1. Clean hands (& a broken record) - In the centre square, with clean hands and forward movement of the ball, we were able to score with 5 goals from centre clearances. For a team that has scoring issues in its forward half, it is a feature to look at for the rest of the season.
(Note: starting square Nash, Worpel & Day - same as Lions game with Newcombe on the bench.)
2. Taking advantage from frees - on more than one occasion, we took the advantage from frees in the centre square, which wasn't the optimal decision. In one of them, Nashy ended up with another free, others resulted in ugly entries. Sometimes when you are hot, you need to take your time.
3. Role of Wingard - there has been much consternation amongst the faithful on the value of Wingard to the team. For the second game in a row, he set up the first goal as well as 2 goals; 7 score involvements & 10th for metres gained by the Hawks' players. Is the issue that with Breust out, he had room to move?
4. Fergus Greene can play the "tall" forward role as he showed the preparedness to crash some packs and whilst not taking the marks, he made it a 50/50 contest on a number of occasions. This is something that I don't think he has done previously. DGB was also prepared to do this as well.
5. Dropped marks in the back half with inferred pressure - again, defenders dropping marks in the back half put undue pressure on their teammates. Mitchell in 1st quarter (out near boundary line on F50 entry) which lead to Hogan goal. Scrimshaw at CHB in the 2nd quarter.
6. Nash is now recognised a "Ferrari" - given that Frost was given the chop out ruck role (i.e. tractor), we now know that the coaches have upgraded the status of Nash.
Observations:
* Josh Weddle bounces the ball with either hand when on the run.
* Dumb footballers still hurt us - Greene 50m penalty; Blancke missing the target over 15-20 metres; Impey handballing to Worpel off balance.
* CMac learns quickly - in the 2nd quarter, he had a running chance to kick for goal running inside 50 and looked for other options & ended up missing the shot. Come the last quarter, he had the same opportunity and didn't look sideways.
* Newcombe only had 2 kicks after half time - with one of these kicks being to Moore being covered by Himmelberg. (Hard to tell if he had a tag given his first half 7K/11HB and ended up with 9/19).
* Goal kicking from 30-40m out - at least 2-3 times a session, after doing a drill, all of the players take 3-4 shots from this distance out and don't miss that often. When they have a "contest" on the shot e.g. miss and push ups are the penalty, their success rate is very high. It is interesting to continue to think about what game day pressure does.
Post-game social media discussion point:
The game of Reeves - the chat has again focused on his lack of marking in the game, however there appears to be little acknowledgement of his actual ruck work. He won the hitouts to advantage 12-5 and with 5 goals from centre square clearances, it was the only scoring method that kept us in the game. If you review Worpel's shot in the last quarter where he ran inside 50 and kicked a point, it came from a boundary throw in where Reeves tapped it over his head to CMac with handballs setting up Worpel.
Whilst the discussion has merit, but it has to be rounded in recognising the all aspects of the performance. Curiously, one paper listed him in our best players which I don't support, although in Sydney games, you can get interesting reports from NSW based journos.
IMHO - The question, at the moment, becomes a choice between scoring 5 goals from centre square clearances vs. 5 marks around the ground, I'll take the 5 goals given our scoring issues. This would mean to be competitive , we would then have to score 8-10 goals from general play.
A couple of other interesting aspects to this discussion:
a) Kosi started in the centre square at the start of at least one quarter in the BH game rather than Meek.
b) It is worth recalling that the last piece of the puzzle for Aaron Sandilands was his marking around the ground as well as recalling Hodgey's speech on Mitchell's elevation to the Hall of Fame, he made the point of his role in nullifying Sandiland's ruck work & hitting zones in the 2013 GF. This may indicate the importance that Mitchell places on this aspect of the game.
Thanks for your great summation of this weeks game. Just a little surprised that you didn't mention the outstanding contribution of James Worpel to our centre clearance dominance. He has been a vastly improved player this year. I think he is building close to the Peter Crimmins medal form of a few years ago. Yes, has a few things to work on (same as a lot of his team mates) but I thought he was excellent for us.
