03-03-2018, 12:02 PM
I know I did a pretty thorough critique last week, but I have more this week.
Sorry.
Unfortunately it comes from seeing where we are not winning the game, and the reasons and many and not particularly simple.
[1] Centre Play:
(a) Rucks
In 2017 we had one of the best ruck combinations going around. Alison Downie led it in style, taking marks around the ground and using her experience and height to win more than her share of the ruck duels. She was the clear #1.
Young Breann Moody was the back-up who sometimes went to the bench and sometimes rested forward. She was smaller, but had a great leap and some real athleticism.
When they didn't go in the ruck, we still had some tall timber to have a go, in Gillespie-Jones and Shierlaw. Even Danielle Hardiman sometimes took a ruck duel.
But however it went, we were competitive. I really enjoyed that. Downie had the smarts to use her body and made a great #1 ruck. She was very good at guiding her taps and giving our mids a decent chance.
In 2018 the same players are there, but much has changed.
Downie has been very much down and has not played much in the ruck. She has been slow and has been finding it difficult to get off the ground. Other rucks have been beating her significantly, especially at the centre bounce. She is clearly lacking form and appears to be lacking fitness and athleticism. Age and kms may be catching up with her. If so, that is a great pity, but being well into her 30's, it was not unexpected. However, it has been a great disappointment, especially after the way she cleaned up taller and more athletic girls last year. She has played some games in defence and is still valuable against a taller, slower player. However, the opposition is now trying to play smaller, more mobile types against her and she struggles against them. Also she has taken very few marks so far this year.
On the other hand, Breann Moody has stepped up to the 1st ruck position. She has been one of our better players and she has been getting her hand on the ball more than her opponents. She can show quite a deal of aggression, which is greatly appreciated.
Unfortunately she is not a gifted ruck, nor does she play it particularly smart yet. Being among the smaller rucks, she depends on her leap. When she doesn't get it, she is less effective. But the worst thing is that she hits the ball to the same spot every time; in about a 10º arc from directly ahead of her to about 10 - 15º to her left. This is the typical area that smaller or less experienced rucks hit it. I've seen it a lot at junior levels and at U18 level for men over 30 years or more. And rather than tapping the ball, she thumps it. Every time.
Tonight, for example, she won more than her share of the taps, but we lost almost every clearance in that time. The opposition put their best mid there, and we do not. Because the tap is not aimed, it tends to be picked off by the stronger, faster player: the best opposing mid.
Considering her ruck dominance, it should be a real point of difference in our favour. Instead, it is the opposite. It is frustrating to see our taps creating centre breaks, sometimes perfect ones.
We do not appear to be reading her taps, nor do we get enough players in a position to do anything about it. And it has happened I every game this year.
Even with a hard working group of mids, we haven't been able to get clearances.
In itself, this is almost game losing: a team that does not get centre clearances struggles to score and that has been us.
(b) Midfielders:
I wrote about out failure to recruit high class mids last week. I won't go over that again. But I will bring up other issues.
Our mids are not large, nor are they quick. They have more than a little guts about them and they tackle like they mean it, but for all the tackles they make, other tackles get broken too easily. That is bad enough, but we also get out-bodied be bigger, stronger girls. Thrice in the 2nd quarter Adelaide got goals because of a single player being out-bodied and their opponent running away freely to deliver the ball to a forward. Considering the goals they managed, and how many we kick, this was totally lethal.
We do not lack endeavour, but we cannot take out the oppositions top mids when we don't get clearances.
[2] Taggers:
We do not appear to play any taggers. I find that incredibly irritating, as they opposition's best players tend to rack up the possessions against us. Even in the first game we did not have a player get more than 16 possessions. Since we lost Davey nobody has got more than 14 (one player in 3 weeks), while 10 or 11 is about our top. (Again seen this week when our top possession getters managed only 11, while Adelaide had 6 players get more than that.)
