After the shit show that was AFL-media in 2025 and the just-passed trade period, if it's real game analysis you're after then you should be following these guys:
Ricky Mangidis, James Ives, Cody Atkinson, Emlyn Breese and One Percenters
There's a few others that popped up through the course of the year but for the sake of this post, I'll keep at this lot as this information mostly comes from them with some other bits from other sources like Fox Footy etc.
What you'll see is little tid-bits I've chosen from most AFL teams that describes how they play, why they play like that and the results they get from doing so posted prior and during the 2025 AFL season.
For community coaches, you might recognise a team's traits in your own team's and then gather some ideas on how to make it more effective for your own team.
NORTH MELBOURNE
- In 1 game they started defending directly in front the ball but very also skinny so the opposition were easily able to get to the outside of them and go around them. The change was to defend with the same set up but in a far wider formation which forced the opposition to kick to the crowd straight in front of them or to extra wide that is more easily covered and defended.
- Again on defense, when the ball is on 1 side then cut off the corridor and force the opposition to chip-kick along the boundary line until you can recover and then spoil one out of bounds for a reset
PORT ADELIADE
- Fast transition offense means you're also susceptible to rapid counter-attack on turnover
- The big 3 in the middle (Butters, Rozee, JHF) all work best forward of center which leaves too much defensive work to Drew unless they start using defensive wingers
RICHMOND
- Went long down the line but couldn’t do anything at contest and resulted in a high turnover rate
ST KILDA
- They choke the corridor to force a slowdown in how the opposition can use the ball where they conceded the 2nd most marks by choice
- They often had a +1 on the defensive side at stoppage
- They used superior numbers/structure to force turnovers in their defensive half
- Marshall loves to grab and kick out of the ruck (their best clearance player) but that was more a hinderance with the Saints being 17th for scores from stoppage
- They win on control/marks, not chaos/groundballs
- They play a safety-first approach where they control the ball for so long it allows them to dictate tempo which also gives the opposition far less possession time which is an excellent theory if you are outmatched on talent but still wanting to win - the negative is that it leads to a low-event game and then you’re more susceptible to variance deciding the result
SYDNEY
- Combine control with chaos by gaining territory with short kicks/uncontested marks from the defensive half before looking for inboard kicks to beat the 1st layer of opposition defense and/or open space in/near the corridor
- Happy to take time to find the right option = 2nd slowest ball movement team and 5th most possessions per possession chain
- Once through the defense then it's off to the races
- 2nd for bounces that creates player overloads
- Liked to station a midfielder (Parker, JJ, Adams, Chad) at half forward to negate opposition rebounders and force front half turnovers
- Brisbane changed lanes 56 times in the 2023 Grand Final v Syd 29 and almost all of the Swans' losses came from teams being able to change lanes laterally with high numbers of uncontested marks (Brisbane GF 150, Saints 123, Port 122, Bris 115, Freo 100, Rich 108, Dogs 98)
- Defend high so can easily cut off chaos balls out of forward 50 but could be too across the ground (3 talls+ruck) to cover the ground laterally when the opposition control their ball movement
WEST COAST
- Under McQualter, they want to become a territory team, apply high pressure to force turnovers with the end result being forward half footy
- The higher the groundball gets number, the higher the chaos style
WESTERN BULLDOGS
- Everything is still built on clearance strength and moving the ball outside by hand
No comments:
Post a Comment