That residual fatigue idea seems a joke to me. There are just so many things in this game where we will happily swallow it if it’s said enough times, then we can feel relieved to let our minds finally wander off and contemplate shiny things. But increasing fatigue across years, from doing something once a week, for six months seems counter-intuitive and illogical to me. I mean really? So the more marathons you run, do you get better endurance or worse?
If it were any sort of thing you’d think the residual “fatigue”, might be more a factor in 2012 and 2013 than 2014 or 2015, as you’d think the players would’ve developed a greater physical capacity to deal with it as they get more accustomed to it. That’s the usual way fitness works. They’ve also put in place things like resting on the last round, lessened the actual tackling and it seems to continue to be put forward as a thing.
I also don’t rate mental fatigue as being more a factor for Freo than any other team, most of whom all have plans of varying degrees of complexity that they’re having to keep up with.
I do have a theory that over time ultra-defensive defensive game plans frazzles a significant portion of the team’s mindset and decision making. The game style is great to start with and initially players can apply it with all sorts of aggression, vigour and even reasonable doses of creativity, but after doing it for too long the focus tends to shift to mistake-avoidance. This gets corrosive to decision making and too many players can become afraid of making mistakes rather than taking the game on with gusto.
Having a look at some of the earliest quarters in Freo’s initial year under Lyon and it was aggressive and dynamic (particularly noticeable was one Kepler Bradley’s wiliness and willingness to take the game on, where the prudent playing of percentages produced a prolonged pfffffft). Maybe it reached it’s zenith in the 2013 prelim or thereabouts.
I don’t think it’s worth anyone’s while apportioning blame on this one though (apart from the fact blame is a pretty ineffective strategy anyways), highly structured defence oriented game plans have demonstrated their effectiveness enough times (especially with a couple of big key forwards). So you reckon it’s fair to follow that path in search of success, especially when you the negative side effects aren’t initially apparent. But they are like plutonium, giving you a kick along (after you’ve gotten used to the heat), but hold on to it too long and it’ll begin to eat away at your bones.
So at the moment with what seems like a lack of skill (despite being right up in the top teams for disposal efficiency last year) also looks like players afraid of making mistakes. Each mistake can compound that fear.
That’s why a year of changing focus can have great benefits even if there is a lot of pain, but Rossco probably needs to deprogram the players and coach them to heighten aggressive creativity. Sure keep a strong defence, but there can be more pressure in kicking a goal than saving one.
