Roos latest - gameplan wont change

[NMWBloods]

And so your suggestion is what? Do nothing and for us to continue to play this abomination of a game?

[Mike_B]

Re: Re: Re: Re: shifting responsibility..

Originally posted by Sean
The shut down part of our game is designed to limit the effectiveness of the opposition. If we play a team with a superior midfield that will get more clearances, at least we don't get hammered and could get a chance to steal the game like we did against Brisbane.

If we open up the game and don't have numbers around the ball, we still don't get the clearance but the opposition will find it easier to move the ball forward. It would be nice to play looser but the only result is that we will get thumped.

This is my problem - we take this attitude from the opening bounce rather than giving the players a chance to start off with an open game and then close it down if its not working. Its a concession that you expect to struggle from the outset and canned be summed up as playing not to lose rather than playing to win.

[Nolie]

Originally posted by Sean
. We have been very ordinary this season in terms of skills and decision making and yet we are 5-5....
I'm obviously being a bit argumentative with those comments but IMHO the gameplan is not our problem - it doesn't matter what our gameplan is until we can hit targets by hand and foot. On Saturday there were very few players who could do that.

I agree wholeheartedly. I have made comments along the lines that Roos doesn't have the catlle but the crux of the matter is a lack of polish on the skills.

Spot on the money Sean.

[Mike_B]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: shifting responsibility..

Originally posted by NMWBloods
Our ratio of handballs to kicks is higher than any other team in the competition.

Actually, we're 15th in this regard. Adelaide have 1.43 kicks to each handball, we have 1.47. Essendon have the highest kick-handball ratio at 2.12.

[Sean]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: shifting responsibility..

Originally posted by NMWBloods
The poor execution was not intentional, but given more of our games turn into slugfests than don't, surely the game plan revolves around creating this stoppage type of play.

The gameplan is to win the clearance or stop them from winning it.

I'm not saying that it's not defensive at times or doesn't create stoppages - I'm saying that it's not a reason for our bad form and is quite possibly the best option considering the general lack of skills in our midfield.

Just on that, Ablett is currently our "number 3" midfielder (with Williams out). He wouldn't make the starting midfield for any team in the 8 - and many out of it. Don't get me wrong, I like him and I'm happy with his progression but lets not start to think we have a good midfield. If Kirk & B1 play well, which fortunately they have been, we do OK in the midfield but if those two aren't getting clearances we don't have too many other options as far as I can tell.

We have less long kicks than any other team in the competition. We have more stoppages than any other team in the competition.

Yep - we are definitely playing poorly.

The thing I keep thinking about is the 4th quarter against Brisbane. Roos said after it that it was the way he always wants us to play. Was he lying? Has he decided that the type of play that gets us results like that and saw us make a PF is bad and he would rather that we kick 8-10 goals per game? I don't buy it.

Also, what are all these missed crumbing goals? I don't think there have been a lot of them.

Good question. Walls, of course, didn't actually look at crumbing goals - he just compared our "crumbers" Adam & Amon with Milne. Not terribly scientific of him.

Amon has kicked 11 behinds & I'd guess 5 OOBOTF. Schneider has kicked 3 behinds - not sure about OOBOTF. 25 was probably a bit of an exaggeration.

[Sean]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: shifting responsibility..

Originally posted by Mike_B
This is my problem - we take this attitude from the opening bounce rather than giving the players a chance to start off with an open game and then close it down if its not working. Its a concession that you expect to struggle from the outset and canned be summed up as playing not to lose rather than playing to win.

Fair point. I think that Roos doesn't view it as closing the game down. His comment about having a Judd would suggest that - we only close it down if we don't get the clearance and if we don't get the clearance there is no advantage in playing loose.

Anyway, this is starting to get too technical for me - I'm happy to stick with get numbers around the ball and then kick it long .

[Wazza]

Re: Re: Re: Re: shifting responsibility..

