Waste notBy Peter Ryan
Tue 22 May, 2012HOW CAN you have 18 extra inside 50s and lose the game?That's the question Richmond fans were asking (wailing would be another description) at work on Monday.
The short answer is by missing gettable goals.
However that is not the only answer to that question.
When you kick inaccurately that statistic - one of the game's most informative - goes up.
As does the time the ball spends in your forward half.
You only have to look at Richmond's third quarter against Essendon or Geelong's final quarter against Collingwood in round eight to know that is true.
Richmond kicked five goals, eight behinds in the third quarter on Saturday night and had 19 inside 50s to Essendon's 10. The ball was in the Tigers' forward half 7.45 minutes longer than the Bombers.
It won the quarter by just 12 points.
Geelong kicked four goals, six behinds in the final quarter on Friday night and had 23 inside 50s to Collingwood's 10. The ball was in the Cats' forward half 6.48 minutes longer than the Magpies.
It won the quarter by just five points.
That's like doing a PhD: a lot of good work, often for little return.
A pattern of wasting time in the forward half is starting to emerge at Geelong in 2012.
In seven games this season it has won the time in forward half differential. Yet it has lost four of those seven.
Even with the slight drop in teams winning after winning the time in forward half differential - from 72 percent to 67 percent - that makes the Cats unusual: the three top teams on the ladder are in the top four for the time in forward half differential.
It suggests Geelong's efficiency going forward is diminishing.
Like a handy baseline player in tennis, it keeps the ball in there but doesn't hit many winners.
Richmond can trap it in there too but it struggles when the ball goes back to the centre after a goal to maintain its dominance.
So the Tigers appeared in command when kicking points.
As we get fooled into thinking a team is dominating when they pepper the goals.
The truth is such apparent domination from middle-ranked teams (which Richmond and Geelong appear to be in 2012) often comes through ascendancy in one part of the game.
With a good zone defending kick-ins and a tiring opposition - or one disrupted through injury - both Richmond and Geelong were able to trap the ball forward and keep attacking the goals.
But they also had players who wanted to take shots from unlikely or crowded positions.
And their desperation to kick a goal seemed to increase as each minute ticked by and each scoring opportunity went wayward.
As much as it wasted opportunities it built the pressure.
In the hands of a good team such constant attacks can build the pressure in a positive manner, worrying the defenders and tiring them out physically and mentally.
But if the attacking team has doubts the missed chances can have a negative psychological effect.
In that case, often when successive goal attempts are missed the attack becomes kick and hope rather than a process of building the pressure and playing the percentages.
The offensive transition juices start to kick in, particularly if you are creating opportunity after opportunity. The chance one player will then not switch back from attacking into defensive mode when they inevitably need to increases.
This is dangerous because as novelist Alex Miller wrote in his book Lovesong, 'Sometimes one rock is dislodged and the whole mountain falls'.
Such missed chances can make an effective counterattack more likely as holding a structure without reward is tough.
The attackers become more vulnerable as each scoring attempt misses and their psychological make-up is tested.
If the opposition sweeps down and kicks a goal after the ball has been in your forward-line without much reward, football - life - suddenly seems so unfair.
Sound familiar Tiger and Cat fans?
So to have domination you must match time in the forward half with straight kicking.
Otherwise it might be providing false hope.
And it raises the inevitable seed of doubt as the question keeps being asked: How can you have 18 extra inside 50s and lose the game?
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