Three Games, Three Flaws

For the first time in what feels like a month, we had three games this season that pitted two teams in the top-9 against each other.

 

In a season that has seriously started to drag, particularly compared to last year, the games between the Dogs and Giants, Crows and Hawks, and Lions and Magpies felt like water in a desert.

 

Each game revealed something important.

 

We already knew that the winners of the games were pretty good teams. What was laid barer was that the teams that lost have a definitive flaw that will be why they don’t win the premiership, if they fail to win the ultimate prize.

 

Maybe they can cover up that flaw come September, or even tighten it up in GWS’ case, but history suggests that if they haven’t fixed it in August, it probably won’t be fixed at all.

 

GWS

 

Blind Freddie could see how the Bulldogs v Giants game was going to go.

 

The Dogs went into the game as the best front half team in the AFL. The Giants went in as the 14th best, ahead of only the three worst teams in the AFL and St Kilda.

 

It was always going to be a question of whether GWS can absorb the pressure that they put on themselves by refusing to pay any attention to field position.

 

Simply, they couldn’t.

 

The Dogs spent 60% of the game in their front half and had 21 scoring shots from the front part of the ground.

 

Sam Darcy made Sam Taylor look Will Thursfield, Leek Aleer was moved too easily and isn’t anywhere near as good as Jack Buckley and GWS couldn’t move the ball.

 

But even with those issues, the Giants stick to a defensive system that puts an extraordinary amount of stress on their defenders to win one-out constantly, and set up every attack.

 

To that end, no team gives up more defensive 1v1s and the Giants are the only team to score more points from the back half than the front.

 

Against the Bulldogs they failed to either defend or score because of both overmatched personnel and a significant difference in the soundness of the two teams’ structures. The Dogs prioritise field position above all else, while the Giants don’t even acknowledge that it might matter.

 

And by failing to acknowledge, they walk into their own self-destruction.

 

The Giants are a team of Livia Sopranos wondering why her children don’t love her as she tells her kids that she gave her life to them on a silver platter, all while psychologically torturing them.

 

To hammer home the ceiling they’ve placed on themselves with how they play, this season the Giants have spent 47% of game time in their forward half.

 

Since 2021, no team who has had less than 50.3% time in forward half has contested a Grand Final.

 

Hawthorn

 

At ¾ time on Friday night, the score was 71-63 in favour of the Hawks with Adelaide preparing to kick to what was perplexingly the scoring end.

 

To that point, Izak Rankine had 9 disposals and a goal.

 

In the final term, Rankine had 7 disposals, 2 clearances, 5 score involvements, and kicked a couple of goals, including an absurd goal to put the Crows ahead with 10 minutes to go.

 

Nobody on Hawthorn could go with him, simply because they don’t have anyone as good as him. That final term was Dirk Diggler showing Jack Horner what he had, and Hawthorn having no choice but to go full Little Bill.

 

Occasionally you look at a game of AFL footy and can point to one very special player as the reason that a team won. Friday night was one of those games.

 

You often also see it in finals, where superstars make names for themselves by flipping battles of will with preternatural skill. Isaac Heeney’s qualifying in 2023 springs to mind. So does Dustin Martin’s 2020 Grand Final.

 

Now with Will Day injured for the year, Hawthorn don’t even theoretically have a Johnny Doe who might be able to match it when some other superstar goes full Diggler again.

 

They don’t have the horses, pardon the pun.

 

Collingwood

 

Of the three teams that lost, Collingwood is clearly the best.

 

But like everyone, they have problems. In a sense, it’s a similar problem to GWS, though is far less certain to be terminal to their premiership chances.

 

Both GWS and Collingwood are Don Draper, they succeed in incredibly specific circumstances but otherwise can be overwhelmed.

 

For Don, it was a boardroom and a communication moment of genius. 

 

For GWS, it’s defenders achieving Herculean feats four times a quarter.

 

For Collingwood it’s being in control.

 

If you ask Craig McRae he’ll be quick to tell you that the Pies are pretty close to the best defence in the AFL and he’s right.

 

But – and the but has been laid bare against Fremantle and more against Brisbane – they don’t have guys that can win 1 on 1s. Their system is dependent on pressure up the field forcing dump kicks into the air where they can manufacture third men up constantly. 

 

That’s how the Pies are one of just four teams allowing fewer than 10 marks inside 50 per game.

 

It’s a good system and has worked well, but recently teams have been able to introduce an Adam into Collingwood’s Draper-esque life and turned it upside down by taking control away from them.

 

Teams who use the ball well and get uncontested possession, get a lot of ball originating from the front half so the Pies have less time to set up, and crucially have mobile key forwards that manipulate space to force the kind of man-to-man situations that the Pies hate have given the Pies trouble in the back half of the season.  

 

Logan Morris is that kind of player and Brisbane is that kind of team. Morris even kind of looks like Adam.

 

Against Collingwood, the Lions won the disposal count by 85, kicked 60 points from the front half which is clearly the most the Pies have given up this season and Morris was able to find space everywhere and kick 6 goals while taking just two contested marks inside 50.

 

This has been coming for the Pies whose marks allowed per opposition inside 50 rate has dropped precipitously over the last month as their blueprint has started to be figured out, and particularly as Billy Frampton and Jeremy Howe haven’t played much lately.

 

But if your season is hinging on Billy Frampton and Jeremy Howe getting back fit and firing, how good are you really?