Explaining Carlton’s infamous second-half fade-outs

Source : ABC NEWS

There’s a sense of deja vu hovering over Princes Park. It might not be Groundhog Day, but what is happening on the field every week for Carlton seems to be echoing the past.

Take last week for example.

Eight months ago Carlton’s Michael Voss was under pressure heading into his side’s match against Melbourne.

Eight months ago the Blues shot out to an early lead, shutting the Demons out on the scoreboard in the first half.

Eight months ago the Demons stormed back to take the lead in the second half, bringing the crowd and sleeping commentary booth to their collective feet.

That last part is where the similarities end, and where the present diverges from the past. 

Instead of withstanding the Demons storm like last year, Carlton folded. Instead of a victory restoring the faith of the fans, more questions are being asked than answered.

The collapse brought into near focus another one of Carlton’s long recurring nightmares — its inability to run out games. Few sides are as good as Carlton at the start of games in the past two years, and few sides as bad at finishing them.

Football is, quite famously, a game of four quarters. The premiership quarter is traditionally the third. The tortoise often overcomes the hare late.

Finding out how to avoid being run down is now the obsession of everyone at Princes Park and on Lygon Street.

“We haven’t created habits that last over four quarters and there’s no point sooking about it, it’s about getting to work on it now,” star midfielder Sam Walsh said.

The easy and most common diagnosis is either mental weakness or fitness issues. Some even suggest a combination of the two. But before the armchair psychology or physiology lessons begin, it might be worth looking at if there’s something more obvious happening on the field.

So what’s behind Carlton’s second half slumps, and can they fix their trouble before their season floats away?

Locking gains

Before working out what is going wrong with Carlton during those fallow periods after half time, it’s worth working out their core identity. Each football team has a core strategy — a “brand” — that signifies how they go about it on the field. 

Brisbane exploit the kick-mark game with speed, while the Giants rush forward from a rock solid deep defensive base. 

If a team doesn’t have a clear identity, it’s usually cause for concern.

Carlton’s footballing fingerprint is as obvious as any other team in the competition. The core two elements are complimentary, but one takes more prominence publicly.

At the start of the season Michael Voss was clear in describing Carlton’s core strength coming into the season, alongside its biggest need for improvement.

“We’re a strong contested team, but we need to improve in transition.”

Make no mistake about it — the Blues are a team forged by the contest. 

Carlton are shaped in the guise of their leader (Voss) and most feted player (Cripps). The Blues were the third best team for clearance differential last year, and had the second largest centre clearance differential. 

Despite their slow start the Blues still sit in the top five for clearance differential this year as well.

It’s worth noting that this doesn’t necessarily lead to Carlton gaining big margins on the scoreboard directly. The Blues actually conceded more points directly from centre bounce than they scored last year, and they were only narrowly ahead for total stoppage scoring.

Instead winning clearances is more about controlling territory for the Blues. When the game is played on their terms — in their half — Carlton can take the opposition away from the game.

This front-half game style forces opposition sides to fight to even get it in their attacking half. 

Last year Carlton was the fifth-best team at generating forward half intercepts, creating easy opportunities for repeat inside 50s. 

Carlton’s efficiency inside 50 has wavered, but the method requires volume of entries over pinpoint entries.

This pressure can create a pressure cooker for bad opposition decisions — as Demons fans saw plenty of in the first half last week.

It’ll often look a little like this, with Carlton’s upfield defenders closing off the corridor with extra numbers and forcing the ball wide along the boundary line. 

Carlton also overloads the space to make the ground even “skinnier”, reducing the opportunities for other sides.

If the opposition pulls the trigger into the middle with a risky kick, Blues players will be there to capitalise. In the example above, Carlton forced a turnover at midfield before using numbers to generate another entry inside 50.

Carlton’s tall timber also tends to push up to dis-incentivise looping long kicks to packs.

“We’d like him (Jacob Weitering) further up the ground doing what he does best, which is obviously generating (attack) and interrupting opposition’s passages of play,” Voss said last year after Weitering was forced into a deeper assignment.

