I actually didn't get around to watching Coll/Rich from 10 days ago until this weekend so I've lumped it with the Coll/GC game from this past weekend.
The Pies have the best team-system in the AFL to be in every game they play but not enough talent to win enough of them.
Nick Daicos is the constant, and De Goey is having one of his "up" years but then it's a raffle as to who will support those 2 any given week.
Ive got them making the 10 where they could win a game or 2 but that's about it I reckon for the Pies in 2026.
The Suns have been THE biggest disappointment in 2026 and that's including a competition that has Essendon in it!
$3.5 million invested at center bounce is a huge price to pay for a poultry 15th placed ranking in clearances so they really need to change up the mix in there, but they are playing half the team they did last year with most of the incoming players being young but they still wouldn't have thought this is where they'd be right now.
The Lions are back in a big way and unfortunately for everyone else they still have Coleman, Zorko, Allen and McCluggage to come back into their probable best 18, let alone best 23.
The Cats are sliding a touch at the moment having lost 3 of their past 4 with a bye in there as well and have just seemed a touch off the pace all season long with Cameron struggling bigtime with that arm issue.
A bit of a different tact with the game analysis this week with a huge focus on the game itself then isolated coaching concepts like I normally do.
Going into the game Brisbane had regained some form beating Gold Coast and Richmond by really doubling down on their stoppage/clearance game as well as transition defense.
In those 2 games they were +29 in first possession, +22 in clearance, +6 in center clearance, + 43 in scores from stoppage and + 24 in scores from turnover.
On transition defense they won 90% of the stats for chain to score %, d50 to f50 %, d50 to score %, defensive half to f50 % and defensive half to score % but more importantly kept both teams to well below league average in those metrics.
Moving to the Sydney game, those metrics remained a huge focus on stopping the Swans' handball chain game and although the Swans still managed 705m gained from handball, the eye test proved it just wasn't the same as we've seen with a little glimpse in the last quarter when the game was done and dusted.
SYDNEY PLAN
In the last 2 previous games, the Swans had been spanked at stoppage (-20 in clearance against St Kilda and Port Adelaide) and would have been spooked by the Lions last games as mentioned above.
Sydney opted to start with an extra around the ball which didn't help things (-13 in this game) but then also leaves Harris Andrews twiddling his thumbs in anticipation for intercept after intercept.
BRISBANE PLAN
With offensive advantage at stoppage they simply had to focus on denying Sydney corridor space to run handball chains through.
SYDNEY HANDBALL CHAINS
Sydney lead the league in handball meters gained by a fair margin to the 2nd best team in that area (696 to 565 Collingwood) and this is it looked like once they were able to get it going in this game, albeit in the last quarter when the pressure from Brisbane was way down and fait enough.
BRISBANE DEFENDING HANDBALL CHAINS
The Lions' mids were rinsed good and proper a month ago for a lack of 2-way running on defense but were possibly just trying to get through the middle part of the season unscathed and fill up for the run home, which they definitely seem to be doing no going by the defensive run to shut off corridor on Sydney handball chains early in the game.
With Brisbane taking away corridor as shown earlier, you can turn them into a wide kick-mark team and then you simply have to crowd the space just in front of the kicker (but out of the protected space of course), to limit and runners from behind to receive handballs and the ensuring overlap.
Brisbane were diligent here but I also suspect Sydney were a bit hesitant to be so attacking once the goals started to flow for the Lions.
As good as Brisbane's preparation was for this game, Sydney left a lot of potential scoring opportunities on the table as players didn't give handballs when they normally would have so far in 2026 which I'm sure will be on the review tape this week.
With Brisbane's defense and our poor transition game the stats were startling:
Chain to Score - 23.8% season average to 18.7% in this game
D50 to F50 - 27.7 % to 13.7% (only went 2 for 29 in the first half!)
D50 to Score - 11.91% to 2.0%
Defensive Half to F50 - 35.5% to 22.7%
Defensive Half to Score - 15% to 6.7%
Other parts of the game that didn't help and was totally out of character was clangers (41-25 at half time) with many of the coming out of defensive 50 resulting 41pts from turnover for the Lions (again by half time) v 44pts average off turnover per (full) game so far in 2026.
Personally, I saw signs that we/Sydney were at least half to blame for this result so we can turn this around pretty quick, especially getting some troops back that are very important to what we do in McInerney and Papley + more games into Gulden who was well off the pace.
Much like the opposition 4 weeks ago, hopefully this is the kick in the backside we need to really kickstart a finals tilt.
80% of our training is live which means there's problem solving, game representation and every player involved in some shape or form all the time.
There are minimal lines, standing around and cone to cone drills because there is very limited learning taken from that type of training and without learning you can't improve.
We're currently sitting 4th on the ladder and eyeing a finals birth which is a top 5 format.
We had just 3 players carry over from last season so we were always going to be better in the 2nd half of the season then the first half but have had some heartbreaking losses that we need to get on top of going forward all against other top 5 teams (1pt, 4pts and 4pts with an after siren missed goal!).
1 thing I've found with live training activities is that once you start using them as much as I do, then cone to cone drills just doesn't do it for the players and they simply go through the motions when you do them which is great because then it's pushing you as a coach to design and deliver them on a consistent basis.
