Who instigated the "possession game"/ | PUNT ROAD END | Richmond Tigers Forum
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Who instigated the "possession game"/

nitrotiger

nitrotiger

" lets play like the tigers of old ! "
Sep 9, 2005
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Noble Park North Melbourne
Who else but bloody Gerard Neesham when the Dockers were ushered into the national comp.
Lot to flamin answer for I reckon...II dont hate the Dockers....Im just ANNOYED by them,thats all.....and we lost Chris Bond and Ashley Presscott,an under-rated defender,to them in them days...... :-[
 
It's a natural progression instigated primarily by the coaches.
Higher emphasis on disposal skills. Lower risk kicking to a 50/50 contest.
The best footy I've seen this year is when players are forced to play one on one footy to counteract the possession game.
As has been said beats the heck out of flooding.
Might mean there's less contested possession hence the basketball reference but it beats the heck out of a game that was getting so scrappy it was leaning towards rugby. Seems only yesterday everyone was complaining about that.
 
Digglers Ghost said:
We're just never satisfied are we TOO?

I'd love the late eighties to early nineties style footy to come back. Now that was entertaining!!
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Spot on there DG, I was just saying that to a mate last week.
 
Digglers Ghost said:
We're just never satisfied are we TOO?

I'd love the late eighties to early nineties style footy to come back. Now that was entertaining!!
Click to expand...

Yeah - but the late 60's early 70's football was the best spectacle - tough hard physical clashes with great passages of football - 2 screamers a quarter as players flew into packs to pull down great marks and of course the main reason - The Tigers were on Top - feared and hated and very very bloody good!
 
I'm told that it evolved somewhere in the 50s & 60s with Melbourne & Geelong. I'm told that both Bobby Davis & Norm Smith both asked their teams to run and carry the ball into attack. This was the footy that Barassi learnt to play in Melbourne's golden era, which he in turn took to both Carlton & North in the 60s & 70s.

North in the 70s played a very quick possession game in the 70s. In 1975, North ran teams off their feet, starving them of the ball. The best example is North's thrashing of the Hawks in that GF.

Hawthorn learnt from North's 70s experience and developed their own possession game through the 80s. Westcoast & Footscray did it in the 90s.

The basis of the possession game is numbers on the ball, running in packs, keeping the ball away from contested situations and holding possession. It has generally been used, over the years, by sides that have lacked for taller players.
 
Tigers of Old said:
It's a natural progression instigated primarily by the coaches.
Higher emphasis on disposal skills. Lower risk kicking to a 50/50 contest.
The best footy I've seen this year is when players are forced to play one on one footy to counteract the possession game.
As has been said beats the heck out of flooding.
Might mean there's less contested possession hence the basketball reference but it beats the heck out of a game that was getting so scrappy it was leaning towards rugby. Seems only yesterday everyone was complaining about that.
Click to expand...

Basketball Vs Rugby?

Give me the Rugby...at least it is body on body, and brutal.
 
The best (read "worst") posession side I have seen in my early football life was played by Collingwood in 1973. From memory, they finished on top at the end of the H&A season with this style.

Crucially, they played the posession game forward of centre. This is where it really comes unstuck.

Needless to say, when the heat was finally put on them, in the second half of the 1973 preliminary final they got burned.

There's always a core of light running players in such teams (although Freo currrently uses fat sissies in lieu).

If teams want to play, fast, running posession football, they will almost invariably fail in September. It's too hard to maintain in desperate games against similar class opposition. It only takes some sustained pressure to rattle them. And some bully boy tactics- late tackles, fearsome away from the ball shepherds and my personal favourite- the late spoil on the uncontested mark (you've got to hurt him enough that he spills the ball or it's fifty). Andy Kellaway is a genius at this last one.

Your tactics have to be cruel, measured and sustained. You don't brawl with them. They have to want to brawl with you. It's what INSIDE teams do to OUTSIDE teams.

Next time you see a lower class team mauling a light running side which one will you barrack for?

And which one is truly the better Australian football team?

On Neesham's teams- he was banking on using a style that suited the light players available to him at Claremont. It failed but was visionary and influential in its way.
 
It has come from Soccer. Our game is slowly evolving in a similar way to the World Game. If the current trend continues, we will have teams playing with 80% of the players behind the ball until they surge forward, just like they do in Soccer.

Do you remember the celebrated goal at the 2002 World Cup where Mexico had something like 21 unopposed touches as they probed from one side of the field to the other and back again until the put the ball on their striker's head and through the net?

I was at a RFC function the following week and suggested to Greg Hutchinson (our assistant coach at the time) that AFL was going down this path. He didn't think any AFL team would ever have the skill to do something like this. ??????

I doubt that Neil Craig would agree, esp after the Crows did exactly the same thing against Collingwood a few weeks ago.
 
I think with the money and the pressure of the game going up and up each season, less risks are taken and more "safer" ways to play the game are being used.

I'd say Sydney under Eade and the Bulldogs under Wallace, adapted to the two types of games that have ruined the free running attacking game. Wallace used the flood to his advantage and Eade used the posession game. Not that they innovated them, I just think that they used it in more extreme ways than every other team did.

Sydney came away with the flag last year because they simply oozed their way through the finals. Leaving their attacks few and far between but playing the contested posession game better than any other team.

It's all about playing to your advantages, when you can. Taking risks when you can and always sticking to your game. The more you do this, the more you win.
 
Watch the Essendon v Carlton 1993 Grand Final. This is exactly the type of football we should get back too. So exciting and tough, but with excellent skills and contests all around the ground. None of this basketball merrygoround crap we normally see today.
 
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