Our forward entries

[howlinwolf]

I couldn't have agreed more with Gerard Healy on Fox last night when he showed frustration at our forward entries.

Why do we kick it over a leading forward's head continually ?
Basic footy teaches to kick short to a forward in front and let him run into the ball. Negating the defender right there.

I've seen it with my own eyes. Harvey, short pass to Lockett... goal.

I would have thought this would easily have been rectified with professional coaches.
Are our skills that bad we can't kick to the right position ?

Also, our forwards don't seem to lead in different directions to scatter defences.
We have forwards competeing for the same mark.

After watching our forwards closely for the last few years I don't think we have tested the opposition's defences enough.

Our forwards mostly all lead to the same place, leading defenders to the area, then compete with eachother.

Thoughts ?

[WellardSaint]

Against Dees, our guys all scattered to stretch their defence. Last night, Parker spoiled Bruce more than once.
We just kept stuffing up badly.

Rubbish kicks, Gresh tried a miracle goal, etc

[older saint]

I couldn't have agreed more with Gerard Healy on Fox last night when he showed frustration at our forward entries.

Why do we kick it over a leading forward's head continually ?
Basic footy teaches to kick short to a forward in front and let him run into the ball. Negating the defender right there.

I've seen it with my own eyes. Harvey, short pass to Lockett... goal.

I would have thought this would easily have been rectified with professional coaches.
Are our skills that bad we can't kick to the right position ?

Also, our forwards don't seem to lead in different directions to scatter defences.
We have forwards competeing for the same mark.

After watching our forwards closely for the last few years I don't think we have tested the opposition's defences enough.

Our forwards mostly all lead to the same place, leading defenders to the area, then compete with eachother.

Thoughts ?

I think the problem is based around the previous game plan to a large degree. The thoughts of Richo was we have 2/3 tall marking forwards when unsure bomb inside 50 10 metres out and we hopefully will mark.
Everyone worked this out around 2017 Round 20.

Our structure and forward coaching needs to adjust to the talent we have . Membrey - a stop and prop mark, Bruce a leading and launch mark, King seems to be , on very limited vision , more Bruce than Membrey type. On the ground Lonie stays down but Long and Parker seem to fly more than stay which needs to be worked on.

That said i think a huge problem is the delivery. I look at the list of potential players who make this kick in. Too many would be in the average department - Ross, Billings, Steele, Steven, . I would only say perhaps Dunstan , Savage, Gresham woul dbe above average in delivery. This can be argued but point being we lack elite ball users. There is no Winmar, Dal Santo , Montagna of yesteryear . Perhaps Clarke and Coffield will help solve this.

fix this and more space and play to strengths will improve things

[BarryGrogan]

I actually disagreed wirh Healy.


Adelaide pressured our midfield, which allowed them to force poor entries.

They pressured us, which slowed us down. Slowing us down, allowed them get numbers back.

We don't have Darling and Kennedy down there, so the bomb doesn't work. We don't have Rioli and Ryan as small forwards either.


In my opinion, Adelaide just outpresured us. The Dogs did too at times , so did Melbourne. But against both of them, we pushed back and our effort wore them down.

Adelaide kept harder at it for longer.



We weren't good, dont get me wrong. But for mine the biggest issue was that Adelaide just wanted it more.

[Yorkeys]

Just not used to having leading targets.

[howlinwolf]

I actually disagreed wirh Healy.


Adelaide pressured our midfield, which allowed them to force poor entries.

They pressured us, which slowed us down. Slowing us down, allowed them get numbers back.

We don't have Darling and Kennedy down there, so the bomb doesn't work. We don't have Rioli and Ryan as small forwards either.


In my opinion, Adelaide just outpresured us. The Dogs did too at times , so did Melbourne. But against both of them, we pushed back and our effort wore them down.

Adelaide kept harder at it for longer.



We weren't good, dont get me wrong. But for mine the biggest issue was that Adelaide just wanted it more.

But we doubled the crows centre clearances.
I think the problem was our disposal to the forward line and our forwards leading to space

[BarryGrogan]

I actually disagreed wirh Healy.


Adelaide pressured our midfield, which allowed them to force poor entries.

They pressured us, which slowed us down. Slowing us down, allowed them get numbers back.

We don't have Darling and Kennedy down there, so the bomb doesn't work. We don't have Rioli and Ryan as small forwards either.


In my opinion, Adelaide just outpresured us. The Dogs did too at times , so did Melbourne. But against both of them, we pushed back and our effort wore them down.

Adelaide kept harder at it for longer.



We weren't good, dont get me wrong. But for mine the biggest issue was that Adelaide just wanted it more.

But we doubled the crows centre clearances.
I think the problem was our disposal to the forward line and our forwards leading to space

Our clearances were always pressured though.

[B.M]

I blame AR

[Sainternist]

Yeah this is a residual effect from Richardson’s game plan. It’s too late in the season for Ratts to go changing the team’s game plan. That would only lead to getting in the players’ heads and confusing the hell out of them.

Unfortunately, the strategy just doesn’t hold up against top 8 teams. I think Ratts has done well tweaking it in all the right areas. Our work rate in the middle seems to be improving out of sight since he took over the reins.

[To the top]

More down to personnel to me

Our only key option is Bruce

Membrey is 188cm so mid-fielder size - and the info I had was that they sent Talia to him to negate him

So apart from Bruce and Membrey we had Lonie, Parker, Long and Hind

And there is the problem

Do you expect then to kick to any of those 4 on the lead?

This is where we miss McCartin and King - and the option to push Marshall forward (noting Bruce relieves in the ruck which compounds the problem)

[shanegrambeau]

I actually disagreed wirh Healy.

