07-03-2017, 12:28 PM
I agree most of the fundamentals are solid and there is a lot to like - except our inability to score.
As Malcolm Blight said in his HOF acceptance speech when asked about his philosophy on playing and coaching, he made the point that the team that wins is always the one that kicks the highest score! Therefore his approach was always based around an attempt to outscore his opponents. If you can't score, then you aren't going to win many games and you are never going to be successful.
As Paul correctly notes, defence and attack need to be balanced, and you need an equal measures of both to have any sort of success. We seem to subscribed to a theory that you can focus on defence, and then at some as yet unspecified point in the future you "flick some imaginary switch" and add an attacking component onto the game plan, and then you become a really good team. This theory doesn't really stand up to any sort of logical scrutiny, and our sides ongoing malaise [in terms of win/loss, scoring, points conceded, conservative game style] would also suggest it is not really working that well.
I would also propose that the counter argument is actually in many ways more sensible - learn and develop players with an ability to score [because it takes such a long time to develop the players to do it] and then add the defenders and defensive attitude later. Defenders and defensive patterns are much easier to recruit and teach.
I'm sure we aren't coaching the team to kick low scores, but at the same time we keep picking the same players who have struggled to kick over 10 goals per game for 2 years. We have also made a conscious decision to not actively recruit an established KPF or quality goal kicker [bar maybe Matt Wright], but have 'loaded up' on defenders instead.
We all 'feel like' we are heading in the right direction, and in many areas we are. But the cold hard facts when you look at the numbers vs last year tell you something a little different - we are in an almost identical position to where we were. And our ability to score has not improved at all over the last 70 odd games - so the idea that it will somehow improve markedly over the next 8 weeks is very optimistic.
As Malcolm Blight said in his HOF acceptance speech when asked about his philosophy on playing and coaching, he made the point that the team that wins is always the one that kicks the highest score! Therefore his approach was always based around an attempt to outscore his opponents. If you can't score, then you aren't going to win many games and you are never going to be successful.
As Paul correctly notes, defence and attack need to be balanced, and you need an equal measures of both to have any sort of success. We seem to subscribed to a theory that you can focus on defence, and then at some as yet unspecified point in the future you "flick some imaginary switch" and add an attacking component onto the game plan, and then you become a really good team. This theory doesn't really stand up to any sort of logical scrutiny, and our sides ongoing malaise [in terms of win/loss, scoring, points conceded, conservative game style] would also suggest it is not really working that well.
I would also propose that the counter argument is actually in many ways more sensible - learn and develop players with an ability to score [because it takes such a long time to develop the players to do it] and then add the defenders and defensive attitude later. Defenders and defensive patterns are much easier to recruit and teach.
I'm sure we aren't coaching the team to kick low scores, but at the same time we keep picking the same players who have struggled to kick over 10 goals per game for 2 years. We have also made a conscious decision to not actively recruit an established KPF or quality goal kicker [bar maybe Matt Wright], but have 'loaded up' on defenders instead.
We all 'feel like' we are heading in the right direction, and in many areas we are. But the cold hard facts when you look at the numbers vs last year tell you something a little different - we are in an almost identical position to where we were. And our ability to score has not improved at all over the last 70 odd games - so the idea that it will somehow improve markedly over the next 8 weeks is very optimistic.