the left side. They often look right before switching to the left hand side across half back. They swing left from out of the centre square when they win the stoppage and handball to a Priddis or Scott Selwood who swings around and kicks towards the left hand flank where a Darling or Kennedy is often situated. Embley is a player who they look to a lot across the half back line and wing, relying on them to carry the ball and hit targets. Embley struggled with this throughout the NAB Cup, but was close to best on ground against North Melbourne.
Defensively they had Mitch Brown line up mostly against Hansen who he defeated quite comfortably. Glass spent time on numerous players in a general type role. Schofield played on and was easily beaten by the more nimble Lindsay Thomas. Schofield was out positioned numerous times and Thomas ended up with 4 goals. Hurn, Waters and Sheppard play down back and all three can be offensive weapons.
FORWARD STRUCTURE
They have two very good forwards in Mark LeCras and Josh Kennedy who they look to on a regular basis, depending on when and how they get the ball forward.
From centre bounces they often play either out of the goal square with an open forward 50 in front of them, pushing 3 or 4 players up to the half forward line. This allows for the quick kick out of the centre, hoping to win the footy and then a quick kick forward to the leading player who has a paddock to lead into. If they don’t win the ball out of the centre then they tend to push a couple more players back inside the 50 to a more traditional forward line structure.
LeCras likes to lead to the pockets and uses his agility to win the ball if he doesn’t mark. Kennedy is hit up often more in a long high kick forward to a hot spot 30 metres out directly in front. Kennedy is hit up the most inside 50, being the forward 50 target on 21 occasions (33%) during the NAB Cup. LeCras was next with 10. Others such as Lynch and Callum Wilson provide marking targets up forward, whilst they had smalls such as Ashton Hams, Gerrick Weedon and Andrew Strijk playing across the half forward line. They hit up the small half forwards who then look inside for the mark closer to goal.
In Round 1, Wilson, Weedon and Strijk didn’t make the line up but the structure stayed quite similar. LeCras spent some time in the midfield when not up forward but unfortunately for West Coast, he looks to have done serious damage to his groin muscle. This throws up a chance for West Coast to change their forward structure around slightly. Do they bring in a marking target like Callum Wilson to play out of Full Forward, or do they bring in another small agile player such as Strijk or Weedon who can search for the ball throughout the forward 70m area?
Again, similar to the NAB Cup, Kennedy was the main marking target inside forward 50. He was the target on 15 occassions out of 41 clear inside 50 entries. They threw Cox forward during the second half playing out of the square, who became the target for the long bomb to the top of the square. Ashton Hams played as the small across half forward and kept the ball in the area well with 3 tackles and 4 inside 50s. Jack Darling was most impressive in his debut, with a couple of strong grabs and two goals after working as a high forward pocket up towards the flanks.
Mark Nicoski became the joker in the pack. The usual running defender was stationed across half forward where he played a high quality game, kicking two important last quarter goals, being involved in at least three others throughout the match and providing some x-factor due to his pace and long kicking.
NAB DETAIL
WHY THEY BEAT GOLD COAST:
A dominant display from their two ruckman went a long to West Coast winning against the Suns, with both Cox and Naitanui running their inexperienced counterparts ragged. For a lot of the match both ruckmen started at the centre bounce and both would run hard, creating options especially in attack where they kicked 3 goals between them. Gold Coast’s ruckmen tried to run off them the other way but they just couldn’t make the impact.
More fluid midfield movement meant they created plenty of chances in attack, especially trying to hit leading targets in the pockets. Kennedy played well inside the forward 50, whilst Jack Darling provided a target across half forward. As the forward 50 chart below shows, they did like to move the ball wide with a lot of the forwards leading to the pockets.
They had a stronger defensive unit with the likes of Schofield and Brown successfully beating their opponents, whilst their small defenders played well with only Matera finding space inside 50 to cause a headache.