Fair enough, but did you hear one of the Fox commentators bemoan the fact that Membrey stood for an eternity after a mark outside 50, allowing the Adelaide players to flood our F50?

I think it is part over correction for our dreadful bomb-and-hope strategy of the past - although perhaps, it kind of worked, especially considereing our appalling accuracy last year. Now our timing is crucial. Perhaps Healy was overly technical in insisting that the forwards should work in synchronicity with one another, and only designated forwards should leap, after all that cuts out a lot of opportunistic chances. I had to agree with him at a casual glance however, it looked a mess although we did create quite a few chances that were lost for other reasons like kicking straight.

Ratten has been our forward coach all year. You would think he knows what is going on. There must be so many facets to it, including rotations etc., And then there was the comment that we were too predicable up forward, which kind of contradicts the forward chaos comment.

[WellardSaint]

I actually disagreed wirh Healy.

Fair enough, but did you hear one of the Fox commentators bemoan the fact that Membrey stood for an eternity after a mark outside 50, allowing the Adelaide players to flood our F50?

I think it is part over correction for our dreadful bomb-and-hope strategy of the past - although perhaps, it kind of worked, especially considereing our appalling accuracy last year. Now our timing is crucial. Perhaps Healy was overly technical in insisting that the forwards should work in synchronicity with one another, and only designated forwards should leap, after all that cuts out a lot of opportunistic chances. I had to agree with him at a casual glance however, it looked a mess although we did create quite a few chances that were lost for other reasons like kicking straight.

Ratten has been our forward coach all year. You would think he knows what is going on. There must be so many facets to it, including rotations etc., And then there was the comment that we were too predicable up forward, which kind of contradicts the forward chaos comment.

After our win against Doggies, in the presser, Ratts said he had been our fwd coach but he gave that role to Skrobalak and 'we've kicked 100 pts for the first time this year so Skro keeps that job now'

[Enrico_Misso]

What really bugs me is when we win the ball down back and move it quickly to a running player who marks or gathers 70m out, looks forward for a target, can't see a loose man, so winds up just passing it sideways allowing the opposition time to pack the defence, so we end up kicking it to the hot spot and the ball is smothered in a pack and the opportunity is lost.

Adelaide got several goals moving the ball quickly to an open forward line where "Tex" would mark on a lead, or kick to a designated place for a "Betts" to run on to it.

We need to take that risk and move it in a pre-planned way.

[WellardSaint]

What really bugs me is when we win the ball down back and move it quickly to a running player who marks or gathers 70m out, looks forward for a target, can't see a loose man, so winds up just passing it sideways allowing the opposition time to pack the defence, so we end up kicking it to the hot spot and the ball is smothered in a pack and the opportunity is lost.

Adelaide got several goals moving the ball quickly to an open forward line where "Tex" would mark on a lead, or kick to a designated place for a "Betts" to run on to it.

We need to take that risk and move it in a pre-planned way.

We played much better against Dogs and Dees.
Pyke studied videos of those 2 games and worked out a way to kill our entries.
It's how coaches work.

[prwilkinson]

Doesn’t help when 3 St Kilda forwards fly for every single mark. The mids when under pressure didn’t kick it deep to the forward pocket for a throw in either... just kicked it back to Adelaide a lot instead. That was quite frustrating.

[BarryGrogan]

Adelaide were forcing us to kick from deeper though - meaning wour entries weren't quite as penetrating as thry needed to be to be threatening.

They forced us to enter a bit shallow.

[spert]

It's obvious to me that our midfielders don't have much confidence in their field kicking and the ability to pick out targets. We had guys calling for the ball in good position many times and being ignored, where in a similar situation the Crows players were taking risks and hitting targets with good short passes. We have no silky skills in the middle, and although Gresh is talented, his kicks are ordinary. Also our forwards just have to make hard leads and demand the ball, not try and arm wrestle every contest, or play from behind hoping for the loose ball out back. At least Membrey had the right idea. This is a coaching issue to fix, and it is probably something that Richo didn't do well.

[Impatient Sainter]

It basically comes down to our inability to hit a leading target - Richo was so risk averse the players havent trained that well enough. On Saturday we went from one extreme to another to shallow and not hitting targets to too deep (bombing) no one leading.

The other thing that was mentioned was our lack of lead up players, again that is a trained habit because we are not used to having stay at home forwards. Having said that as a collective apart from Parker our small forwards are not strong 1 on 1 marks.

[shanegrambeau]

What really bugs me is when we win the ball down back and move it quickly to a running player who marks or gathers 70m out, looks forward for a target, can't see a loose man, so winds up just passing it sideways allowing the opposition time to pack the defence, so we end up kicking it to the hot spot and the ball is smothered in a pack and the opportunity is lost.

Adelaide got several goals moving the ball quickly to an open forward line where "Tex" would mark on a lead, or kick to a designated place for a "Betts" to run on to it.

We need to take that risk and move it in a pre-planned way.

We played much better against Dogs and Dees.
Pyke studied videos of those 2 games and worked out a way to kill our entries.
It's how coaches work.

Yep agree with both of these points, and maybe that explains why Healy said we were messy yet also predictable...and yes, then we were - have to admit - kind of out coached on that point. They saw us do it and they were prepared. However, I notice a lot of sideways passing when I watch footy now tho, perhaps there are general trends as well as team-particular trends..

Caveat for any footy comment I make - I know you all deeply care lol! , I haven't seen a lot of footy and then suddenly (thanks to this forum) I bought a WatchAFL sub...(I live O/S)...two months ago. The first game I saw us win end-to-end was our win was the GC game.