Copycats will be left in wake of premiersAndrew Faulkner
The Australian
March 14, 2020Australian football — assuming there is any in a time of plague — is set to ratchet up the speed and the scoring after a sluggish 2019.
Last season, scoring sank to its lowest ebb in more than 50 years of the VFL/AFL, defying the league’s attempt to declutter the game by introducing zones.
Eighty measly points per side, per game, robbed the fans of value for their not-inexpensive memberships. (Hopefully the clubs are refunding their members an appropriate sum for the upcoming crowd-free games.)
The new rules were well-intentioned — and certainly allowed for more open play after centre bounces — but they didn’t eliminate the general congestion.
As usual, the coaches found a way to do their own thing. They sidestepped the rule changes by teaching their players to hold on to the ball. Players chipped the ball out of defence, hugged the boundary line, and ignored the corridor.
They didn’t take the game on. They all but switched it off.
Defence dominated and scoring plummeted.
But one team retained some of the old ways. One team kept handballing and kept moving the ball fast. One team continued to kick goals. And won the premiership.
The Tigers didn’t win the flag by sticking with the pack. They didn’t prevail by being like everyone else. Theirs was a triumph of invention and evolution as much as it was inspiration.
Yes, they sweated on turnovers like the other sides. They did it better than the rest, averaging a goal more per game scored from turnovers.
But as Champion Data has pinpointed in its 2020 AFL Prospectus, there was more to Richmond than just cashing in on their opponents’ mistakes.
They outflanked the opposition by going down the guts and refused to follow the fashion of kicking rather than handballing.
They slowed it down at times, but were flexible enough to burst out of defence when an opportunity arose.
They played the game the way they wanted to play it.
It’s one thing to pore over the stats, but part of Richmond’s success was almost an intangible factor but also an unfashionable truth — they had better players.
As master coach Jack Oatey used to say, you need strawberries to make strawberry jam. And Damien Hardwick had the pick of the crop.
Or more precisely, Hardwick had the cloth to fit the way he wanted to cut the other sides up.
“Richmond have the interceptors down back with Nick Vlastuin, Bachar Houli and Dylan Grimes,” Champion Data analyst Daniel Hoyne wrote in the 2020 AFL Prospectus. “This allows the Tigers to counter-attack from the back half and be aggressive when they win it back.
“They have the speed across the ground to play a quick game. Think of Daniel Rioli, Jason Castagna, Shai Bolton, Dion Prestia and Liam Baker to name just a few.
“They also have talent across each line, which allows them to trust in what they’re doing.
“Not every club has this available on their list. Without the right personnel, it would be a risky strategy to implement.”
The last observation is telling. Because typically coaches have used the premiers’ game as a template for a new season.
Like last year, when Champion Data’s numbers showed clubs were copying 2018 premiers West Coast’s kick and mark game.
But most clubs didn’t have Jeremy McGovern at one end and Jack Darling at the other.
And if coaches try to play the Richmond way without the players to do it, well, things could get ugly.
Turnovers — the biggest source of scoring last season — would rise and so would scores. Scores will likely rise in any case, as surely last year’s low was an outlier, a one-in-50-year event.
Confronted with the 6-6-6 zones and a host of other rule changes, the coaches chose a low, conservative, path in 2019.
Now they’re used to the new rules — and there are no changes this year to digest — they’ve had time to hatch plans to get an edge on their opponents.
So hopefully we’ll see something new this year. Hopefully something more Pagan’s Paddock than Clarkson’s Cluster.
As Hoyne argues, something new is better than something borrowed. Because coaches need to get smart about what best suits their players.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/afl/afl-set-to-hit-throttle-in-2020-but-richmond-will-be-hard-to-follow/news-story/053d010cfda36ac7219474c2a0f13e9a
