At one point during the game yesterday Mark Ricciuto, when asked what the clubs could do to open up the game, said rather candidly that he had no idea. Ricciuto doesn’t strike me as one of the great football tacticians, but he obviously knows a bit about the game, and I thought it was interesting that he was at a loss. Given his job is to be insightful about football, admitting he had no insight seemed to me to be a career-limiting comment. In his defence though, based on what we saw he couldn’t even rely on the old standby of ‘work rate’ (it was clearly 100% from both sides), so even Paul Roosy Roos and the other talking heads would have struggled.
Certainly both Lyon and Pyke were also at a loss, or had no interest in opening up the game.
So, I’m wondering what the assembled Dockerland hive-mind might have done yesterday – let’s say after half time – when the game had bogged down, and the teams were basically arm-wrestling to a stand-still.
For what it’s worth, I’ve never really been sure what is the correct counter-move to an opposition team which has put a spare behind the ball, plenty of numbers at contest and only a few men forward. There are a few options:
Option A: Match the numbers in your forward line and man up the loose defender. I can see the appeal to this, being that you reduce the chances of the spare back marking the ball and being used on the way out, but whenever teams do this the opposition coach just ends up putting yet another spare back down, and on-and-on until you end up with a clogged forward line, still with one short, and the opposition has all the space ahead of them going forward.
Option B: Leave the opposition’s spare man back, and send a spare man back of your own. That leaves two teams with equal numbers at the contest, and spare numbers in the backline. This seems to be the default position and you end up with the ball pinballing up and down the ground, but both teams find it hard to score.
Option C: Leave your spare player in the midfield, and hope that player is more damaging than the opposition’s spare man back. Coaches occasionally use this option, but in what seemed like greasy conditions yesterday (especially after halftime), and given how many numbers were around the ball, I’m not sure, say, 11 v 10 men in the middle gives you as much of an advantage as, say, 4 v 3 in the backline.
I think the 6-6-6 rule was a tacit acknowledgement that having numbers behind the ball is very difficult to play against. The problem yesterday, and with a lot of games, is if you don’t score much then the rule is basically pointless for all but about 5 minutes of a two-hour game.
I know RM will point out that our players should have lead at the ball more, and I tend to agree with him, but yesterday it would have been almost impossible to time a lead. There were very few instances yesterday, from either team, of a player having time and space to set up a chain of possession where a forward could get on the end of a lead. The couple of times it happened the deep defenders from both teams managed to thwart the attack well. There didn’t seem to me many times when there was an option in the middle (although it’s a bit tough watching on TV).
Perhaps Freo could have done a better job of getting the ball out in space from the clearances, but I thought the pressure at the contest, and even once the ball was released, was fierce the whole game. Langdon got it 27 times, for example, but how many times were those possessions hurried?
Personally, I think for a game like yesterday we’d be better having Hodor at the contest. Choosing a plodder might seem counter-intuitive if your goal is to open up the game as we’d we lose a little speed and flexibility, but Hodor has a much better chance than Lobb of getting the ball moving the right way at the contest. If Fyfe and Mundy can get their hands on the ball with just a hair of space, they have a better chance of getting the ball to the outside.
I’d also try and set up Freo’s loose man as a rotating player starting midfield and floating forward as a link man – as much as possible someone like Walters, CamMac, Hogan, Langdon or Cerra - and generally be moving forwards around a bit more on the fly to confuse the opposition. The problem with this is that without a runner and with a team lacking in continuity, we’d probably be more likely to confuse ourselves. As a coach, I’m not sure I’d trust the combination of Tabs, Hogan, CamMac and Matera to organise themselves out of a wet paper bag, and I think we’re really lacking leadership in the forward line. I know the reflexive instinct is to blame the coach when three Freo players run to the same spot and fly for the same ball, but c’mon forwards, you’ve each been playing football for the better part of a decade, surely you don’t need a coach to tell you that’s a bad idea.
Walters has been in career best form as a midfielder floating forward this year, but he seems like the only forward with enough game-sense to get to the right spots these days, and a good enough kick to make things happen.
I think Lyon too often strays towards low-risk football, but sitting in the sheds at halftime away against Adelaide, with a pretty good track record this season of running out games, I can see why he thought we might be able to win an arm-wrestle if Adelaide dropped their intensity in the second half. He got that call wrong, but in a pretty even contest I’m not sure what the best alternative option was.
Anyway, just some random thoughts. I’d be keen to know what others think. Is there an option I'm missing? If there isn't, and given the success GC17 and Adelaide have had in gumming up the game, and how unsuccessful teams like North and the Footsdogs have been when the game has opened up, I can't see why opposition coaches (including Hardwick this week) wouldn't try the same.