Hird & Robbo ( & Baumy)- Saints pressure-

[saintbrat]

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sport/ ... 42,00.html

James Hird on St Kilda's increased pressure in 2009
James Hird | July 23, 2009 12:00am

YOU pick up the ball inside your defensive 50, look left, look right and all you see is red, white and black. You go to give the handball to a teammate and smash, Steven Baker runs straight through you.

All the oxygen is expelled from your lungs and your diaphragm goes into complete spasm as 85kg of pure aggression ploughs you into the ground.

You look up to see where your handball has gone and smash, your teammate is hit by another great tackle. The ball spills to the ground and is scooped up by Stephen Milne.

A second later the Saints crowd is celebrating another goal.

This is what it's like to play St Kilda - and you can get a feel for it only by watching the Saints live.

On TV you can see the hits, and no one hits harder than the Saints at the moment. At the ground you can feel them. And you can also see how the Saints have become footy's version of the Boston Strangler.

St Kilda is conceding an average of 60.4 points a game this season - 19 fewer than any other team and the best defensive record since 1965.

The reason why is not hard to find: opponents can't score because they can't get the ball into their forward line.

Last year we marvelled at "Clarko's Cluster" as Alastair Clarkson's Hawks conceded an average of 42.6 inside-50s a game. But Ross Lyon's Saints are giving up just 39, 10 fewer than the AFL average.

The great teams of the past 20 years have been built on defence. Not just a strong backline, but defence built around intense pressure all over the ground.

St Kilda, with 16 wins straight, is closing in on greatness. The Saints have a huge range of attacking players, highly skilled midfielders, running ball-winners in their backline, a multi-pronged attack and a champion in Nick Riewoldt as skipper.

Watching him is like watching an Olympic runner in the prime of his career. When you get to that live Saints game, watch how Nick plays. He covers an amazing amount of ground at speed, delivers the ball beautifully by foot and commands the game like all great centre half-forwards.

Riewoldt is a great player in the prime of his career. Like watching Wayne Carey, Nathan Buckley and Michael Voss in their golden ages, we are seeing one of the best at his best. There is no better sight in football than a champion in full flight.

As good as St Kilda's attacking players are, they are not defined by what they do with the ball. In 20 years if someone asks me what is the one thing I remember about the Saints of 2009, it will be their defensive pressure all over the ground.

Ross Lyon was a tough player, he hit hard and defended strongly. He also spent time at the Swans in an assistant coaching role. The Swans were defined by their defensive and tough approach. So it's no surprise that Lyon's game plan is built on uncompromising defence.

This is a game plan built for finals success. It is tough on the body and the mind as it requires great concentration and commitment at the ball and the man, but if you get it right, as we have seen, it can be awesome.

Two statistics that are a good indication of pressure are contested ball and tackles. Winning both these stats is a good indication of a team's commitment at the contest. It means they are winning the ball in close, and when they are not they are stopping the opposition running away with the ball.

The Saints are No. 1 in the AFL for tackles and No. 3 for contested possessions.

But St Kilda's defensive game goes a lot further than that, and some of the strategies it has perfected this year were on show in the biggest game of the year, against Geelong in Round 14.

In that game St Kilda recognised that Geelong loves to release the ball by hand quickly, and often, to their support players. What the Saints did was recognise that they had to slow down the player with the ball, but also put pressure on the support runners.

Gary Ablett, as we know, has the best side-step in the game, but in the opening minutes it became apparent the Saints were prepared for Little Gazza and his mates.

After a Geelong mark deep in defence Ablett ran around the back to receive a handball -- a classic Cats play. Ablett ran to the opposite pocket towards Saint Andrew McQualter, and most at the ground expected the little champ to shimmy past his opponent, using a forearm push if necessary, before sprinting clear to set up an attacking move.

But McQualter didn't run at Ablett, instead corralling him by putting up his arms and controlling the space ahead of Little Gazza.

Ablett was forced to change direction and eventually handball under pressure.

The Saints were as successful as any side I have seen at corralling Ablett that day, which is as much as you can do against a guy who is almost impossible to tackle.

But what happened next really showed how far St Kilda has come. Ablett released the ball to Tom Harley with a looping handball - and the Saints were waiting.

