TACTICAL INSIGHTS FROM AFLW ROUND 2

Check out AFLW Round 1 insights here.

After a slow and bad-weathery start on Saturday we had some excellent and high scoring games yesterday where I'll put my focus on the Carlton v Adelaide game, in particular Darcy Vescio, Brie Moody and the Adelaide forward line again, specifically Eloise Jones.

DARCY VESCIO

Darcy-V has shown that she is one of the few 1-touch players in AFLW and a renown goal kicker but this was a little disappointing from her.

In this transition offensive moment, you can see in the 1st image that the ball is on it's way to the Carlton forward line where she has come in with the ball from the center square.

Her awareness is not where it usually is as she has her eyes on the ball and seems to not expect another Carlton forward to be there.

You can see the ball in the top right hand corner.

The ball has now hit the marking player for who it was probably intended for but where's DV gone? Yep, she's in line with the marking contest and hiding behind the marking contest from our angle.

All small forwards know that you MUST be front and square to the contest and DV has done this countless times in her career but in this instance she's gone for the over the easy over the back kick, but the ball never gets there.

Instead it indeed goes front and square where she would have been in the box seat to swallow that up and off she goes.

If she did sit front and square and the ball went over the back then she would have been first to get there anyway so there's no need to "guess" where the ball is going to go for fear of being badly out of position if you guess incorrectly.

She did do a nice rov and dribble snap goal in the 3rd quarter though so she made up for this.

BREANN MOODY

Looking again at a Carlton transition offensive moment, the ball has been kicked to Carlton's half forward flank where Breann contested the mark and roved her own spillage and was running almost horizontally across the ground with ball in hand.

Looking into the forward line she didn't see any other Carlton players so she did what a lot of other AFLW player don't do - kicked to space AWAY from the contest.

If you watch AFLW close enough you'll always see a winger cutting the ground in half defensively but also holding space on the fat side offensively so a kick to space is not the worst option in most cases.

You can see that Carlton player in the bottom left corner of the screen.

You can see now that it's a clear 50/50 contest now, instead of kicking to unmarked opposition players and what actually ended up happening is that Carlton got possession of the ball and had an inside 50 back to Moody, who had worked from the previous contest, 25m straight out from goal.

Excellent decision making by Moody that actually makes her teammates and the opposition move (player movement in the Game Model).

ELOISE JONES

This time we'll look at an Adelaide Crows transition offensive game moment where the ball is kicked to their half forward flank and I've underlines where Eloise starts her running/leading pattern. Also notice the 50m of vacant space in the Crows forward line.

 Eric Phillips is awarded a free kick in the contest and Jones darts off towards the boundary line before ducking back to the middle to keep that pocket of the ground vacant.

She eventually meets up with the other Adelaide forward and they both U-turn and lead into the space still held vacant by the Crows where one of them is awarded a free kick but for no score.

A lot of players will simply run back towards IN that space and taking their defender with them rendering it useless now unless long dump kicks are your go - which it shouldn't be.

ADELAIDE CROWS FORWARD LINE

I touched on this last week but on the big Ikon Park ground it was very evident and that's how the Crows keep their forward 50 pretty much vacant to allow players to run into it Pagan's Paddock style.

The Adelaide forwards play pretty high to allow this to happen but the midfielders play their part by not going in there at all pretty much.

This also allows the Crows to have plenty of numbers through the middle of the ground where most of AFLW is played and it helps when you have a very strong Erin Phillips to bookend any long kicks that come to half forward, providing a tough contest and allowing more time for the forwards to reach the contest and hold the ball in.

Check out the vacant green grass in these images:

Even in a ball in they still leave that space open:

Game Models aren't really about set plays which are more about what you do when you have the ball but more about what you do off the ball to create time and space as well as giving all players guidelines on what's expected of them at ALL times, not just when the ball is in their area.

Remember I'm after 5 local / amateur football coaches to test a template of a game model I've made up which is definitely something you could use THIS SEASON, once we fully develop it.