Preview Round 9 2020, Essendon vs Brisbane Lions, Metricon Stadium, Friday 31st July

[WhiteLionFeva]

In fairness our midfielders do kick a lot of goals. And also behinds.

Yeah, kicking butts.

 

[WhiteLionFeva]

Fullarton any chance you reckon? Robbo mentioned him in an interview yesterday.

 

[Dylan12]

Call me crazy, but I reckon Cam Rayner could play true full forward and do it well given an opportunity. He certainly has the attributes i.e. strong, quick off the mark and a decent kick. Times have changed, but he is the same height as Dunstall was and could be an outside the box selection to play deep and keep Essendon guessing.

 

[jackess]

In fairness our midfielders do kick a lot of goals. And also behinds.

Without looking at our stats I'm not sure the mids are kicking as many this year. Neale has kicked quite a few, Berry kicked a few playing forward but we haven't had many goals this season from Lyons, Robbo or Clugg

 

[WhiteLionFeva]

Call me crazy, but I reckon Cam Rayner could play true full forward and do it well given an opportunity. He certainly has the attributes i.e. strong, quick off the mark and a decent kick. Times have changed, but he is the same height as Dunstall was and could be an outside the box selection to play deep and keep Essendon guessing.

And Richard Osborne played full forward for the Roys a few seasons at probably a similar height. Not a true FF like Dunstall but could lead and take a decent overhead mark.

 

[Elixuh]

People amuse me when they talk about our forward pressure as if it is the raison d'etre for forwards. Forwards are there to score goals. I think people bang on about McStay applying forward pressure because that's about all he can do. Look at last week carefully and you will see he had the 'fumbles' badly dropping several simple marks. Event the "match winning" one he only just held onto.

His set-shop kicking for goal from 20 to 40 yards out is terrible. I will hazard a guess that he has missed 8 of his last ten of these sorts of shots. To put this into stark relief imagine if we were 3 points down when he had to take that shot!!?? Who would back him to kick it? My grand father, bookie, would be giving good odds on a miss.

We are nearly in a premiership window and I think we only lack one component!!!

It may be that the qualities of our forwards fit perfectly into our scheme and it has resulted in us being a relatively high scoring and quality side. It may be that if we take (for instance) McStay out of the side and put in another forward who (we will say hypothetically) scores more goals than McStay but has different attributes (eg doesn’t create as many contests and doesn’t provide as much pressure) that we actually have a lower net goals scored for the team.

Using arbitrary numbers, if the team as a whole across a season currently scores 1000 goals and McStay accounts for 50 of those goals. It is not necessarily the case that getting in another forward who can kick 100 goals will result in the team then kicking 1050 across the season. We may lose more frequent goal opportunities elsewhere.

So for me it’d be important that whatever forward comes in provides what McStay provides + more goals as the whole package.

 

[Dylan12]

And Richard Osborne played full forward for the Roys a few seasons at probably a similar height. Not a true FF like Dunstall but could lead and take a decent overhead mark.

An even better example. Without derailing this thread, Ossie was a thrill to watch. Still have vivid memories of him kicking bags of 10+ at Princess Park.

Cam could be the new Ossie 2.0.

 

[3KZ is Football]

Call me crazy, but I reckon Cam Rayner could play true full forward and do it well given an opportunity. He certainly has the attributes i.e. strong, quick off the mark and a decent kick. Times have changed, but he is the same height as Dunstall was and could be an outside the box selection to play deep and keep Essendon guessing.

He would be the Doc Wheildon option. I am not opposed to the idea, but he would need to lead.

 

[jackess]

I thought it was clear that we're all about multiple avenues to goal. Leaving Cam deep to kick a bag would be very unlikely.

It's not the 80s

 

[WhiteLionFeva]

I thought it was clear that we're all about multiple avenues to goal. Leaving Cam deep to kick a bag would be very unlikely.

It's not the 80s

Don't tell 3KZ that.

 

[M Malice]

 

[Gadzorks]

Call me crazy, but I reckon Cam Rayner could play true full forward and do it well given an opportunity. He certainly has the attributes i.e. strong, quick off the mark and a decent kick. Times have changed, but he is the same height as Dunstall was and could be an outside the box selection to play deep and keep Essendon guessing.