Milne (hardly a player known for his defensive game in the past) was ready for the play and pounced on Harley as soon as he took the ball. The result: a turnover in St Kilda's forward 50.

St Kilda's great defensive leap forward this year is not only applying pressure to the ball carrier - which the Saints do better than anyone - but not allowing teams the easy handball out the back to relieve pressure.

They are great at anticipating the next handball and applying pressure on the ball carrier and the next man in the chain.

This is what makes the Saints' 22-man defence so impossible to break through.

In the past - even last year when teams struggled to break through Hawthorn's cluster - teams had room to breathe when they were in the opposition's attacking area.

When they tried to get through a midfield clogged with zoning players, it was a different story, but in their defensive 50 players were pretty safe.

Not against the Saints of 2009. They apply pressure in their forward 50 like no team in history.

The Saints have won the ball back off the opposition by forcing a turnover in their forward half 397 times, 32 more than any other team in the competition.

Any mark or slow possession that is gained is quickly confronted by a full-ground zone of St Kilda players in designated positions across the field.

This zone is asked to move forward and attack the player with the ball, his lateral and forward options.

Breaking through this zone requires taking risks and a huge amount of skill; Geelong is the only side that has managed to work its way through it, but it took the Cats more than a quarter to come to terms with the Saints' frontal pressure.

Geelong finished the game with 52 inside-50s -- the only time a team has finished with more than 50 against the Saints this year.

St Kilda has conceded fewer than 40 inside-50s in a game 10 times and at times the sleeper-hold has almost choked opponents to death.

It was almost bizarre to watch the Crows on Sunday repeatedly forced back to their defensive goalsquare as they tried to find a way out of the Saints' forward pressure.

Adelaide had just four inside-50s in the second quarter, with the ball locked in St Kilda's forward half for up to 10 minutes at a time. You can't win with stats like that.

Richmond felt the lights go out in similar fashion in Round 13. After a promising start the Tigers managed just seven inside-50s from quarter-time to three-quarter time, and didn't bother the scorers in that time. But Jade Rawlings shouldn't feel too bad -- the Saints have kept teams scoreless in an amazing nine quarters this year.

The Saints could well go through the season undefeated, but even if they don't, the defensive pressure they put on opposition sides is probably the best the AFL has seen.

In golf the saying is you drive for show and putt for dough. There is a similar saying in football: attack puts bums on seats, defence wins premierships.

[saintbrat]

must be the subject of the day at the H-S
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sport/ ... 42,00.html
Tackle reward is total trust
Mark Robinson | July 23, 2009 12:00am

THE most inspirational act that changes the flow of a game, outside of a goal, is the tackle. Wherever it is on the ground.

One moment the opposition has the ball, streaming towards goal, or out of the backline, from the centre bounce, or powering down the wing, then whammo, in an instant the ball is taken away.

Executed with hunger and hardness, it draws an animal-type roar from fans and enormous pride from teammates.

Never forgotten in a team environment is the individual sacrifice for the betterment of others.

From it comes reward. A trust. An unwritten expectation that if one player busts his gut for the contest to help the team, then why can't everyone?

The chase-down tackle is the crowd favourite, for we can all see it happening.

The unexpected tackle, however, the one that requires players to act instinctively, decisively - as executed by Brett Kirk, Brad Sewell, Domenic Cassisi, Andrew Swallow, Luke Ball and Lenny Hayes - is a true measure of the commitment to the cause.

Most players haven't the want as the aforementioned group, but if every player has intent, the battle is mostly won.

Ask coaches about the most important statistic in the game and they chorus: the contested possession.

Allan Jeans, the former Hawks coaching giant, opined the ball was always in three categories: they have it, we have it, or it's in dispute.

It's simpler in explanation than execution. Just ask Richmond. But clearly the more committed your tackling, the more you get the ball and the more chance you have of kicking goals.

St Kilda leads the league in average tackles a game (70.4), is No. 1 in inside-50 tackles and No. 1 in midfield tackles.

The Saints sit 16-0 and on the weekend were described by former Richmond coach Terry Wallace as the best pressure team, defensively and offensively, he has seen in 30 years of football.

Defender Sam Fisher is a major component of St Kilda's shut-down defence. Not just man-on-man, but central to St Kilda's strategy of swamping midfield space when the ball is deep in its forward line.

The Crows were strangled into submission on Sunday.

