Rich V Melb - Saturday, March 4, 4.10pm AEDT, Casey Fields

[jokershoppe]

Sorry if you’ve already addressed this as I haven’t read the whole thread. Just wondering, in your experience in club land, how these pre season games are handled? Are players told to take it easy and make sure they come out unscathed? Is it a chance to muck around with things? Or is it treated more like a dress rehearsal for the real thing?

It it was a real afl game then
Not at Casey fields
Lynch would play 4 quarters
Side picked would vary quite significantly.
Mcg would be a huge advantage over Casey fields for us.
Lynch bolton and dusty especially need game time,those 3 firing changes absolutely everything with 850 goals kicked in afl footy.

 

[Little Ziggyadee]

Speaking to an ex AFL player tonight. He basically said those who are walk up starts treat practice games as a chance to get some run in the legs. Care factor is little. More emphasis is made by the fringe players trying to break into the team.

That's from a bloke that hasn't tasted the ultimate reward.
We played like shitt.
There was no positives
Cumberland thinks he is Dermott Brereton.
Cotchin isn't a Castagna or Bulter.
Lynch looked like his foot fell off during the summer.
Grimes was dreaming what type if grapes will he have in October.
Dow finally woke up.
Sampson marked everything but kicked like a Donkey.
Our coach instead of coaching was at Disneyland with Griffens.
If I see Teague on TV again with a RFC top on, I going straight to the club.
This needs board sackings.
Peggy hasn't even closed the door on the way out and we are in crisis.
Do you reckon the Ferret and Bryan Wood will challenge again??

 

[momentai]

Clearly just taking parts of what I say. We get that you don't like Tarrant, yes his main focus is to spoil the best forward, but he can mark. Remember you were the one that brought up stats showing his lack of marking last year, I'm sure you remember that Tarrant broke his thumb last season but the professional that he is, he continued on and defending very very well. Obviously went to a purely defensive focus from then.

The thing Tarrant give us, is he takes the oppositions best forward, we don't really want Balta doing that role, we want him on the 2nd forward where he can also sag off and intercept. To even contemplate that Young is ready to take the oppositions best forward is not only ludicrous, but you'd almost think about sending the men in the white coats around.

He may get there, but there is zero chance that Young would be preferred over Tarrant right now, it would mean a drastic shift in our defensive matchups.

Sounds to me as if you are coming to this conclusion too, and moving towards Miller back, which is likely. Ie. Tarrant would be 1st cab, then Miller, then Yound would come into the discussion.

Tarrant taking the best forward given his limitations as a defender is crazy.
Looks like he misses through injury.

Young got into trouble with the umpires yesterday in part because of his early contact with his opponent.
According to the commentary the umpires are likely to be hard on this although I didn’t notice much protection given to our tall forwards for similar contact made to them.

Balta is the one who should be taking a Curnow or McKay but he lacks discipline.
We have all watched him do some marvellous things since 17, but he really needs more consistency at this point.

So yes I think unfortunately Miller may be sent back.
Ryan may come in but with Riewoldt and Lynch, but he is another who lacks toe.

 

[gold1]

That's from a bloke that hasn't tasted the ultimate reward.
We played like shitt.
There was no positives
Cumberland thinks he is Dermott Brereton.
Cotchin isn't a Castagna or Bulter.
Lynch looked like his foot fell off during the summer.
Grimes was dreaming what type if grapes will he have in October.
Dow finally woke up.
Sampson marked everything but kicked like a Donkey.
Our coach instead of coaching was at Disneyland with Griffens.
If I see Teague on TV again with a RFC top on, I going straight to the club.
This needs board sackings.
Peggy hasn't even closed the door on the way out and we are in crisis.
Do you reckon the Ferret and Bryan Wood will challenge again??

Well.I guess we are spooners this year.............

 

[Tigers of Old]

folks have mentioned our forward line and I think we'll nut that puzzle out.

what worried me about yesterday was the continued flakiness of the back six / seven. they just haven't looked great since 2020.

Good call. There's enough options up fwd but as you say the defence is far more problematic.

 

[Little Ziggyadee]

Well.I guess we are spooners this year.............

At least we haven't got a 1st rounder to burn

 

[Little Ziggyadee]

Cornes might bring it down to 5 goals for Cotchin

 

[Tig3]

A lot of doom and gloom, personally I think Melbourne have the best defence in the comp. We got it in there enough, just weren’t effective with our entries and the smalls didn’t get to work at ground level so it rebounded out too easily. Get it in 55 times against most other sides and we’d score more

 

[Little Ziggyadee]

At least if we kept Bulter and Higgins we wouldve only lost by 6 goals

 

[year of the tiger]

The forward line was my biggest concern.