What was learnt:
1. Clean hands (& a broken record) - In the centre square, with clean hands and forward movement of the ball, we were able to score with 5 goals from centre clearances. For a team that has scoring issues in its forward half, it is a feature to look at for the rest of the season.
(Note: starting square Nash, Worpel & Day - same as Lions game with Newcombe on the bench.)
2. Taking advantage from frees - on more than one occasion, we took the advantage from frees in the centre square, which wasn't the optimal decision. In one of them, Nashy ended up with another free, others resulted in ugly entries. Sometimes when you are hot, you need to take your time.
3. Role of Wingard - there has been much consternation amongst the faithful on the value of Wingard to the team. For the second game in a row, he set up the first goal as well as 2 goals; 7 score involvements & 10th for metres gained by the Hawks' players. Is the issue that with Breust out, he had room to move?
4. Fergus Greene can play the "tall" forward role as he showed the preparedness to crash some packs and whilst not taking the marks, he made it a 50/50 contest on a number of occasions. This is something that I don't think he has done previously. DGB was also prepared to do this as well.
5. Dropped marks in the back half with inferred pressure - again, defenders dropping marks in the back half put undue pressure on their teammates. Mitchell in 1st quarter (out near boundary line on F50 entry) which lead to Hogan goal. Scrimshaw at CHB in the 2nd quarter.
6. Nash is now recognised a "Ferrari" - given that Frost was given the chop out ruck role (i.e. tractor), we now know that the coaches have upgraded the status of Nash.
Observations:
* Josh Weddle bounces the ball with either hand when on the run.
* Dumb footballers still hurt us - Greene 50m penalty; Blancke missing the target over 15-20 metres; Impey handballing to Worpel off balance.
* CMac learns quickly - in the 2nd quarter, he had a running chance to kick for goal running inside 50 and looked for other options & ended up missing the shot. Come the last quarter, he had the same opportunity and didn't look sideways.
* Newcombe only had 2 kicks after half time - with one of these kicks being to Moore being covered by Himmelberg. (Hard to tell if he had a tag given his first half 7K/11HB and ended up with 9/19).
* Goal kicking from 30-40m out - at least 2-3 times a session, after doing a drill, all of the players take 3-4 shots from this distance out and don't miss that often. When they have a "contest" on the shot e.g. miss and push ups are the penalty, their success rate is very high. It is interesting to continue to think about what game day pressure does.
Post-game social media discussion point:
The game of Reeves - the chat has again focused on his lack of marking in the game, however there appears to be little acknowledgement of his actual ruck work. He won the hitouts to advantage 12-5 and with 5 goals from centre square clearances, it was the only scoring method that kept us in the game. If you review Worpel's shot in the last quarter where he ran inside 50 and kicked a point, it came from a boundary throw in where Reeves tapped it over his head to CMac with handballs setting up Worpel.
Whilst the discussion has merit, but it has to be rounded in recognising the all aspects of the performance. Curiously, one paper listed him in our best players which I don't support, although in Sydney games, you can get interesting reports from NSW based journos.
IMHO - The question, at the moment, becomes a choice between scoring 5 goals from centre square clearances vs. 5 marks around the ground, I'll take the 5 goals given our scoring issues. This would mean to be competitive , we would then have to score 8-10 goals from general play.
A couple of other interesting aspects to this discussion:
a) Kosi started in the centre square at the start of at least one quarter in the BH game rather than Meek.
b) It is worth recalling that the last piece of the puzzle for Aaron Sandilands was his marking around the ground as well as recalling Hodgey's speech on Mitchell's elevation to the Hall of Fame, he made the point of his role in nullifying Sandiland's ruck work & hitting zones in the 2013 GF. This may indicate the importance that Mitchell places on this aspect of the game.
Thanks for your great summation of this weeks game. Just a little surprised that you didn't mention the outstanding contribution of James Worpel to our centre clearance dominance. He has been a vastly improved player this year. I think he is building close to the Peter Crimmins medal form of a few years ago. Yes, has a few things to work on (same as a lot of his team mates) but I thought he was excellent for us.