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2021 may be the best yet
- Thread starter Carter
- Start date
Let's put it this way: Bears, Demons, Cats, etc have all declared their hand. This may not end well - especially for them.
Not even half way as yet, we should be 7-5 at the bye & be able to launch from there
It’s absolutely imperative we win the next two. I reckon we can go 8-4 from now which will probably leave us with a home elimination final. I’ll take that.
If we can come out the other side of the bye with Cotch, Shedda, Dion and Shai ready to go, then we’re far from out of this.
I have a theory regarding what the brains trust have been doing over the past few weeks, especially as the injuries have added up. The thinking may have gone as follows:
- Most of our best mids have gone, and we may get hit with even more injuries, killing our hopes completely.
- So what do we do?
- We need to do three things:
- bring in other players immediately (forced upon us)
- keep developing a squad and gameplan that best suits finals in 2021 (and beyond)
- try to limp to the bye ahead of the ledger
- So let's trial a few things in a controlled fashion. Let's keep 80% of everything 'business as usual', but set aside 20% for experimentation; that's 20% of the gameplan, 20% of our structures, 20% of our personnel, etc. (Clearly I've just pulled this figure out of the air, but it just helps me place a bit of conceptual 'scaffolding' around what may be happening.)
- Let's throw the magnets around a bit: Balta and Astbury forward a bit, Vlaustin into a few centre clearances, Aarts in there a bit as well, etc, etc
- Let's keep the one-ruck approach going as a constant, while varying other factors
- Let's try some of the young guys
- CCJ and Chol stay out as, at present, we want to push the one-ruck idea to its limit
- Caddy stays out as we already know what we'll get with him.
- Any of these three guys could easily be in a side playing finals later in the year, but they are not part of our current experiment.
Hardwick said Cotchin and Prestia should play next week, Bolton a maybe, and Edwards some chance depending on training.
In the words of the great Isaac Hayes at the beginning of the all-time classic (and one of my personal faves) By The Time I Get To Phoenix, I want you to travel with me, PRE.
What if...
We finished 8th. Not too far-fetched, right? Win the next two and we're halfway there.
8th. Finals.
A clean slate with no one giving us a chance in hell.
Hunters for the first time since 2017.
An opportunity to bring chaos back, like the vengeful return of a midnight God.
Four wins for the best threepeat in history and perhaps the best dynasty ever.
Our stars may not have the run in the legs right now, but if we could just scrape in to 8th, oh footy gods, we will unleash one last brutalization on this hostile competition.
I will be day-dreaming about the romance of 8th until September
What if...
We finished 8th. Not too far-fetched, right? Win the next two and we're halfway there.
8th. Finals.
A clean slate with no one giving us a chance in hell.
Hunters for the first time since 2017.
An opportunity to bring chaos back, like the vengeful return of a midnight God.
Four wins for the best threepeat in history and perhaps the best dynasty ever.
Our stars may not have the run in the legs right now, but if we could just scrape in to 8th, oh footy gods, we will unleash one last brutalization on this hostile competition.
I will be day-dreaming about the romance of 8th until September
3rd place is magic
Hawks and Bris won their 3rd flags from 3rd
And the tigers have won their last 3 flags from 3rd
Right now we are 3 wins& % behind
What a story it would be
Hawks and Bris won their 3rd flags from 3rd
And the tigers have won their last 3 flags from 3rd
Right now we are 3 wins& % behind
What a story it would be
I haven't had a chance to read everyone else's posts yet but this is my take.
We were clearly the best side last year. I don't think you fall off this suddenly without it having a bit to do above the hear rather than in ageing bodies. The media goes on about us only beating one top 8 side, but ther reality is we were within a kick of PA and WCE with a decimated lineup and half the free kick talley that they received.
Unfortunately, i think for Richmond we walked into the StKilda game thinking "ok it's the second half now, after the bye where we cream everyone" and we just expected it to happen. This loss and the extent of it may well by the catapult for season 2021 - if we still have it.
