I heart Joel Selwood

“I don’t know why it is not working. Why isn’t it working?”

We have Joel Selwood the best contested player in the AFL yet every week I look at the stats and the Cats have lost the contested ball and the clearances. The skipper leads headfirst into every contest and receives very little physical support from the rest of the midfield. If you could bet on blokes getting cuts over the eye Joel Selwood would be $1.01 favourite every week and I would still back him. The devils advocate would argue that he drops his body and looks for free kicks, the fact is he is just hard and at the moment he is the only one.

He deserved six Brownlow votes on the weekend against the Gold Coast.

I touched on it last week but the cats aren’t brave. The stat that I found the most damning from the game is gold coast taking 13 bounces to the Cats 3. The cats refuse to take the game on and when asked Chris Scott says we don’t look into the past and that we are a new side, well I agree but the fact is that the side we have become under Scott is the tick the boxes do the team thing side with absolutely no confidence or flair to take the game on. The same way Scott was as a player this cats side wants to play the percentages , I can see it every time Harry Taylor gets the ball , he is looking for safety every time. I do buy into the whole defence wins premierships and I want to blame our backline but they have been as good as can be expected when the ball is coming in as often as it has been. I cant actually blame Taylors seemingly negative play because I guess he figures that the ball is just going to come straight back in and at least he has time to set up if it’s a stoppage and tis is what he has been trained and instructed to do. The truth is the Cats should be avoiding stoppages like parking inspectors at the moment because we are getting smashed in that department every week.

The lack of bounces just illustrates how negative our ball movement has become under Scott. In the first three matches the Cars have taken just 15 bounces to the oppositions 36 and round two against Freo both teams had 7.

That tells me that opposition sides know to attack with run and carry because they know that we won’t chase and tackle but will guard space and try and corral which is just giving their two way runners easy possessions.

Having said all that there was a lot of positives to come out of the game. First we won a game we shouldn’t have, or did gold coast lose it? I’m not sure, either way its four desperately needed points. Ten more wins and we can start thinking about finals. Secondly the game of Marc Blicavs was his best for the club. He came through when we needed him most and slotted through the sealer but it was really a sustained four quarter effort from the big man. Think he may have polled his first Brownlow vote.

 

We can’t beat Nth Melbourne this weekend on exposed form. Shouldn’t even get close however we are Geelong and I really hope the boys can rally around Tom Hawkins and pull off a big one to get the season back on track.

Go Cats   

 

The scene is this, its grand final day 2014. Hawthorn has put on a clinic at the MCG and the draw of the TV screen is becoming less of an attraction. (I had believed the hype on Sydney and loaded up confirming my reputation as the worst sports gambler of all time.)

Third helpings of BBQ have been devoured and fourth helpings will put me firmly in fat bastard territory so it’s not an option. Just when talking with the Mrs. amongst a patio full of the ladies was becoming a viable option for the rest of the afternoon a glimmer of hope for all supporters of every team not playing the game  hits the screen.

The 2014 AFL Sprint.

 

Hope.

Hope in the form of Jordan Murdoch and a four beer two joint buzz.

The resident Hawthorn supporters are all puffed up like rosters strutting the yard and are ripe for the picking. All their betting has centralised around the hawks winning the game today and it’s over by half time so they have some coin and some confidence, perfect sucker material.

The Hawks have young Billie Hartung who is quick as a flash and was unlucky to miss the squad but through a mate of a mate I had heard that he has been out all week on the gas with the box hill VFL team that had just won the grand final. He had been told early that he wouldn’t be playing so I am betting that he isn’t in tip top shape for this race.

When making a private bet it always pays to get the best of the odds. The TAB isn’t a charity; the markets it posts are as close as you can get to winning chances and if you can bet mate even money on a two horse race when the actual odds are weighted in your favour it can be considered to have a plus expected value. The more plus EV bets you can make over a period of time the better off you will be in the long run and immediate results shouldn’t matter. The same can be said for football, if the ball spills to the front of a marking contest 75% of the time the player that is front and square will have the opportunity to get the ball an extra 25 times over 100 contests.

Poker has similar concepts.

 It’s just the smart play.

“Alright you Hawthorn soft cocks, I’m prepared to take Jordan Murdoch even though he has been out with the boys on the piss for the week over your pretty boy Billie fit and ready to go Hartung, who was stiff not to be playing today actually, what you reckon? Who is keen?”

The hook has been baited. Geelong supporter mouthing off when the hawks have the game wrapped up at half time. These blokes will throw cash at me.

“Il take that.”

“Me too.”

