Review Round 9, 2024 - Adelaide vs. Brisbane Lions

[Big Sauce 21]

 

[martinson]

He has loads, just does SFA most weeks like he probably will for the next month

If you isolated all the games that he's played in the forward half , which is relatively few, you'd find he's been very good Nathan.

Plus some of those were in a purely defensive role where his job was to pressure and if he happened to get it offload it.

Let's see if we let him have his head like we did yesterday whether he can produce a similar output.

When you're a genuine team player and not one of the 'stars' it's not so easy to do a lot that gets noticed.

 

[Nunez]

Just dropping by to say i saw the worrell incident where he busted his arm on replay (was at the game but up the other end of the ground) and what i noticed were the lions players in the general.area coming up to check on him and give him a pat on the back which was classy and a good look. I will see myself out now.

Lohmann is an absolute shithead on the field, but it's all in the name of competitive fun. Great kid - loved seeing that.

Hope Worrell is okay.

 

[dlanod]

been saying for a while hipwood and daniher get criticised differently than other key forwards

you can see why daniher doesnt want to engage with media at all

If you don't look/act like the standard KPF (think Hawkins, Brown, Fev, Carey - leads, strength, ego), they'll always be harder on you. Buddy got hassled early on until he became dominant and even then people were negging him because of his lack of contested marking. Jack Riewoldt, the media darling these days, also had similar because he was really effective but didn't look like a classic KPF (at least until Richmond as a whole got better).

 

[braddsey]

Showed more yesterday than any of our forwards have all year.

Though likely snuck under the radar a little more in terms of attention from the opposition. That said, he took his chances, including the massive pressure goal late in the 4th.

 

[luthor]

Gobsmacked that neither coach could find a vote for either Bez or HA

 

[Mr Ripper]

Thoughts, Mr Ripper?

Well, that’s probably right for Joe. Never see his lips move.

 

[martinson]

Gobsmacked that neither coach could find a vote for either Bez or HA

Andrews was awesome.

I saw a narrative put up that Himmelberg played Harris fairly well and hurt him on occasions.

If you look at the times Himmelberg managed to get it Harris made the decision to cover for others and help out.

Harris isn't getting his due kudos in the media. Now that Moore stinks it up fairly regularly they've decided that Weitering is the best KPD going around so the AA is all his barring injury or a total loss in form.

 

[western royboy]

The other thing that annoys me is that minor infringements pre and during marking contests get paid but your gun midfielders around a stoppage are fair game. You restrain someone by grabbing off the contest is a free is it not.

From an albeit community level umpire (major league) the easiest free kick to pay is a hold…anywhere.

I’m always looking for them and instructing players “don’t hold”

I tend to find if you get a coupe early it is amazing how they go out of the game.

I’ve got no idea how AFL panel umpires are instructed.

I’d love to get a go for a week to see how we’d go because I think a bit of common sense would go a long way.

 

[luthor]

Andrews was awesome.

I saw a narrative put up that Himmelberg played Harris fairly well and hurt him on occasions.

If you look at the times Himmelberg managed to get it Harris made the decision to cover for others and help out.

Harris isn't getting his due kudos in the media. Now that Moore stinks it up fairly regularly they've decided that Weitering is the best KPD going around so the AA is all his barring injury or a total loss in form.

100% agree

Andrews has been imperious all season but it's like he's the Invisible Man in the media.

Pox

 

[Grasshopper17]

Well, that’s probably right for Joe. Never see his lips move.

He chews a fair bit of gum by the look.

 

[martinson]

He chews a fair bit of gum by the look.

He seems to have rinsed his hair before every game as well.

Does Joe go to the boutique barber prior to games ?

Maybe there aren't a lot of options down the coast.

 

[McIvor]

From clips I see from training, we don't practice set shots with anyone standing the mark. There's the first problem: not training as you play.

I feel like as a sport not necessarily just the Lions to be fair is that the standards are pretty low. You regularly hear stories over the years of players going to local ovals away from the club to practice their goalkicking - sans with no one on the mark lol - to only training in the mornings when games at their earliest are approx 2pm and then night games going to 10:30pm and yet you never hear clubs training at that time. It really is surprising how little clubs do to replicate what game conditions actually are.

