I don't quite understand the skills point.
AFL clubs have a finite amount of time with players. Almost all coaches complain about the limited time they are given to work on skills, because the trade-off is that you have to give up on fitness time or game simulations. I’m not sure how our training schedule compares to other teams. Until I know that, it seems premature to say we aren’t spending enough time.
But let’s use Matt Taberner as a test case. Let’s say you have 10 training hours a week with him. You need to work on his fitness and body, work on his understanding on where he needs to be on the field (in conjunction with other players), and work on his skills. For every extra hour you spend on his skills, you lose an hour on the other aspects.
Tabs has been a much better player with the extra muscle, and he’s covering the ground well, which is a requirement for a modern forward. He's also struggled with injury. So it’s hard to say fitness time is wasted.
Tabs still has a lot to learn about positioning, and the team transition from defence to attack still seems off. He’s parterning with Cox – who he’s only played a handful of games with, and they still tend to get in each other’s way. So it’s hard to say that time is wasted.
He still misses shots from 20m in front, so it seems his skills could use some work. So fair to say that time is wasted.
So, you can't make him spend more time at the club, what do you get rid of in those 10 hours?
The answer requires a nuanced understanding of how that time is already spent, what the rest of the league is doing, how much you can actually improve skills, whether you are better focusing on a skill in isolation or trying to execute them in game-simulations at pace – which wouldn’t be set aside as skills as such, but still improves them. You would also need to understand whether our skills deficiencies are because of fatigue or between the ears or because of poor team options – at which point fitness, strategy and game simulations might be more important.
The Dan Carter isn't really relevant. A rugby back probably covers about 7km a game, has 80 minutes of game time and breaks where they are standing around very little. If Carter was playing AFL, he’d be playing for 120 minutes and running closer to 20km, a lot of it at pace. The recovery time would be different. In that case, I reckon a fair bit of his time would be redistributed to fitness and recovery.
Dan Carter has chosen to put in the time to be the best he can be. Nat Fyfe posts videos of him doing the same. Even the Carter argument seems to be that it is players themselves who will themselves to be great.
And yet it’s Lyon’s fault for our players skills being bad. I just don’t get it.
