tempo football vs attacking

[tropicaltiger]

Just watched the game. The 3-4 minute period with about 10 minutes to play to 7 arguably cost Port the game. Port just weren't manning up, if you're winning at that stage there is absolutely no reason no bomb it into a situation where the defense has flooded back and you are out numbered. Any team it that situation would work it around trying to crack the zone, you don't run and gun into a defensive flood. We only got in trouble when Port finally manned us up with about 6.30 to play and Richo turned it over. We were lucky they didn't work it out sooner because out back line was very fragile with Thirsty and Luke out.

The umpires absolutely hammered us in the last, if we'd got the fair run of it we would have won by three goals and this wouldn't be an issue.

 

[Azza]

One of the purposes of freezing the ball in the defensive third is to break the defensive flood of the other team.

Of course we suck some air while a few tokenists from the other team pretend to man up. Or they really man up in which case we've opened some space up the park (if we can get it there) and made them use just a little bit of petrol.


We'll get better at it.

Bowden said as much in the post-match interview. There were lots of loose men around our backline so we kicked it around. Shades of that game we won against Adelaide in 06 when they refused to man up. Sheeds called it basketball and we copped a lot of flack but we got a hugely unexpected win.

It scares the cr@p out of me tho. Bowden may be able to handle it, but the othgers? Remember when Richo was our last man in defence running it out? My balls are just starting to descend again.