Terry Wallace + god!

[mightytiges]

Interesting Kevin Sheedy said he "MAY" play that style in the future 

The Bombers play Adelaide in two weeks. I hope they get thumped  .   

[Moi]

Interesting Kevin Sheedy said he "MAY" play that style in the future 

The Bombers play Adelaide in two weeks. I hope they get thumped  .   

You have a nasty streak, MT lol
Me too - go Crows 

[mightytiges]

Tigers coach, Terry Wallace, joined the breakfast team to discuss the big talking point of round eight: the Tigers tactics used to beat Adelaide.

http://sport927.com.au/gateway/Daily_Audio/Sound%20Grabs/TW_220506.asx

Terry Wallace interview

* Gave the players the plaudits for executing the plan.   

* The Crows had more inside 50s. So no guarantee of winning if you used those tactics every week.  We did it yesterday simply because we were undermanned and we would've struggled playing them head to head.

* Said instead of calling it basketball, he would say we went fishing. Luring the Crows players out from their flood.

* Assistant coaches had a big say in the tactics.

* Terry picked up Sheedy having a bob each way on whether he would use the same tactics.

* Anyone can go and see our youngsters at Coburg who have won 4 out of their last 5 games. So he doesn't understand where the not developing towards a premiership line comes from. Then made the remark  "How are Bendigo going?!".

[one-eyed]

Gone fishing for four points
23 May 2006   Herald Sun
Terry Wallace

MINUTES after our victory against Adelaide on Saturday, I spoke to the players and warned them the game would spark varying opinions.

We knew Richmond supporters would care only about claiming four points against a team we supposedly had no hope of beating, while those who are concerned about the aesthetics of the game would be calling for blood.

What I didn't anticipate in this conversation was the fuel that was added to the fire by Kevin Sheedy on Sunday.

How Richmond got embroiled in Sheeds' post-match media conference is quite bemusing and, in some ways, insulting.

In my tenure as a coach and media analyst I have been embroiled in my fair share of controversy, so all I do now is have a chuckle and get on with the next task at hand.

But for those hundreds of thousands of basketball fans who take their kids around every weekend, the game, at times, seems an easy pot shot for the "bully boy" mentality of some football people.

It's true that as a kid I grew up loving basketball, playing in junior representative sides.

Ten days ago, I gave up my Saturday night after our 118-point loss to Sydney to speak to the Victorian under-18 squad that was preparing for the national titles.

In my junior sporting days I have no doubt I was discriminated against by footy fathers because of my basketball background.

Eventually I left my local area because these people were not open-minded enough to accept that I actually had enough skill in both games to be worthy of selection.

Yet 35 years later it appears this mentality still exists.

The facts of Saturday's game were that our game plan had nothing to do with basketball.

In that sport you need to move the ball out of the back court within 8sec and you have a shot clock that guarantees the game remains at a rapid attacking pace.

What we did on Saturday was much more like fishing.

We threw out a lure for Adelaide to stop flooding numbers behind the ball.

Our idea was to lure the Crows to playing one on one instead of having their wings and half-forwards push down defensively and then run in a tidal wave back to their goals.

Sheeds should understand that this is called transition and all transitional games around the world – soccer, hockey, basketball – have tempo play involved.

To suggest you can't win the premiership playing tempo football is quite ridiculous. Anyone who knows our game will tell you Sydney is the master of this style of play.

To all Tigers supporters, be assured we are developing for future success and working on a style of game that is attacking and creative.

In our three victories on end leading up to our Round 7 loss to Sydney, we were the No. 1 inside 50 team in the AFL.

The hat-trick culminated in an attacking victory over Essendon in the Dreamtime game at the MCG.

Our club had also set its sights on developing a group of young players. The club has 30 players under 24 years of age, 11 teenagers and 20 under the age of 21.

Although our record stands at 4-4, we have tried more players at senior level than any other club this year.

This controversy reminds me of the furore that broke out from the evening I coached the Bulldogs in Round 21, 2000.

That night we were playing the rampaging Essendon, which was striving to go through the season unbeaten.

The team at the time was devastated by injury so we put a plan in place to play a zone defence to restrict their superstars. This was a basketball tactic and I wonder whether Sheeds is still smarting because he would have been in the record books for all time.

Just like 2000, on the weekend we went into this game massively undermanned.

What has been lost amid all the tactical discussion is that I had a group of players who were tough enough to win first use of the footy, tackled hard and kept the opposition under pressure for four quarters.

I think their performance in this area has been undersold.

The state of the game is important to everyone who is a stakeholder. But fans still want to be able to come through the turnstiles knowing their team will be doing everything in its powers to get a victory in each and every game.

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/footy/common/story_page/0,8033,19225107%255E25877,00.html

[one-eyed]

Craig the villain in tactics turmoil
Chip Le Grand
The Australian
May 23, 2006

FOR two days Terry Wallace has been hailed as either a tactical genius or vilified as the Grinch who stole football. In truth, he is simply a winning coach who can't believe his luck.

If there is a villain from Saturday's extraordinary match between Richmond and Adelaide - a match that has created all manner of weird and wonderful benchmarks for how football should never be played - it is Adelaide coach Neil Craig.

AFL coaches, as a rule, are reluctant to criticise the tactics of their opposite numbers, as they understand the fine line that separates guru from dunce. Yet those contacted yesterday by The Australian were staggered that Craig, for the best part of 45 minutes, indulged Richmond in a tedious game of piggy in the middle.

