"Tempo" is a dirty word / With 5 mins to go why didn't we ice the game ? [Merged]

[brigadiertiger]

Re: With 5 mins to go why didn't we ice the game ?

We got into the position we were in by not playing defensive football but then we started to go defensive and we lost. Should have continued to attack the whole time and who knows?

 

[Rosy]

Re: With 5 mins to go why didn't we ice the game ?

I felt this deserved its own thread.

It was already being discussed so I've merged the threads y_and_b.

 

[tigers80]

we didnt believe in ourselves my take on it....and by doing that we went into our shells....our supposedly leaders and we know who they are dont know jack about leading....those poor kids have got no hope while that cancer remains at punt road...

 

[jb03]

Re: "Tempo" is a dirty word

Agree. I didnt sense any "tempo" play by us.

Were we at the same game? I was at the G and at the 20 minute mark of the last quarter there's no doubt Richmond started holding the ball up and kicking it a short distance sideways to standing targets who had plenty of space to run if they wanted to but they opted to repeat the process.

What I saw was Essendon filling the hole down the ground - not just in the last few minutes - but pretty much for the entire game. And we did pretty much the same ourselves for a large part of the match too. That, combined with our general ineptitude and the inability of forwrads to move into space properly is what you saw, not any purposeful slowing down of the game as Richo himself has denied.

Rightly or wrongly, the whole game is all about not just not kicking to a contest, but also not potentially running towards or into one that puts pressure on the disposal. Gone are the days of risk taking.

Bummers filled the midfield late in the last qtr and the defenders had bugger all options. They were all over us late and we couldn't handle it.

That's the way I read it to TM. Only Lids has the ability to pion point passes from long range, quite often late the Bummer defenders were back in numbers and were covering the forward options. THe players in the middle often had no choice. They then ran hard forward. They simply outplayed us in the final 5 minutes. The inside 50 stats for those 5 minutes would tell a story I reckon.

 

[TOT70]

I thought the game changed when Newman went off the field. Until then, he had easily been our best player and had run repeatedly through midfield distributing the ball to the forwards cleanly. When he left the field, no one stepped up to play his link man role and the clean flow to the forward line stopped completely.

Why did he leave the field?

 

[tigersforever06]

Re: "Tempo" is a dirty word

Richo said in his interview that at no stage were "tempo" instructions issued.

IMO we didn;t change the way we played at all. We are essentially a stop and prop team all the time. The difference was we got smashed in the clearances, a common occcurrence for us when the pressure comes on.

Agree 100%

How badly do we miss Coughlan. IMO apart from Brown we just cannot afford to lose Cogz