From the Coaches Box - spreading the load
In Cellarbrations' From the Coaches Box this week, forwards coach Henry Playfair talks about the importance of an even spread of goalkickers
Last weekend’s win made it eight in a row for us, but to honest, that’s not something we’ve really discussed inside the club. It’s just something that has evolved out of getting our processes right and getting things right internally and the results have taken care of themselves. It would be good to be able to keep up our momentum this week against Richmond at the MCG tonight.
Looking at the Tigers’ defensive structures, they’ve got a pretty solid group who have played most of the year together. They seem to be defending pretty well one-on-one, so we need to be mindful of that this week. They’ve got Troy Chaplin back there as a key defender, as well as Alex Rance and Jake Bachelor, and Dylan Grimes, who is a medium-sized defender. They have the capability to cover talls and smalls, so that gives them flexibility. They’ve also got Steven Morris, who is a really good lock-down defender, as well as Bachar Houli, who gives them some drive, so they’ve got a pretty good mix down back and they do match up pretty well against us.
While our talls were important against the Power, we’ve always thrived on spreading the load across the forward line and particularly the goal kickers. For the last two or three seasons, we haven’t had one stand-alone player we relied on just to kick goals and we’ve been able to spread that load across a few players. This year we’ve done it more so with guys through the midfield spending time forward like Kieren Jack, Jarrad McVeigh, Luke Parker, and even young Brandon Jack and Jake Lloyd coming in, so we do feel like we’ve got enough talent amongst our smalls to impact the scoreboard, which is something we’ve seen over the last few weeks and something we’ll need to see continue against the Tigers this week.
We’re expecting a tough match on Friday night and we’re expecting Richmond to be at their best. We’ve just had a big match here in Sydney and now we’re going to play on the big stage at the MCG in front of what is hopefully a big crowd. We always have great support in Melbourne, so it will be terrific to have those fans supporting us in the stands this week. We see this match as another big challenge for us, but we feel like we’ve prepared well over the last week and will be ready to go on Friday night.