Paddy Dangerdive | PUNT ROAD END | Richmond Tigers Forum
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Paddy Dangerdive

Yeah I think you are spot on. The coaches stress that when Danger is forward they want him neutralised in every contest, which is basically knocked over, landed on, taken to ground in a tackle etc.... Deny him a second effort in a nutshell, use his leap to your advantage by bodying him under the ball and make sure he ends up on the ground. His massive jump is a strength if the footy is on a platter but otherwise it is a weak position and easy to shift someone off their line.

They say the same about Dustin but no-one can take him down, often even when two blokes tackle him.

The other thing he seems to lack is agility. I mean, he has agility, but I don’t reckon he has afl level top end agility. Even in some of his action photos he’s feet are near flat on the ground. He needs to shed a few kegs to become more versatile. 80’s footballer legs.
 
Yeah I think you are spot on. The coaches stress that when Danger is forward they want him neutralised in every contest, which is basically knocked over, landed on, taken to ground in a tackle etc.... Deny him a second effort in a nutshell, use his leap to your advantage by bodying him under the ball and make sure he ends up on the ground. His massive jump is a strength if the footy is on a platter but otherwise it is a weak position and easy to shift someone off their line.

They say the same about Dustin but no-one can take him down, often even when two blokes tackle him.
Yep. My favourite part of the dangerdive evening was picket deploying a hip and shoulder to the great diver. It hurt him, and he let everyone know.
 
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You are correct, stats don't lie.

Diverfield 464 free kicks from 269 games, Dusty 219 frees from 244 games, Ablett 465 frees from 357 games and Duckwood 795 frees from 310 games. I rest my case your honour.

I can't find it and it is a couple of years ago now but there was a great meme with that pic of Danger, Selwood and Ablett from the Hun with a caption something like: This is what 1,724 Free Kicks looks like (adjusted for the above numbers). It was very funny.

In terms of the comparison with Dustin Martin, Martin has huge core strength it is quite stunning to see live. Clearly he was born with the potential for this core strength but it must have taken a hell of a lot of work to get to where he is. I imagine he could do a plank for a few hours. The way he holds his feet is very good too, clearly has great balance, he could be amazing at ballet! It gives him an edge over the other elite players. Plus the ability to see and seize the opportunities means he can turn games because he produces against the tide. Truly amazing footballer.

DS
 
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In the last qtr Dangerfield is paid a holding free kick straight After a centre bounce.
I've watched it 10 times, i can't see when Prestia holds him.
If we got those free kicks we would win games by 15 goals

Yep I looked closely at this last night and you’re right - it should never have been paid as a free kick
At worst there was incidental contact with Prestia arm touching Dangerdivers but that happens at pRobably hundreds of contests each game
Prestia did not appear to hold Diver and it was not a tackle
 
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People are at a loss to explain why Danger is such an ineffective player when it's hot.

It is not a physical issue like a lack of agility.

It's above the shoulders.

But also not in the simplistic way people often say that. It's not a lack of endeavour, or bravery, or concentration. It's not a lack of heart or mental strength.

It's a total lack of creativity.

Which, when coupled with a lack of composure and scratchy foot skills, leads to a completely ineffective footballer when the pressure's on.

I've played with players like Danger. Strong, fast, long kicking. But who only know one move. These players look great when things are going well. But, when plan A goes out the window, they just dive out after plan A and hold on to it as they fall to their doom.

Danger doesn't move the ball sideways. When it's hot, he gets the blinkers on. He see's the ball, and he see's the goals. He doesn't see team mates in better positions. He doesn't see the 'through ball' option. He can't finesse a diagonal kick. He rarely handballs unless he's already in trouble. He is a straight line player because that's become his muscle memory. And instead of looking for other options when that's not working, he doubles down on it. He runs harder and kicks harder. No creativity. No composure.
 
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That's false bravado I reckon Carn... all good when it's going well, but when it gets tough he's not up for it and you can see it on his face.

Yep. Let’s compare Dusty and Danger on GF day when they perform a successful action and when they make a mistake.

This will be open for interpretation of course, and it’s always troublesome to comment on what might be going on inside someone else’s mind, but I think it’s interesting nonetheless

Success:

Both Dusty and Danger kicked a goal in the 2nd quarter. Their post-goal reactions were night and day. Danger doesn’t smile or show any positive emotion whatsoever; he looks entrenched in the mentality that his actions mean nothing unless they end up with the final result.

Dusty‘s natural reaction in the moment looked immediately mindful of his teammates’ emotions and belief levels at that point in time. (and this might be confirmation bias, but to me it looks like he’s doing it for the love of his teammates)

You can make your own interpretation of their post-goal reactions.

Mistakes:

Both players made embarrassing mistakes. Their reaction afterwards were night and day.

After Dusty’s banana floater, you can see him flash a smile to Jack (?) and it looks like he’s making a joke about himself. I think you can see the calmness under the smile, and there isn’t a hint of false bravado about it, but I’ll let others decide that for themselves.

After Danger messes up, it’s classic false bravado. It’s up for interpretation of course, but I think intuitively you can see his mind is at sea underneath in the moment and history suggests it changes the way he plays in the moments afterwards. However you’d like to describe it - it’s very different to Dusty’s reaction.

My interpretation is most elite athletes put enormous pressure on themselves to deliver a required outcome, and in this case, Danger contributed to bringing additional pressure upon himself by publicly hinging everything on the outcome in the media during the lead-up.

Richmond’s success has been built on many different things, one of them being a mountain of work to mitigate this omnipresent performance reducer that exists for everyone. Pressure affects everyone, but it affects us less.

The first thing I can learn from watching this club is you control what you can control. You can’t directly control a future outcome such as winning a premiership. But you can control the moments that lead up to and influence that outcome. So control those moments.

