Dons bombed — for 2012

It’s not often that AussieRulesBlog comments on matters Essendonian. We prefer to keep this blog about the big picture normally, but the plight of our beloved team moves us to exceptional action.

 

One of the more notable trends of 2012 when historians pore over the statistics will be the exponential speed of the Bombers’ fall out of the top eight. In the last five weeks a slide has become free fall. Predictably, questions are being asked and those who would cut down tall poppies are readying their scythes to take a shot at James Hird.

 

Watching the Bombers every week as we do, we’ve noticed a distinct change in the way they play the game that, we think, gives a substantial clue to what is going on. Early on, when Essendon were a surprising entry in the top four and seemingly embarked on a trip to the Grand Final, their zone setup around goal-kicking and kickouts from behinds was sharp, crisp, precise, enthusiastic and ruthlessly effective in denying opposition easy exit out of their backlines. Pressure begets turnovers and turnovers beget goals!

 

Contrast that with the end of the season. Now those zone setups for goal kicking and kickouts are listless, loose, decidedly unenthusiastic and almost totally ineffective in corralling oppositions inside the Bombers’ forward 50 metre arc. There’s no lack of effort, most of the time, at the contest or at the ball carrier, but there’s not much happening, teamwise, off the ball, and that’s where we think the problem lies. Injury, training load, mental tiredness in the face of mounting losses? We’re not sure of the cause, but it’s off-the-ball work rate that is the problem for the Bombers at present.

 

The Cats have won three of the last five Premierships and played in four of the past five Grand Finals. There would seem to be some aspect of the Cats that could be studied and emulated. The Bombers took advantage of Mark Thompson’s ‘burnout’ — we’ve commented often that the smell of smoke hangs around those events — and secured one of the brains behind the Cats’ amazing run of high performance as a means of obtaining the intellectual property involved.

 

A significant feature of the high-flying Cats under Thompson was their ability to escape from trouble and turn it into attack. To a large extent, that success was founded on unrewarded running: workrate. When a Geelong player was in trouble, there were often two or three players loose behind him offering get-out options from where precision disposal created attacking moves.

 

It’s hardly a shock to note that the Bombers displayed some of this style during their heady start to 2012, and the setup at goal kicking and kickouts is a signifier of the effort being put into unrewarded running. It takes an effort to quickly make that ground to create the pressure of an effective zone.

 

It’s also worth noting that the 2006 Cats finished 10th with only 10 wins for the season, having won about 40% of their games, and a percentage of 99%. A year later they finished on top with 18 wins and 152%, three games clear, and were runaway winners of the Grand Final.

 

Will history repeat itself with the Bombers emulating the 2007 Cats in 2013? Only time will tell, but it’s certainly too early, given the Dons’ sparkling early season, to throw out the baby with the bathwater as we’ve heard many Bombers fans mooting.