I post a couple of these a year that compile whole watching and reading AFL content on TV/socials which have been referenced and the others are mostly me jotting stuff down in my phone.
Hopefully you can use at least 1 of these 13 AFL craft tips this coming weekend.
TALL FORWARDS - JOHN LONGMIRE
Competing/getting the ball to ground is most important thing...it’s not about how many contested marks you take but how many times the opposition take them on you where you don’t even get the opportunity to get inside and score from an inside forward 50 entry
STOPPAGE - PATRICK CRIPPS
Create space between you and the drop zone...hold the opposition out, allow the tap to happen and then push off late towards the ball...you can also hold/wait for the ball to bounce/push and then go to the ball
SWITCH PLAY - FIRST CRACK
Try to catch a lazy midfielder not pushing across hard enough then go in board to the space/player they haven’t filled
GEELONG WING - FIRST CRACK
Ollie Dempsey starts on the wing but then at a mid 50 stoppage a half forward comes up (Shaun Mannagh) to take his man...even if Geelong lose the clearance they are covered with their defensive spare + the half forward covering the opposition wing...if Geelong can win the ball back quickly then Dempsey leaks out towards goal on his own
SPARE DEFENDER - FIRST CRACK
Having one means someone from the stoppage can leak out goal side even if the opposition win the clearance as there’s still defensive cover
CYCLE DEFENSE - ADAM SIMPSON
Skinny side defenders press up to the ball instead of hanging back on defense...fat side defenders then slide in behind from the fat side to cover in behind/goals side
COLINGWOOD - FIRST CRACK
Opt for slow/wide on offense so they can organise defensively behind the ball and play a forward half game and/or free up Darcy Moore as the spare...are the best at holding shape around the ball and refuse to compromise even if they concede contested possession inside so they can apply frantic pressure when they do lose the contest and counter punch on live turnover’s and then once they win territory they don’t give it back...they kick down the line more than anyone but they also score next after a kick the line more than anyone
DEFENSE
Defend with a corridor-bias with only anchors moving out to contest so the opposition have to go around you and then when you regain possession you can go directly through corridor as your floaters are already/always there
TEAM DEFENSE
With not many left footers in our competition, can we set up defensively to force them left by not overcommitting and letting them slip back inside by coraling them to the boundary so they can only kick straight down the boundary at best on their opposite foot/banana kick and we can set up defensively in front of them and intercept
OPPOSITION DOMINANT MIDFIEDER
At stoppage set up 2 of our mids in a row but they are still playing 1v1 with their direct opponent...the player sequence will be us, oppo dominant mid/us to create a potential 2v1 advantage where the ball is going to go and force another of their mids to beat us
LAST TOUCHED/OUT ON THE FULL
you need someone on the 45 and then a half back/mid coming through as a lateral kick but on the move so we can go immediately inboard...we can kick to the 45 and then get a handball off to the lateral option, or just go directly to the lateral option to run and carry but that 45 option can trail back to goals as well and be used as a forward handball option
CORRIDOR
When we go corridor aggressively to a wing/half forward then have the half backs come up to surround the contest of it hits the deck
BREAKING TACKLES
If you gather and someone is trying to tackle you face on then tuck ball into your armpit, turn and push off with 1 arm and they’ll have nothing left to grab
I'm coaching the senior women again this year so I'm going to way back to November last year to day 1 of building out a training activity that we have gradually built and layered as the season has gone on.
STEP 1 - INTENTION
The intention is the end point so picture what that is and then work backwards from there.
In this case I wanted my players to look off-the-line as often as they can when they have the ball in hand.
To encourage this search behaviour, I needed to design a task that requires that very same thing in training.
I can't just go into a game and expect them to do it just like you don't go straight to a full car license when you're 16 and have never driven before.
I need to work as far as needed to make off-the-line options as obvious as possible and this in itself starts the learning process, with the gradual progression and frequent exposures hopefully adding more learning points and the shift to long term memory (real footy IQ).
STEP 2 - MAKE IT OBVIOUS
You're looking for low complexity here which means as little moving parts as possible BUT you still need to retain SOME (doesn't have to be all) game information for transfer purposes.
In the case of day 1 here it's a 2v1 with kicker having 2 options to choose from initially but that decreases to 1 as the defender deliberately choses to go with 1 of them leaving the obvious option to go to.
I always have a player on the mark too which is vastly underrated game information missed a lot of local training activities but not noted in the image.
I start this by kicking the ball the designated kicker to a) Get some extra marking practice and 2) The 2 offensive players then have to time their leads appropriately.
Also, as coach-umpire, I'm pretty hard on players going off the mark, getting called to play-on and taking away the control that the mark gives us, so I umpire accordingly all throughout this training activity (and in general!).
STEP 2 - INCREASE COMPLEXITY SLOWLY
STEP 3 - LAYER
5v2
5v3
6v3
5v4
6v4
8v4 End to End
So there's a great way to build out your training activities because if you've started and ended on the same activity from season start to season's end then you haven't provided an environment where your players can learn, grow and improve.
Small group personal training done the right way. Train in a group - do YOUR OWN program. PT studio located in the heart of South Yarra on Surrey Road North, just off Toorak Road. 1on1 personal training also available. Don't do everyone else's program, get personal with your training.