Why do we not tag at least one of the opposing mids? Last year we were good for much of the season in shutting down dangerous opponents. Only twice we could not. This year, only the Collingwood game has shown us being able to control the opposition and they still had the top 3 possessions getters on the ground. One was playing her first game!
I'll leave it at that, but we do not appear to be able to cover players, while we struggle to get Vescio or Harris free.
[3] Picking our original squad:
Last year we had a lot going for ourselves. We were close to going all the way, even though we played much poorer away than we did at home. We had a great leader in Arnell, a great ruck in Downie and the best forward in the competition with the chances to prove it. We had a really stingy defence that played well together.
Our smaller forward were not great and we lacked consistency in the forward line, but we were really competitive.
This year our squad is looking much less viable. And that is not just because Bri Davey is out for the season.
(a) We do not look as fit.
Stamina: We tend to start quarters well, but not finish them so well, and we have not finished a single match this year. Even GWS in the wet looked capable in the last quarter, although I was pleased to see us steady in that game.
I do not know what is different on the fitness front, but we appear not as strong in general, and particularly weak in our smaller players. And this with Shae Audley getting huge numbers of tackles each weak.
Strength: This is not a problem with our key position players so much, but it is very obvious with the smaller players. They get out-bodied too often, especially in the centre square.
However, probably the best example is our tendency to drop far too many marks. Girls like Moody and Shierlaw (just two examples) get their hands on the ball a lot, but cannot complete the marks even with little pressure. Darcy Vescio has been particularly noticeable in this area this year. Her lack of the entire VFLW season left her handling down, but she still 2 grabs far too many marking attempts. Lass, please work on this. It could be the difference in us getting another 2 or 3 goals each week. Last year he touch was perfect and her pace that little bit more than many of her opponents. It will take time to get that back after her knee operation.
Speed: Last year we had a number of players who could put the afterburners on and make a break. This year that hasn't happened once. On the other hand, it happens against us a number of times per game. This is especially in the midfield and in defence.
Last year we kept things tight and crowded in defence, and, with the confidence high, played an excellent team defence that stopped opponents scoring and often led them to being run down. This year the defence has been a lot more open, leading to higher scores against us.
Last year we managed to get the fast break often from defence, through skill, work rate, whatever. Once the ball got over the top, we were good enough and had an open forward line. This allowed us to score relatively easy goals. We don't have that this year. We have made the fast break work twice this season, and twice made a total mess out of it through poor disposal. I have not seen any more than that, even though I have seen the majority of our games.
Why? Skill is one thing: we do not hit targets under pressure. We do not hit targets under little pressure. We do not give out key forwards, in particular, the chance to mark the ball out o front. It always goes over their heads and our smalls do not get the crumbs.
This is an area we REALLY need to excel in. The extra fitness allows a team to work more effectively when the opposition starts to make mistakes. We MUST become the strongest, fittest, fastest team to be the premiers.
(b) Our players appear to have aged very quickly:
Unfortunately the core of our team, the ones that made us win, have aged a lot this season and are struggling to give us value.
Lauren Arnell: an elite player, age and injuries have caught up with her this year. She is far less effective and does not appear very confident in her body. There have been times in 2018 where she has given up, or allowed herself to be shepherded out, because she has thought she could not catch her opponent. This is just not the same player who carried our midfield last year. Her output is less than half of what she provided last year and she has gone through an entire game without a single possession.
It is so disappointing, as she was the heart and soul of the team this year.
Maddie Keryk: one of our best mids last year, she has struggled so much that she has hardly made the team. With her not being able to make an impact, we have lost 15 possessions from the midfield each week.
Alison Downie: last year she was one of our best and a ruck to win games. This year she has rarely played in the ruck and has not been able to jump for the ball, has not been able to out-body opponents, has not been able to hold her marks and has moved like I do with no decent knees. I can not see her continuing if this is the best she can provided. That goes for Keryk and Arnell as well. They are proud players and simply would not accept what they are producing at the moment.