WHY THEY LOST TO COLLINGWOOD:
Skills, skills and more skills. They just didn’t have the class to move the ball freely to get beyond the Collingwood choke. They struggled with unforced errors meaning they didn’t get the ball forward of centre enough to create enough scoring opportunities, even though they had a high efficiency once getting the ball inside 50. They relied too much on the long kick to Kennedy who was successfully crowded to make as much of an impact as he did against Gold Coast. There was much less leading from the forwards against Collingwood and they looked more for the hot spot in front of goal.
They lost the midfield battle to Collingwoods classier movers, with Pendlebury dominating. They struggled to contain the two Collingwood talls in attack with Mitch Brown going off injured halfway through the match. But it all boiled down to not moving the ball cleanly. They closed to within a kick during the last quarter but ruined their chances with turnovers at crucial times.
ROUND 1
WHY THEY BEAT NORTH MELBOURNE
It was a good quality contest which could have gone either way. Even though West Coast led for much of the last three quarters, North Melbourne had a couple of purple patches which saw them come from a way back to really pressure the Eagles. It was a mighty effort for the Eagles to triumph considering their injuries to a couple of runners putting pressure on the rest of their small brigade.
Norths purple patches came under seeing the Eagles half back line put under pressure and making critical errors, turning the ball over close to goal and poor player marking inside 50.
The Eagles through ultimately had more options up forward, both in terms of marking targets and smalls who were well supplied by a midfield that was itself brilliantly supplied by the dominance of Dean Cox against a ruckmanless North Melbourne outfit. The Eagles had 50 hitouts to 18, which shows the amount of first use the Eagles midfielders had against their opponents.
They often went for the hot spot high and long to Kennedy 20 out in front of goal and whilst Kennedy only took the 2 marks inside 50, the smalls had the chance to shark at their feet.
DANGERMAN
Dean Cox – He looks fit. Really fit. He was the Eagles best player in the NAB Cup, with a dominant performance against Gold Coast and 22 disposals against Collingwood. He was again best on ground against North Melbourne. He’s marking strongly, he’s moving freely and he’s winning plenty of the football. With Naitanui likely to be back this week, Cox can finally go 100% whilst on the ground with an adequate back up to relieve the pressure off his shoulders. He’s pushing forward and kicking goals. He can be the difference for the Eagles if he can get on top of Brogan.
X-FACTOR
Andrew Embley – Played one of the best games he has played in a couple of years against North Melbourne, picking up 28 disposals and a goal playing on a wing. It was only the masterful display shown by Dean Cox that kept him from being best on ground. He also had 5 tackles, 3 inside 50s and 2 goal assists and most importantly, had a 79% disposal efficiency. He is quick, he is tall, he can carry the ball, he can kick goals and he goes in hard. He is one of the most experienced on field leaders for the Eagles and if he shows this form on the weekend then he could be a handful to manage.
POSSIBLE MATCH UPS:
CARLILE vs KENNEDY – Alipate will most likely line up against big Josh Kennedy on Saturday. They look high and long to Kennedy inside 50 so Alipate will need to improve on his performance against Collingwood.
CHAPLIN vs DARLING – Like the above match up, Troy will need to be on his game. Jack has strong hands and a good motor. Troy should be able to hold the second gamer, but we should not take it for granted.
P STEWART vs NICOSKI – Paul Stewart has the pace and agility to go with Nicoski and has the ability to hurt Nicoski going the other way.
A SELWOOD vs BOAK – Adam Selwood had a fantastic game on the weekend, keeping the ever dangerous Brent Harvey to just the 11 disposals and the opening goal of the match. Selwood is someone that can blanket a player and pick up plenty of the ball himself. Boak had a quiet one on the weekend but will be looking to hit back against the Eagles
BROGAN vs COX – This will be one of the match ups that will decide the match. Dean Cox looks as good and dangerous as he did at his peak through 05-07. We may see someone like Trengove follow Cox around the ground to try and limit his output (29 disposals against NM, average of 20 in the NAB) whilst Brogan will need to provide a strong contest and get his hands on the ball for our midfielders to have the best chance against their opponents.
