In this week's Game Plan, stoppage coach Mark Stone pinpoints what went wrong in the third quarter against Hawthorn and how they plan to address it on Saturday against North Melbourne...
THE team was certainly disappointed with the effort on Sunday against the Hawks. We had a great crowd but just couldn’t produce our best footy.
Many of the problems stemmed from the middle of the ground. The sequence of centre clearances we allowed Hawthorn to get during the third quarter - something like eight in a row - really hurt, especially here at the SCG when the ball gets pumped inside your defensive 50 really quickly. The Hawks were able to score from a couple of them and it just swung the momentum in their favour.
In that second half, our effort was poor and our energy was low. We needed to stop their momentum and get the ball going our way somehow. At some point we needed to say enough is enough, and we needed to influence the contest and change the game. Players have to understand they take a fair bit of responsibility if they are one of the three midfielders stepping into the circle and that there is an onus on them to win the footy.
It doesn’t matter if you’re playing Hawthorn or any other team, if you can’t get control of the centre, you’re in a bit of trouble at any ground - be it the SCG or Etihad Stadium, where we play this weekend. It’s a critical area of the game and we need to do better this Saturday against North Melbourne.
Etihad Stadium is a short ground from end to end and you can come out of the middle pretty quickly and set up scores. Naturally, we will look at what North Melbourne do - how they set-up and how they move the ball - but primarily it’s about us. It’s about getting our set-ups right, our energy and effort up, and really having the desire to win and not accepting anything less than that.
North Melbourne’s experience is spread right across the field. They have Drew Petrie up forward, Brent Harvey and Daniel Wells in the middle, and Michael Firrito down back with Brady Rawlings. Their youth is really scattered around so they have a nice blend all over the ground. The Kangaroos are fiercely competitive and that is one their greatest strengths. The group will be disappointed with their recent performances, so they will have a real crack this Saturday and we need to make sure we are up to the challenge.
Their two classiest ball users - Harvey and Wells - will be really critical. If they play well, that really lifts the team and the young players around them. It’s quite similar to us. If our older, experienced players aren’t fighting, then it makes it hard for our young players to follow.
Our forward line is developing all of the time. We have a young group and our midfielders and forwards are still learning how best to work with each other, and that is something that takes time. In recent times we’ve had Sam Reid and Andrejs Everitt up forward, and they are both young players with a lot of potential. This week we will add another debutant into the mix, our fifth for the season. Lewis Johnston will play his first game against the Kangaroos and is a player that can play at either end of the ground and could spend some time up forward.
Tadhg Kennelly touched on it earlier this week. Against an ultra-competitive team like North Melbourne, we will need to be prepared and really up the energy, and find that fighting spirit that got us over the line in tight matches against Essendon and West Coast earlier this year.
