(11-03-2023, 05:06 AM)LP link Wrote:2nd year blues is a symptom of being the system long enough for the opposition to build a portfolio of your strengths and weaknesses, it is not related to the stats or the year of draft.
It's about finding ways to continue to influence games when the opposition have learnt how to make you uncomfortable or ineffective, and it's very real. Virtually every players suffers it, because they are facing opponents for a 2nd or 3rd time and the honeymoon is over, they are no longer known unknowns.
A great example, after his breakthrough season opposition started pushing Cripps onto his left side, he still got plenty of footy after all he is almost unstoppable, but his effectiveness diminished. He could barely make contact with his left foot and he started doing blind over the shoulder handballs and the like. Over the next couple of seasons he developed ways to give himself time and space so he could be more effective. Only recently he's started using his left foot, it's still not great but it buys him even more time and space because opponents can no longer just force him that way.
That is seriously underrating Crippa’s performance in his second season - when he won his first JNM - as well as conceding that he didn’t suffer from the mythical second year blues.
It’s a fan’s concept that doesn’t happen in the real world.
“Why don’t you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don’t you dig how beautiful it is out here? Why don’t you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?” Oddball