Sunday afternoon at the MCG saw two teams moving in opposite directions.
Melbourne, after losing their first five, adjusted what wasn’t working and have won five of their last six as a result.
Sydney, in a quest to rectify what ailed them on Grand Final day last year, have stripped away much of what made them fearsome in the first place.
Today’s post is about how and why these teams are trending in their respective directions. But first, a…
Programming Note
The next five Notebook entries will cover teams coming off their mid-season byes, setting the scene for the back end of the season. It means we’ll see the following teams at the following times:
Round 12 Notebook*: Carlton, Port Adelaide, Western Bulldogs
Round 13 Notebook: St Kilda, Fremantle
Round 14 Notebook: Collingwood, Gold Coast, Richmond, Sydney
Round 15 Notebook: Adelaide, Hawthorn, Melbourne, West Coast
Round 16 Notebook: Brisbane, Essendon, Geelong, GWS
*North Melbourne will have a separate stand alone post the day after the Round 12 Notebook
The goal is to cover the key on-field points from each team up until the bye, what it means in their big picture, along with how they’re set up to achieve what was covered on the blog in pre-season. Whether I can stomach revisiting the over/under win predictions remains to be seen.
Until then though, let’s move onto this week’s entry and a look at Melbourne and Sydney.
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Patreon subscribers get early access to the Notebook each week as part of their benefits for signing up.
In addition to Patreon, you can find me on Twitter – and also Bluesky, where vibes are much more pleasant and there’s much less hate. It’s nice.
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Melbourne trending upwards
On the surface, there weren’t any obvious statistical changes in Melbourne’s ball movement since their 0-5 start.
The kick to handball ratios are largely the same, as are the splits between long and short possession, with the apparent increase in marks mainly a function of game situation and opponent. Maybe there’s other stats hidden somewhere to tell a neat story.
But then a look at these numbers which are available…
| Melbourne in 2025 | Round 0-5 | Round 6-11 |
| Time In Possession | -5:52 (17th) | +2:53 (4th) |
| Time In Forward Half | -1:33 (14th) | +8:02 (2nd) |
| Inside 50 retains | 44.3% (18th) | 53.2% (9th) |
| Scores per inside 50 | 37.5% (18th) | 49.5% (4th) |
…shows a notable improvement. So we have to dig a bit deeper to show the changes between the 0-5 start and 5-1 record since.
It started with a shift in forward responsibilities. Harry Petty played the first five* games as a defender but switched ends for Round 6 v Fremantle. While four goals that day caught the eye, he’s only kicked three in his next three and a half matches, allowing for his concussion against West Coast and absence the week after.
(*four and a half if we’re being accurate after a mid-match switch v Essendon in Round 5)
Petty hasn’t – and largely won’t – be a player who kicks multiple goals in a game regularly, and the numbers show he isn’t a key forward who has a high retention rate when targeted inside 50. It’s a low-ceiling role.
And after that paragraph running Petty down … the role he’s played as a key forward has been incredibly important to Melbourne’s improved ball movement. The easiest way to think of him is as a forward line anchor. In a positive sense, not negatively.
The remaining forwards and/or midfielders pushing closer to goal all work off Petty’s positioning. Whether it’s smalls getting to his feet as he creates a pack, or leading players pushing up at the ball carrier, most of it is based off the anchor as a reference point.
In turn it creates greater spacing, a word foreign to anyone in Melbourne’s forward half for about the last three years. Incredibly enough, if forwards have ‘room’ to work in, then ‘good things’ happen. It’s a crazy concept.
Around the ball, the graduation of Kozzy Pickett to a mid-forward role – while still getting the ball in dangerous positions – has been crucial.
Pickett is averaging 20.4 disposals a game this year, blowing away his previous season high of 12.7 (2024). But the splits of where he’s winning the ball is almost identical, as he basically plays on-ball when play is in Melbourne’s forward half, then as a forward the rest of the time:
| Pickett’s possession location | Forward 50 | Midfield | Defensive 50 |
| 2024 | 36.5% | 61.7% | 1.9% |
| 2025 | 34.4% | 61.3% | 4.3% |
Over the last six weeks, 40 of Pickett’s 118 disposals have either been a scoring shot from him – 16.15 – or a score assist (nine) for a teammate. More than one in three on average. It’s a case of maximising his strengths to get the best result.