I really like this idea. He most certainly has the ff swagger, and he has shown a lot of resilience. Thinking here about how he came back unfit and it impacted on his season and he pulled his head in, took the criticism and worked his arse off.

Not dropping cam last year when he knew it would have been a reasonable action made him develop intense scrutiny coping skills, which forwards in particular need (chat focuses a lot on forwards).

Good call Dylan12

 

[jackess]

The best thing about Rayner recently has been his goal kicking. One of maybe a couple (along with Bailey) I feel any sort of confidence in.

 

[WhiteLionFeva]

The best thing about Rayner recently has been his goal kicking. One of maybe a couple (along with Bailey) I feel any sort of confidence in.

Starce is pretty reliable when he gets forward.

 

[jackess]

Starce is pretty reliable when he gets forward.

Yeah I was confident when he had that shot on the weekend but there isn't a big sample to choose from. Clug also from set shots is fairly reliable.

 

[Johnny Bananas]

I genuinely love that we're the highest scoring team two years in a row but apparently our forwards suck

What a reductive argument. Nobody's perfect, and highlighting potential ways to improve isn't the same as bashing the players. It's entirely possible that Hippy is better off playing as a HFF and adding Skinner or Ballenden or Rayner as FF would give us a net improvement overall.

 

[jackess]

What a reductive argument. Nobody's perfect, and highlighting potential ways to improve isn't the same as bashing the players. It's entirely possible that Hippy is better off playing as a HFF and adding Skinner or Ballenden or Rayner as FF would give us a net improvement overall.

There's a big difference between highlighting areas we can improve and saying we can't win finals or we have a terrible forwardline or saying McStay is a comedy footballer or declaring anybody would improve our forwardline.

 

[briztoon]

I genuinely love that we're the highest scoring team two years in a row but apparently our forwards suck

We also concede the most points of any team in the top 10.

Must mean our defence sucks by some people’s way of looking at data.

We also have the highest scoring midfield two years in a row. So there may be some merit in people’s opinions about our tall forwards.

 

[X AE A12]

Anyone without a ticket they're on sale through Ticketek now since 12

 

[jackess]

We also concede the most points of any team in the top 10.

Must mean our defence sucks by some people’s way of looking at data.

We also have the highest scoring midfield two years in a row. So there may be some merit in people’s opinions about our tall forwards.

Definitely merit in us not having a great defence

Where's the highest scoring midfield stat from?

 

[LIONS08]

Call me crazy, but I reckon Cam Rayner could play true full forward and do it well given an opportunity. He certainly has the attributes i.e. strong, quick off the mark and a decent kick. Times have changed, but he is the same height as Dunstall was and could be an outside the box selection to play deep and keep Essendon guessing.

Great call! I would love to see this happen!!

 

[eth-dog]

Nice OP, except nowadays our gameplan is more a high octane pressure around the stoppage type. We do launch off half back still when it's down there because we can but we're not as reliant on it as we used to be.

 

[Brett C]

I thought it was clear that we're all about multiple avenues to goal. Leaving Cam deep to kick a bag would be very unlikely.

It's not the 80s

Didn’t you know McStay’s or any forwards true performance is only measured by the number of goals each week, otherwise we should bring in untested young forwards who haven’t kicked bags in NEAFL games.
Hopefully my sarcasm is obvious

 

[Kernel Kurtz]

I thought it was clear that we're all about multiple avenues to goal. Leaving Cam deep to kick a bag would be very unlikely.

It's not the 80s

I said this on the weekend , how many games do we watch and there is no forward to kick to.
this is with all teams.
It's one avenue , one of many, keep a player deep , is that wasting Cam, maybe.
As I say it's an avenue that simply is not there a lot of the time with all the focus on keeping numbers around the ball and forwards flooding the defensive half .
Like the little girl says , "Why can't we have both".
It's a balance, the balance is off kilter imo.

 

[Brett C]

What a reductive argument. Nobody's perfect, and highlighting potential ways to improve isn't the same as bashing the players. It's entirely possible that Hippy is better off playing as a HFF and adding Skinner or Ballenden or Rayner as FF would give us a net improvement overall.

When it’s the same shit week after week despite evidence that McStay’s actual value to the team is far beyond the number of goals he kicks then it gets tiresome.