We wait until the opposition have set up their zone and then we are lost for ideas so as you said daniel we just kick to a pack which at best is just a 50/50 scenario. It was so old school and predictable and easily counted.
Yes, MT, why were we doing that? We had lots of opportunities to move the ball back into play quickly before the Blooze had set up their zone, but our kicker seemed to wait in the goal square until everything was static.
I couldn't see it on the Tube, but didn't we have anyone to kick to? Is that another symptom of our unwillingness or inability to spread from a contest? I couldn't understand it. It almost seemed planned.
As Stripes said our players were stagnant within Carlton's zone formation. Our guys were just standing in a hole flat-footed and hoping the kicker would drill a pin-point pass to them. That ain't going to happen as it's too risky especially with most of players' footskills.
So really the kicker's only options were
(i) to kick short to a pocket which really gets you nowhere as the zone doesn't have to budge if you stop and take the kick behind the mark or if you play on you still have no one upfield to kick to and having played on you're able to be put under pressure and tackled. The latter leads to that happy handgrenade handball deep in defence we've seen so often
(ii) a long kick wide to just outside the 50 to a contest. (Lids tried to kick a few torps in the last quarter to gain some extra distance but he never connected with one properly).
One of the problems we have is we don't have a imposing quality ruckman or strong-body tall to dominate in the air (Jack can't be everywhere) nor do we have or use tall mids as marking targets say 30m out who can then play on and fire a pass over the back of the zone to a teammate running hard into space further a field. Lids should really be used as a target rather than wasting his talent doing the kick ins. We were playing a side with shorties like Betts, Garlett, Yarran in the Carlton zone. Surely a reasonably tall Tiger mid could have marked over the top of one of the shorter Blues if the ball was kicked in their direction irrespective of the zone. The other issue is we are so slow in moving the ball because we are not only stagnant but we don't function as team properly. You need each player that gains possession to have the confidence and knowledge that he quickly fire off a pass as soon as he gains possession to a teammate leading up and running hard into space upfield. Because we don't do this we either get trapped behind the zone or we lose more than our fair share of 50/50s from going the predictable long kick down the line. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we occasionally tried the old school 80s huddle at CHF. Despite it being predictable as well at least with the long kick we'd have numbers at the contest and fall of the ball compared to now where we just hand the ball back to the opposition on their forward 50
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