Danielle Hardiman: still probably our best defender, she is looking a lot slower this year. That may be because our defence is under more pressure more often. Still, it must be noted.
Laura Attard: a very solid contributor in 2017, this year she hasn't managed a game. We miss the leadership and calmness in defence and the midfield.
Kate Shierlaw: one of our taller girls, Kate appears to be struggling this year. Instead of 3 or 4 marks in the forward 50, she had been lucky to have 1 mark per game.
These are our older, more experienced players. Their output is down, as a group, by maybe 80%. That is a hell of a lot from the leaders of the club on the field.
Then we have our '3rd tier players':
Gabby Pound: Gabby doesn't have the height, the strength, the pace or the skill, but she has a heart bigger than she is. She has worked incredibly hard this year and puts in each week. In the long term we need to displace girls like Gabby for faster, more skilled models. But not any time soon. She has courage and spirit.
In many ways she is the stereotype of a Carlton women's player: she gives so much of herself each week, but her deficiencies are obvious. Still, she keeps going and going.
Sarah Last: Sarah is a Wedderburn girl, who was there when I was teaching there. She is another who has real spirit. She missed most of last year with injury and that yard of lost pace is really hurting her. I don't know if we can afford to keep her, but she is a real team person.
Lauren Brazzale: Lauren lacks pace and her ball handling this year has been aweful. Her only really good game was in the wet against GWS, where she was excellent.
Courtney Webb: another with courage and spirit, but she lacks pace, her ball handlinh under pressure is ordinary and she gets bundled out of way too easily.
Reni Hicks: Reni has youth on her side, but she needs to really work on her physical attributes. At the moment she isn't good enough, but with a better fitness base she well could be.
Natalie Plane: needs time on the field. Like Hicks, she probably struggles for a spot at the moment, but a couple of pre-seasons and some good fitness work and she could be good.
Sophie Li: Like a lot of our girls, she has plenty of the attributes that you want, but speed, strength and good disposal are not among them. Recruited as a 31 year old, she probably left her run a bit late.
Sorry.
Unfortunately it comes from seeing where we are not winning the game, and the reasons and many and not particularly simple.
[1] Centre Play:
(a) Rucks
In 2017 we had one of the best ruck combinations going around. Alison Downie led it in style, taking marks around the ground and using her experience and height to win more than her share of the ruck duels. She was the clear #1.
Young Breann Moody was the back-up who sometimes went to the bench and sometimes rested forward. She was smaller, but had a great leap and some real athleticism.
When they didn't go in the ruck, we still had some tall timber to have a go, in Gillespie-Jones and Shierlaw. Even Danielle Hardiman sometimes took a ruck duel.
But however it went, we were competitive. I really enjoyed that. Downie had the smarts to use her body and made a great #1 ruck. She was very good at guiding her taps and giving our mids a decent chance.
In 2018 the same players are there, but much has changed.
Downie has been very much down and has not played much in the ruck. She has been slow and has been finding it difficult to get off the ground. Other rucks have been beating her significantly, especially at the centre bounce. She is clearly lacking form and appears to be lacking fitness and athleticism. Age and kms may be catching up with her. If so, that is a great pity, but being well into her 30's, it was not unexpected. However, it has been a great disappointment, especially after the way she cleaned up taller and more athletic girls last year. She has played some games in defence and is still valuable against a taller, slower player. However, the opposition is now trying to play smaller, more mobile types against her and she struggles against them. Also she has taken very few marks so far this year.
On the other hand, Breann Moody has stepped up to the 1st ruck position. She has been one of our better players and she has been getting her hand on the ball more than her opponents. She can show quite a deal of aggression, which is greatly appreciated.
Unfortunately she is not a gifted ruck, nor does she play it particularly smart yet. Being among the smaller rucks, she depends on her leap. When she doesn't get it, she is less effective. But the worst thing is that she hits the ball to the same spot every time; in about a 10º arc from directly ahead of her to about 10 - 15º to her left. This is the typical area that smaller or less experienced rucks hit it. I've seen it a lot at junior levels and at U18 level for men over 30 years or more. And rather than tapping the ball, she thumps it. Every time.
