Quote from: Dyer'ere on Yesterday at 11:55:37 PM
Something about that is right, Rancey, that we can't handle being favourite, sorta thing. But I do altogether buy the no plan B thing - that we can't play second to the ball, hustle, heat, mop and counter. We got that right a number of times this year - every time we were chopped up at the clearances yet won the game. But we didn't do it n the final so fair criticism.
I think that the gap between teams is closing. Footy socialism means that the top teams aren't as good as they were and the bottom ones aren't as bad. But the dilution of the talent pool due to the expansion teams means none of them are as good.
So there's a change in emphasis. Teams are more about shape and style. North is heavily structured. Big. Strong. Their game is to get out the back. The predication is simple - two big strong North players can beat three opponents. Give or take. One gets out the back and off they go. Their talls are many and tall.
Compare that to the Richmond style. Swarms of little tigers hit the fall. First to the ball. They are augmented at ground level by small mobile KPPs with ground skills. Numbers of talls force the ball to ground where they can help mop up. Richmond has no big men to speak of and is no player who is dominant in the air. Even the ruckman struggles here. But the Tigers can win possession and then freeze the ball before tacking or cutting to run.
North and Richmond are opposites.
Hawthorn have no physical advantages over Richmond. They're pretty much the same shape. But they don't have the ball winning ability of the Tigers. So we expose them for that and freeze the ball. Then tack. They can't get a kick.
We've seen quite a bit of the dynamic of North against Richmond and Hawthorn against Richmond in recent years.
What we see now and will see increasingly is a sophisticated game of Rock, paper, scissors. This shape/style beats that shape/style.
Somewhere between our poor hunting skills, our lack of skill, and the limitations and advantages of our shape/style, lies the answer to our form vagaries. But lack of skill is still the main thing we need to improve on. A couple of good new players would be great.
I like the rock scissors paper analogy a lot. I still don't believe we lost 'cos we're north bunnies though. We were outcoached and outplayed in that game for reasons discussed to death. I will say one thing though, you've been saying for a 2 or 3 seasons now, and I agree %100, that we aren't good enough at contested marks around the ground. We've improved, but we still aren't good enough. Lids, tick, K-mac, tick for his age, Cotch tick, Dusty, tick but need to improve, Brandy, was a tick but has gone backwards a bit, Rance tick obviously.
Thats around the ground, bookends-wise, Ty is improving and needs to improve more, Ivan has stagnated, Chaplin is the most frustrating for me, for his role and supposed standing, his hands needs to be bankable. Like a McGovern or Hurley, marking-wise only I'm talking about, for all his strengths and weaknesses, reliable clutch marking HAS to be his go. He'll take one then bobble one, take two then bobble one, take one then bobble two. etc, etc, etc. When we forst got him I asked my Port workmate, what he thought, 'drops too many marks'.
Got sidetracked on Chaplin there, but to take the next step, contested marking across the park needs to improve, not by that much, but it has to.
tigersnake said:
I like the rock scissors paper analogy a lot. I still don't believe we lost 'cos we're north bunnies though. We were outcoached and outplayed in that game for reasons discussed to death. I will say one thing though, you've been saying for a 2 or 3 seasons now, and I agree %100, that we aren't good enough at contested marks around the ground. We've improved, but we still aren't good enough. Lids, tick, K-mac, tick for his age, Cotch tick, Dusty, tick but need to improve, Brandy, was a tick but has gone backwards a bit, Rance tick obviously.
Thats around the ground, bookends-wise, Ty is improving and needs to improve more, Ivan has stagnated, Chaplin is the most frustrating for me, for his role and supposed standing, his hands needs to be bankable. Like a McGovern or Hurley, marking-wise only I'm talking about, for all his strengths and weaknesses, reliable clutch marking HAS to be his go. He'll take one then bobble one, take two then bobble one, take one then bobble two. etc, etc, etc. When we forst got him I asked my Port workmate, what he thought, 'drops too many marks'.
Got sidetracked on Chaplin there, but to take the next step, contested marking across the park needs to improve, not by that much, but it has to.
Every now and then PRE hold a level of analysis that I can't get elsewhere and learn from. It is the beauty of the forum - a level of analysis beyond the increasingly poor news media. Thank you both for finding a way to build a theory that I believe is totally accurate and something the club could actually use.
