I feel the need...the need for speed!

[the shadow]

I was heartened by a lot of what I saw last night. Promising signs from Steven, Eljay, Geary, Heyne and Farren Ray. Super effort from Goddard, Ball as courageous as ever, Chips doing his usual sterling job, no matter where that was.

The thing that has me concerned though is that we don't seem to have anyone with great leg speed. Every other side I've seen so far this year seems to have at least 3-4 players who can break away from the stoppages, or break the lines, or create space with their pace.

I know we were missing Gram and Joey last night, who are probably our best run and carry players, but it seems the modern game demands you have at least 6-7 of these types if you are going to penetrate floods and rolling zones.

When you couple a lack of pace with our propensity to attack from wide out, we seem doomed to give the opposition time to get in behind us and therefore crowd our forwards out. Tough times ahead for Roo, Kosi etc., if last night was anything to go by.

At least we started to use the corridor a bit more in the second half last night and as a result looked much more dangerous, but using the corridor without some extreme speed machines is risky unless you have exquisite foot and hand skills. While I believe we have a very skilled group, we still have several players whose skills let us down when they are forced to take risks.

Can anyone out there throw up some names in the pace department, or are we just going to have to rely on skill and grunt as in the past?

[ace]

I think it less to do with speed and more to do with coaching.

The teams that sucessfully run the ball through the lines have a small squad of players running in parallel.
The guy with the ball run towards an opponent and then handballs to one who is free.
The squad running in parellel provides more options.
After he has run past the opponent he receives the ball back.
Did you note how Hawthorn would take this player out even after he had handballed.
They would rather give away a free with time to reset the lines than let the player receive the ball back again.

St Kilda seems to have never practiced parallel running.
Lyon is only interseted in defensive play, he won't risk having so many players running away from their opponnet simultaneously.