As for tackling, Fisher is categoric: It is the team's greatest improvement - and asset.

"Tackling and pressure . . . we talk about every day pretty much, every meeting," Fisher said. "It's as simple as that."

The defensive attitude was born in the pre-season.

"We take pride in our tackling and pressure and that's what we want to pride ourselves on for the year," Fisher said.

"Basically we set a standard, right from pre-season. Our workrate had to lift to try to bridge the gap between the Geelongs and Hawthorns, and that's been our focus throughout the year. The standard we try to keep is to do with our tackling and pressure, putting other sides under pressure."

Critical is St Kilda's ability to maintain the rage, which is testament to its fitness and attitude.

The Saints are ranked No. 1 for tackling in third quarters and are fourth in fourth quarters behind Carlton, Brisbane and Sydney, in that order.

This tells us two things: The Saints are relentless until the game is beyond dispute; and the Blues are travelling very well.

"We prepare as best we can from Monday to Friday and that puts us in good shape to be able to continue to produce that pressure week in, week out," Fisher said.

[Saintschampions08]

Damn, it makes me happy to be able to tell people that my team is not only the best in the AFL, but that every player bleeds for his team, and teammates...every player will put himself on the line to win a ball, and when we're playing poorly...they'll try twice as hard.

[st.byron]

Good reads. Thanks for posting Brat

[saintsRrising]

The Hird article is exceptional.

A great read.

[saintsRrising]

IMO the Crows game broke the back of the doubters..and in particular that ruthless second quarter.

Even despite the way we played against the Cats...many in the media were clearly still waiting for us to fall over and climbed on with glee the Crows bandwagon.

But with that absolutely brutal second quarter, which stunned the Crows so much that Craig ran up the white flag before it ended to just play out the remainder of the game to try and preserve %, the last of the doubters have been silenced.


The Saints are the real deal this year....and all are now willing to acknowledge it.


The Cats of course also remain the real deal...and so it is not a one horse race.

After this weekend though we should know if it is just a two horse race...or whether the are one or two others still in it.

[InkerSaint]

Hirdy's borrowed Sheahan's Boston Strangler simile and Lethal's golfing metaphor... I wonder what else he nicked.

[TimPekin'sDirtyGuernsey]

The Hird article is exceptional.

A great read.

Seconded

[markp]

IMO the Crows game broke the back of the doubters..and in particular that ruthless second quarter.

I thought in many ways it was the most satisfying performance yet.

They're really good articles...

[aussiejones]

We still need to heed the warning from the Tribunal ....make our efforts fully legal as obviously the spotlight is on our style of play.

[saint66au]

The Saints are the real deal this....and all are now willing to acknowledge it.

Except for a few of our own numbnut supporters who insist on booing the team for "not being entertaining enough"

There are few more exciting things to watch in footy I think than a fwd line applying huge tackling pressure and "locking it in". I lose count of the amount of times I scream "BALLLLL' during a game now...even if in hindsight some of them have no earthly chance of being paid lol

[Moods]

The Saints are the real deal this....and all are now willing to acknowledge it.

Except for a few of our own numbnut supporters who insist on booing the team for "not being entertaining enough"

There are few more exciting things to watch in footy I think than a fwd line applying huge tackling pressure and "locking it in". I lose count of the amount of times I scream "BALLLLL' during a game now...even if in hindsight some of them have no earthly chance of being paid lol

I agree completely. The tackling allows the supporters to get behind the team and be involved. I was just watching the replay (again) of the 1st quarter of the saints geelong game. The last goal we kicked that 1/4 was after 30 seconds of intense pressure in our fwd line, and Fisher then nails a goal. Biggest roar of the 1/4 (and that's saying something) It builds up the anticipation of what's about to happen.

As for 'some' of our numb nut supporters. I like to think that they're the neutral supporters, rather than saint supporters, who just want constant action.

[Dal_Santos_Gal]

It's the opening paragraph I love the most, I was so happy with it, I read out to all my work mates that were in the office....

I love it, love it, love it.

I still have to pinch myself, it is St Kilda they are talking about ??
Oh it could be the year to remember for ever! it could well be

LID!!!! settle down!!!!

YOU pick up the ball inside your defensive 50, look left, look right and all you see is red, white and black. You go to give the handball to a teammate and smash, Steven Baker runs straight through you.

