2024 Pre-Season v St Kilda: Running, kicking, and lots of wind

Regular readers will know how posts about games at Geelong, or a windy Hobart, are met with a similar refrain:

…it’s so different to normal conditions, the normal playbook gets thrown out the window, it’s only one or two games a year played like this…

In most cases, Sunday at Moorabbin, blowing a gale nearly all afternoon, would fall under the same category.

Yet the useful part about pre-season is when teams are still bedding down their process, they’re more likely to play through unique conditions attempting to create good habits.

It all combined to mean there was still plenty to learn from the game against St Kilda. Even if it was essentially two matches in one: with the wind and against the wind.

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Quarter 2 v Quarter 4

Considering all the focus on North’s ball use, the change up in the two quarters against the wind deserves highlighting.

In the second term, as the wind really picked up in intensity and left me with mad scientist hair standing out in the open, North wanted to use handball and run and carry to gain territory. On paper it made sense, and the movement patterns in trying to execute it were sound.

Sometimes it paid off:

But more often than not it faded under the St Kilda pressure and inability for a long get out kick due to conditions. On a normal day the Saints defence (and North defence in other quarters) don’t have the luxury to press up as high, as a long ball would expose them out the back.

The longer the quarter went, the more it became goal kicking practice for St Kilda.

In the final term, with another chance at playing against the wind, North’s process flipped.

While still looking for the same sharp ball movement, the focus changed from handballing to kicking. The stats bear it out:

North against the wind*
Q2: 44 kicks, 18 marks, 52 handballs
Q4: 67 kicks, 30 marks, 51 handballs

(*Note: Sometimes there are post-quarter stat adjustments for a kick or a handball here and there; if there were some here it means my manual screenshots at the end of each term have missed it)

Not only was the goal to generate more consistent attacking opportunities, but also deny St Kilda the opportunity to pin North deep.

12 inside 50s for the quarter – up from five in the second – meant North achieved half of their attacking aim. While the Saints kicked 3.4 for the term to edge away, for the most part it wasn’t from system breakdowns. Their scoring shots:

Point: Sharman’s misplaced kick from the centre
Goal: A quality check side from Membrey
Point: A King set shot from 60
Point: A rushed snap out of congestion from Garcia
Goal: A Sharman mark in the goal square
Point: A Henry set shot miss from 30 out
Goal: An unreal Henry check side from 40

To only concede two high quality shots in the face of a gale for an entire quarter is promising, and an even more positive sign the playing group is able to implement an in-game change as asked for by the coaches. Down the track results will come, but getting the process bedded in is more important at this stage.

The full-ground defensive setup

It’s a little tricky to explain this without behind the goals vision, but I’ll do my best.

At its best, a team defence almost looks like one person controlling a group of marionettes; everyone moving up, back, and side to side as needed, with teammates covering for each other.

That final form is still a few years away for North. In the immediate term, for all the improvements we’ve seen offensively already, the team – as in, not a single line, but the entire team – defensive setup is still flaky at best and bad at worst.

The goal for any team is to slow the opposition down, ideally force them into smaller spaces on one side of the ground, then force a turnover in a dangerous position and capitalise from there.

Too often North are getting pulled out of position way too easily. Whether it’s setting up too narrow on one side and gifting open space through the middle…

…or slowly moving from side to side and leaving gaps in between their horizontal lines of defence…

It’s a crucial area of improvement. Especially with how (nearly) every team is looking to bounce off half back at a rate of knots and North’s lack of pressure forwards.

(Note: Those mediocre diagrams aren’t exact replicas of passages of play from Sunday, rather a general illustration of things that are happening too often)

The forward state of flux

Jy Simpkin’s concussion and Zane Duursma’s addition to the mix leaves more questions than answers.

As covered in the Collingwood match analysis, Simpkin’s new role is important to North’s mix because few others on the list can play it like him. The hole left by his departure was noticeable; the midfield reshuffle led to others playing in roles they weren’t overly suited to. Also, this is all secondary to hoping Simpkin recovers with no ill effects, however long it takes.

Meanwhile Duursma showed plenty of glimpses offensively, his clean hands noticeable, but also struggled defending when the ball wasn’t in his immediate vicinity.

(Sidebar: That’s completely normal and shouldn’t be interpreted as criticism. Players of Duursma’s archetype don’t come into the league with an inbuilt knowledge of defensive principles. Just doesn’t happen. It’ll grow with time)

Add those two topics to the existing forward conundrums and it leaves plenty of defensive questions without simple answers.

In the short term, a Round 1 forward line of Larkey, Coleman-Jones, Zurhaar, Curtis, Stephenson, Duursma, plus midfield rotation, gives plenty offensively and little the other way. 

With Curtis playing almost as a marking forward, his spot appears in the most danger if Duursma plays and the goal is to have more of a pressure presence. Either way, it’s a line far from settled heading into the season opener.

Other odds and ends

Bailey Scott running

More wing time for Scott please; he and Dylan Stephens as the first priorities on either side.

George Wardlaw lifting

Although it wasn’t Wardlaw’s finest game by any stretch, seeing him coming from a mile away to impact this passage of play – plus the last quarter being his most influential – is another tick for his mindset. Plenty of other players – young and old alike – let the game drift to a conclusion when they haven’t influenced up to that point.