One of my big hopes for the 2019 season is the nullification of RL's defensive tactics with the new rules introduced by the AFL. While no one running the club has a problem with throwing everyone behind the ball far too much, the AFL have brought in some tactics like extending the kick out area for behinds and allowing players to just run out of the square instead of kicking to themselves.
This article outlines another tactic I hope makes a big change to Freo as it forces RL to start his forwards inside the forwardline rather than loading up in defence.
As in the article, last season our go to starting structure was 7 in defense with 5 forward (48.4%) with our next best 6-6-6 (25.8%). We also had another 15.8% of unstated formations which I would suggest are either 8-7-3 or 9-6-3.
Realistically you are little to no chance of scoring much with these formations unless you have incredible ball movement or pace off half back and in the forwardline (eg Richmond). While we haven't addressed the pace problem in the forwardline or our transition, at least with a constant 6-6-6 structure we'll be able to see a few more forward flurries actually work (as well as probably conceding a few more goals).
I like the change and believe it teaches the players to be a lot smarter and better in their roles opposed to relying on numbers to clog up space and slow the game down as a default to rest back momentum after an opposition goal. Even if we lose some games, we give ourselves a chance to bring ourselves back into contests with some Sandi to Fyfe magic. We're getting belted in games under the old system anyway so at least this might give us something to get excited about as we have targets to go towards and faith is placed in players to beat their opponents 1v1.