All the oxygen is expelled from your lungs and your diaphragm goes into complete spasm as 85kg of pure aggression ploughs you into the ground.

You look up to see where your handball has gone and smash, your teammate is hit by another great tackle. The ball spills to the ground and is scooped up by Stephen Milne.

A second later the Saints crowd is celebrating another goal.

This is what it's like to play St Kilda.

[Quixote]

^^^ Agreed! Best opening football journo paragraph I've read for ages!

[d roit]

Great article from a man who consistently provides a great insight into football. His contribution On The Couch is no doubt what keeps me tuning in each week.

What a trade the people a fox sports made: Rob Walls for Jimmy Hird

[saint patrick]

Fantastic article from someone who has real credibility...is in the top 5 best players I have seen in my lifetime no doubt.

Love the " Lion Cage " reference..witnessed it first hand against Adelaide and it was surreal...

Awesome that we have been doing this for 15 rounds and preseason and astute coaches like Craig haven't got a clue how to beat it...

Like Clarkos cluster its important we win a flag while it remains unsolved

[SuperSaint]

Yes Hird's article is a good one and after all that praise, I thought he would tip us against the Dogs this week. I guess we need to impress him even more.

[AP Erebus]

Hirdy's borrowed Sheahan's Boston Strangler simile and Lethal's golfing metaphor... I wonder what else he nicked.

Frontal pressure from Neil Craig

[saintbrat]

and now Greg joins the discussion

http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/rfnews ... ntentSwap2
None shall pass
Greg Baum | July 25, 2009

With a history-making defence, the miserly Saints are giving nothing away - on or off the field.

ST KILDA gives away nothing. Not goals, not behinds, not glimmers of hope, certainly not games. In one game this year, the Saints conceded five widely spaced goals, in another six. All were begrudged. Twelve times they have held opponents goalless in a quarter; no one has been so mean since 1958. They held Richmond scoreless for 77 minutes, longer if you include half-time.

St Kilda 2009 doesn't give its opponents as much as a sniff. They allow the ball into their defensive 50 merely 39 times a match, a record low. From these meagre chances, oppositions manage a goal once every four-and-a-half entries, any score once every two-and-and-a-half entries, both records for miserliness. The Saints' defensive arc has become a black hole into which entire elaborate goalkicking apparatus disappear, never to be seen again. And all this has been achieved without a single appearance from Matt Maguire and only three from Max Hudghton, both cornerstones.

On average, St Kilda surrenders 60 points a game. Unless it concedes 90 or more points a game henceforth, it will establish itself as the best defensive team since 1969, when the introduction of the out-on-the-full rule drastically changed scoring.

In their present state of mind, the skinflint Saints wouldn't give even to the Good Friday appeal. Approached this week, defensive coach Steve Silvagni, full-back of the 20th century, said he could give us nothing. He wouldn't, would he?

It wasn't always so. Twenty-five years ago, St Kilda was the most profligate team in the game's history. In one season, they conceded on average 133 points a game, in another 139. In those days, the Saints had an excess of everything that was bad for a football team. About then, Danny Frawley came along to try to shore up this team of pushovers.

In a record nine seasons as captain, he half-succeeded. So did his successors. But they could not rid the club entirely of its own shadow. Frawley thinks third-year coach Ross Lyon has. "For years and years, St Kilda was a side that was reliant on its stars," Frawley said. "The team-of-the-century are all superstars. But we've won one premiership."

Now it's all for one and one for all, and that is the secret to the way the Saints blank opponents. "Total team defence," said Frawley. "It starts in the forward pocket, with Stevie Milne. You only have to look at the way he is running and chasing. It's two-way football for everyone."

Milne has laid 38 tackles this year, already a career high. Nick Riewoldt is three away from a career high. Most others are tracking for the best tackling seasons. At the Western Bulldogs, Farren Ray averaged fewer than two tackles a game, at St Kilda, almost four. Leigh Montagna was averaging three tackles a game. This year, it is nearly seven, and his 107 tackles leads the competition. Lest you think him one-dimensional, Montagna also has had third most kicks in the competition. Check the Brownlow markets.

St Kilda is averaging 70 tackles a game, the most since stats have been kept. Lyon acknowledges that there has been an emphasis. But he demurs at the idea that the Saints are doing something extraordinary, noting that at least seven other clubs are averaging in the 60s for tackles. It is where the game has gone.

