The Buck Stops Here.
Nathan Buckley has gone through his five biggest takeaways from the final round of the 2022 home and away season.
Buckley has touched on Collingwood, Carlton, Essendon’s coaching search, Richmond and Geelong.
Collingwood’s most important KPI
“When you look at the stats sheet, they’re winning when they’re losing massive numbers in KPIs.
“They’re not winning in a traditional way. You have to go back nine weeks to go to a game that they won contested ball, +30 against GWS.
“So going back there is -54 against Carlton, -29 against Sydney, -24 against Melbourne, -15, -13, -10, -10, -19. They’ve only won the clearance stat twice in that nine weeks, -12, -7, -20, -8, -15. So you cannot gauge Collingwood’s chances of winning on contest and clearance because their pressure is so good around the ball.
“The most important KPI for Collingwood is winning the next contest out of a stoppage, so when the ball goes forward 30 metres or back 30 metres, you need to win that next contest because Collingwood keep winning those, both in defence and offence.
“You need to challenge them, and Carlton did that in the second and third quarter. When they won clearance and went forward, they won that next contest more often in the second and third quarter which gave them a chance to score and hold territory.
“That’s the stat that you need to challenge Collingwood with.”
Carlton can take positives despite heartbreak
“The other side of the equation was Carlton and what could’ve been.
“It’s a tough pill to swallow but when the dust settles it will be a really positive year for the Carlton Football Club.
“Against Melbourne two weeks ago they were eight points up at the 29-minute mark. So this is a team (Melbourne) that finished second in the competition after the home and away (season), the reigning premiers, they lost that by five points with the last two goals of the game in the last minute-and-a-half.
“They were 11 points up against Collingwood 20 minutes into the last quarter after leading by four goals at three-quarter time against a side that finished fourth.
“Carlton have had two narrow losses in games that they looked like they were going to win against two of the top four sides. That’s how close and marginal it is.
“I need to mention Paddy Cripps – 35 touches, 27 contested, 18 of those in the front half, 12 clearances, eight inside 50s, five tackles. That was a final, that was an elimination final for Carlton. ‘Vossy’ finds out who stood up when we needed you and who wilted. If you don’t stand up in big games, you quickly become superfluous to taking that next step.
“It’s valuable information that Michael Voss and the Carlton Football Club have going forward.”
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Essendon’s big red flag
“They’ve made the decision on the coach, but there’s a lot of stuff that needs to get done for them to get back to where they want to be.
Essendon president Dave Barham: “We think we’re after a more experienced coach. We think a more experienced coach might be able to get more out of this list and we want to give our list the best chance.”
“That little grab, for me, it narrows the search. But it says to me that Essendon don’t believe they have the information internally to bridge the gap between where they are and being a highly successful, well-oiled football department, and that’s a big red flag.
“Because if you’ve got no one in there that you believe is actually seeing it well enough … I think you’re asking someone to come in and be a saviour for us as a senior coach and that’s not the way good programs are built.
“They’re built with a spread of football intelligence, a spread of experience, it’s not just one person who comes in and says, ‘My way or the highway’. To expect to have an experienced coach, it’s really narrowed the field.
“I don’t know whether you need to have been a senior coach to have experience in football. I hope they go a little bit wider than that.”
The key stat around Richmond’s scoring
“Don’t underestimate Richmond.
“There’s one stat that stacks up in regards to their capacity to score from turnover that is going to have a lot of sides worried going into September.
“The numbers that Damien Hardwick is talking about is controlling turnover. So it’s your balance of offence and defence and after Geelong and Sydney, Richmond are the next best team.
“Richmond scored 200 goals from turnover this year, that’s the highest number of goals scored from turnover. They’ve put together an offensive profile that’s going to worry a lot of sides.
“The last time a team kicked 200 goals from turnover was in 2018 and Richmond kicked 210.
“Richmond, the only team that’s kicked 200 (goals) off turnover, and that’s heading north as well in the last period of time.”
Geelong cherry ripe heading into September
“It’s probably fait accompli, it’s something that’s staring us right in the face, and that’s how clearly dominant Geelong have been throughout the year.
“I think they need kudos.
“They’ve been able to put another home and away season together that’s been the envy of plenty of other teams.
“Jeremy Cameron’s a question mark, but they’re as cherry ripe as they’ve ever been and now it is their time to go and make the most of it in the next four weeks.”