 

[3KZ is Football]

Clearly the coach needs to be sacked for not training them to mark the ball properly.

Let’s shuffle the assistant coaches first, shall we.

 

[Lions Flag 2020]

AFL players have super endurance and are incredibly brave but the skill level of the competition is generally poor. In an elite competition I would expect everyone to be two sided hand and foot (yet double Brownlow medalist lochie Neale has no left foot along with half the competition). The number of 5m hand balls which miss the target is incredible and set shot goal kicking is truly embarrassing across the comp (but specially by us). No wonder teams like the lions and hawks were able to win 3 peats as they assembled teams with higher skill levels than the mediocre rest. Tigers didn’t have better skills just a game plan that suited their team and a freak of a player who was at the peak of his powers winning grand finals for them.

If our key forwards miss another set shot from 25m directly in front this season then I am going to throw the tv out the window!

 

[Grasshopper17]

I think my thoughts about the game echo many others' here... Pretty good effort for most of the game from most of the players, with some poor execution thrown in which cost us goals back the other way.

Outside of that, from a strategic perspective, I was incredibly disappointed by our lack of willingness to change angles and really utilise the width of the ground. After my general enthusiasm about our ball movement against Melbourne and the Gold Coast, it basically completely evaporated against Adelaide.

I included in my comments a reference to Adelaide Oval being narrower than other grounds, but that need not preclude us from trying to switch to the open side AT ALL. I think the one time we did it was in the last quarter, it was a bit of a Cam Rayner chaos ball in general play, it was a good option at the time in my opinion, but it seemed as though nobody else was ready for it and I think we barely escaped without conceding ourselves.

So this meant that basically 100% of our ball movement was in straight lines towards goal. Yes, many of those marks were uncontested, but there's only so many times you can get away with that, and then you're forced to go long down the line. Fortunately our talls ahead of the ball competed well enough that this didn't hurt us too much; we only conceded 6 contested marks and 10 intercept marks for the whole game.

But it just meant we just became very one-dimensional, and really limited our ability to score. I've referred a couple of times to what I consider the 4 primary avenues to goal. If, like us yesterday, you aren't prepared to shift the ball laterally, you eliminate one of those methods of scoring. If you aren't prepared to move the ball quickly, which we didn't, even when we went direct, we eliminate another method of scoring.

I understand (to an extent) the rationale behind not wanting to play this way: we don't want to expose ourselves on a fast turnover if we cough the ball up. But guess what? We coughed the ball up and got exposed on fast turnovers anyway! We conceded 90, which is well above AFL average (82.78), and Adelaide still generated shots at goal from 55% of their inside 50's, which again is well above AFL average (46.9%).

So if this not evidence enough that this whole concept of "defending with the football" is a flawed concept, I don't know what is, and I fear that if the message isn't getting through yet, it may never. Geelong learnt this lesson courtesy of a Preliminary Final flogging in 2021 - on that score we are still 2 and a half years behind the cutting edge.

So that leaves only 2 paths to goal: winning clearances and forward pressure. We lost clearances, and were well beaten at centre bounces, yet still managed to score 7-5 (47) from this score source while conceding only 3-6 (24). So from a scoreboard perspective, our clearance game held up well, but it's a high intensity method, requiring sustained effort. This means it is therefore prone to random fluctuations, often in line with midfield personnel changes, as we saw with the runs of goals from both teams during the 2nd half last night.

Scoring from forward pressure is similarly a high intensity method. The metric I've started looking at is comparing our forward 50 tackles to the amount of times we went inside 50 and failed to get a shot at goal (i.e. Adelaide rebounded). Last night we laid 10 tackles inside 50 and let the ball out 28 times. That's a ratio of 35.7% compared with an AFL average of 39.8%. Meanwhile at the other end Adelaide went 13 from 21, an exceptional 61.9%. That's a huge difference in the game, and doesn't even include the times we gave the ball back to them under no pressure due to our skill errors in the back half.

