Rd 15: Post Game Passion: Carlton vs Adelaide

[Thryleon]

Thry, the point I was making is that this is less about cattle and more about the mindset of the coaching staff. I am of course quite aware of player movements in the intervening years. Of course the cattle at your disposal must count for something, but not as much as people think in my opinion.

And the point I am making is that the game is a very different beast than what it used to be.

Like it or lump it, teams reacted to us playing with that forward press, and any attempt by us to even attempt to execute it today results in score from turnover quicker than you can say Rasberry Pie.

They did a couple of things.

1.  The Bombers stopped us at the coal face.  We relied on getting first use of the footy.  Their method of stopping that (besides injecting bigger bodies...  ;D) was to put the bigger bodies at the stoppage resulting in repeat stoppages, and the inability of our team to get the ball inside forward fifty quickly.  They knew they only had to stop a few mids, and the rest were incapable of doing enough damage (Murphy and Judd).

2.  Teams started setting up for the quick ball into forward 50.  The current en vogue "score from turnover" is a result of that, where teams would have the ability to rebound as quickly as we put it in there and much of that is the new team defense, defensive zone that Hawthorn have made popular, and we are executing well enough.  Remember we were deemed to be "downhill skiers"??  This is a result of us executing a forward press by flooding forward a bit.  This leaves our defense playing one on one, and we were hardly full of Silvagni types back then.

3.  We were often beaten in one on ones by other teams who matched our ability to get the game going on their terms because the aforementioned forward press, flood forward, or whatever you want to call it, left us exposed.  We often had players attacking off half back together to get numbers in there quickly, who were not as good as Simpson and Docherty are at getting back to perform defensive duties.

ultimately, lamenting times past, is a symptom of not appreciating that the landscape is forever changing.  There is as much chance that this game style would be more succesful today because it is different as it would be less succesful, but the key isnt to remember how good we were or it was, but the key is to apply that methodology in context of today and appreciate that perhaps we would be in exactly the same spot even if we did play like that.  Realistically we need to be better at applying horses for courses, and playing different ways in different contexts which is what I am hoping Bolton is getting us to do.