I think some of the criticism of Lyon is valid, but one of the criticisms is that the team hasn't changed the way it has played under Lyon. Looking at our games this season I don’t think that’s true. One of those changes is we do have players forward. I can’t think of too many times in the last couple of months where a Freo player had the ball in the middle and had to wait for the forward line to fill up. I think there was one instance on Sunday, which is well below the AFL average.
If we had a new coach I’m sure people would comment on the fact we’ve gone from a contested ball-winning team to an outside running team in the last few years (we’re 6th in the league for uncontested possessions and second last for contested possessions). Despite having a young team, we’re a top 8 side for disposal efficiency. But the downside is we’re one of the worst clearance teams in the league (largely a personnel issue) which has changed. It’s much harder to score when you are losing on the ball.
I’m not a fan of playing Walters in the midfield, but the reality is he’s not a one-on-one target forward either. He’s actually a bit of liability as a target, so I can see the benefit of playing him a bit further up the ground where he can get the ball and be the guy kicking into the 50. He needs a few bodies and mayhem around him, where he can use his smarts and skills to make something happen. If we had a fit midfield Walters isn’t in there other than for short bursts.
I agree Cox has plenty of talent, but his go is to get to the right spot and have the player kick to his advantage where he can use his judgment to take a mark. That takes a fair degree of continuity by the team, and skill by the player kicking the ball. I reckon we’ll get there on both fronts, but we’re a long way off that at the moment as you’d expect from a team that hasn’t played much together. I don’t think that’s a structural thing, per se.
I also think people forget how important Fyfe and Sandi are to our forward line. Both are used floating down to create marking mismatches. In their absence, our marking power falls off a cliff. 4 contested marks on a sunny day is diabolical (the AFL average is around 11), but is partially explained by three of our top 4 contested markers (Tabs, Fyfe, and Sandi) being absent.
RM, I know you’d prefer to see players leading from the square. Who would it be exactly? Even if that was the way the game is played these days (it’s the exception rather than the rule), we don’t have the cattle for it. We just don’t have the players with that x-factor of timing, instinct and speed. Using Truthproject’s example, Stephensen, Degoey, Hoskin-Elliot were all top 5 picks. The highest pick in our forward line this week was Langdon at pick 54.
I’m not sure how you structure a forward line if your forwards can’t beat people on a lead or take contested marks. The only suggested approach was from yeti, which was to get our smaller players to lead to the pockets, which I think has a few problems.
