Our players bar a few are to put it bluntly slow-thinkers 
. Their reaction times to make decisions are the worst in the AFL IMO. Quick movement in footy is not how fast you can run but how fast you can think and execute. Geelong players are hardly fast apart from Wojcinski and a couple of others but they work together to move the ball on quickly. That's why they are so good. You hardly see a Geelong player standing with the ball for 20 secs trying to decide what to do with it. Our guys also seem to have little understanding of even basic footy strategy. Sure the coaching staff should spot and fix this but sheesh as a professional footballer surely you can think for yourself as far as strategy goes (reading which way the ball is heading, running to space, etc). It's laughable how even something so simple as a switch in play across HB we have all our players running to thin side instead of the fat-side wing where the ball is heading to and where the space is. So the poor defender looks up and sees no one 
. Thick as!
MT, isn't slow thinking what gets exposed when players either don't know what the gameplan is or don't have the confidence to follow through with it. I mean there is a chance we've drafted a heap of exceptionally slow thinking footballers, but more likely it is one of two cases: we either have footballers who have little idea of what to do next because i) the gameplan hasn't been digested by that individual and other individuals who are the next link in the chain or ii) the other players cbf doing the little things to make the gameplan work.
If it is mostly i) then this too is a mark against Wallace. If it is ii) then the players should bear the burden.
I think its a bit of both.
Yep Jake it's all of the above. Both coaches and players fault.
The major flaws with the gameplan is a lack of protection of the ballcarrier and the slow movement of the footy. Teammates spread away from the ballcarrier to be handball receivers trying to get on the outside of their opponent so they have space to run forward into. The problem is if those that spreaders are manned up, or they don't have enough time or too dumb and lazy to spread hard into space, or they don't run into space at all that blind freddy can see, then the ballcarrier has no purposeful options to go to. There's few hit-up options further upfield (HFs don't lead up towards the ballcarrier) nor do we have enough big key forwards to be confident enough to go long to as a final out (we avoid going long to contests unless it's Richo up forward with 3-4 defenders on him). As we don't protect the ballcarrier via shepherding and blocking then often the ballcarrier ends up isolated surrounded by opponents to use a rugby union phrase and that's when you are dead meat and it's turnover time. The last resort for the ballcarrier is to handball under pressure to one of the spreaders nearby but they are 'hot' as well so we end up with this hot potato handball around half-back or defensive side of the centre until we stuff up
.
The obvious example of our lack of protection of ballcarrier was in the first quarter on Sunday when Newman received a handball at CHB and had 30m of open space in front of him to run into. He was clear or he would've thought so. However his teammate who gave off the footy to Newy didn't shepherd the Melbourne player chasing him to protect Newy's rear. So the Melbourne player just runs past and tackles Newy from behind. Turnover! It's such a small but important thing to add to our game but nothing is done about it.
What also results is because we all spread away from the ballcarrier and expose him to immense pressure we are not only prone to turnover the ball but are sitting ducks on the counter as well whenever there is a turnover. All our opponents are free in space because we've run off them so turnovers result so easily in goals to the opposition. To counter the turnovers you can push numbers behind the ball to flood but then that dries up your own attacking options.