So as I highlighted after the Melbourne game, I'm concerned that we are having to work harder, not smarter, in the way we set up scoring opportunities. We still managed to generate shots at goal on 49.1% of our inside 50's, which is above AFL average, and our 2nd best result for the year. I genuinely believe the sky is the limit with regards to the levels we could achieve if we were more prepared to take the game on with our ball movement from turnovers. We are 16th in this regard, scoring only 39.9 points per game from turnovers (57 points per 100 turnovers). Sydney lead in this regard with 62.3 per game (88 points per 100 turnovers). Yes, we may open ourselves up if we lose the ball, but we got opened up yesterday anyway. So as I see it we have little to lose in this regard.

Be brave. Pin yer ears back.

 

[martinson]

I think my thoughts about the game echo many others' here... Pretty good effort for most of the game from most of the players, with some poor execution thrown in which cost us goals back the other way.

Outside of that, from a strategic perspective, I was incredibly disappointed by our lack of willingness to change angles and really utilise the width of the ground. After my general enthusiasm about our ball movement against Melbourne and the Gold Coast, it basically completely evaporated against Adelaide.

I included in my comments a reference to Adelaide Oval being narrower than other grounds, but that need not preclude us from trying to switch to the open side AT ALL. I think the one time we did it was in the last quarter, it was a bit of a Cam Rayner chaos ball in general play, it was a good option at the time in my opinion, but it seemed as though nobody else was ready for it and I think we barely escaped without conceding ourselves.

So this meant that basically 100% of our ball movement was in straight lines towards goal. Yes, many of those marks were uncontested, but there's only so many times you can get away with that, and then you're forced to go long down the line. Fortunately our talls ahead of the ball competed well enough that this didn't hurt us too much; we only conceded 6 contested marks and 10 intercept marks for the whole game.

But it just meant we just became very one-dimensional, and really limited our ability to score. I've referred a couple of times to what I consider the 4 primary avenues to goal. If, like us yesterday, you aren't prepared to shift the ball laterally, you eliminate one of those methods of scoring. If you aren't prepared to move the ball quickly, which we didn't, even when we went direct, we eliminate another method of scoring.

I understand (to an extent) the rationale behind not wanting to play this way: we don't want to expose ourselves on a fast turnover if we cough the ball up. But guess what? We coughed the ball up and got exposed on fast turnovers anyway! We conceded 90, which is well above AFL average (82.78), and Adelaide still generated shots at goal from 55% of their inside 50's, which again is well above AFL average (46.9%).

So if this not evidence enough that this whole concept of "defending with the football" is a flawed concept, I don't know what is, and I fear that if the message isn't getting through yet, it may never. Geelong learnt this lesson courtesy of a Preliminary Final flogging in 2021 - on that score we are still 2 and a half years behind the cutting edge.

So that leaves only 2 paths to goal: winning clearances and forward pressure. We lost clearances, and were well beaten at centre bounces, yet still managed to score 7-5 (47) from this score source while conceding only 3-6 (24). So from a scoreboard perspective, our clearance game held up well, but it's a high intensity method, requiring sustained effort. This means it is therefore prone to random fluctuations, often in line with midfield personnel changes, as we saw with the runs of goals from both teams during the 2nd half last night.

Scoring from forward pressure is similarly a high intensity method. The metric I've started looking at is comparing our forward 50 tackles to the amount of times we went inside 50 and failed to get a shot at goal (i.e. Adelaide rebounded). Last night we laid 10 tackles inside 50 and let the ball out 28 times. That's a ratio of 35.7% compared with an AFL average of 39.8%. Meanwhile at the other end Adelaide went 13 from 21, an exceptional 61.9%. That's a huge difference in the game, and doesn't even include the times we gave the ball back to them under no pressure due to our skill errors in the back half.

