2018 Rd 14; Pre Game Preparations: Carlton vs Collingwood

[Lods]

Its not an either situation.

The plan can be fine until its nullified.

Likewise, the plan can be cactus, but if left unchecked might simply succeed because no one knows how to stop chaos.



What we are simply seeing is too many people pulling in too many different directions at the same time.  We play football like a team that barely knows itself, and part of that is missing personnell (Docherty, Murphy etc) and part of it, is that we changed plan mid stream (say 4 rounds in) and part of it is that some players don't know the plan all that well and therefore execute it with different rates of success, and finally, we may have multiple plans for multiple situations in games of football.  If you are calling on the plan that states play tempo football whilst you have the momentum, you result in cutting your own momentum.  If you call on the plan that states play fast open football when the game is not on your terms, then you result in getting burnt the second you fail.  Ultimately, there is no such thing as a bad plan, and there is no such thing as a bad player at the proffesional level, and its all about degrees.  The better players and teams, execute the more suitable plan for the more suitable situation more frequently than teams that don't, and this is where we are currently falling over, and largely due to far too much change in an otherwise inexperienced overall outfit.

Makes sense??

I hope so.  There are lots of situational changes we are not getting right which is why we are not winning games we should, and why we are getting blown away in situations we really shouldnt.  In among all of that, we are doing better against some teams where we didnt think it was possible, because the opposition have taken it for granted that their way will simply beat us, and when it doesnt they are changing it up mid stream to get the win.

It makes a lot of sense.

I'm just wondering though...

One of the problems we've had since the early 2000s is that successive coaches have tried to introduce varying styles of playing (Pagan, Malthouse,)
In both cases the criticism was that they were trying to "get the players to play to a certain style rather than design a plan to suit the players strengths."

Ratten, I'm not so sure of (no doubt someone will tell me if I'm wrong .....but I suspect that his time was more about playing to the lists limitations....and strengths....(without as some used to suggest a Plan B. )

Now it's understandable that what is happening under Bolton is that players are learning new patterns and structures...varying ones indeed.
But for whatever reason, and injury may play a big part, they aren't able to execute.
So are we once again persisting with a set of plans, as opposed to modifying, the plans to suit the abilities of the team  at the time.

Long term we may want to play a certain way but that will rely on the confidence of the players to play that way....that confidence must get a battering each time we get a really poor result.

Having said all that...I'm not sure there is a way to change a game plan/plans in an incremental fashion.... that also minimises damage.

That's a bit above my level.