The Buck Stops Here.
Nathan Buckley has explained his five key takeaways from the weekend of footy.
Bucks is loving watching a young Magpie, concerned about a top eight team’s percentage and also outlined the biggest problem for the Bombers.
1. Jack Ginnivan is loving the moment and he is roaring ready
“You come from a position of power when you have a performance like he did yesterday.”
“He’s kicked 11 goals for the season but what I love about him is he handles the moment, he doesn’t mind it when people give their judgements of him because he’s got a pretty strong sense of who he is and he’s a real competitor, he’s a gamer.
“So when the game’s on the line or he needs to find an extra five metres on a set shot or he needs to kick a goal, as he did yesterday, he nails them.
“So great effort.
“He’s a very crafty player, he knows exactly where the goals are.
“He’s a very hard worker, he’s constantly moving and he picks up what’s going to happen two or three possessions down the track quicker than most, and then he positions himself really well against his specific defender or finds dangerous space in the front half so the ball carrier, when he raises his eyes, Jack is an option for him.
“He kicked 100 goals in the under 12s… he’s always loved kicking goals, it’s something that has become him.
“I can’t see him becoming a midfield player, although he’s got the freedom to develop and express himself as he wishes, but he’s doing what he's always dreamt of doing as a kid and he loves the game and he loves the contest.
“So I think that’s to be celebrated.”
2. Is Callum Mills tiptoeing to the top echelon of players in the competition?
“The system that Callum Mills is a part of, he suits it as well as anyone does.”
“He cut his teeth as a half back, pick three in 2015, took some time to come along but then played really well in that role.
“He’s gone into the midfield nearly unassumingly, picked up 37 touches (on Monday), he’ll get ten votes from the coaches today which will put him in the top three and put him up next to Patrick Cripps, Christian Petracca and the other bloke that’s sneaking up there is Andrew Brayshaw.
“Callum Mills has been exceptional and even highlighting the role that he did on Tom Mitchell, he’s got the capacity to balance his defence and attack for a side that is going places.”
3. Percentage is a great guide
“We’ve got enough data now, six games in, we’ve got enough of a guide, and percentage is what you want to look for.”
“The only team in the top eight without a percentage of 100 is Carlton, the only team out of the top eight with a percentage above 100 is the Bulldogs.
“I think Carlton are the most vulnerable side in the top eight.
“Everyone says that they’re such a great stoppage side, they’re middle of the road for scores from stoppage.
“So it is their stronger point to their scoring, but it’s not great against the rest of the competition.
“They need to fix their transition footy first and foremost… when they attack they need to be able to defend better as a unit behind it, and when they’re defending, they need to be able to move the ball with more effectiveness from the back half.
“It can happen (mid-season), but right now they’ve won games off the back of bursts of football from clearance, and that’s why everyone sees that their clearance is strong, and aerial dominance in their forward 50.
“It’s something that can easily come and go, and it’s something that we’ve seen in their games.
“Their defenders are holding up really well, a lot of their name players through the middle are performing well, Charlie Curnow and Harry McKay, I don’t reckon you can get more out of the individuals at the moment.
“So then collectively, they’re not really gelling over a four quarter performance.
“What we’re seeing is that their best is exceptional, and that’s a great thing to have… all you have to do, and this where the work has to be done by the coaching group, by the club, by the players themselves, is to continue to bump up your average performance.
“And the way you do that is your low level needs to improve, and that takes time, we can’t be expecting that at this stage with a new coaching structure, it takes time for that to be established.”
4. Essendon’s forward pressure needs to be looked at
“The way they are selecting their team at the moment is a question mark and my real query is where is Devon Smith, because that bloke is exactly what the team needs and he’s on the list and he’s been left out.”
“Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti and Will Snelling is (another) big one, he was recruited out of a mid-season draft out of the SANFL at one point.
“Now he gets all the way up the field and all the way back, so they’re really missing him, and he’s been in their top three of their best and fairest the last couple of years.
“They’re trying to get a Matt Guelfi, Nic Martin, who’s a young player who’s started the season really well, an Alec Waterman, who’s a marking player, Archie Perkins, who’s a tall midfielder who’s playing forward, a young guy in Kaine Baldwin and then (another youngster) in Ben Hobbs to actually be the players who are going to be pressure forwards.
“Every good team in the competition has small, pressure forwards. They only had three forward 50 tackles yesterday and they marked the ball 17 times inside their forward 50, which is exceptional, and probably, to be fair, has an impact on their ground-level numbers because if youre marking it (like that), it reduces your ground level numbers.
“So we have to put that on the table… but there’s some real dirt.
“You cannot defend the ground without great pressure on the ball.
“Essendon, they need to fix that. It is a hard fix, and you might need players to selflessly consider that this is an important role for the team, can I play it?”
5. You choose to play the game of football
“There will be contact, there will be injuries, and you choose to play a game of footy, this is going to happen.”
“For us to see that (Paddy McCartin incident) on the weekend was not great, even though it’s seemed like it’s panned out okay, but football is a physical game.
“It’s a great story and I love it and I’m wrapped that he’s back after years out and the prospect that he wasn’t going to come back into the fold.
“But footy is just footy, it’s a small part of life, Paddy McCartin is going to live for the rest of his life on the other side and he’s got plenty of things to explore and we don’t want that to be diminished, or taken away, which is why we put the rules that we have in place.
“But it’s still a very physical game and there’s going to be contact.”