Is Longmire cooked?

[Agent 86]

Yeah I know we are seen here as ALWAYS getting a raw deal from the umpires, but logic dictates that it's not ALL of the umpires who hate the Swans and treat them unfairly.
Logic dictates that it's the Swans who are infringing.
Something the team really needs to work on.

In the Demons game I saw a lot of frees missed for the Swans, and equally as many (if not more) missed for the Dees.
The Demon heavy crowd clearly recognised this as well.

We were way behind free kick count at end of Q1. This evened up in Q2 & 3.

The team playing more attacking game generally gets the breaks.

[liz]

I thought we got a decent run from the umpires against Melbourne. Sure, there were some missed (for both sides) but no absolute howlers that I can remember. And I thought we were awarded more than usual of the "it's there but only sometimes awarded" type of frees.

[Nico]

Fantastic. You've solved the problem of our game plan.

No wonder why we're always kicking directly to the opposition.

If our vision is poor going forward, better to kick backwards and sideways. At least we can see who we're kicking to.

The club needs to find a good ophthalmologist to sort out the game plan.

Unfortunately players can't wear glasses during a game. I remember Leo Barry taking his many zig zag runs then look up and kick nowhere. I swear he had poor vision but he doesn't wear glasses. Some players have great field vision and others don't. Leo was always an enigma to me because he was great at reading the ball coming into the backline.

[Nico]

I thought we got a decent run from the umpires against Melbourne. Sure, there were some missed (for both sides) but no absolute howlers that I can remember. And I thought we were awarded more than usual of the "it's there but only sometimes awarded" type of frees.

Appears they missed 2 clear head high frees to Hewett in the last quarter.

[liz]

Appears they missed 2 clear head high frees to Hewett in the last quarter.

They were clear on TV but I'm not sure they would have been clear to the umpires, given the number of bodies around that particular contest. I'd much rather see valid frees not paid than the umpires guess and pay invalid ones (such as the supposed high contact against Clay Smith in front of goal in the 2016 GF, where there was clearly no high contact from the TV vision).

There were a couple of tackles where the Swans weren't pinged for HTB which were probably line ball (as there were in the first quarter against Essendon) but a lot of 50/50s can go either way. I thought we maybe got (slightly) the better run of those 50/50 ones on Sunday.

[Markwebbos]

Appears they missed 2 clear head high frees to Hewett in the last quarter.

They happened together. Not one but two Dees players got him round the neck.

[chammond]

Kicking backwards in defence
Kicking sideways in defence.
Kicking diagonally sideways/backwards in defence
Handballing to a player who is not moving and about to be tackled.
Instantly handballing ROTE as soon as possession is taken.
Poor vision going forward.
Lack of forward genuine leads.
Not taking kicks for goal when within the 50m arc.
Not pre-empting the opposition drive forward and having a strategy to combat at times.
Etc.

So we trade Moore in and Hannebery out, and then Plan A will work?

[Nico]

So we trade Moore in and Hannebery out, and then Plan A will work?

No, trade Moore in and we are working on the Plan B that we don't have or could it be that they are sneakily working on a Plan C,

[Auntie.Gerald]

Interestingly we were 14 wins and 8 losses in 2017 after the last round of the season and finished 6th on the table

This year we stand at 13 wins with two big games to go

I think if we win 1 of the last 2 that would be a pretty good season considering our injury list this year

That would be 14 wins2017 and 2018

[CureTheSane]

So we trade Moore in and Hannebery out, and then Plan A will work?

Your comment and my post are mutually exclusive.

I have not advocated Moore, and have said I am happy either way the Hannebery deal turns out.

I'm not offering answers to my post (I wish I could)

Those are some of the frustrations I have with our game.

[chammond]

Your comment and my post are mutually exclusive.

I have not advocated Moore, and have said I am happy either way the Hannebery deal turns out.

I'm not offering answers to my post (I wish I could)

Those are some of the frustrations I have with our game.

I'm sorry, I wasn't criticising, I was just being facetious about this whole idea that we can magically change our game plan. As you pointed out, the way we play is made up of little successes and failures, dictated by the individual traits of the players, and a large dose of luck.

I've done enough junior coaching to know that game plans are very simple: score more points/goals/runs etc than the opposition. More important to the coach are the individual tactics: the matchups, and the situational rules, like kicking down the line, no u turns, honouring the leads of your forwards. Plus, of course, playing to the strengths of your players, which really sorts out the good coaches from the bad.

