Inside football story - Saints Accuracy questioned

[kalsaint]

An interesting article suporting my thoughts on our ball movement and forward structure and general indirect play.

Read on if you are interested. Article is by Brett Anderson - Inside Football.

Over the past four seasons, there has been a steady decline in St Kilda’s accuracy rate in front of goal, which is costing the Saints games and ladder position, writes BRETT ANDERSON.

NEVER has there been a better example of just how much poor kicking for goal can cost you than two weeks ago at Telstra Dome.
Playing reigning premier Geelong, the Saints went to quarter time having dominated the clearances 13-2 (including the first 11), won the contested ball 31-23, taken 15 inside-50s to 12, yet having kicked 4.7 and leading by only seven points.
Against Geelong, there’s the ball game, right there. With such profound dominance all over the ground, expending that sort of energy, to reap anything less than six to seven goals is unacceptable.
You simply can’t keep a team such as Geelong out of the contest; it’s hard enough to beat them with a level playing field let alone keeping them in the game with poor conversion when you have momentum.
An hour later the Saints trailed by eight goals and that was that.
The end result statistically was two less scoring shots, the same number of inside 50s, and a 42-point loss.
This wasn’t the first time the Saints have kicked themselves out of games, either.
No less than 26 times over the past two seasons, the Saints have kicked as many behinds as goals.
It’s one of football deadly sins as on four of those occasions they had more scoring shots than their opponents yet lost the game.
Two extra wins in either of those years would have seen them finish top two in 2006 (instead of fifth) and fifth instead of ninth in 2007. What a difference!
Poor kicking for goal is a by-product of poor ball movement. If you don’t move the ball quickly enough in this day and age, you will get burnt.
Slow, indecisive ball movement gives opposition midfielders time to flood back and clog up the centre corridor inside 50, thus forcing you to attack wide, which reduces your chances of an accurate finish.
There aren’t many Gary Ablett (senior) types who can stand on heads or kick goals from the third row of the grandstand.
Interestingly, 11 of Geelong’s 21 goals in the St Kilda game were kicked from the corridor compared with St Kilda’s four (of 13.)
The Cats’ quick ball movement doesn’t give opposition midfielders the chance to push back and fill the space in front of Cameron Mooney and Tom Hawkins, leaving them to contest fairly with their opponents in the corridor in front of goal.
Back in 2004, when they were the talk of the town, the Saints were ranked first in set shot accuracy (71.5 per cent) and overall accuracy (66.9 per cent).
This was due to the fact that they made it a prime objective to use the centre corridor when kicking inside 50, thus most of their shots at goal were from directly in front.
They were playing fast, free flowing football, in contrast to how they often play today.
By moving the ball quickly, their big forwards in Nick Riewoldt, Fraser Gehrig, Aaron Hamill and Justin Koschitzke were given the chance to beat their opponent one on one, and when the ball hit the ground, Stephen Milne was at the foot of the contest to pick up the crumbs.
As football has evolved, so has the way the top teams combat the Saints.
No longer are they given as much freedom through the middle of the ground to spot up forward targets, and opposition teams are making it a priority to push back and support their defenders in the air and on the ground, making it extremely difficult for the Saints’ tall trio to get a clear run at a ball in the corridor.
Skipper Nick Riewoldt has worn the brunt of most of the criticism. He has been maligned for his poor conversion rate, but he hasn’t been helped by the fact that a lot of his set shots on goal are coming from wide positions.
At just under 67 per cent in 2008, his conversion rate isn’t much different to that of some of the best forwards in the competition last year in Jonathan Brown (68), Scott Lucas (68) and Matthew Pavlich (64). It’s just a matter of Riewoldt getting more opportunities in dangerous areas.
Stephen Milne, on the other hand, is a different story.
Who could forget the night back in Round 22, 2005, when Milne kicked 11.0 against Brisbane at Telstra Dome. But the dead-eye Milne of 2004–05 is a far cry from the inaccurate and seemingly rushed one of 2008.
He was methodical in his goalkicking routine back then, but now he often seems rushed with his set shots.
Small forwards such as Milne get few opportunities over the 120 minutes of a game, and when they do present, they need to be taken.
If the Saints can start moving the ball quicker and playing on at all costs they will give their big forwards more opportunities to mark the ball in the centre corridor, which will in turn make converting a bit easier. At least we hope anyway!

BRETT ANDERSON

[saint66au]

Very astute and pretty much spot on imho

His summation of 1/4 time of the Geelong game was on the money. Where I was sittting, the general mood was very much one of having ruined any chance we had of ganing control of the match. WInning a quarter of clearances 13-2 against Geelong happens very bloody rarely. To translate that to only a 7 point lead is football suicide...and so it turned out

One other thing, When you score a goal you create a contest in the centre with a pretty handy bunch of mids to extract it for us. When you score a behind you hand control of the ball to the opposition. With the lack of forward pressure we applied during the Geelong and (especially) Bulldogs game, that proved a disadvantage too great to overcome.

[Teflon]

Good point 66.

We do have a capable midfield and it showed against Cats........in truth on that day it appeared easier for them to run the footy from our fwd line the length of the field to score than it did to win it from the middle - at least in the first qtr when, as you point, we simply handed the footy back to them with bad kicking.