Originally posted by Sean
The gameplan is to kick long to the tall men. That's the thing that I don't understand about what the likes of Walls are going on with - surely they don't think that the style of play we used on Saturday was intentional.

Chipping the ball up the wings has never been part of the gameplan. It's what happens when our players make poor decisions or lose confidence due to poor skills.

The only time we kick it long is if BHall has led to a wing, otherwise we consistently chip the ball along the wing working our way towards the 50 when we hold the ball waiting for a lead rather than use quick movement and long kicks to the goal square.

We consistently do this and very rarely use the corridor and hardly ever move the ball into the corridor before the 50 to straighten us up before moving into attack. This means our forwards only have space to lead to the flanks.

How can you say its not part of the game plan to chip the ball along the wing keeping possession and reducing the chances of a turn over? By playing like this if there is a turn over chances are you may be able to force the ball over the boundary line.

Even if at times it is not intentional opposition coaches have worked out the Swans as we have done the same thing for the last couple of years. With Leo playing deeper in defence, teams are dragging Kenneally back and we lose our run out of defence so we have to chip up the wing - pulling ROK away from the 50 and forcing BHall to lead further up the ground.

Although not every play is like this, its what the Swans seem to fall back on when they lose confidence or cannot generate run.

Sorry about ranting on I feel better now, thank god for footy forums otherwise the 1 other AFL fan at work would be copping this from me every day but I get to share it with all of you.....hehe

Cheers

Waz

[Guzzitza]

Re: Re: Re: Re: shifting responsibility..

Originally posted by Schneiderman
[B]Cant be any more frustrating than all the bandwagon supporters who loved us in 2003 but hate us in 2005. Its the "GAMEPLAN" that sucks they say. Paul Roos should stop saying the players suck, because its obviously the GAMEPLAN. What a crock. Why? Because with the same breath they note that we have the most number of behinds in the league, that our clearances suck, and we cant hit a contested target - all of which reeks of SKILL ERRORS.

[B]

To what? And I have participated in those other threads so I know whats been said. Nothing revolutionary. Certainly nothing Roos hasn't tried already. What exactly DO you do with players who cant hit targets, when in the F50 cant kick straight, and when in the D50 cant find a safe escape route? What GAMEPLAN do you employ when your team is down on confidence, form and skill? The answer: who cares. It wont make a difference.



They try. I've seen them do it. Watch Bevan or Spriggs, or even J Bolton. They kick it long... straight to a defender. Before you can kick it long, you have to know you can hit a target. Stuart Maxfield led the clangers list for much of this season. Paul Bevan would be close to catching up. "Kick it long" is a dumb strategy for a team like that!

You obviously miss the point. If your current gameplan is ineffective because your players do not have the skills the execute it - CHANGE THE GAMEPLAN. Give the players a chance to succeed, or fail, with a different plan. At least you go home each week knowing you have tried an alternative. Also, you name Maxfield (unlikely to play again i believe), Bevan (currently a defender), Spriggs ( in the reserves), and Jude (not an attacking footballer more an in-and under player) : all these have poor disposal, and therefore the whole team should not bother kicking long? Oh please, give me a break!. Ablett has a huge boot on him, Kennelly kick long on the run, and I believe Dempster can hit a long target reasonably well. SO theres 3 players to begin with, who you can kick long. DO i expect them to kick 60m directly into the arms of a fowward? NO. I expect them to kick long into the F50 so that at least fi the ball is going to be contested in the air, or dare i say on the ground - it will be within scoring range where our currently non-existent crumbers and starved forwards have a chance of scoring a goal!
You preach skill errors! NO @@@@ MAN! We all see it, its not that we think that wow the only thing wrong is our gameplan. THe skill errors are hurting us, but they will always hurt in the gameplan which involves constant pressure on midfielders who are scrapping at ball in contention on the ground surrounded by high traffic. So change the plan, so at least when they make an error kicking long, the ball will actually be moving towards goal by 50-60ms, rather than being a short handball intercepted or dropped just outside D50.

