Tackling no longer a winner in new game
Greg Denham | March 31, 2009
WIN the tackle count against your opponent and you win the game. Not so, at least not any more.Five first-round losers actually won the tackle count, but picked up no premiership points.
Hawthorn, Collingwood, Essendon, Melbourne and, believe it or not, Fremantle had more tackles than their opposition, but were beaten.
In the Dockers' case, they had 65 tackles to the Bulldogs' 49 but were blown away by 63 points.
The best tackling club in the opening round was Carlton, which made 82 tackles to Richmond's 54.
But that statistic was not surprising, given the Tigers, in four years and one game under coach Terry Wallace, have won the tackle count in just 29 of their 89 games. Under Wallace, Richmond has executed 560 tackles less than its opponents.
The other winners with the highest tackle count were St Kilda (74) over the Swans (57) and Brisbane (67) to West Coast's 32.
The Eagles cleared out by as much as 38 points in the second term at the Gabba, but were overrun and lost by nine points. However, under a different John Worsfold game plan, which includes defensive zoning, they had 14 players with one or less tackles for the match.
Tackling and the pressure it places on the opposition is just one aspect of the modern game, but increasingly it is the contested ball balance that is gaining more significance as a barometer of how well a team is playing.
Tackling is not the key indicator of success it once was, just as the possession count is now generally way out of kilter with the success-rate it produced a decade ago.
But sometimes a high-possession performance can reflect a victory, as the Western Bulldogs delivered on Sunday in Perth.
The Dogs had a club record 446 disposals, compared with Fremantle's 345. The Dogs bettered their previous best effort - against Brisbane last year - by one.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25265800-5012432,00.html
