How many expected this........

[SainterK]

I must be strange as many will probably agree but that stat does nothing for me. We are 3 and 3 and have played 3 of the worst sides in the AFL. I still say winning ugly kills losing attacking footy. Yes we have scored more but come back and revisit that stat when we play some good sides. We have only played one side in the 8 and that was a home game against an interstate side. This isnt having a go at Watters. Just pointing out that we may be a little more attacking but we are losing ground defensively because of that.

Could someone look where we defensively in comparison then, a similar chart for goals scored against?

[plugger66]

I must be strange as many will probably agree but that stat does nothing for me. We are 3 and 3 and have played 3 of the worst sides in the AFL. I still say winning ugly kills losing attacking footy. Yes we have scored more but come back and revisit that stat when we play some good sides. We have only played one side in the 8 and that was a home game against an interstate side. This isnt having a go at Watters. Just pointing out that we may be a little more attacking but we are losing ground defensively because of that.

Could someone look where we defensively in comparison then, a similar chart for goals scored against?

I would like a chart on how our form actually looks and to me it looks very average. The good thing is last week was our best game but losing Chips doesnt help.

[SainterK]

I must be strange as many will probably agree but that stat does nothing for me. We are 3 and 3 and have played 3 of the worst sides in the AFL. I still say winning ugly kills losing attacking footy. Yes we have scored more but come back and revisit that stat when we play some good sides. We have only played one side in the 8 and that was a home game against an interstate side. This isnt having a go at Watters. Just pointing out that we may be a little more attacking but we are losing ground defensively because of that.

Could someone look where we defensively in comparison then, a similar chart for goals scored against?

The good thing is last week was our best game but losing Chips doesnt help.

Agree, it was a good performance....forward structure getting there, need another small I think, but I do like the three talls and I think that they are settling in and working together well now.

Fisher will be a bigger loss than Ben I feel.

Wonder why they have him as test, it's a hamstring or it's not?

[Dave McNamara]

Monday night is going to be very ugly.

I'm hoping so St P too, but don't feel sorry for Carltank...

[ShanghaiSaint]

Just pointing out that we may be a little more attacking but we are losing ground defensively because of that.

I have also noticed how unorganized our defense has been this year. We seem to get caught out a lot more.

[8856brother]

Great stat.

Will be interesting to see at the end of the season how many goals and how many players scoring more than 5.
And compare that with 2010 under Ross.

I suspect under Waterss
- a lot more goals
- a lot better spread

And..
- a lot less wins.

If you compare this year with last year, we have two more wins in the column don't we...let's not be too hasty to write off his efforts so far

With all due respect K, we should be 5-1. Still wouldn't mean we were flying. We have played some VERY average sides. The only thing we have proven so far is we sit maybe JUST above those average sides. Port 1-5.

Let's re visit in a month. At least we've kicked over 10 goals every week so far. Under Ross we were winning sometimes with as little as 7 or 8.

[saintsRrising]

I must be strange as many will probably agree but that stat does nothing for me. We are 3 and 3 and have played 3 of the worst sides in the AFL. I still say winning ugly kills losing attacking footy.

Yes winning is the more important.

Yes we have scored more but come back and revisit that stat when we play some good sides. We have only played one side in the 8 and that was a home game against an interstate side. This isnt having a go at Watters. Just pointing out that we may be a little more attacking but we are losing ground defensively because of that.

Personally IMO I do not believe that the switch to a more attacking game-plan is the problem.

Rather it is that AFL game evolved to really expose turnovers. Lyon's gameplan was a masterstroke at the time and perfectly suited to the "cattle" we had at the the time and the extra "cattle" that he was able to secure from other clubs at mainly knock down prices. It made the most of our strengths and make our weaknesses.

Other clubs evolved how they played, in part to shut down our gameplan, and in part because one of the great beauties of AFL is that the gameplan is always evolving.

Turnovers now get punished severely. Moreso than every before. In every loss this year, including the Hawks game, silly turnovers was most likely the core difference between winning and losing. You will always get turnovers...however we have too many players who when even under little pressure turn the ball over due to poor skills. Often a turnover is twice as costly as it costs agoal to us, and is goal to the opposition = a 12 point mistake. Miiskicks when having to kick quickly out of a pack are always going to occur, but we too often see saints in space under only little pressure butchering the ball to kick to the disadvantage of a teammate and not even to a 50-50 contest. Until we improve this aspect of our game we are going to continue to struggle against teams as we simply giving them too many "Get out of Jail Free " cards.

IMO even if we had stuck 100% to Lyon's outdated gameplan we would still be losing, as we would still be making turnovers. Without a better capacity to score goals we would have not been as able to score on their turnovers.



ON WATTERS COACHING:
* I think his gameplan tweaks are by and large good
* Match-ups on opponents are not always good.

[gringo]

We are transitioning into a new game plan and have ben exposed due to injury on top of that. We seem to lose players that sure up the backline more than anywhere else. Fisher is a huge loss but Buddy got such an easy time of it with out Macca there to drop in front of him. He is often planted as the big chop out mark.

We should have won a few games that may have got the confidence up. We need to take out Sydney and one of Carlton or West Coast and we will get our tails up again. Simpkin is going well but makes rookie mistakes occasionally and Milne needs to get moving soon or needs a rest at Sandy. I still have some hope we can remain competitive against good teams and will knock some off soon.

[SainterK]

11 goalkickers again tonight.

So glad that the plan now evident, is that if it's up to Scott, it's not going to fall to a few anymore.

[Richter]

11 goalkickers again tonight.

So glad that the plan now evident, is that if it's up to Scott, it's not going to fall to a few anymore.

Yep. I mentioned the stat in another thread K, but in 5 years under RL we only once scored more points against a top 8 team than we did tonight. (vs the pies round 7 of 2009 when we scored 20 goals 8