One more week to go until the business end of the season.
It means this is the last edition of the Notebook for 2022, because once we get into finals every match will receive the full ‘North Melbourne review’ treatment.
Until then, let’s finish up with a look at Max King’s goalkicking (again), and the final two minutes of a thriller at the MCG.
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The Shinboner Patreon continues to run until October 31 this year. Tiers of $5 and over earn you early access to the weekly Notebook piece on Monday mornings.
This is the last Notebook piece of the year before we move into finals mode from next week.
Overall there are four different tiers. It starts at $2.50 per month and goes up to $10 per month for all the benefits. A huge thank you to everyone who’s signed up.
Here are all the details and how to sign up.
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Max King’s goalkicking, part two
The Round 6 Notebook analysed Max King’s set shots and the ever present technical flaw:
“King’s ball drop is askew, usually going to the inside of his foot rather than straight over the middle. As a consequence, King chases the drop with his foot, essentially trying to ‘catch up’ with it.
“But the drop creates too many problems, basically an in built hook so most of his set shots miss to the left hand side.”
Nearly four months later, we’re in the exact same position. Matthew Lloyd had an interesting breakdown on one part of King’s set shots:
(please ignore the caption and just watch from 2:05 to 3:25)
The lean back works hand in hand with the aforementioned ball drop. Combine the two issues and nothing has changed from earlier in the year. As a result King is still missing at a higher rate than he should.
Here’s the first miss on Friday night:
And the second miss:
After those, without the confidence in his routine, everything broke.
Body shape changed, run up changed, and it was a complete lottery where the ball drop went or how his kicking leg swung through.
It wasn’t pretty, but – to echo my words after Round 6 – it should be easily fixable.
The effort is there, with plenty of reports suggesting King is putting in extra time. But without acknowledging the base flaw, all it’s doing is consolidating a bad habit and putting him into further trouble.
How it hasn’t been recognised by now is wildly confusing, and it’s the only thing holding King back from a 65+ goal season.
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For those who missed it during the week, I unveiled the Shinboner Program Guide for the finals series and trade period.
Here’s where to read it
Here are all the details and how to sign up.
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The final two minutes of Melbourne v Carlton
Technically the headline should say ‘final two minutes and 15 seconds’, but close enough.
There were so many different nuggets in positioning and patterns that a written summary doesn’t do it justice.
Instead, here’s a video breakdown of everything that happened. My main takeaway was both teams set up relatively well with no enormous, head scratching structure breakdowns. Just a handful of little things that was finished off by an outstanding piece of skill.
No need for sound up, it’s all annotated:
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For those who have missed any posts or podcast appearances over the last week, here’s where to catch up:
Sunday 14th: North’s Round 22 Review
Thursday 11th: Hashtag Kangaroos Podcast
Wednesday 10th: Shinboner Program Guide: Finals & Trade Period
Tuesday 9th: North’s Round 21 Review
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