WESTHOFF vs SCHOFIELD – If either Ebert or Motlop plays, Schofield may go to them, but at this stage it looks like Schofield picking up Westhoff. Schofield is very quick for his size so will be able to keep up and provide a contest against Westhoff. Westhoff should be able to get on top if he can use his footy brain to his advantage and show Schofield up for his lack of physicality.
PREDICTION:
Port Adelaide by 16 points. I think Port will hit back this week and collect their first win of the season. I think we have more offensive midfield weapons than West Coast and have the defence to be able to cover their forward line. It all depends on how well our forward line can perform. If it can play well then we should win. If West Coast can block our forwards (which admittedly isn’t that full of options at the moment) from kicking goals then we may see West Coast get on top.
Port has had the wood on West Coast at AAMI Stadium for years. West Coast have only won the once against Port Adelaide here, way back in 1998 and even that was by under a kick after Darryl Poole hit the post with a tough shot from near the boundary with 30 seconds left. Otherwise, we have always played well against West Coast here, even in our poor years we've still found an extra yard to get over the top of them. We beat the comfortably in their premiership year with a young Pearce dominating and Shaun Burgoyne playing close to the perfect game of football. We came from behind to beat them in a close final in 2007. We had our first 100 point victory over them in 2001. This is a game the club expects to win, though some would say West Coast are due...
GAMEPLAN
West Coast rely heavily on a winning midfield to win games of football. It sounds straight forward and I guess it is, but their chances rely on Dean Cox and Nic Naitanui feeding their youthful midfielders first use of the ball. When they get the ball in quick to their open forward line then they can be hard to beat. With plenty of runners and two very good forwards in Mark LeCras and Josh Kennedy, when in form they look fantastic. Unfortunately, those days have been few and far between in the last couple of seasons.
They play predominantly down the wings, playing wide and allowing for their superior rucks to win the ball back if it goes out of play. They look to switch regularly across half back, moving the ball quickly to the opposite side of the ground to open up their opponents and find a clear path inside the forward 50.
ALL ABOUT THE SKILLS
West Coast’s main issue has been poor skills. In 2010 they had undeniably the worst skills in the competition. We saw this first hand in Round 2 where they gifted us the game after making turnover after turnover. The short style of play they try to play relies heavily on pin point accuracy with their foot passes and at this point in time, they do not have the skills to pull this off, leading to turnovers, goals to the opposition and lost matches. It is the one thing holding back the Eagles from improving back up the ladder.
Nothing I saw in the pre season matches suggested this would be significantly improved in 2011. In the match against Collingwood in particular they made a number of critical errors which ultimately cost them the game. Their inability to get the ball forward often enough due to turnovers in the middle proved costly. Even under no pressure they miss targets and under pressure they resort to high long bombs forward which are easily dealt with by the opposition. Against North Melbourne it was a similar story, with poor skills and decision making seeing them blow a 20 point lead in the space of 5 minutes during the third quarter. Players such as Ebert, Scott Selwood, Schofield and Sheppard need to improve their decision making under pressure.
COMING OUT OF DEFENCE
They have Hurn and Schofield usually deal with kick ins, and their main option is to kick long to a flank group of 2-3 teammates including one of Cox, Naitanui or Lynch, depending on who is in the ruck at the time. They look for the big mark from the ruckman, who then will switch play to the other side of the ground.
They seem to favour playing down the left hand wing with 43% of their forward movement in the NAB Cup and 57% against North Melbourne played down the left side. They often look right before switching to the left hand side across half back. They swing left from out of the centre square when they win the stoppage and handball to a Priddis or Scott Selwood who swings around and kicks towards the left hand flank where a Darling or Kennedy is often situated. Embley is a player who they look to a lot across the half back line and wing, relying on them to carry the ball and hit targets. Embley struggled with this throughout the NAB Cup, but was close to best on ground against North Melbourne.
Defensively they had Mitch Brown line up mostly against Hansen who he defeated quite comfortably. Glass spent time on numerous players in a general type role. Schofield played on and was easily beaten by the more nimble Lindsay Thomas. Schofield was out positioned numerous times and Thomas ended up with 4 goals. Hurn, Waters and Sheppard play down back and all three can be offensive weapons.