Tonight, for example, she won more than her share of the taps, but we lost almost every clearance in that time. The opposition put their best mid there, and we do not. Because the tap is not aimed, it tends to be picked off by the stronger, faster player: the best opposing mid.
Considering her ruck dominance, it should be a real point of difference in our favour. Instead, it is the opposite. It is frustrating to see our taps creating centre breaks, sometimes perfect ones.
We do not appear to be reading her taps, nor do we get enough players in a position to do anything about it. And it has happened I every game this year.
Even with a hard working group of mids, we haven't been able to get clearances.
In itself, this is almost game losing: a team that does not get centre clearances struggles to score and that has been us.
(b) Midfielders:
I wrote about out failure to recruit high class mids last week. I won't go over that again. But I will bring up other issues.
Our mids are not large, nor are they quick. They have more than a little guts about them and they tackle like they mean it, but for all the tackles they make, other tackles get broken too easily. That is bad enough, but we also get out-bodied be bigger, stronger girls. Thrice in the 2nd quarter Adelaide got goals because of a single player being out-bodied and their opponent running away freely to deliver the ball to a forward. Considering the goals they managed, and how many we kick, this was totally lethal.
We do not lack endeavour, but we cannot take out the oppositions top mids when we don't get clearances.
[2] Taggers:
We do not appear to play any taggers. I find that incredibly irritating, as they opposition's best players tend to rack up the possessions against us. Even in the first game we did not have a player get more than 16 possessions. Since we lost Davey nobody has got more than 14 (one player in 3 weeks), while 10 or 11 is about our top. (Again seen this week when our top possession getters managed only 11, while Adelaide had 6 players get more than that.)
Why do we not tag at least one of the opposing mids? Last year we were good for much of the season in shutting down dangerous opponents. Only twice we could not. This year, only the Collingwood game has shown us being able to control the opposition and they still had the top 3 possessions getters on the ground. One was playing her first game!
I'll leave it at that, but we do not appear to be able to cover players, while we struggle to get Vescio or Harris free.
[3] Picking our original squad:
Last year we had a lot going for ourselves. We were close to going all the way, even though we played much poorer away than we did at home. We had a great leader in Arnell, a great ruck in Downie and the best forward in the competition with the chances to prove it. We had a really stingy defence that played well together.
Our smaller forward were not great and we lacked consistency in the forward line, but we were really competitive.
This year our squad is looking much less viable. And that is not just because Bri Davey is out for the season.
(a) We do not look as fit.
Stamina: We tend to start quarters well, but not finish them so well, and we have not finished a single match this year. Even GWS in the wet looked capable in the last quarter, although I was pleased to see us steady in that game.
I do not know what is different on the fitness front, but we appear not as strong in general, and particularly weak in our smaller players. And this with Shae Audley getting huge numbers of tackles each weak.
Strength: This is not a problem with our key position players so much, but it is very obvious with the smaller players. They get out-bodied too often, especially in the centre square.
However, probably the best example is our tendency to drop far too many marks. Girls like Moody and Shierlaw (just two examples) get their hands on the ball a lot, but cannot complete the marks even with little pressure. Darcy Vescio has been particularly noticeable in this area this year. Her lack of the entire VFLW season left her handling down, but she still 2 grabs far too many marking attempts. Lass, please work on this. It could be the difference in us getting another 2 or 3 goals each week. Last year he touch was perfect and her pace that little bit more than many of her opponents. It will take time to get that back after her knee operation.
Speed: Last year we had a number of players who could put the afterburners on and make a break. This year that hasn't happened once. On the other hand, it happens against us a number of times per game. This is especially in the midfield and in defence.
Last year we kept things tight and crowded in defence, and, with the confidence high, played an excellent team defence that stopped opponents scoring and often led them to being run down. This year the defence has been a lot more open, leading to higher scores against us.