Seeing Jack, Cotch, Dusty and Cotch walking to their positions together looks scary for the oppo. But in reality its too.many old blokes.

I think we will see Trent and Dusty play more on the ball and less forward for the reason you identify

It would scare most players if they started to see double walking around out there.

 

[Dont Argue]

Going long along the same boundary and kicking to packs seems to be our game plan whilst Melbourne kicked at angles and constantly had outlets.
Not sure what we’ve been working on as I saw absolute no system to our forward entries.
If it wasn’t for Baker and Taranto, we would have been embarrassed much further.
I don’t worry about score lines but I’ve got no idea what our system actually is. Our lack of foot skills prohibit a precision game but the new rules have destroyed our pressure/Kaos brand. We look caught somewhere in between

 

[Redford]

The forward line was my biggest concern.

Seeing Jack, Cotch, Dusty and Cotch walking to their positions together looks scary for the oppo. But in reality its too.many old blokes.

I think we will see Trent and Dusty play more on the ball and less forward for the reason you identify

It was no small co incidence that when we moved Chimp and the Dusty Dog up the ground and into the middle in the second half that we played and looked a truck load better. Clearly, thankfully, the coaching staff realised it wasn’t working and made the necessary changes.

Melbourne kicked 2 or 3 very late goals, but otherwise the second half we looked reasonably ok for just a practice match.

 

[TigerMasochist]

Notwithstanding the result, lowlight for me was the shithouse Foxtel/Kayo commentary.
Nick Del Santo & Gerard Healy, christ almighty, they're dullards.

Just turn the foolume down real low, grab a beer or three n do your own commentating / barracking. Lots of fun n you'll rarely disagree with the commentators opinion.

 

[mrposhman]

Tarrant taking the best forward given his limitations as a defender is crazy.

Did you even watch us last year?? Tarrant took the best forward in every match!!

 

[The Mole]

I’m going to watch the game again over coming days but I had a couple of impressions at the time.
Firstly we let the Dees flood our forward line with extra players and then allowed them to run it out easily, particularly in the first half.
We allowed Grundy and Gawn to move forward many times without a covering player (ruckman?)
We rarely switched to the fat side and if we did it was slow. That’s not how they have been training.
We were not running hard in numbers to support. Again this is not how we have been training.
We have been training clearances hard this preseason and we won the hit outs and the clearances -just - but would have been by more if Prestia had played a whole game.
Our pressure around the ball was significantly below our normal output.
Did we do all this on purpose or was it simply lack of application?
I will see more on the rewatching of the game. I suspect we didn’t want to show all our game plan although that may well be just wishful thinking.

 

[Merveille]

It was no small co incidence that when we moved Chimp and the Dusty Dog up the ground and into the middle in the second half that we played and looked a truck load better. Clearly, thankfully, the coaching staff realised it wasn’t working and made the necessary changes.

Melbourne kicked 2 or 3 very late goals, but otherwise the second half we looked reasonably ok for just a practice match.

I don’t think either of them were ever going to be permanent forwards. They will go 35-65 ish i reckon mid forward give or take, maybe Cotch more 50-50 whereas last year was much higher. It’s why I can’t see Short playing too much mid-time barring injuries

 

[tbartiger]

No-one is ever told explicitly to take it easy but the focus is completely different to a premiership game so it's essentially implied.

For example a key focus of the preseason game will be how many minutes you are playing. In a real game you will run rotations around the game, so if the ball is stuck and you can't get off you would keep going, in a preseason game you would just head to the bench regardless.

Sides will also hold back on structural things, basically run a cut down version of aspects like kick-ins, stoppages etc....They have already run these things at training and in club scratches so the work is done there.

The build-up is nothing like a real game either, there's essentially no opposition focus compared to usual, it's all about what the team needs to achieve in terms of preparation, normally it would be at least 70/30 the other way.

The intensity before and during is way down from everyone, often the assistants are coaching, there's more intervention from the conditioning team and there's an unquestionably different attitude from the players in terms of preservation vs intensity. The exception is young guys trying to break the side which is why you often see someone stand out like that (Hello Samson Ryan).

In summary, it's nothing like a premiership game in nearly every way.

That sounds nice, but I am willing to ignore all that and unequivocally announce the sky has fallen and the season is over.
See you in ‘24 lads

 

[TigerForce]

Loved Bakes' reference to Green as 'angry little man' after the game.

 

[TigerForce]

There's that statement again.....

 

[The Big Richo]

There's that statement again.....

Not to read too much into preseason form but I reckon Melbourne might be on a similar path to us in 2018/19.

They've taken the Geelong tactic with Stanley to release their intercept markers and have added a forward dimension as well. Hunter is an absolute steal and their midfield is still in peak years.

Going to be right there I reckon.