[Sean]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: shifting responsibility..

Originally posted by Wazza
How can you say its not part of the game plan to chip the ball along the wing keeping possession and reducing the chances of a turn over? By playing like this if there is a turn over chances are you may be able to force the ball over the boundary line.

If you look back at 2003 we generally played straight up the middle. When we played poorly we would end up chipping it up the wings. I remember a few games where I was yelling at the team to start running - as soon as they did and went "up the guts" everything would fall into place.

I think that we possibly now chip it around too much when teams are flooding against us. The players don't have the confidence to hit a target or to deliver long to a one on one contest in the forward 50.

Anyway, that's my theory. I just don't believe that any side would intentionally chip the ball up the wing when other options are available - it's never worked in the whole history of footy.

Even if at times it is not intentional opposition coaches have worked out the Swans as we have done the same thing for the last couple of years. With Leo playing deeper in defence, teams are dragging Kenneally back and we lose our run out of defence so we have to chip up the wing - pulling ROK away from the 50 and forcing BHall to lead further up the ground.

I think you are right - having Leo play as a KPP is definitely a problem for us but it doesn't necessarily change the way that Roos wants them to play. Someone is playing at HBF in Leo's place - problem is that whoever it is probably can't provide the same run that he can.

IMO we must get back to having Tadhg & Leo playing on the HBF. It's one of the reasons why I'm in favour of keeping LRT in the team - then dropping Schauble seems to completely defeat the purpose though.

Sorry about ranting on I feel better now, thank god for footy forums otherwise the 1 other AFL fan at work would be copping this from me every day but I get to share it with all of you.....hehe

I know how you feel. I work at home by myself so I've got no-one to bore with my footy theories . Therefore, you guys now get them.

[Sean]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: shifting responsibility..

Originally posted by Guzzitza
Ablett has a huge boot on him, Kennelly kick long on the run, and I believe Dempster can hit a long target reasonably well. SO theres 3 players to begin with, who you can kick long. DO i expect them to kick 60m directly into the arms of a fowward? NO. I expect them to kick long into the F50 so that at least fi the ball is going to be contested in the air, or dare i say on the ground - it will be within scoring range where our currently non-existent crumbers and starved forwards have a chance of scoring a goal!

Sorry to keep harping on this but isn't that exactly what was happening in the previous three games? Tadhg was running out of defence again and delivering long into the forward 50, Ablett was playing well as was Dempster. Just because we have a shocking game doesn't mean that the gameplan has changed.

Dropping Dempster & Schauble was very silly because it possibly affected Tadhg's game - if you want to bag Roos for his selection policy I'm all for it .

[Diego]

Re: Re: Re: Re: shifting responsibility..

Originally posted by Schneiderman
[B]Cant be any more frustrating than all the bandwagon supporters who loved us in 2003 but hate us in 2005. Its the "GAMEPLAN" that sucks they say. Paul Roos should stop saying the players suck, because its obviously the GAMEPLAN. What a crock. Why? Because with the same breath they note that we have the most number of behinds in the league, that our clearances suck, and we cant hit a contested target - all of which reeks of SKILL ERRORS.

[B]

To what? And I have participated in those other threads so I know whats been said. Nothing revolutionary. Certainly nothing Roos hasn't tried already. What exactly DO you do with players who cant hit targets, when in the F50 cant kick straight, and when in the D50 cant find a safe escape route? What GAMEPLAN do you employ when your team is down on confidence, form and skill? The answer: who cares. It wont make a difference.



They try. I've seen them do it. Watch Bevan or Spriggs, or even J Bolton. They kick it long... straight to a defender. Before you can kick it long, you have to know you can hit a target. Stuart Maxfield led the clangers list for much of this season. Paul Bevan would be close to catching up. "Kick it long" is a dumb strategy for a team like that!