FORWARD STRUCTURE
They have two very good forwards in Mark LeCras and Josh Kennedy who they look to on a regular basis, depending on when and how they get the ball forward.
From centre bounces they often play either out of the goal square with an open forward 50 in front of them, pushing 3 or 4 players up to the half forward line. This allows for the quick kick out of the centre, hoping to win the footy and then a quick kick forward to the leading player who has a paddock to lead into. If they don’t win the ball out of the centre then they tend to push a couple more players back inside the 50 to a more traditional forward line structure.
LeCras likes to lead to the pockets and uses his agility to win the ball if he doesn’t mark. Kennedy is hit up often more in a long high kick forward to a hot spot 30 metres out directly in front. Kennedy is hit up the most inside 50, being the forward 50 target on 21 occasions (33%) during the NAB Cup. LeCras was next with 10. Others such as Lynch and Callum Wilson provide marking targets up forward, whilst they had smalls such as Ashton Hams, Gerrick Weedon and Andrew Strijk playing across the half forward line. They hit up the small half forwards who then look inside for the mark closer to goal.
In Round 1, Wilson, Weedon and Strijk didn’t make the line up but the structure stayed quite similar. LeCras spent some time in the midfield when not up forward but unfortunately for West Coast, he looks to have done serious damage to his groin muscle. This throws up a chance for West Coast to change their forward structure around slightly. Do they bring in a marking target like Callum Wilson to play out of Full Forward, or do they bring in another small agile player such as Strijk or Weedon who can search for the ball throughout the forward 70m area?
Again, similar to the NAB Cup, Kennedy was the main marking target inside forward 50. He was the target on 15 occassions out of 41 clear inside 50 entries. They threw Cox forward during the second half playing out of the square, who became the target for the long bomb to the top of the square. Ashton Hams played as the small across half forward and kept the ball in the area well with 3 tackles and 4 inside 50s. Jack Darling was most impressive in his debut, with a couple of strong grabs and two goals after working as a high forward pocket up towards the flanks.
Mark Nicoski became the joker in the pack. The usual running defender was stationed across half forward where he played a high quality game, kicking two important last quarter goals, being involved in at least three others throughout the match and providing some x-factor due to his pace and long kicking.
NAB DETAIL
WHY THEY BEAT GOLD COAST:
A dominant display from their two ruckman went a long to West Coast winning against the Suns, with both Cox and Naitanui running their inexperienced counterparts ragged. For a lot of the match both ruckmen started at the centre bounce and both would run hard, creating options especially in attack where they kicked 3 goals between them. Gold Coast’s ruckmen tried to run off them the other way but they just couldn’t make the impact.
More fluid midfield movement meant they created plenty of chances in attack, especially trying to hit leading targets in the pockets. Kennedy played well inside the forward 50, whilst Jack Darling provided a target across half forward. As the forward 50 chart below shows, they did like to move the ball wide with a lot of the forwards leading to the pockets.
They had a stronger defensive unit with the likes of Schofield and Brown successfully beating their opponents, whilst their small defenders played well with only Matera finding space inside 50 to cause a headache.
WHY THEY LOST TO COLLINGWOOD:
Skills, skills and more skills. They just didn’t have the class to move the ball freely to get beyond the Collingwood choke. They struggled with unforced errors meaning they didn’t get the ball forward of centre enough to create enough scoring opportunities, even though they had a high efficiency once getting the ball inside 50. They relied too much on the long kick to Kennedy who was successfully crowded to make as much of an impact as he did against Gold Coast. There was much less leading from the forwards against Collingwood and they looked more for the hot spot in front of goal.
They lost the midfield battle to Collingwoods classier movers, with Pendlebury dominating. They struggled to contain the two Collingwood talls in attack with Mitch Brown going off injured halfway through the match. But it all boiled down to not moving the ball cleanly. They closed to within a kick during the last quarter but ruined their chances with turnovers at crucial times.
