Hardwick draws on positives (Sportal)

[Smokey]

Hardwick draws on positives
11/04/2010 12:09 PM
Steve Orme
Sportal

Richmond coach Damien Hardwick insists Saturday's 55-point loss to Sydney at the SCG was a step in the right direction for his young side.

For the second straight week the Tigers conceded six goals in a disastrous opening term to trail by 52 points at the long break before steadying the ship somewhat in the final two terms.

While Hardwick took solace out of his side's second-half effort, the fact is his charges have now lost their opening three matches by a combined 183 points.

But the rookie coach implored frustrated Richmond supporters to keep the faith.

"I thought we were disappointing in the first half but I thought we battled back well," an upbeat Hardwick said.

"There's obviously some work for us to do but I thought the inside-50 differential was relatively similar and we won the clearances and won the turnovers."

For the rest of the article:

http://sportal.com.au/afl-news-display/hardwick-draws-on-positives-89233

[WA Tiger]

Whe the game is over to the tune of 50+ points at half time I am not sure what to take out of it. Were we better in the second half or did Roos try a few different moves with his players that made us looklike we were better??

[Muscles]

I thought the big difference in the second half was that we pretty much put the zone away and started playing one-on-one football.   There were a lot more players helping out their teammates in contests.

It appears to be a ridiculous thing to say, but we had more players at the contest when we gave away playing the zone.  Our zone was dissected very neatly by Sydney's hand and foot skills in the first half.  Sydney had more players around the ball than we did.  I thought that the width of the SCG worked against us big time in constructing and rolling the zone to match Sydney's switches.  Big gaps opened up in the zone and Sydney went right through it.

When we went to one-on-one we had a lot more players available at each contest - it may have been that their opponents dragged our players towards the ball.  Then, with more troops available around the contest, we started winning more of the ball and we started putting some pressure on the Sydney ball carriers.

[wayne]

Whe the game is over to the tune of 50+ points at half time I am not sure what to take out of it. Were we better in the second half or did Roos try a few different moves with his players that made us looklike we were better??

This isn't the NAB cup, if there is a chance to get some percentage I reckon most teams would try and go for it.