So as I highlighted after the Melbourne game, I'm concerned that we are having to work harder, not smarter, in the way we set up scoring opportunities. We still managed to generate shots at goal on 49.1% of our inside 50's, which is above AFL average, and our 2nd best result for the year. I genuinely believe the sky is the limit with regards to the levels we could achieve if we were more prepared to take the game on with our ball movement from turnovers. We are 16th in this regard, scoring only 39.9 points per game from turnovers (57 points per 100 turnovers). Sydney lead in this regard with 62.3 per game (88 points per 100 turnovers). Yes, we may open ourselves up if we lose the ball, but we got opened up yesterday anyway. So as I see it we have little to lose in this regard.

Be brave. Pin yer ears back.

It really does illustrate what a loss Coleman has been.

 

[Nathan Barley]

I think my thoughts about the game echo many others' here... Pretty good effort for most of the game from most of the players, with some poor execution thrown in which cost us goals back the other way.

Outside of that, from a strategic perspective, I was incredibly disappointed by our lack of willingness to change angles and really utilise the width of the ground. After my general enthusiasm about our ball movement against Melbourne and the Gold Coast, it basically completely evaporated against Adelaide.

I included in my comments a reference to Adelaide Oval being narrower than other grounds, but that need not preclude us from trying to switch to the open side AT ALL. I think the one time we did it was in the last quarter, it was a bit of a Cam Rayner chaos ball in general play, it was a good option at the time in my opinion, but it seemed as though nobody else was ready for it and I think we barely escaped without conceding ourselves.

So this meant that basically 100% of our ball movement was in straight lines towards goal. Yes, many of those marks were uncontested, but there's only so many times you can get away with that, and then you're forced to go long down the line. Fortunately our talls ahead of the ball competed well enough that this didn't hurt us too much; we only conceded 6 contested marks and 10 intercept marks for the whole game.

But it just meant we just became very one-dimensional, and really limited our ability to score. I've referred a couple of times to what I consider the 4 primary avenues to goal. If, like us yesterday, you aren't prepared to shift the ball laterally, you eliminate one of those methods of scoring. If you aren't prepared to move the ball quickly, which we didn't, even when we went direct, we eliminate another method of scoring.

I understand (to an extent) the rationale behind not wanting to play this way: we don't want to expose ourselves on a fast turnover if we cough the ball up. But guess what? We coughed the ball up and got exposed on fast turnovers anyway! We conceded 90, which is well above AFL average (82.78), and Adelaide still generated shots at goal from 55% of their inside 50's, which again is well above AFL average (46.9%).

So if this not evidence enough that this whole concept of "defending with the football" is a flawed concept, I don't know what is, and I fear that if the message isn't getting through yet, it may never. Geelong learnt this lesson courtesy of a Preliminary Final flogging in 2021 - on that score we are still 2 and a half years behind the cutting edge.

So that leaves only 2 paths to goal: winning clearances and forward pressure. We lost clearances, and were well beaten at centre bounces, yet still managed to score 7-5 (47) from this score source while conceding only 3-6 (24). So from a scoreboard perspective, our clearance game held up well, but it's a high intensity method, requiring sustained effort. This means it is therefore prone to random fluctuations, often in line with midfield personnel changes, as we saw with the runs of goals from both teams during the 2nd half last night.

Scoring from forward pressure is similarly a high intensity method. The metric I've started looking at is comparing our forward 50 tackles to the amount of times we went inside 50 and failed to get a shot at goal (i.e. Adelaide rebounded). Last night we laid 10 tackles inside 50 and let the ball out 28 times. That's a ratio of 35.7% compared with an AFL average of 39.8%. Meanwhile at the other end Adelaide went 13 from 21, an exceptional 61.9%. That's a huge difference in the game, and doesn't even include the times we gave the ball back to them under no pressure due to our skill errors in the back half.

So as I highlighted after the Melbourne game, I'm concerned that we are having to work harder, not smarter, in the way we set up scoring opportunities. We still managed to generate shots at goal on 49.1% of our inside 50's, which is above AFL average, and our 2nd best result for the year. I genuinely believe the sky is the limit with regards to the levels we could achieve if we were more prepared to take the game on with our ball movement from turnovers. We are 16th in this regard, scoring only 39.9 points per game from turnovers (57 points per 100 turnovers). Sydney lead in this regard with 62.3 per game (88 points per 100 turnovers). Yes, we may open ourselves up if we lose the ball, but we got opened up yesterday anyway. So as I see it we have little to lose in this regard.

