To understand why Amiss isn’t getting the ball you need to go back to how he would have played under Ross Lyon. Stick with me here.
The Bulldogs won the inside 50 count 63 – 44. That means the ball was camped in the Doggies forward line for big chunks of the game. When that happens, Amiss and his defender need to decide: do they stay close to the other goals, 150m away from the play, or do they push further up the ground to be a link or at least have some impact on the game?
The Bulldogs were pushing their defenders up into the centre, effectively leaving Amiss goal side clear in about 30m of space. Amiss then needs to decide whether he follows them up the ground to even up the numbers there, cut down the risk his opponent gets an easy intercept mark, but leaving an empty forward line (ie, the Ross Lyon method), or does he allow his man drift into the play, stay near the goals and hope Freo can work their way up the ground and find him in space out the back?
It looks like Amiss was instructed to choose the latter, meaning we always had a player forward, but we’re still not quite clean enough to work the ball through hands to find him with a kick over the back.
The short point is that if Amiss spends 70% of the time more than 100m from the ball, then he’s not going to have much of an impact. But in games where we win though the middle and he can lead out and/or we do a better job of stringing the ball though the middle to hit him in space, he’ll hit the scoreboard heavily.
He’s playing his role, and he’s fine.
