Was that Plan B?

[Toy Saint]

An attacking, running, play on brand of football.

And we actually had forwards in the forward line.

That's different.

[Saintmatt]

If it was, then Plan A (& whomever thought that was a good idea) - can just get in the bin.

[The_Dud]

Maybe winning is Plan B?

[desertsaint]

i think that was plan 'why the heck not?'

[SemperFidelis]

i think that was plan 'why the heck not?'

It’s a very good plan, that one

[CarlD]

Suspect it mightn't work so well against the good running sides but at least it looked like there was a plan today and it came off.

[Captain Impossible]

The spread, finally. Where has that been? Great running Saints.

[Sainter_Dad]

Suspect it mightn't work so well against the good running sides but at least it looked like there was a plan today and it came off.

Can't ne worse than when we act like Witches Hats

[chico2001]

Yes, I think we caught Melbourne off guard apart from the first 10 minutes and managed to get our forwards one out a lot of the time. Did plan B include almost getting done right at the death?

[tony74]

No, that was still plan A. They’ve finally got some confidence and actually hit targets, particularly by hand. Always been the style and plan but if you can’t execute it you look slow, disinterested, and poorly organised.
Boys are pumped. They deserved it.

[Milne]

No, that was still plan A. They’ve finally got some confidence and actually hit targets, particularly by hand. Always been the style and plan but if you can’t execute it you look slow, disinterested, and poorly organised.
Boys are pumped. They deserved it.

Ok so what's plan B then?

[Enrico_Misso]

They handballed forwards today instead of backwards!

[bigred]

Melbourne has some real issues down back. We exploited like we should.

[Ape_Man]

I like having the 3 tall forwards.

It allows 1 or 2 to go up the ground as marking options on the half back and wing, while still having a target forward. With a small forward hovering as well.

Worked well yesterday.

[rodgerfox]

No, that was still plan A. They’ve finally got some confidence and actually hit targets, particularly by hand. Always been the style and plan but if you can’t execute it you look slow, disinterested, and poorly organised.
Boys are pumped. They deserved it.

Richardson said that they were making changes to the 'game plan' during the bye.

So I don't think it's as simple as 'it finally clicked' Tony74. I can't buy that. To be honest, if it takes 13 weeks for the coach to get the players to listen - then he simply has to go. If that's the case (which I don't believe it is) he obviously has a serious weakness as a coach.


From afar, it seemed clear that there were two major changes:

1) We went one on one in defence. This actually hurt us at times as when the ball came in quickly, their forward line was quite open and they scored fairly easily. Having said that, the defence all in all did pretty well considering we conceded 62 Inside 50s.
2) We made a glaring effort to NOT bomb it in to the hot spot. That stood out. I can't accept that week after week, for 13 weeks the players simply haven't understood the message on that one. It's been so obviously a strategy up until yesterday. From the grandstands, it appeared clear that it was a specific change to the plan. And might I say, thank f*** for that!


The other thing, was Gresham started off the back of the square. That took Melbourne an entire half to respond to, and was very effective. Even when Melbourne had woken up to it, he still pinched those two 3rd quarter goals.


And finally, aside from what I perceived to game plan alterations, we had Steven, Gresham and Sinclair hurting them and actually being offensive weapons. These guys playing 'A-Grade' games caused Melbourne to defend them, which then opened it up for the Billings', the Ross', the Steeles' and even the Armitages' to play handy 15-20 possie cameo roles. Suddenly the midfield looks deep.

[Cairnsman]

Suddenly the midfield looks deep.

Suddenly the forward line looks deep. With the three talls back in the side together and executing better leading patterns it finally gave the midfield multiple options for targets and opened up the game for others in the forward line, it really seemed to confuse the Demons defence, all of a sudden we had a forward line with players who all needed the best defender or defenders to go to them. Time and again we streamed out of the back line in quick end to end plays which seemed to help the midfield grow in confidence knowing the options into the forward line were a choice of either pocket, a forward leading up the middle and also a forward in the space behind the lead-up. It also looked like the forwards worked out that if the mids were taking the risk to go inboard then one of the forwards would take the option to be the middle lead-up, then the other talls just had to decide which would fill the space in behind and the other could take off to a pocket. Gee didn't Josh take advantage. And success breads success, the mids started to take the game on more and use the risky inboard option more and more.

This has seemed to be the problem from the live games I've seen this year, our mechanism into the forward line, we'd bring the ball out of defence quickly only to stutter and stall somewhere between the middle and forward arc, get pressured, feel pressured, make a rushed decision, bomb it.

I know this is obvious stuff but we've been down on key structural players in the forward line, and in our case, a new bunch of promising forwards that haven't had the luxury of stringing games together and completely established how to work as a unit on a consistent basis. The lost games or finals chance this season has not been the most frustrating part of this season, it's been the lost development time on game day due to injuries.