Along with Christian Petracca looking more like Christian Petracca with each week, it’s allowed Melbourne to take advantage at contests, first in the league for contested possession differential between Round 6-11 by a million miles:
| Top 5 contested possession (Round 6-11) | Differential |
| Melbourne | +116 |
| Carlton | +54 |
| St Kilda | +47 |
| North Melbourne | +45 |
| Adelaide | +38 |
Combine midfield structural tweaks with forward structural tweaks, along with top-tier players playing like top-tier players, and it’s the ingredients for the form improvement recipe we’ve seen over the last six weeks.
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For those who have missed it, the last five Notebook entries on The Shinboner, plus…
2025’s Team Structures Page
How to get 49 disposals in a game: Round 10’s Notebook
Rolling stoppages and fast-tracked rookies: Round 9’s Notebook
A centre bounce setup: Round 8’s Notebook
Midfielders in tandem, midfielders progressing: Round 7’s Notebook
Veterans, offence, and scoring: Round 6’s Notebook
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Sydney trending downwards
This is almost like a Part 2 to the Round 6 Notebook, where Sydney’s issues were first touched on.
Since then, even allowing for the wins against GWS and Carlton, things haven’t got better offensively. They’ve got worse.
Sydney’s strength *was* ball movement, by necessity. Because their forward line, talent wise, wasn’t the strongest line of all time, the offensive system was structured in a way where pace and space created extra opportunities and allowed the true stars – the midfielders – to impact offensively.
Those are the cliff notes anyway. The full breakdown came in last year’s Finals Dossier.
In an effort to rectify some of the issues without the ball around contests – i.e. what we saw in the Grand Final against Brisbane – this year’s focus has been heavy on improving the defence.
In some places its worked, as touched on in the Round 6 Notebook. But it’s completely crippled their offensive output, largely for two reasons:
1) It doesn’t give their best players the freedom to damage opponents
And, perhaps more damagingly…
2) In turn it’s asking for more from their second and third-tier players instead
Which is basically the opposite of how to set up a team with Sydney’s strengths. Take these numbers as evidence of the downturn:
| Sydney’s offence | Scores per inside 50 | Inside 50s retained | D50 to I50 |
| 2024 | 47.8% (2nd) | 55.3% (1st) | 27.2% (4th) |
| 2025 | 42% (16th) | 50.1% (14th) | 24.6% (10th) |
Because if you’re asking Sydney’s forwards to play as ‘traditional’ keys, for lack of a better term, it’s asking plenty from players who aren’t capable of it. When Sydney were up and firing, they got the ball into space and sliced through sides with quick uncontested possession, with the forward line benefiting.
The Swans’ contested possession rate (the % of total possessions that are contested) ranked 12th in the league last year. So far this year it has shot up to fifth, an indicator of their preference to prioritise inside work and change their ball movement profile.
For the heavier contested style to work, moving from contest to contest down the field, it needs a stronger forward line to create opportunities of their own. So far in 2025, the Swans’ forward line has seen… (brackets indicate how many games started at that end):
– Tom McCartin (two games)
– Peter Ladhams (six games)
– Aaron Francis (three games)
– Joel Hamling (four games)
…all players that can get on the end of work up field, but to ask them for consistent chance creation and standalone threats to opposition defences is a bridge too far. Several bridges, even.
As a result of all this, when Sydney are on top of a game it still becomes a low chance match, where margins are relatively close* and the offensive system doesn’t allow the Swans to streak away on the scoreboard.
(*the North Melbourne game doesn’t count)
The Fremantle win could quite easily have gone the other way; likewise the Carlton win if the Blues weren’t dealing with their own terminal offensive problems.
The ultimate issue is the changes made to try and focus on an improved defence has removed the margin of error Sydney had through creating so many chances offensively.
So when the time comes where Sydney are beaten cleanly around the ball – against Melbourne, the first half v Essendon, and the second half v Gold Coast in recent weeks – the bottom drops out rapidly with no offensive insurance policy up their sleeve.
When they do try and go quickly offensively, it’s ad-hoc at best and results in turnovers in dangerous places; the understanding and movement patterns from previous years all gone for the time being.
It makes complete sense why the tweaks were made, and there’s every chance the balance could still be found as the season goes. But at the moment, it’s trending the wrong way.
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