The first thing we need t odo is understand exactly what our DNA is, and what makes us different, because thus far this year i haven't really seen our brand at all. It's ok to say the rule changes havent helped, and they haven't but our best still over comes this issue bearing in mind we aso get ther attacking advantages provided in the new rules. In 2021 i have not seen the swarm and spread mentality from our team. When the ball is in dispute, we outnumber. That definitely isn't happening and from my observation, that's why the opposition is breaking from stoppages so quickly and scoring multiple goals in a row. We are basically pretty easy to score against at the moment.
If we are on, the pressure roles up. One player moves in to tackle, a team mate leaves his man to cover the tacklers man, and the 3rd team mate back comes in to cover the 2nd team mats man, It rolls up and rolls up until the opposition receiver is getting tackled the instant they are taking possession, then we spread lightening quick with opposition trailing opponents all over the place.
That's our brand and we ain;t playing it at the moment.
What i fear is that we don't have the fitness at the moment, possibly because of the vastly shortened pre-season we've had, lack of games into players returnign from injury and possibly just lack of motivation.
What i do know is that our best is miles above anything i've seen from opposition teams. All of them have cracked when put under pressure, even by very lowly sides. Adelaide cracked Melbourne with pressure. Geelong falter when real heat is put on them. The real problem that i'm seeing with us, is the worry that our reaction to how easlity we are being scored against seems to be to start to play "ball preservation football", chipping it backwards and sideways.
That's how the others play when we are cracking them, not how we play. How often do we dominate games but have far less possessions and marks? That is our game style, not what we did last night and has crept into our game over the last month. That game style doesn't work against our true style, so why would we adopt it?
If we don't see swarming pressure and then balistic forward handball forward kicking attack then we are stuffed. But if we can flick that switch, the opposition is stuffed because the best this year simply aren't that great at all.
We were clearly the best side last year. I don't think you fall off this suddenly without it having a bit to do above the hear rather than in ageing bodies. The media goes on about us only beating one top 8 side, but ther reality is we were within a kick of PA and WCE with a decimated lineup and half the free kick talley that they received.
Unfortunately, i think for Richmond we walked into the StKilda game thinking "ok it's the second half now, after the bye where we cream everyone" and we just expected it to happen. This loss and the extent of it may well by the catapult for season 2021 - if we still have it.
The first thing we need t odo is understand exactly what our DNA is, and what makes us different, because thus far this year i haven't really seen our brand at all. It's ok to say the rule changes havent helped, and they haven't but our best still over comes this issue bearing in mind we aso get ther attacking advantages provided in the new rules. In 2021 i have not seen the swarm and spread mentality from our team. When the ball is in dispute, we outnumber. That definitely isn't happening and from my observation, that's why the opposition is breaking from stoppages so quickly and scoring multiple goals in a row. We are basically pretty easy to score against at the moment.
If we are on, the pressure roles up. One player moves in to tackle, a team mate leaves his man to cover the tacklers man, and the 3rd team mate back comes in to cover the 2nd team mats man, It rolls up and rolls up until the opposition receiver is getting tackled the instant they are taking possession, then we spread lightening quick with opposition trailing opponents all over the place.
That's our brand and we ain;t playing it at the moment.
What i fear is that we don't have the fitness at the moment, possibly because of the vastly shortened pre-season we've had, lack of games into players returnign from injury and possibly just lack of motivation.
What i do know is that our best is miles above anything i've seen from opposition teams. All of them have cracked when put under pressure, even by very lowly sides. Adelaide cracked Melbourne with pressure. Geelong falter when real heat is put on them. The real problem that i'm seeing with us, is the worry that our reaction to how easlity we are being scored against seems to be to start to play "ball preservation football", chipping it backwards and sideways.
That's how the others play when we are cracking them, not how we play. How often do we dominate games but have far less possessions and marks? That is our game style, not what we did last night and has crept into our game over the last month. That game style doesn't work against our true style, so why would we adopt it?
