![Shocked :shock:](./images/smilies/icon_eek.gif)
What do you put around your house to protect it?
![Image](http://www.nationalfanthem.com/ShirtPieces/DaFence--ZM.jpg)
How are leaking so many goals? I suspect it is that habit we have had under Richo of falling in a hole with exhaustion and not having a complex enough onfield structure that will:
1) Conserve our energy - keeping the footy, locking the ball down
2) Hold up when players are tired and the momentum is against us
We seem to need all players to be up and about with effort ALL the time to keep the dogs at bay. Once that slackens (as it will at some point) and the oppo are up and about with momentum, we have no true underlying system as a safe guard (such as ensuring you have a sweeper on the last line all the time, or being able to flood the half-back line, or being able to grind it to a stalemate for a while at ball ups).
Are our midfielders defensive minded enough? It's easy to run around getting touches as an unmarked midfielder but are they honest and focused enough on defense and running both ways (Acres has paid a price for this but what about others?) Defence matters for every player on the ground. Dogs play "total football" where every player needs to be an attacker at certain times (including the backmen) and go into defence modes at other times.
We are 13th in the league for tackles. So much for our highly touted pressure. If a team is talented enough, corralling, pressuring and touching them to record pressure points isn't enough - they will use clever hands to flick it on and on again and on again until it gets out. TAckling is the killer. It stops them dead, can give you a free, makes them pay a physical price for daring to grab the ball, puts doubts in their mind about being crunched every time they get the footy.
We are 15th in the league for hit-outs and 14th for contested possessions. Generally speaking we don't get much chance at first use of a contested ball and are chasing tail straight away.
We are 16th for marks and 17th for disposal. We do not keep the footy. We get pressured and turn it over due to our poor kicking team that is lacking in footy-IQ.
We chase tail. That is our game plan. And the huge problem with that is we don't even have particularly quick players to do run-downs. Chase, chase and chase (and every now and then we actually get close enough to tackle but not often).
Any wonder our players come off the field like this
![Image](http://d19lga30codh7.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/games7.jpg)