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Understanding the Western Bulldogs' defensive 'smallball' system

Roar Rookie
4th April, 2016
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Jason Johannisen. (AAP Image/Joe Castro)
Roar Rookie
4th April, 2016
26
1355 Reads

The Western Bulldogs’ start to the 2016 season has been nothing short of impressive. In conceding only 74 points so far on the season, the second-least through two games since WWII, the Dogs have impressed media analysts and the average pundit alike with their defensive cohesion and solidity.

As impressive as all this is, however, analysing how they’ve achieved it is interesting enough to look at.

In the NBA, the latest and greatest buzzword to describe the trend of basketball tactics is ‘smallball’. This is a tactical trend led by the Golden State Warriors to run with line-ups that are shorter and more mobile than their direct opponents.

Despite forgoing a height advantage, the team utilises a advantages gained in mobility, run and spread. While we’re not too sure how often Luke Beveridge has watched Stephen Curry knock down a three, there is no doubt that the similar applied logic of smallball has found its way to the Whitten Oval.

The players that the Western Bulldogs rotates through its defensive unit includes Marcus Adams, Easton Wood, Dale Morris, Matthew Boyd, Robert Murphy, Shane Biggs, Jason Johannisen and Matt Suckling.

This unit is very short, with only one player who can be considered a key defender, Marcus Adams, with the rest of the team being medium or running defenders. Using this defensive unit in a conventional defensive system, such as manning up the forwards, might see the team give up height in marking contests and lose one-on-one contests.

While this happens, as the Dogs ranked among the league’s lowest in defending marking contests last year, the defensive scheme aims to minimise the occurrence of these outcomes where they are disadvantages and maximise the instances of advantageous situations that are gained from such a mobile, attacking defensive unit.

Firstly, one cannot look at defence and offence in isolation. When this defensive system was first implemented last year, it was done so as much to benefit from the offensive firepower out of defence as it was to implement a strong defensive system.

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While that element is still true today, and its fast, possession-dominant style of attack has had it been called ‘sexy’, it is interesting to analyse how such an offensively-minded defence has been so effectively defensively this season.

The Dogs play a zonal defensive system that presses high up the ground and attempts to lock the ball in their own forward half. This means that players defend certain areas of the ground rather than direct opponents more often than most clubs in the AFL.

To implement this system successfully, the Dogs have recruited and selected players who are mobile endurance-wise and able to play on both small and tall defenders, the likes of Easton Wood and Marcus Adams slotting in perfectly in a system like this.

The reason that this smallball zonal defensive system seems to have worked so devastatingly is that Luke Beveridge seems to have successfully implemented a scheme where the advantages of this type of team selection seem to have outweighed the negatives.

While helped by the narrow flanks of Etihad Stadium where the Dogs play the majority of their games, the Dogs have used their defensive unit to the fullest of their strengths. In selecting endurance athletes in the defensive half, a zone can be well implemented, both in covering territory and forcing pressure and pressing to occur up the ground.

Smaller players are also generally are more skilled below the knees when the ball hits the deck, helping force turnovers and prevent the continuation of opposition possession. Furthermore, this defensive unit has the pace to outnumber forwards at the contest.

All of this helps force opposition forward thrusts to be lower quality, or to prevent opposition forward thrusts to even occur through the forcing of turnovers. For example, both Fremantle and St Kilda attempted multiple times to switch the play across the ground to find an opening, and often failed. This occurred because not only were there limited holes in the Dogs’ zone, but they were switching the play closer to their own goals than they would usually otherwise do.

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This meant that when turnovers occurred, they were shallower and more destructive than usual.

This system still creates disadvantages, such as running goals out the back of the zone or there being plenty one-on-one marking contests to defend. However this seems to be outweighed by the advantages of smaller players in this defensive system.

Lastly, the recruitment of Marcus Adams has many of the weaknesses of the system, for example his 13 intercept possessions against the Saints ending many of their attempts on goal.

The Dogs’ smallball defence has been the league leader this year though a strong zonal system, ability to force turnovers through pressure, pressing and winning more ground balls, taking advantage of a mobile defensive unit.

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