A nibble.

“How much then boys? I will warn you I backed Sydney today so this is me chasing some losses.”

“$10?”

“$10 whoa big spender are you sure you shouldn’t  check with your husband and see if your aloud to bet with the boys, maybe you can get the kids outside to chip in and make it $12.50. I’m basically giving money away here , Murdoch is like the fourth fastest at our club.”

“$20 then.”

That is a big bite, time to start reeling them in and see what is on the hook.

“Alright $20 each then, head to head, Murdoch vs. Hartung to see who the quickest in the AFL is.”

Hands are shaken and I have two bets on both of which I have the clear favourite in a two horse race for even money. Good result on a crap day.

Conversation starts amongst the blokes as to who the actual fastest player in the AFL is and a fairly persuasive argument is made for Patrick Dangerfield who has won the last three sprints in a row and being a bit of an old bastard I put forward Scott Chisholm ex Freo player that won in sub 11 seconds as all time that I've seen. The rest of the time till the start of the race is spent ridiculing the lone Carlton fan that has the audacity to put forward Dennis Armfield into the mix. Fair dinkum the only way Dennis Armfield wins a race is if they change it to an egg and spoon race and he is only allowed to compete against people with comparably bad facial hair.

The race itself is a bit of a fizzer. Murdoch runs nice and tall and hits the front at the halfway mark. Billie Hartung makes his charge at about 60m but the Geelong jet easily fights off his challenge then puts the foot down and blows them away to win easily.

I would like to pause here and ask why the StKilda football club has taken the piss and entered Clinton Jones in this race. He finishes last or near enough to it but the fact he was allowed to run is a disgrace. If you cant be bothered with any aspect of the grand final like the saints have made a habit of over the last 150 years at least send a kid that can run and might be inspired off the experience not a middle aged plodder who made his career not getting a kick himself but scragging good players off a kick. You plan to delist him at the seasons end anyway yet there he is proudly sporting a StKilda Guernsey at the only game that might give your club some international exposure, might make it onto ESPN plays of the day and some bright spark at the Saints decides to send Clinton Jones to race 100m.

Piss weak effort StKilda, sums you up as a club.

So $40 up.

A little bit of excitement for a Cats fan with not much to celebrate in 2014.

It helped me watch the second half of the exhibition that will end in hawthorn putting a full stop at the end of the 2014 AFL season.

It gave me hope that the Cats would be the first side to ride the conception that in order to be successful you needed to bottom out and go through the draft system. Through thorough list management and solid core values you didn’t need to follow the AFL rollercoaster system.

We were wrong. Maybe Hawthorn will crack the code and be the first true power of the modern era. They arguably are already but then that brings the Cats and the Lions into the conversation. It all gets a bit squirly. 

I can easily see the cats following Brisbane’s decline. But will they?

The Cats are playing scared at the moment. Not scared of the opposition, we are scared of ourselves. We know we are not good enough and we are too scared to try. It makes me sick. Gone are the Cats of old swinging into the middle with a dangerous pin point pass to a guy who has taken the initiative and run into space. Gone is any surety the backline held due to the sheer volume of ball that gets sent straight back in and worst of all our pressure is non existent at best. Any pressure we encounter be it actual or perceived causes poor decision making and our mantra seems to be hold off and corral instead of applying any physical contact on the ball carrier.

We used to hunt the ball in packs but now we are the hunted and getting picked off regularly by teams that are braver than us.

I've got a plan B for the cats. Lets just go back to taking the game on , giving the ball to Jordan Murdoch who has been given the inspiration to take a four bounce 100m sprint down the wing of the MCG and told to kick it long into the Tomahawk and Clarke. Then its up to hard work to lock it in our forward zone with relentless pressure.

I’m staying positive that it all turns around against Gold Coast Suns at the cattery on Sunday. We haven't beaten the Suns in few matches but we cant have dropped away that much can we?

Go Cats   

 

 

The easter Monday massacre

Gee the Hawks were good.

Danger signs were there early on for the cats in their Easter Monday clash with the reigning premier. The hawks had brought the pressure game that dismantled the swans in last year grand final but early on the cats held on. Even went goal for goal , even matched the hawks around the contest . Until the siren went for quarter time.

It was like watching a team have a switch flicked. The hawks stepped up every aspect of their game and the cats settled back on the effort of the first term that saw them up at quarter time. The Hawks set up on the defensive side of the contest at most of the stoppages and as soon as the ball got loose it seemed like they had an extra two players. They just knew where to be at the right time. They are easily the best  drilled side in the league.

