Football Department Review

[kruddler]

Read between the lines, the coaching group did not have a clear game plan or the ability to communicate and lock in the plan. This would be fatal for any coach, this is not the board forming an opinion, this is the external review findings.  Accept it, a decision has been made. Judge the new board on the decisions they make from this point forward.

Did the coach not have a clear game plan?
OR
Did he was he not able to lock in a plan?

I'm going to try a few things which may or may not work, bare with me.
IMO a simplistic view of our gameplan is to back our defenders in to beat their opponents in one on one contests, move the ball quickly through the middle to our leading KP forwards. Be strong at the contested ball through the guts and basically play with attacking flare to keep the ball going forward and locking it in deep forward when we get it there.

OK, so we've seen that basically work against top teams...albeit just falling short because we are not as talented as the top teams yet.

Now, at the start of the year, we couldn't win the contested ball because we were playing a guy with a broken back in the middle....and who couldn't chase. Our defenders did remarkably well despite this. So less defensive pressure in the middle = more pressure on defenders.

That aside, we started turning things around in the middle and winning contested possessions...then our rucks broke down.
So less defensive pressure in the middle = more pressure on defenders.

We then were unable to lock the ball up forward as well as we used to because we had no real targets there as our KPPs were sitting in the injury room. Their defenders were able to sit in the dangerous spots and not have to worry about defending a player. This allowed for quick slingshots out of our forwardline.
So less defensive pressure in the middle = more pressure on defenders.

Ultimately, our defenders broke down due to sheer weight of numbers. Without checking, i reckon our defenders had more 1 on 1 contests than any other side.

Further to the above, due to injuries (and also lack of VFL....over 2 years!) to teach players new roles....and the actual gameplan(!)...players were asked to play in multiple new roles that were foreign to them. Hands up who thought Silvagni would be our #1 ruck at times this year? Kennedy, Silvagni, Martin as our FF? Kemp as our CHB?

The whole thing is one large clusterf***. I'm not doubting the issues around the game plan, but there are many valid reasons why this is the case.

Example questions...
1. Do you understand the game plan?
2. Are you 100% clear on what your role is on game day?
*no follow up question*

IMO, first answer is yes. Second answer could be 'no'. Rather than leaving it at that as "Why?" and you might find its because throughout my 2 years under teague i never thought i'd need to understand how to play FF/ruck/chb/whatever.