If we don't see swarming pressure and then balistic forward handball forward kicking attack then we are stuffed. But if we can flick that switch, the opposition is stuffed because the best this year simply aren't that great at all.
need to get our running game up and running. need to play on and take the game on at all costs. run run run and outnumber at every contest. if we get exposed on the counter then so be it. we just need to hit them harder the other way. do what we do best and attack and run. if we continue chipping the ball slowly to maintain possession we are done.
I agree that we look our best when outnumbering at the contest (then again, who doesn't).
It is something I noticed yesterday watching Footscray. They always had an outnumber and always had options, they worked really really hard and that is what got them over the line against WCE. But, added to this was that a fair percentage of the time, maybe a bit over 50%, when one Footscray player would handpass to a team mate, they would then lay a shepherd on the player who was pursuing them. This meant they could handpass to a team mate who now had some space to get a clean disposal which is critical.
Too many of our disposals are under pressure and hurried. Too many of our players dish it off to a team mate and think their work is done. We can play so much better as a team than we are at the moment.
DS
It is something I noticed yesterday watching Footscray. They always had an outnumber and always had options, they worked really really hard and that is what got them over the line against WCE. But, added to this was that a fair percentage of the time, maybe a bit over 50%, when one Footscray player would handpass to a team mate, they would then lay a shepherd on the player who was pursuing them. This meant they could handpass to a team mate who now had some space to get a clean disposal which is critical.
Too many of our disposals are under pressure and hurried. Too many of our players dish it off to a team mate and think their work is done. We can play so much better as a team than we are at the moment.
DS
Agreed but in the past we handballed out of congestion to a player clear of the immediate pressure. It's the big mistake opponents did against us. They'd handball to players next to them and the noose would tighten. We are less creative with out handball selection, and worse when we do go to the right target, our skills often are making the receiver reach up or down, or missing him entirely. This is the thing that has me most worried, our skill level but i think that may be happening because we are under greater pressure by simply not having players at the contest in adequate numbers.
Lots of theories getting around , maybe we are just out of form a tad , maybe now we can smell the cut grass of September coming and maybe we’re about to click, imho it dosent matter where we finish in the 8 , as long as we are there we can win it, not saying we will, but we can
The main drivers of this over the last 4 years have been Prestia and Lambert and they've missed a lot of football. Its why I wouldn't be counting us out just yet. If we can get these 2 going again, it will go a long way to fixing our game.
Our midfield is faarked.
But I think we play with freedom this week. A freshness we haven’t seen since 2017.
Hear me out here. If the WC loss was about “needing the bye”, the StK loss about “waking up”, then the GC loss is surely about “something is fundamentally wrong and we need to change”.
What that change represents only the club can know.
Sometimes it is as simple as taking finals, the future, out of every conversation and focusing instead on quarter to quarter objectives. Baby steps now, like we are starting all over again.
Yes we are lacking a critical core of ruck/midfield experience, but I think we throw caution to the wind and apply kamikaze chaos from the outset against Collingwood.
All it takes is one win to stoke the unforgettable fire.
Look into the players eyes in the team song if we beat Collingwood. Ignore us at your peril if we get a sniff of blood in the water.
Finish 8th with Nank healthy. That’s all we need to do for all hell to be unleashed.
I’m still on this train.
But I think we play with freedom this week. A freshness we haven’t seen since 2017.
Hear me out here. If the WC loss was about “needing the bye”, the StK loss about “waking up”, then the GC loss is surely about “something is fundamentally wrong and we need to change”.
What that change represents only the club can know.
Sometimes it is as simple as taking finals, the future, out of every conversation and focusing instead on quarter to quarter objectives. Baby steps now, like we are starting all over again.
Yes we are lacking a critical core of ruck/midfield experience, but I think we throw caution to the wind and apply kamikaze chaos from the outset against Collingwood.
All it takes is one win to stoke the unforgettable fire.
Look into the players eyes in the team song if we beat Collingwood. Ignore us at your peril if we get a sniff of blood in the water.
Finish 8th with Nank healthy. That’s all we need to do for all hell to be unleashed.
I’m still on this train.
