State of the game?

[Tigeritis™©®]

With our Mighty Tigers now unbeatable and the clear benchmark of the competition, the only thing everyone seems to be discussing is how boring the game is and what must be done to change it.

Thoughts?

[mat073]

Just more saltiness coming from Chris Scott and his boyfriend Gerald Wheatley.

[WilliamPowell]

Last season everyone loved the way we played the game. The game style got kudos left, right and centre

Now that everyone is trying to copy us and they can't because their hopeless at it there's something wrong with the game

Please   

The game is fine, it will corrrect itself it always does, there is no need to do anything

Cameron Ling said it Friday night, there's nothing wrong people are panicking about nothing

[Go Richo 12]

The game was always better the moment a player retired.

[Tigeritis™©®]

I starting watching some games from the 90’s.

If I agree with anyone I’d have to agree with KB. Reduce interchange and don’t recall any bounce no matter how poor (I’d reintroduce it around the ground too) as the fact the bounce is completely random no ruck or player has any idea where it might go and that randomness also helps the team that eventually gets the clearance or the rucks where just better at palming the ball back then.

kB wants interchange gone altogether (except for major injuries) but I’d limit interchange to 4 per quarter, 4 at each change. 

I like how we now play and our style but I can’t say the game overall, as a spectacle, is as good as it was to watch back in the 90’s, even as bad as some games might have been compared to now.

I wouldn’t reduce players or bring in zones as it’s not our game.

[YellowandBlackBlood]

We developed our gamestyle to suit our playing personnel.

Now others are copying it without the personnel and wonder why they're making it look bad.


Why isn't anyone bringing this up in the media?

[Eat_em_Alive]

We developed our gamestyle to suit our playing personnel.

Now others are copying it without the personnel and wonder why they're making it look bad.


Why isn't anyone bringing this up in the media?

Because they havn't read it here first   

[Slipper]

Cameron Ling said it Friday night, there's nothing wrong people are panicking about nothing

And in my opinion he is totally right.

I remember the days of Sydney with their flood, and people being all doom and gloom about the future of footy. The other coaches worked it out and adapted to ways to overcome it. And Sydney did basically what we have done, they choose a gameplan that suited the personnel they had. Once that team started to break-up, their gameplan had to change.

One thing that I think is overlooked in this debate is the impact that having the competition expand has had. It might not seem much that there are an extra 100 or so players in the AFL, but the effect of the new clubs is to dilute the spread of top end talent in the competition. It has to have. Add this to the draft concessions that those clubs got that concentrated a generation of top end talent at those clubs, and it is not hard to see why some clubs are apparently struggling to play attractive footy.

I believe we won the flag last year in large part to having a great band of really top end talent, more so than the greater majority of the competition. Martin, Rance, Cotchin and Riewoldt is as good a top four on a playing list in the AFL last season as any team had. Around that we had a bunch of role players, a number of whom developed into key contributors under a gameplan that suited them.

With extra teams in the competition, premium talent is going to be even harder to get hold of.

[dwaino]

Players are professional and fitter now, 20 years ago some blokes still had to juggle day jobs. We’ve got a unique game that changes every few years and the winners are those who can predict or beat the trend. I agree that skills have dramatically dropped, the talent is too dilated across too many teams. Fatiguing players more in an effort to open it up won’t do anything for skills. In fact it would just make it worse.

[Tigeritis™©®]

It’s not what is successful but what looks good, I hated watching the style of any team Lyon was involved in including today’s team.

Does anyone here think footy was better to watch in the 90’s?

I do.

[Tigeritis™©®]

I’ve watched games in ‘94, 95, 98 & 2001 and the footy played is much more entertaining.

I also remembered how good Jamie Tape was very hard at it and skilful. Tony free was another hard nut but his kicking wasn’t as good as I remember. We never shouldn’t let Maxfield go. Rogers was also very good. Knights was a star. Campbell was a very good kick and Chris Bond was a an absolute hard nut.

Like I said I love what we are doing and how excellent we are playing but footy in general is not as entertaining.

[one-eyed]

Field Marshal: Sam Edmund looks at which clubs are making the most of the AFL’s trench warfare era

SAM EDMUND,
Herald Sun
May 9, 2018

GET the ball in your forward half if you want to live.

It’s like a line out of Terminator, which is appropriate given team defence has taken a machine-like grip on our game.

If soccer is considered the beautiful game, this AFL era will be remembered as trench warfare. No less gripping to some, but if the glass is half empty footy currently has a face only a mother could love.

The days of end-to-end footy are now as rare as the snow leopard. Instead, the ball is inched forward one brutal contest at a time in a territory tug-of-war that sees the victor pin the ball in its attacking half and scrounge a goal.

When the attractive games do come, like they did in a 37-goal Brisbane Lions-Collingwood shootout on Sunday, they are talked down by the people who shape the game.

“I can’t say it was pleasant viewing from our perspective,” Pies coach Nathan Buckley said.

“It was a high-scoring shootout ... high scores from stoppage, high from turnover. That’s the worst we’ve defended all year.

“We’re not all together happy with the way the game was played, but we did what we needed to do late to win the game on its terms.”

The game now dictates that sides live by the forward half game or die fighting it. You can’t beat them, so you need to join them and those who haven’t — or can’t — are destined for the bottom rungs of the ladder.

The percentage of possession chains remaining in-tact from defensive 50 to inside 50 has been on the decline since 2007 where it’s gone from happening 38 per cent of the time to 20.5 per cent.

The percentage of scores originating in the back half has gone from 17 per cent in 2007 to only 9.7 per cent this year.

The last three premiers — Richmond, Western Bulldogs and Hawthorn — have ranked in the top two for time in forward half.

Essendon’s woes are underpinned by a ranking of 16th for time in forward half and 17th in points scored from the forward half. Yet the Bombers are No. 2 in the AFL for points scored from the defensive half.

“The plan is to lock it in our front half when we get it in there,” Dons coach John Worsfold insisted on 3AW.

“We’re not defending high because we’re not getting it in there (forward 50) enough ... but the times we don’t score it’s coming out and getting right down the other end too easily.”

Richmond ranks No. 1 in time in forward half and points scored from the forward half and Melbourne is second and fifth. West Coast’s status as a contender is clouded by the fact it ranks third for time in forward half, but only 9th for points scored from the forward half.

The Eagles sit No. 1 in points scored from the defensive half, which recent history says is unsustainable.

Geelong is ranked a lowly 14th for time spent in its forward half, but sits fourth in that stat over the past four weeks.



http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/more-news/field-marshal-sam-edmund-looks-at-which-clubs-are-making-the-most-of-the-afls-trench-warfare-era/news-story/3dd860f29b575020dc300a12dca5c7e2

[mightytiges]

This round shows there's nothing wrong with the game. Good teams play good footy & crap teams ( hello bombers ) play crap footy. It's been that way for 150 years.