You over take footyhead as the most pathetic poster on RWO. At least footyheads comments are funny to read.

You on the other hand.. On par with Roosys game plan your post are. Dribble Dribble Dribble. I am sure you have some capacity with Paul Roos as his PR manager.

And no way am i a bandwagoner...heh fancy someone with your nick calling me a bandwagoner. Been around RWO longer than you have freckles.

[NMWBloods]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: shifting responsibility..

Originally posted by Sean
Sorry to keep harping on this but isn't that exactly what was happening in the previous three games? Tadhg was running out of defence again and delivering long into the forward 50, Ablett was playing well as was Dempster. Just because we have a shocking game doesn't mean that the gameplan has changed.

One of the differences is the calibre of opposition. It's possible we haven't changed the game plan at all in the past 2.5 seasons, but our opposition has changed.

In 2003 what we did was not really expected nor analysed closely, and while we were underestimated all year this remained the case.

During the off season teams looked closer at our game plan and how to shut it down. This produced many of the dour struggles in 2004, with wins often coming when the other side wasn't really good enough or when the opposition underestimated us still.

In 2005, this has become even more noticeable, however now every team knows exactly how we play and counters it accordingly. Therefore the only wins we get are against the weaker sides.

However, I don't believe there was no change in game plan during the 2003-04 off-season. You can see in the very first game against Brisbane in 2004 that we were playing a slow, possession game with plenty of stoppages. During that season I theorised that Roos expected teams would counter the running plan and thus he developed the close-in plan as an alternative and we would be able to swap between the two as necessary. However, I've not seen a lot of examples of swapping the game plan during games.

[Sean]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: shifting responsibility..

Originally posted by NMWBloods
However, I don't believe there was no change in game plan during the 2003-04 off-season. You can see in the very first game against Brisbane in 2004 that we were playing a slow, possession game with plenty of stoppages. During that season I theorised that Roos expected teams would counter the running plan and thus he developed the close-in plan as an alternative and we would be able to swap between the two as necessary. However, I've not seen a lot of examples of swapping the game plan during games.

I thought that the change came after the Geelong game but you could be right - I can't really remember how we played in the earlier few games. It was also about the time that someone wrote an article saying that we couldn't win a flag with our style - we played too loose. How things change.

In terms of swapping between plans, I was under the impression that we kind of were - without actually changing the gameplan. Take the game against Brisbane at the SCG as an example. We outplayed them for three quarters and then shut down the last quarter. We didn't really change the plan in the last quarter - just changed it's focus.

Unfortunately most people only remember the last quarter of games like that, the Demons game in Melbourne & the Eagles final.

I agree with what you said about teams working us out - it definitely becomes harder to win when other teams worry about us. That's why it's so important that our skills are good. Despite having a disappointing season last year we actually beat Brisbane, St Kilda & the Eagles easily. We also beat Geelong but that probably doesn't count. When our skills are good we can beat anyone quite comfortably. When our skills are bad we are terrible.

[NMWBloods]

I think the Brisbane win at the SCG was very good. Probably was a good example of kicking a reasonable (but not high) score to 3QT and then shutting the game down.

StKilda severely underestimated us I think and we jumped them from the start and they never recovered. Excellent win.

Geelong were still very crap early in the year.

The Melbourne and Adelaide games were just horrible spectacles.

We lost to West Coast last year during the H&A, while the win in the final was very good, it was during the wet and West Coast are not particularly good when combining an away game and wet weather.

I don't think any of our other wins last year were particularly outstanding.

[ScottH]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: shifting responsibility..

Originally posted by NMWBloods
One of the differences is the calibre of opposition. It's possible we haven't changed the game plan at all in the past 2.5 seasons, but our opposition has changed.

In 2003 what we did was not really expected nor analysed closely, and while we were underestimated all year this remained the case.

Just like 1996.