Did we go for too many big bodied mids

[E]

It seems fairly clear that for right now, precision passing is more important than any other skill.

I remember this board went overboard about the need for big bodied mids that looked like Nat Fyffe. well we have hoards of the them now. Problem is, other teams have a bunch of receivers with incredible footskills and they are passing us off our feet.

So many times we had De Doey, Treloar, crisp, greenwood and Adams over the ball. the ball would leave the clearance and the saints would be 7-8 passes away from an easy goal.

[gurugeoff]

good point, not enough outside speed collectively from this group. Add an injured Pendles who is not quick anyway, and ...

[Jpies]

[AN_Inkling]

I'm not at all concerned about disposal, but your question may still be the right one to ask. It's run and pace that we are sorely lacking. Whether it's all down to personnel or whether game plan and execution has something to do with it I'm not certain, but we are being killed on the outside.

Look at these uncontested/total disposal numbers:
Montagna 35/40
Steven 23/30
Billings 26/30
Stevens 25/34
Ross 27/31

I don't think I've ever seen so much easy ball. Obviously we're not playing our zone defense at all well, but we are also simply being smashed by better running teams. We seem to have concentrated too much on inside ball at the expense of outside run. We won both clearances and contested ball today, but never really created much space whereas the Saints had it all game long.

[thompsoc]

Some of our Mids lack skill.
They are all tough but most are slow, lack acceleration,
and lack precision foot or handball skills.

[didick]

They may be big but few can lay a tackle.
How many times in recent games have we had four, five maybe more players contesting the ball against maybe two opposition and they take the pill away? I can't understand it.
And the hand passes for the sake of hand passing just to get rid of it to a player in a position that is no better. I thought our mids would strike fear into the opposition this year, but we are blown over like a straw house.

[jatsad]

It has nothing to do with midfield pace. It is more skills related and quickness of mind.

You can't tell me that Hodge, Mitchell and Lewis are quick.

And it helps if they run back and help out the defense.

[yin-YANG]

I think the zone does not suit our team. We have plenty of inside players and we need to make the game man on man. We need to bring pressure and the teams that run and chip the ball around waiting for space will hate a man on man style. We are giving too much space to the opposition and most teams will exploit that.

I am not sure how big-bodied our mids are - I think that we need to look at the lack of pressure from our forwards and mids - get each man to man-up and when we have the ball play on and move the ball quickly we are so slow we are allowing other teams to flood back easily and block our movement.

We have to set up a style that suits our inside players. We do well with contests and need more of that!

[stui magpie]

It would've helped if more of our mids were prepared to run hard both ways.

It's easy to make someone look slow when you have a far higher work rate.

[AN_Inkling]

[PyreneesPie]