We’ve had a block of games to watch in person now, I thought it might be worth revisiting this Game Plan thread. My seats have been on the ground level, and while there are certainly advantages of sitting so close, I prefer the higher seats to get a sense for where the players are running. .
Maybe others have a better view of things, but I thought the last two games looked very similar to the Ross Lyon years:
i. against Geelong (which was horrible), our players got sucked into the contest with no players forward; and
ii. against Collingwood, where we relied on Mundy and Serong(!) winning the clearances, pressure to win it back when we didn’t have the ball, and many of our goals were slingshot-over-the-back jobbies, rather than the lead-up style we had in earlier wins against Adelaide and St Kilda.
I think Tabs is playing closer to goal than last year, and Lobb tends to be the one who floats into the midfield. That’s a great development, and I’ve been really impressed with how good Lobb’s hands have been at ground level - his recovery after flying for a mark is top-shelf, and he’s one of the better players his size at getting a sneaky handball over the top of a tackler.
I think we’re missing a couple of lead-up players. Hogan really helped us with that earlier in the season, and I think CamMac will be helpful if/when he comes back. His continuing non-selection baffles me because I feel like we could really use someone with his sense of timing on a lead forward of half-way.
Our ball movement out of defence looks a little more ad hoc compared to the very measured ball movement earlier in the season. I’m not sure other clubs have taken that away, the players are falling into old habits or the conditions have militated against it.
It looks to my eye our players are running up and back almost as much as they did under Lyon, but our numbers don’t tend to loiter quite as long really deep in defence. Certainly our small forwards and wingmen still seem to push back pretty far into defence, and then break forward when we have the ball (which is how pretty much every team plays). I don’t have the telemetry data, but I’d be surprised if our distance covered has changed much. Perhaps we’re just doing a better job of breaking forward earlier.
I’ve been interested how much Cox has been asked to chase people around up the ground leaving Ryan as the ‘tall’ defender on the last line. I’m not sure how much of that is JLo’s instruction, or the other coaches trying to expose Ryan. If it’s the latter, I reckon Ryan has made suckers of them. I’d much prefer Ryan outsized on the last line of defence than Cox at this stage.
