CA, I’ve thought about this a bit, and my best explanation is that it’s a matter of time to bed a new system and decision-making by the players.
When to comes to scoring, there are at least five broadly overlapping ways to try and score:
i. Create space forward and hit a man on the lead;
ii. Try to take a contested mark and/or crumb from the contest;
iii. Try and run through or around the other team’s midfield or get out over the back;
iv. Create a stoppage in the forward 50 and score from that; or
v. Score from turnovers and try to score while the other team is out of position.
When selecting a team and trying to play to a system, it’s impossible to focus on all of these ways to score. For example, for most of Ross Lyon’s run he focussed on the last two at the expense of the others. He pivoted a little towards the ‘try and get out the back’ option in the last couple of years, with limited success.
JLo seems to be focussing heavily on the second option. If we are going to play tall it makes sense, and we’ve seen how it has benefited Tabs. But if you look at the other aspects, I don’t think we’re performing all that well.
Other than Hogan, we don’t have any forwards who have the burst speed or timing to lead at the ball. We don’t have an elite crumber yet at the feet of Tabs/Lobb (hopefully Henry can grow into that role a bit). We don’t create many stoppages in the forward 50 (my view is that having twin towers in the forward 50 makes that harded, but others might disagree). We don’t really seem to be great at building a wall for repeat entries, which we should be able to do when our bigs learn to play with each other.
Relying on taking a contested mark in the 50, as a strategy by itself, is an inefficient way to score. It’s a great weapon to have, but think of all the times we looked for Tabs against Richmond (and generally) for the output of 1 goal. It needs to be an option, not the only option. We need to find easier goals, which will come by layering on the other methods a little, which I think will come in time.
Personally, I think we need to get the midfield involved more. Our midfielders like Fyfe and Walters used to create chances from stoppages in the 50, and that doesn’t happen anymore and Walters in particular looks a little lost. B Hill and Langdon used to get over the back, but there aren’t natural replacements for those players, and guys like Bewley and Brayshaw are much better at running into defence than into the forward line.
My guess is that JLo is starting with the bones of the structure, and the rest will come together. I think once the team (and especially the defence) is settled he might loosen the reigns on players taking the game on from halfback. We haven’t got many goals streaming through the middle, and I think we need to add that to our game a bit more rather than the repeated long kicks down the line.
