Our ruck to midfield connection

[Pies2016]

[The Boy Who Cried Wolf]

Still Grundy does need to learn to thump the ball forward..

Let's have a hypothetical for a second -

Lets say Grundy is the greatest ruckman that's ever been - but he's surrounded by a hopeless midfield that constantly gets beaten to the ball - would it be better to turn over the ball at Grundy's feet, or maybe 15-25 meters closer to our goal?!?

[Pies4shaw]

^ By all means, make an argument that Grundy should belt the ball forward more. But it doesn't make much sense to suggest that it "should be compulsory for Grundy to watch former Geelong ruckman (someone) Burke". It's a bit like suggesting that it should be "compulsory" viewing for De Goey to watch Jason Wild.

No, I didn't miss your point. Various people have been saying that in this thread. more or less since it started. I have two comments on the proposal. First, if your forward line is below par (and Collingwood's most definitely is), belting the ball forward out of the centre just enables opposition teams to set up their attack from a shallow position, short of true centre half back. A number of the better teams (eg, Richmond and Geelong) actually prefer to play that way - they concede the ruck and set up to make the indiscriminate ball forward a turnover. It would be different if we had, say, Swan or Russell following the ball out of the centre or, say, Didak coming at the ball from high half-forward. Secondly, I think the coaches all accept that and that Grundy is under instructions to play the ruck in the way he does. It is a risk-averse strategy designed to avoid Collingwood being killed for want of pace and ball-handling skills on the outside. It is possible that hundreds of posters on Nick's have identified a viable strategy that the coaching staff have also demanded Grundy implement and that Grundy is just being stubborn and refusing to "just belt the ball", despite repeated exhortation from all of the coaches. Really, though, how likely do we think that is? My view is that, for better or worse, he's sticking to the coaches' instructions.

[Pies2016]

[masoncox]

[Pies4shaw]

Smashing the ball forward against Collingwood in a Grand Final isn't a bad strategy when you have 4 Brownlow Medallists around the ball and Collingwood has a handful of good AFL footballers in its entire team. Also, Keating was rucking against McKee - a man who in the entriety of his "best" AFL season had about as many hitouts (235!??!) as our current starter has in 6 games.. The following year was even worse - They changed the rules so that McKee was even less useful at centre bounces, so Fraser was up against Keating and Charman. We lost the hitouts 48 to 27 in 2002 and 55 to 31 in 2003.

In 2002, we were only shaded for the clearances - the real damage was at the contest: although we "won" the contested possessions by 1, Lappin, Akermanis, Black and Voss all had 10 or more contested possessions and 45 between them. For us, Buckley had 12 but our other good medium-sized runners struggled at the contest. Hitting the ball to the outside to let your 4 silky Brownlow Medallists "run onto it" is a great strategy when the opposition midfield is Buckley, Burns, O'Bree, Licuria and - well, no-one else, really.

[Pies2016]

https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/www.afl.com.au/news/651488/bizarre-stats-what-do-these-weird-numbers-say-about-brodie-grundys-year/amp

It’s an interesting read but without any answers.
My take away ( data wise ) is that our mid field does get enough first hands on the ball ( as a differential to the competition ) but then doesn’t have the ability to distribute to any real advantage often enough.

[Big T]

Grundy clearly injured. Why not play Lynch this week. Ffs.

[K]

[K]

[Dave The Man]

We really don't have many Inside Mids Really

[K]

^ Someone like Libba Jr. has quick hands to get the ball from inside to outside... but it's probably very uncommon across the league to have that. It's a WB trademark.

[3rd degree]