As one put it: "I can't believe the media has been all over Terry Wallace. Get all over Neil Craig."

The AFL media has been all over Craig for most of the season and this paper is no exception. He has been lauded for the way he has transformed Adelaide into a premiership contender and admired for the discipline and organisation he has instilled within his team. In round one against Collingwood, he was said to have turned football on its head.

Yet against Richmond, Craig coached a clanger.

Midway through the second quarter, Wallace enacted a plan to slow the game to a trickle, starve Adelaide of the ball and break down the structure that underpins the best defensive team in the competition.

The way the Adelaide defence operates, half-forwards push back to the wing and wingman into the backline, giving the Crows extra numbers in their own half. When they win the ball, this allows Andrew McLeod and Graham Johncock to rebound through the midfield.

Richmond's response was for all six defenders to stay in their own half and keep possession at all costs. So long as Adelaide continued to push back, Richmond would chip the ball to loose players.

"To use the basketball vernacular, they were playing a zone defence and we just kept chucking it around the perimeter until they came out of their zone and took us on man-on-man," Wallace explained. "But they didn't come out so it became a Mexican stand-off."

So what should Adelaide have done? The answer was obvious to any under-10 coach sitting in the stands: push forward, pick up the loose players and win the ball.

"The bottom line is that you have to worry about your defensive strategy as much as your offensive strategy," Western Bulldogs coach Rodney Eade explained. "Richmond's offensive strategy was to keep the ball off Adelaide. The defensive strategy in that case is to go and man them up.

"In basketball terms, you press them. Deny them time and space. Instead of running back in transition, go forward and man them up so, when Richmond has the ball on the half-back flank, they have got no one to kick it to."

The Crows' dilemma was when to abandon the defensive structure that had served them so well to go get the ball. Adelaide did not man up until early in the final quarter, resulting in an immediate and belated change in fortune. Craig later admitted that he should have responded earlier.

Adelaide's problem was yesterday explained by assistant coach Don Pyke.

"At the end we did man up and probably we worked through a number of different scenarios before we got to that point," Pyke said. "In fairness to our players, sometimes you can react too early and too quickly and change the entire balance of your side."

What has been lost in the debate over tactics and aesthetics is other things Richmond did well to put itself in a winning position early in the match. Richmond thrashed the Crows in the clearances and beat them to the contested ball. The Tigers began the match in conventional fashion and kicked the first three goals of the opening quarter.

Had Adelaide got the early jump, it would have served Richmond no purpose to retain possession and slow the game down.

The most perplexing aspect of Adelaide's failure to combat Richmond's tactics is the fact that Craig employed the same tactics to great effect in the opening round of the season. When Craig was asked to defend those tactics at the time, he said Collingwood needed only to man up.

Just as all teams have developed counter-tactics for flooding, teams should now be prepared to deal with tempo control strategies.

"It is all about education and training," Wallace said. "Most teams would have trained for different situations. If a team floods or a team plays possession footy, you should have options there. Players should be able to have that in their minds."

Eade believes coaches have never had a greater impact on the game. "All these issues are coach-driven and the solution is going to be coach-driven," he said.

It is a timely point, given the Richmond-Adelaide game has prompted calls for rule changes and another week of introspection about the evolution of the game. So, if you don't like what you saw on Saturday, blame the coach. But not the one who won.

Additional reporting: Andrew McGarry

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19224350-36035,00.html

[Ox]

IDGAF really,wether they play a game with some basketball inspired game planning but it has to be done to the best.

I didn't c the game on Saturday but from what i gather it was an exaggerated version of what we have seen many times in the past and will no doubt see in the future.

We didn't start the fire and we can't put it out on our own....so grab a box of matches and a can of metho .

[Tiger Spirit]

Eade believes coaches have never had a greater impact on the game. "All these issues are coach-driven and the solution is going to be coach-driven," he said.

Exactly right.  The AFL competition is somewhere it’s never been before and it’s easy to be confused by it all.  Therefore, it’s crucial that there are no knee jerk reactions and decisions made to try and counter what’s happening because it will all be a waste of time.

I’ve listened to different views on the game, over the last few seasons and there’s no doubt professionalism, more than anything else, has changed the way game is played, perhaps forever.

I don’t like the game the way it is at the moment, but I’d rather let it evolve than have rules changed to try and fix things, because no rules can, without eroding the true spirit and nature of Aussie Rules.

The thing those who love the game have to come to terms with is the reasons why the game has changed.  Once we understand that then perhaps we can appreciate why football is played the way it is.

What TW implemented on the weekend has been pillaried, to a large degree.  But as a supporter, you can live with something like that, for a short time, if there’s a purpose behind it.  What infuriates supporters, more than anything else, is watching their team play negative football when it’s not teaching the players anything, from one week to the next.  Negative football, for the sake of it, tells supporters that their coach has no idea what to do next and that their team’s situation is hopeless.

Which is so unlike the motives of TW in the game against Adelaide.  In time, that match could prove to be the game where what TW and the coaching staff have been teaching the players started to click.  On Club Corner last night, Brian Royal said it was the first time the players had coached themselves out on the ground.  Well

So until it is proven beyond doubt that, as a learning curve for the players, it was a complete and utter waste of everyone’s time then anyone who cans the game just doesn't get the purpose of it.

For the majority of those with little or no interest in Richmond then it was a mind numbing game to watch, but for those who think they know a bit more about what the coaches are trying to achieve then it’s slightly more palatable.  Especially if the benefits from that experience are seen in the weeks to come and we don’t have to watch that sort of stuff every week.