We either let a future outcome dictate to the mind (Danger), or we train the mind to dictate to the moment (Dusty).

The lesson outside football is don’t let your mind live in the future. Be like Dusty, instead!

But however you want to describe it, there was a huge difference in thinking between Richmond and Geelong on Saturday, and the result of that fluffy abstract stuff was on full display in the night and day performance gap between each team’s best player.
 
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Can we just come back to this for a moment? Are these numbers for real?

The longterm average for free kicks per game is around 35. That's about 0.8 free kicks, on average, per player per game.

But Dangerfield's average per game is 1.7 and Selwood's is nearly 2.6. Dusty is going just over the average, at nearly 0.9.

To put it another way, Dangerfield is going at 215% and Selwood at 325% the average per player per game. Wow.

I'm no believer in umpire bias or favouritism but those numbers require some sort of explanation.
These numbers make a huge statement about how the umpiring department works. Appalling. The AFL must be made accountable. Explain these statistics Gil and Hocking! [Haven't worked for you to win that flag though!]
 
In the last qtr Dangerfield is paid a holding free kick straight After a centre bounce.
I've watched it 10 times, i can't see when Prestia holds him.
If we got those free kicks we would win games by 15 goals

Is that the one where he didn't even know it was his free. Selwood was in the middle calling for the ball. Danger had already run forward and the umpire states, no its Dangers free and he had to trudge back to get the ball
 
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Yeah I think you are spot on. The coaches stress that when Danger is forward they want him neutralised in every contest, which is basically knocked over, landed on, taken to ground in a tackle etc.... Deny him a second effort in a nutshell, use his leap to your advantage by bodying him under the ball and make sure he ends up on the ground. His massive jump is a strength if the footy is on a platter but otherwise it is a weak position and easy to shift someone off their line.

They say the same about Dustin but no-one can take him down, often even when two blokes tackle him.
Great insights and agree this was all on show for Dustins 1st goal. He has such great core strength that they will throw players like Kolojashnij on him who are taller and heavier, and in Dustins 1st goal he didn't do a lot wrong (King was trying to make out he was too far away, he was a metre away tops), but his upper body strength, his core strength just meant he could grab the ball one handed, hold the taller, heavier man off with 1 arm and have the balance to still drop the ball on the boot and guide it through.

Danger wouldn't have a chance in hell of being able to do that. Totally different players and I really like your explanation of Danger in finals. Its a perfect description and one which those cretins that are paid to analyse footy seem to miss time and time again.
 
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True 123Kid. Dusty stuffs up and smiles about it because he knows he will stuff up every now and again. Everybody stuffs up, you can smile, move on and learn. Or you can put yourself under more pressure by trying to be absolutely perfect.

Danger isn't doing himself any favours there, he puts too much pressure on himself. Must have taken a lot of work to get Richmond players to accept stuffing up is part of the journey. As elite sports players they would be aiming for perfect but perfect does not exist, least of all in the pressured combative environment of Australian Rule Football.

DS
 
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I don't think you're being fair on Danger by comparing him to Dusty. Actually, looking at proven finals performances, I don't think it would be fair on Danger to compare him to and RFC player.
 
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Is that the one where he didn't even know it was his free. Selwood was in the middle calling for the ball. Danger had already run forward and the umpire states, no its Dangers free and he had to trudge back to get the ball

That's the one, total confusion all round.

DS
 
I can't find it and it is a couple of years ago now but there was a great meme with that pic of Danger, Selwood and Ablett from the Hun with a caption something like: This is what 1,724 Free Kicks looks like (adjusted for the above numbers). It was very funny.

In terms of the comparison with Dustin Martin, Martin has huge core strength it is quite stunning to see live. Clearly he was born with the potential for this core strength but it must have taken a hell of a lot of work to get to where he is. I imagine he could do a plank for a few hours. The way he holds his feet is very good too, clearly has great balance, he could be amazing at ballet! It gives him an edge over the other elite players. Plus the ability to see and seize the opportunities means he can turn games because he produces against the tide. Truly amazing footballer.

DS
His core strength is crazy. He just kind of stands on the spot and sheds tackles sometimes. Even without the don’t argue.
 
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Dusty is not just better than Danger, Selwood and Ablett in a one on one comparison but collectively.
 
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Not sure why people compare Danger to Dusty. It's an insult to Dusty.
 
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When they do their annual top 50 players, I reckon the second best should be ranked at 10 or 11 to reflect the gulf between Dusty and the rest.
 
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Is that the one where he didn't even know it was his free. Selwood was in the middle calling for the ball. Danger had already run forward and the umpire states, no its Dangers free and he had to trudge back to get the ball

Not sure if that’s the one
But you’re right to point out that Dangerdive himself didn’t even know he’d got it - and that has to be the ultimate giveaway that it wasn’t deserved.

And this from a bloke who spends entire games where if he encounters physical contact during contested play but doesn’t win the ball himself - simply assumes that a transgression has occurred and he must be due a free kick. Hence he makes those unnatural jerky body movements just to assist the umps.

There was another of these with 2:39 to go in the 3rd - fortunately this wasn’t paid
 
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It would be interesting to get an insight to what the AFL players think of Clangerflop. On the surface he seems very much about self-promotion that would irk other players yet they have voted for him as the AFLPA spokesperson.
 
It would be interesting to get an insight to what the AFL players think of Clangerflop. On the surface he seems very much about self-promotion that would irk other players yet they have voted for him as the AFLPA spokesperson.

I lost count how many times he actually played for free kicks.
He was diving and , he was throwing his arms in the air. He spent his entire GF playing for free kicks.
I hope Scotty dosent review the game :rotfl1
 
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