The way Lyon tells it, the Saints are doing the ordinary things, but a little bit better than the rest. This bears out Frawley's idea that they are no longer the maverick club that wins nothing. In the Lyon era, they have become normal, and now, exceptionally normal.

The way Lyon tells it, it just happened. He's right, in a way. No-one plans to win 16 games in a row, but they do plan to win every match, every quarter of every match, every contest of every quarter, one by one. No-one plans to have the best defensive season in the history of the game, but they do plan, intricately, to stop their opponents from scoring. Do it well enough, often enough, and, hey presto.

Lyon tells it this way: the Saints spent two pre-seasons growing bigger, stronger, harder. They reduced the incidence of injury from one of the highest in the competition to the lowest. This season, they have used just 27 players. "It's probably just luck," Lyon said. "I haven't got another answer for you." A part answer lies in the work of fitness trainer Dave Misson, like Lyon, recruited from Sydney.

They had drummed into them the importance of total football. "We've got to work hard every minute of the game, with and without the ball," said Lyon. "We've been preaching that."

They were already on a parsimonious progression. In 2007, Lyon's first season, they were seventh for defence, averaging 88 points conceded. Last year, they were fifth, at 87 points. But in the second half of last year, as they went on an 8-2 run, they were second for tight defence, averaging less than 76 points. Then as now, no one factor told. But Lyon noted that Sam Gilbert, injured in the first half of the season, came back in the second to lead the league in rebound 50s.

This year, it's been the same, only more so. Frawley said the Saints combined the best of modern defensive theories, guarding both space and men. Worked properly, it meant on the few occasions the ball reached the defensive 50, it came high, wide and slowly, and was soon spat out again. Critics says the so-called Lyon Cage works better on small grounds than big, but the Saints have won twice in Adelaide this season, and at Subiaco, too. They haven't won at the MCG — only because they haven't played there.

Of course, there has been some fine-tuning along the way. "We've evolved structures that help," Lyon said. "Different stoppage structures, different forward structures. What happens at the fall of the ball. We felt it got swept away a bit (last year). It's really important when it goes in (to the forward line), not getting swept away from the talls."

The Saints have passed all the tests. Geelong was the sternest. Carlton stepped it up, beating St Kilda for contested footy and taking a wanton and extravagant 25 shots — but the Saints won. Adelaide last week was a different test, of the theory that no team can sustain this sort of high-intensity football forever, of the certainty of a let-down. Result: the Crows were corralled in their own half like sheep in a slaughter yard, and duly slaughtered.

Lyon said he had heard all the theories about why the Saints couldn't keep it up: soft draw catching up with them, law of averages, tiredness, getting lost on the big grounds.

"We can't control people's expectations or agendas," he said.

"I'll tell you what we do. We focus on our preparation and pursue improving on a weekly basis. At the minute, it's standing us in good stead."

This is what happens when teams get on a roll in any sport. After a while, it doesn't seem to matter who is in the team and who isn't: momentum carries it along. Zac Dawson instead of Hudghton might not have seemed much of a swap at season's beginning, but it's the jumper that counts. So St Kilda's defence has evolved into a man-eating, morale-destroying beast of prey, frightening opposition coaches and Friday night footy fans. None shall pass, it mouths. None has.

But there's a dimension missing here. Lyon bristles at the notion that because his team holds opponents to pitiful scores, it is somehow dour and industrious, but lacking the flair of, say, Geelong and the Bulldogs. Having crushed Adelaide underfoot, Lyon was anxious not to talk about how the Crows had kicked 7.7, but how his team had kicked 15 goals and could have had more, and was the third-highest scoring team in the comp. "We average 400 disposals a week," he said this week. "We're the highest for inside 50s. Next question, that one's irrelevant."

How do they do it? Well, it all starts from the back pocket …

[Iceman234]

Pleasing

[saintbrat]

you were quick

good to hear the coaches have bought into the "Defensive mode"
SOS gave them NOTHING

[nathan000]

Great to see how Hird rates Riewoldt. That's how he should be rated by everyone.

[The OtherThommo]

Jimmy almost had it out of his trousers when discussing the skipper being On The Couch this coming Monday.