Round 15: Stone the Crows

[sharp9]

Originally posted by Powerstuff
j0lly
carlton found our weak point last week ie. playing man on man footy ..... j0lly
How do people/teams/coaches get away with this excuse? St Kilda are using it as the reason my team (Port obviously) won last week. Everybody plays man on man footy until a player accidentally/deliberately loses his opponent. If 18 players from Carlton 'tagged' their Swans opponents it implies that at least 10 of them are consistently better for them to win. They aren't. They weren't. But too much of that win relied on BBB Barry Hall.
Sydney when switched on are 50% better than Carlton and 25% better than Adelaide. Man on man favours you not Adelaide. They are now the team you were in late 2002. You should be better again.
Nous, aggression, determination are the things you have temporarily mislaid and need to find again. We want to meet you in the finals!

That's bloody good work, Powerstuff.....you can stay!

I agree that man on man actually favours us as we are better man FOR man. The question is whether we perform on the day. On Saturday we alternated between brilliance and appallingness (new word, sorry).

The main reason Barry was so head and shoulders above the others was not his brilliance, per se, but the percentage of the time he performed close to his best (about 95%). Goodes was brilliant, too....about 20% of the time.

If our other players start to play with Bazza's CONSISTENCY (rather than his brilliance) we are in the top four (IMO).

[monopoly19]

I think they may have picked up on the fact that the best way to beat us is close checking - I saw on the news last night that they were tying two players together and the one behind was not allowed to let the tape between them snap (ie. stay close to your man).

[JF_Bay22_SCG]

Originally posted by NMWBloods
No they don't these days. Teams often play a more zoning style of game, rather than a close shoulder-to-shoulder, old fashioned match up game.

Excuse my tactical ignorance here, but can somebody honestly point out the fors and against of playing either defensive system?
I only played footy for St Ives Under 12's devil where the idea of a defensive set-up was throwing Trumper Park mud at a bloke kicking for goal. Or treading on his shoes to annoy him.

So could somebody who has played the game at a high level spell it all out in layman's terms?

And here I was thinking I was an expert about footy.

JF

[Powerstuff]

Originally posted by JF_Bay22_SCG
Excuse my tactical ignorance here, but can somebody honestly point out the fors and against of playing either defensive system?....

Well I'll have a stab at explaining it:
Man on man
We will excuse the forwards from this because obviously their ideal is to be 2m clear from their assigned defender (for a good example see Hall on Wakelin in last year's *(&^! finals).
But since 1864 when the Olgumbee Flats Rabbits played the very first recogniseable game of Australian Rules against Geelong Prep* every other player has had an opponent who they should be watching. The idea is that that opponent should not be running free, marking uncontested etc. If you are of equal skill, fitness etc you should be contesting possession together and coming off winner about 50% of the time. If you are generally better, or the coach can create mismatches, you should win the contest more often than not. Do this in enough positions for enough of the game and you win. But the down side is if they do it better they win. In which case you try.....
Zoning off
A sophisticated tactic (mostly a defensive one) that involves patrolling an area and moving in to a contest that arises in your area, rather than being directly assigned to a player.
If you break their possession you can get the ball moving quickly as many of your guys are free.
But turn it over and it comes right back at you and you have the unpleasant spectacle of the opposition running in numbers, creating overlaps etc. In which case you'd better stop them by playing accountable......man on man.
General discussion
The two approaches are not that different. In man on man you might be running with your opponent but you are still looking out for the chance to contest adjacent opponents. Meanwhile in the zoning system once the ball is kicked in or tapped down you quickly switch back to close checking of your opponent.
Which is where I lose patience with the 'they need to play man on man' mantra. What is meant really is that too many players were beaten by their direct opponents or didn't receive adequate support. And that is the simple summary for every team that loses a match.

*Warning. Could be made up.

[dendol]

pretty good effort, Powerstuff. However, the fact that you can clearly define the two different defensive systems goes against your argument that the two cannot be employed by teams with drastically diffferent results and consequences.

Its true that there is certainly an overlap between the two, but its also true that teams can come out and play one of those two distinct styles.

Speaking of the Swans specifically, man-on-man forces a contest, which we arent too good at (16th in average contested marks). Zoning allows us to handball to loose players and run the ball (2nd behind Port in handballs). On the first stat alone, you can see why the opposition think they can beat us with man-on-man style.

However, we lead the league in contested ball gets, which may (or may not) explain why we have been able to eek out wins, even when the opposition play man-on-man (Geelong, Hawthorn, Carlton).

Its clear I have no idea what Im talking about, and that I should leave the stats talk to our own resident statsman, NMW.

[j0lly]

ITS RAINING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[monopoly19]

Not quite raining at the SCG atm, but clouds looking very, very ominous. Also very windy. Great day for footy!

[Damien]

Originally posted by monopoly19
Not quite raining at the SCG atm, but clouds looking very, very ominous. Also very windy. Great day for footy!

yes looking very bad here in Moore Park this morning.

Hardly any rain for months, and it wants to pour today!! arghhhh