Last year we managed to get the fast break often from defence, through skill, work rate, whatever. Once the ball got over the top, we were good enough and had an open forward line. This allowed us to score relatively easy goals. We don't have that this year. We have made the fast break work twice this season, and twice made a total mess out of it through poor disposal. I have not seen any more than that, even though I have seen the majority of our games.
Why? Skill is one thing: we do not hit targets under pressure. We do not hit targets under little pressure. We do not give out key forwards, in particular, the chance to mark the ball out o front. It always goes over their heads and our smalls do not get the crumbs.
This is an area we REALLY need to excel in. The extra fitness allows a team to work more effectively when the opposition starts to make mistakes. We MUST become the strongest, fittest, fastest team to be the premiers.
(b) Our players appear to have aged very quickly:
Unfortunately the core of our team, the ones that made us win, have aged a lot this season and are struggling to give us value.
Lauren Arnell: an elite player, age and injuries have caught up with her this year. She is far less effective and does not appear very confident in her body. There have been times in 2018 where she has given up, or allowed herself to be shepherded out, because she has thought she could not catch her opponent. This is just not the same player who carried our midfield last year. Her output is less than half of what she provided last year and she has gone through an entire game without a single possession.
It is so disappointing, as she was the heart and soul of the team this year.
Maddie Keryk: one of our best mids last year, she has struggled so much that she has hardly made the team. With her not being able to make an impact, we have lost 15 possessions from the midfield each week.
Alison Downie: last year she was one of our best and a ruck to win games. This year she has rarely played in the ruck and has not been able to jump for the ball, has not been able to out-body opponents, has not been able to hold her marks and has moved like I do with no decent knees. I can not see her continuing if this is the best she can provided. That goes for Keryk and Arnell as well. They are proud players and simply would not accept what they are producing at the moment.
Danielle Hardiman: still probably our best defender, she is looking a lot slower this year. That may be because our defence is under more pressure more often. Still, it must be noted.
Laura Attard: a very solid contributor in 2017, this year she hasn't managed a game. We miss the leadership and calmness in defence and the midfield.
Kate Shierlaw: one of our taller girls, Kate appears to be struggling this year. Instead of 3 or 4 marks in the forward 50, she had been lucky to have 1 mark per game.
These are our older, more experienced players. Their output is down, as a group, by maybe 80%. That is a hell of a lot from the leaders of the club on the field.
Then we have our '3rd tier players':
Gabby Pound: Gabby doesn't have the height, the strength, the pace or the skill, but she has a heart bigger than she is. She has worked incredibly hard this year and puts in each week. In the long term we need to displace girls like Gabby for faster, more skilled models. But not any time soon. She has courage and spirit.
In many ways she is the stereotype of a Carlton women's player: she gives so much of herself each week, but her deficiencies are obvious. Still, she keeps going and going.
Sarah Last: Sarah is a Wedderburn girl, who was there when I was teaching there. She is another who has real spirit. She missed most of last year with injury and that yard of lost pace is really hurting her. I don't know if we can afford to keep her, but she is a real team person.
Lauren Brazzale: Lauren lacks pace and her ball handling this year has been aweful. Her only really good game was in the wet against GWS, where she was excellent.
Courtney Webb: another with courage and spirit, but she lacks pace, her ball handlinh under pressure is ordinary and she gets bundled out of way too easily.
Reni Hicks: Reni has youth on her side, but she needs to really work on her physical attributes. At the moment she isn't good enough, but with a better fitness base she well could be.
Natalie Plane: needs time on the field. Like Hicks, she probably struggles for a spot at the moment, but a couple of pre-seasons and some good fitness work and she could be good.
Sophie Li: Like a lot of our girls, she has plenty of the attributes that you want, but speed, strength and good disposal are not among them. Recruited as a 31 year old, she probably left her run a bit late.
Live Long and Prosper!