What I learnt yesterday was that after four years in the job, Dimma still has absolutely no answer against teams who "park the bus" in our forward line (as Mighty Tigers calls it.) North and Freo do it to us every single time, and we MUST come up with a way to counter it. There are two elements to it: 1. them congesting our forward line, and 2. them creating the acres of space on the rebound that they deny us.
Like Dimma, and indeed the team, I have absolutely no answer to countering the first part of the equation. We have tried bombing into the mess, and that doesn't work. We have tried chipping around the periphery, and that doesn't work. We have tried coming in from the boundary line, which just leads to loads of shots from impossible angles, and a scoreline of 4.15 (which is what we had kicked when I left in disgust at 3/4 time.) Seriously, if anybody has any credible answers to this conundrum, I am all ears. More importantly, maybe you should e-mail them to our football department.
The second part of the equation is a lot easier to counter in theory. If our defenders and mids follow their opponents deep into our forward line when they are pushing numbers behind the ball, they MUST be prepared to follow them back out again. They have so far in these situations been too dumb and too effing lazy to do the gut-running required to stop being caught on the rebound time and time again. Which is basically what repeatedly happened in that abysmally frustrating second quarter.
Anyway, that's just my 2 cents worth. As I said, if anybody has any ideas I'm all ears. The club CANNOT keep letting this happen.