ROUND 1
WHY THEY BEAT NORTH MELBOURNE
It was a good quality contest which could have gone either way. Even though West Coast led for much of the last three quarters, North Melbourne had a couple of purple patches which saw them come from a way back to really pressure the Eagles. It was a mighty effort for the Eagles to triumph considering their injuries to a couple of runners putting pressure on the rest of their small brigade.
Norths purple patches came under seeing the Eagles half back line put under pressure and making critical errors, turning the ball over close to goal and poor player marking inside 50.
The Eagles through ultimately had more options up forward, both in terms of marking targets and smalls who were well supplied by a midfield that was itself brilliantly supplied by the dominance of Dean Cox against a ruckmanless North Melbourne outfit. The Eagles had 50 hitouts to 18, which shows the amount of first use the Eagles midfielders had against their opponents.
They often went for the hot spot high and long to Kennedy 20 out in front of goal and whilst Kennedy only took the 2 marks inside 50, the smalls had the chance to shark at their feet.
DANGERMAN
Dean Cox – He looks fit. Really fit. He was the Eagles best player in the NAB Cup, with a dominant performance against Gold Coast and 22 disposals against Collingwood. He was again best on ground against North Melbourne. He’s marking strongly, he’s moving freely and he’s winning plenty of the football. With Naitanui likely to be back this week, Cox can finally go 100% whilst on the ground with an adequate back up to relieve the pressure off his shoulders. He’s pushing forward and kicking goals. He can be the difference for the Eagles if he can get on top of Brogan.
X-FACTOR
Andrew Embley – Played one of the best games he has played in a couple of years against North Melbourne, picking up 28 disposals and a goal playing on a wing. It was only the masterful display shown by Dean Cox that kept him from being best on ground. He also had 5 tackles, 3 inside 50s and 2 goal assists and most importantly, had a 79% disposal efficiency. He is quick, he is tall, he can carry the ball, he can kick goals and he goes in hard. He is one of the most experienced on field leaders for the Eagles and if he shows this form on the weekend then he could be a handful to manage.
POSSIBLE MATCH UPS:
CARLILE vs KENNEDY – Alipate will most likely line up against big Josh Kennedy on Saturday. They look high and long to Kennedy inside 50 so Alipate will need to improve on his performance against Collingwood.
CHAPLIN vs DARLING – Like the above match up, Troy will need to be on his game. Jack has strong hands and a good motor. Troy should be able to hold the second gamer, but we should not take it for granted.
P STEWART vs NICOSKI – Paul Stewart has the pace and agility to go with Nicoski and has the ability to hurt Nicoski going the other way.
A SELWOOD vs BOAK – Adam Selwood had a fantastic game on the weekend, keeping the ever dangerous Brent Harvey to just the 11 disposals and the opening goal of the match. Selwood is someone that can blanket a player and pick up plenty of the ball himself. Boak had a quiet one on the weekend but will be looking to hit back against the Eagles
BROGAN vs COX – This will be one of the match ups that will decide the match. Dean Cox looks as good and dangerous as he did at his peak through 05-07. We may see someone like Trengove follow Cox around the ground to try and limit his output (29 disposals against NM, average of 20 in the NAB) whilst Brogan will need to provide a strong contest and get his hands on the ball for our midfielders to have the best chance against their opponents.
WESTHOFF vs SCHOFIELD – If either Ebert or Motlop plays, Schofield may go to them, but at this stage it looks like Schofield picking up Westhoff. Schofield is very quick for his size so will be able to keep up and provide a contest against Westhoff. Westhoff should be able to get on top if he can use his footy brain to his advantage and show Schofield up for his lack of physicality.
PREDICTION:
Port Adelaide by 16 points. I think Port will hit back this week and collect their first win of the season. I think we have more offensive midfield weapons than West Coast and have the defence to be able to cover their forward line. It all depends on how well our forward line can perform. If it can play well then we should win. If West Coast can block our forwards (which admittedly isn’t that full of options at the moment) from kicking goals then we may see West Coast get on top.
