Gerard Healy, Jonathan Brown, Nick Riewoldt & Garry Lyon discussing us on 'On The Couch' tonight:
How the 'Sydney Swarm' stifled Richmond
Watch here: https://www.foxsports.com.au/video/afl/on-the-couch/how-the-sydney-swarm-stifled-richmond!799516
The first three examples had nothing to do with Sydney's defence or pressure
. All were either basic skill errors and/or poor decision making by us when we had open options.
(i) Kick inside F50 misses Dusty by 10m over his head and goes OOTF. There was also a free Tiger inboard 40m out from goal which was the better option.
(ii) Kick off HB goes wide to the boundary option when there was a free teammate in board running forward onto the logo.
In any case, the next kick misses its target by 10m and bounces between three Tigers allowing the Swan defenders in.
nb. The Swan defender gets tackled and is spun around 540 degrees which should be HTB. Another example of the crap umpiring we copped all day
.
(iii) Kick out of D50 should have gone wider toward the boundary where the free Tiger teammate was running towards with free space ahead of him. The kick however is too narrow by 20m and goes straight to Dawson for the turnover.
ps. Our F50 entries have been poor in all three matches so far. We just got away with it against crap sides like Carlton and Hawthorn. The Swans were the first this year to make us pay for our slop.
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Example @ 4.15 min:
This demonstrated that we were defensively asleep and that our workrate off the ball was pitiful. Our mids and half-forwards failed to run hard defensively to check the Swan runs.
- After the Swans player in the BP chips to a teammate at HB, he runs on but Aarts fails to stick with him tightly and remains 10m behind as the play carries on.
- Then Lambert fails to follow the Swan mid running from the centre corridor to the HFF where the ball ends up. Graham initially points to Lambert to pick the Swan mid up but Lambert thinks Graham will pick him up and both are left just minding space 20m off the kicker in the zone defence.
- Astbury allows his Swan forward opponent to run into space 40m off him.
- We actually get the kick we want from Sydney which is a long down the line kick to their HFF (towards Astbury's man).
- Balta leaves his man and runs back to spoil. Good .... this is where we
should have had the numbers and won the turnover.
- But we don't! Astbury is too far away from his man and thus too late to get to the contest to help Balta and Dave ends up in no man's land.
- Balta's man who is now free front and centre then gathers the ball, hands to what should be Lambert/Graham's man who dishes it off (before Graham can stop him) to what is Aarts' man running past for the easy overlap chip to Papley and then Wicks inside the Swans' F50.
ps. I hope this makes some sense if you watch the vision a few times and pause it at each possession.All up it's just slack team defence as well as being unaccountable to an opponent that is moving into a threatening and impacting position on the ground
.
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The last examples are a horror show for Bakes but they also illustrate that our mids and other half-backs did not protect our defensive side at centrebounces. You could have driven a road train of B-doubles through there there was so much open ground between the centre circle and the Swans' F50
.
The only good news is all these examples above are fixable without any major change to our gameplan. Just requires a return to AFL standard workrate and intensity, cutting out the slack dumb stuff and executing basic skills. Fix the fundamentals and the rest will take care of itself.
