- Mar 12, 2003
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What's everyone's thoughts on what we should have done here? I've been wrestling with this for a few days and I think it's trickier than it seems. David King nailed it on AFL 360 last night - essentially it's a battle of wills.Some great points here. However with respect to Andrews,he is one of our captains who has played 150 games plus ,so surely he could see what was happening with King and made some adjustments on field. Simply playing off him and leaving it up to other defenders was just totally incomprehensible. King was just gifted goals by Andrews lack of leadership. No one seems to want to take any responsibility when we are under pressure and it is a major weakness imo.
We (as in the club) wanted Payne to play on King and Andrews to play on Casboult. These looked like being good matchups for us given the success Payne had on Max against St Kilda and the troubles both Kings have given Andrews in the past.
The key difference between St Kilda and Gold Coast was that St Kilda didn't really have anyone else. Membrey was out, so King really had to play as their number one tall forward, closer to goal, suiting our plans for both Payne and Andrews.
But Casboult is a much more suitable close-to-goal player, given King's pace.
So King decides to go and play on Andrews. But Andrews is already on Casboult. So now Andrews is marking two players. This is a tricky position for a defender because even if you win the contest, all you have is the ball or a stoppage. But if you lose the contest, which is more likely, it's almost a certain goal.
Do we send Payne further up field to try and be the intercept marking player? This is something we probably need to add to his skillset, but that might take another preseason or two.
This might not solve the Andrews problem, unless Payne starts picking them off with ridiculous regularity and demands someone goes to man him up (this is the exact reason King went to Andrews in the first place).
But this is a high risk policy. It relies on pressure on their midfield, which we didn't have. Otherwise they simply bypass Payne and we still have the 2 on 1 problem. So we relent. Andrews says "fine, I'll play on King, but still try to zone off". Only it turned out to be anything but fine.
So do we simply say "ok, we'll do away with playing our zoning intercept defender, and simply play one on one in defence"? This is what Gold Coast want, and it relies on our midfield to drop back and fill up the leading lanes, or to exert more pressure around the ball. And on Saturday we had neither, for reasons already discussed.
I'm interested to know what others would do in this situation. 3KZ is Football, you're a coach. What would you do in this situation?
Bear in mind we need to be ready to expect the same thing again on Sunday. Maybe Amiss goes to Andrews. Maybe Fogarty goes to him when we play Adelaide. Mihochek. The other King. Some big challenges ahead potentially.