Be brave. Pin yer ears back.

Plus Adelaide's pressure was at about 200 and they ran hard to setup while the suns pressure was probably around 160 and they played the game like they'd already lost it

 

[Viceregal]

your always right

So I tell my wife but she disagrees.

So you tell your wife that she is always right and she disagrees or you tell her that you yourself are always right and she disagrees?

Either way sounds disagreeable

 

[knaf]

Just dropping by to say i saw the worrell incident where he busted his arm on replay (was at the game but up the other end of the ground) and what i noticed were the lions players in the general.area coming up to check on him and give him a pat on the back which was classy and a good look. I will see myself out now.

Hope the kid is alright and recovers well.

 

[p4p1]

I liked Jacks game and am a massive advocate for him but was pretty disappointed with his weak effort late against Walker which enabled him to put it on the boot and get it to Rankin to goal late in the goal square. Other than that, Jack is tracking really well for mine.

Was that the one where Tex pushed him in the back to get him off the ball?

 

[Jim Stynes11]

So that leaves only 2 paths to goal: winning clearances and forward pressure. We lost clearances, and were well beaten at centre bounces, yet still managed to score 7-5 (47) from this score source while conceding only 3-6 (24). So from a scoreboard perspective, our clearance game held up well, but it's a high intensity method, requiring sustained effort. This means it is therefore prone to random fluctuations, often in line with midfield personnel changes, as we saw with the runs of goals from both teams during the 2nd half last night.

Love your posts and I have learned a lot from reading them.

Regarding the above stats on clearances vs scores from clearances - if we are losing clearances and not getting heavily scored against, is this suggesting our defensive run has improved dramatically. Or that our defense outplayed the Adelaide forward line. Likely a combination of both?

 

[On the quiet]

Andrews was awesome.

I saw a narrative put up that Himmelberg played Harris fairly well and hurt him on occasions.

If you look at the times Himmelberg managed to get it Harris made the decision to cover for others and help out.

Harris isn't getting his due kudos in the media. Now that Moore stinks it up fairly regularly they've decided that Weitering is the best KPD going around so the AA is all his barring injury or a total loss in form.

I don't think Harris should be named as fullback in the AA side, that should be the blokes who are playing that fullback lock down role each week, so for me guys like Weitering or May (possibly Taylor but has missed a few weeks with injuries). Payne does the role for us every week, against the oppositions best KPF and this is important for team structure as it allows Harris to intercept and Lester not to be exposed on genuine tall KPF.

Harris should absolutely be considered for AA selection as the CHB.

Agree Moore does stink it up more regularly than the Vic media acknowledge.

 

[Grasshopper17]

Love your posts and I have learned a lot from reading them.

Regarding the above stats on clearances vs scores from clearances - if we are losing clearances and not getting heavily scored against, is this suggesting our defensive run has improved dramatically. Or that our defense outplayed the Adelaide forward line. Likely a combination of both?

Hard to tell, and to be honest the two go hand in glove to an extent. For example, we take 17 contested marks and 24 intercept marks against Adelaide. So you can say "our defence outplayed the Adelaide forward line", but how much of that is caused by our midfield applying pressure on the incoming kick to not allow their forwards to get an easy mark on a lead? And how much is caused by our midfield blocking up space on a slow play to prevent these leads happening?

So it's probably a bit of everything. Certainly our defence has outshone our attack this season, and while I've been impressed with the positioning of our defenders most of the time, some of the credit probably needs to go to our midfield, for helping to ensure our defenders haven't been as exposed as they might have been in previous seasons.

 

[p4p1]

The other thing that annoys me is that minor infringements pre and during marking contests get paid but your gun midfielders around a stoppage are fair game. You restrain someone by grabbing off the contest is a free is it not.

Depends on the forward though.