It was predictable. Predictable for the other hawks around the contest , predictable to their teammates down the fields even predictable to me sitting in the grandstands, it was seemingly predictable for everyone, except the cats players. They looked clueless around the contest , weak , slow and not willing put in an effort unless it got  rewarded with the ball. The polar opposite to the hawks who seemed to relish putting on a block or smother or scrag to give their mates an extra split second to ensure anther target was hit further up the field. They wanted the Cats to get the loose ball because they had them covered like a cheap suit.

The Hawks were brave in every sense of the word. They were strong and brave in the contested situations , while the cats went to ground the Hawks kept their feet and then pushed to outnumber at the next contest either to be an option or to help out a teammate. The running brigade of Hill and Rioli knew their roll perfectly , relentless pressure , force turnover , then run and exploit.

If a loose ball was gathered by the cats it was nervously flicked around by hand until a Hawthorn player was able to pick off the next link in the chain and then they punished that link with some of the hardest tackling I have seen on a football field. They basically turned Geelong's quick hands into the old fashioned hospital handpass and an easy turnover ,then over the top to a mobile runner , 30 m run and carry and easy goal.

This happened time and time again.

Cut to when the Hawks gathered a loose ball. I was two slick handballs into space and the ball was in the hands of a runner who was armed with some information:

The Cats are slow and they don't chase.

This is where the bravery comes in , it's all well and good to know that your quicker than your opponent but takes bravery to take those opposition on in the middle of the MCG in front of 80000 people. That what the hawks did , time and time again. The loose ball would occur and within 10 seconds they had run it 80m and the ball was up the other end  out of trouble and in a position for them to score.

Not only did the Cats not look like they could chase any of the Hawks down , they didn't look like they wanted to.

The only saving grace for the Cats will be that this won't be the only thrashing the Hawks hand out this year, plenty of sides won't be able to match the Hawks output because plainly put they were awesome. You can't control how the opposition play but you can control the effort that you put out and from the stands it looked like the Cats gave up early in the third term.

Not good enough in round one of a premiership season when you were exposed in the same fashion last year.

The Cats are lazy when they don't have the ball.

 As soon as the opposition has the ball they are able to have a free man thirty metres away from the contest at all times. It seems there is no urgency to run defensively to pick up these men or at least make an effort to put on some token pressure. Now I'm no AFL standard coach but I would have my charges relentless in their pursuit to turn the ball over and then rest when we have possession, slow it down around half back all ready to reset and launch a counter attack, but the Cats seem to have it the wrong way around. Plenty of guys streaming into the open looking for easy kicks when we have the pill but when the going gets tough and it's time to run without the promise of an easy kick the current batch of cats take the easy option and had the best seat in the house to see the best side in the last twenty years ply their trade. The defensive structure is not there.

Where is the plan B?

Too many times in the last few years the coaches box seems bereft of ideas when the opposition gets a run on. Chris Scott has to take some accountability and when an opposition kicks two in a row a move needs to be made stem the flow. Get some numbers behind the ball , hold up the opposition even set up a bit more defensively at the stoppages. Do something because at the moment the cats are easy beats for the likes of the top four sides.

Lets address selection.

How George Horlin-Smith was not in the side has me absolutely baffled. I'm not privy to how each player trained over the preseason and I understand that effort has to be rewarded with games in the big time but the only guy that I thought had a pre season deserving of a round one call up was Darcy Lang. (Mitch Clarke goes without saying is a permanent fixture in the cats forward line this year)

Lang was ok in the game and deserves to keep his spot. Gregson was poor and clearly not to level of a Geelong vs. Hawthorn Easter Monday clash. I'm all for giving these guys games but I think we can be smarter about it.

Smedts has shown he is not an AFL footballer, his decision making is poor at best and his disposal was shocking which was  amplified as he was continually given the ball and allowed to use his foot skills to exit the back half. I use the word skills as a figure of speech. The worst part is Taylor Hunt who was let go at the end of last year had a ripper for the Tigers. His contested work and running would have served us well. When coaches make calls on players and move them on from the club they have to live and die by their decisions. Hunt is a far superior player than Smedts and the call to get rid of one and gift the other a game is simply put a bad management call.

Horlin-Smith in my opinion is one of the best young players in the game and I was shocked he couldn't get a game. He is a hard at the contest player and that was an aspect the Cats were sorely lacking , he needs to back in the side next week.

Scary game this week against Fremantle. On exposed form the cats are going to get another touch up, this time in front of the faithful at home but let's end on a positive, at least we can all enjoy a $4 bucket of chips.

 

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