Anyone who thinks modern AFL footy is simple is kidding themselves. There are 36 people running all over a huge field, 18 of which on the other team behave differently every week. So the notion the coach can easily install a system – like loading software – is a furphy. You need to get talented players on the park, and teach them over time to consistently make good decisions, to learn to read a game and react together so that your 18 moving parts collectively work more efficiently than the other team’s 18 moving parts. If your 18 moving parts have superior talent, well that helps a lot.
There is no doubt Freo’s play is discombobulated. But AFL footy is so complicated now that for fans bad teams become a Rorschach test – perceptions of the cause of that bad play are shaped heavily by preconceived ideas of who is at fault. I generally consider that coaches get too much credit when teams win, and too much blame when teams lose. So I accept that shapes my perception of what I’m seeing. But I’m not sure what I’m seeing is a failure of coaching. Most don’t like Lyon. Fair enough, but I think that shapes how people are assessing his role in the rebuild.
I’ve said it before, I consider AFL footy is a weak-link sport. You need to string a number of possessions though a number of players together in order to score. The less the players work together, and the more weak links you have, the worse you are going to play. Each goal is the product of any number of micro-decisions: where to tap it down, how to approach the ball, when to sag off for a handball, when to tackle, where to lead, when to put on a block, how much weight on the kick. You need your players to collectively make those decisions correctly and in unison.
In that regard, talent matters, coaching matters but so does repetition and cohesion. Our team has no cohesion. A third of our team has less than a season of playing together and the lack of continuity shows. We just can’t string enough correct micro-decisions together and we don’t have enough talent to overcome that.
How many times have you seen two Freo players fly for the same mark this season? To me that points more to a lack of shared experience and cohesion than a failure of coaching. A coach could tell two defenders not to fly for the same mark, but he really shouldn’t need to, and in any event both players need to make a correct decision in a split second. They’re not at the moment, because they just haven’t got enough repetitions in game situations to know what their teammate is doing. To me that is happening all over the field. To expect the coach to eradicate that midway through a rebuilding season seems unrealistic to me.
The place this shows up most is the forward line. Hawthorn was much more efficient than Freo, but let’s take a look at the respect forward lines:
F: Shoenmakers Roughead Langford
HF: Breust Gunston Smith
F: Kersten McCarthy Walters
HF Weller Ballantyne Nyhuis
Three things were apparent on Saturday. Hawthorn had more talent in the forward line, more height, and they were better organised. Looking at those forward lines, is there any surprise? Not only do the Hawks have better forwards, they are a unit that has been pretty much intact for half a decade. Ours is a cobbled together unit of mismatched pieces. You could say we’d be better balanced with Tabs instead of Kersten, but arguing about the 22nd man picked is deckchairs stuff.
We’re one off-season into a rebuild. I know the disdain for Lyon is strong. Not only does he miss out on the goodwill of an incoming coach, he carries the baggage years at the helm (and his time at St Kilda). But I think it’s too early to blame him for the lack of cohesion we can all see.