We play a high pressure brand of football, and our recruitment and tactics reflect that. To radically change that style would require a significant change in coaching and playing personnel.

[AnnieH]

I've said it a gazillion times... the coaches can only coach. They can't pull on a pair of boots and do it better.
We have been decimated by injury this year, yet, surprisingly (for me at least), we are still in the eight.
There's the measure of where the coaches are at.

[Steve]

Our depth is quite poor which is obviously a major reason we've tried to pump as much experience as possible into our younger guys over the past couple of years. You can say the players may not have delivered as the club had hoped, but it now seems like poor list management to have guys like Robinson, Towers, Rose, Marsh and even Cameron on our list if we're not going to play them when they're available and young players have been tired. That would be $1M that we could have spent on keeping Tom Mitchell and/or getting someone else in. If we don't use those guys, we may as well fill their list spots with late draft picks who we delist after a couple of years, but save on the salaries.

I think we re-signed those guys on modest AFL wages on the basis they'd be handy depth players, given the amount we spend on our top-liners and the fact we have a lot of kids as well - but it has been a waste given we don't want to use them.

Our game plan is ultra defensive / risk averse, and the difference between backing yourself to outscore your opposition versus trying to keep the opposition to a low score and finishing ahead of them is actually more than a subtle one.

We do move the ball very slowly / cautiously - mainly because our defenders don't trust themselves (or those given them directions don't trust them) to hit targets - you compare that to a team like Hawthorn (even with young and inexperienced players now), who still back themselves to quickly move it on and hit up a 15-20m target which opens things up dramatically. That's why someone like Aliir is so important, as he does that - and why he should have been playing a lot sooner.

We are also incredibly reliant on our midfield to either win the ball or constantly apply enormous pressure - and if we don't the game is just played in our back half which we flood, rather than letting our defenders try and win their contests and then rebound the ball with more open options up the field.

You could see the difference last week, albeit under unfortunate circumstances - two defenders who turn the ball over a lot by foot went off, and we relied more on guys like Newman and Florent who can actually be creative. We look shakier defensively but our ball movement opens up dramatically.

Regardless of the reasons behind it, it is just completely unsustainable to consistently lose the I50's as we have been. My concern is that the response is to be more defensive, which ends up making it worse - given we then have no forward structure and at times just set up to play the game in our defensive half.

We've actually only had more scoring shots than our opposition 6 times this year (which includes the Fremantle, Carlton and St Kilda games which should have been a given) - which even by simple logic is saying we are giving the opposition the chance to outscore us if they're good enough.

I think more teams are looking toward game plans / structures that stand up no matter who is playing (within reason of course), but for the last 6 years we've been making excuses as to why our rigid approach has been thwarted by injuries and players in certain games not bringing enough pressure/effort etc.

I'm definitely supportive of Longmire but there's no doubt we need to change / evolve more than we have been if we're to take any further steps forward.

[AnnieH]

Our game plan is ultra defensive / risk averse, and the difference between backing yourself to outscore your opposition versus trying to keep the opposition to a low score and finishing ahead of them is actually more than a subtle one.

Insightful!!!
Apologies for the cut, I'm saving us bandwidth!
I know you are all sick to death of me saying it, but percentage means everything, especially at the pointy end of the season. The only way you're going to get percentage is to kick goals. That's the way it works!
The reason our backline is breaking down is because much of the game is spent down there.
We really, really, really need to find a way to get the ball comfortably past the defensive 50m arc. Just bung it up the bloody middle for gods' sake. Those rare times when they've just bunged it up the middle have always resulted in the sort of goal that leaves the other team saying where the F did that come from. Watching them kick it to the wings over and over and over and over, and then nine times out of 10 losing possession, is disheartening, and all the other teams know exactly what we are doing and compensate accordingly (Hawthorn worked it out first.)

[CureTheSane]

I've said it a gazillion times... the coaches can only coach. They can't pull on a pair of boots and do it better.
We have been decimated by injury this year, yet, surprisingly (for me at least), we are still in the eight.
There's the measure of where the coaches are at.

So you're saying that the coaches are also annoyed by the players kicking zig zag forward rather than a more attacking style of football, and that the players are acting of their own volition?
I'd suggest that this is the game plan that the players have been coached, and as such, some criticism can be cast on the coaches for implementing a boring brand of football which isn't really working that well.