Carlton’s tall defenders are all mobile, and willing to peel off to support their teammates. Smaller defenders often push up to ball carriers to force the extra disposal.

If the ball goes towards a pack near the boundary, the Blues are more than happy to see a throw in given their ability at the contest.

Carlton often backs this press up with a spare defender filling space deep. 

Often this comes in the form of one of the better ball users — last week Zac Williams and Ollie Florent played this role at times. 

This spare defender both provides safety for Carlton’s tall defenders to peel off their assignment to fly as the third man up with some protection and immediate drive back up the ground.

When this works it’s suffocating, just as the Swans, Tigers and Demons saw in the early stages of their games this year. But its sustainability is perhaps more questionable and is maybe what gets them in trouble from time to time.

A game of four quarters

The core of the Carlton strategy is impressive when it works, but can be maddening for fans to watch when it fails. Part of this comes down to the little, off-ball elements that can be hard to spot from the stands or the TV screen. 

At a contest it can be as little as failing to hold shape, not driving your opponent to the right spot or failing to put yourself in the right position for the next phase.

When defending up the ground it can be losing your position in the press, failing to track leading opponents or even just not communicating with your teammates in coverage. 

Failures in these seemingly small elements can cause a defence to collapse, or for a ball to be waltzed the other way down the ground.

Any role-focused defensive strategy requires buy-in from every player, not just the traditional back six or seven. 

The type of press that Carlton often deploys requires focus off the ball, something that not every player naturally has.

“More importantly when we’re asked to hold and defend behind the ball — and that’s a collective, that’s not back six, that’s a team system — we’re not doing it for long enough,” Voss told the media last week.

Both the numbers and the vision backs this assessment up.

Last year Carlton was the fifth best side across games at generating forward half intercepts.

However, in the third quarter its system fell apart, and teams were able to pick it apart. While the fourth quarter saw the wall re-erected, the Blues struggled to force opposition sides to the boundary for throw-ins in the final stanza — another crucial part of the territory domination strategy.

This year has been even worse across the board, and it was the same case last week against the Demons.

“We’ve kept it in our half (forward half intercepts) 12 times in the first quarter and we only did it nine other times for the rest of the game,” Voss explained after the loss.

The Blues were swift and precise with their defensive movement early in the game. They were equally disjointed and stagnant later on.

The photo above shows an example of how just an effort and positioning based defensive scheme can fall down when communication and effort falters. 

In this example six Carlton players are covering space and just four Demons players, and are in the right spots to force Harvey Langford into a bad kick. However, the Carlton defenders on the edge of the square fall asleep and Caleb Windsor got free to become a target.

Despite the extra space Langford’s kick was quite poor. But due to Carlton’s defensive lapses Windsor had more than enough time to gather the loose ball and start a Melbourne charge towards their 50. 

This Melbourne counter attack was helped by the extra numbers they had up the ground thanks to how many Blues had already committed to their trap.

What should have ended in a relatively easy Carlton intercept and shot at goal ended up as a valuable Demons forward 50 stoppage.

These errors are relatively small and minor in isolation, but have big footballing consequences when repeated. They are the types of things that separate finalists from bottom six sides, and AFL players from VFL players.

Voss was clear after the game that it was a lack of consistent effort that is the Achilles heel for the defence.

“You still have to be able to defend. So if that means it’s five minutes (straight), it’s five minutes. If it means it’s 15 minutes, it’s 15 minutes.”

While Carlton’s press undoubtedly works early in games, its effectiveness appears to wane as the game goes on and pressure builds. While a more conservative defensive approach may cede some of their territory advantage early, there’s little scope for it to get worse than it is now later in games.

Teams have also seemingly cottoned on to how Carlton set up at half time and shifted how they went about transitioning the ball.

After half time opposition sides have started to deploy the width of the ground to stretch the Carlton defence to great effect. Data from Emyln Breese shows that teams attacked Carlton by making the ground bigger, and harder to defend.

Generally, later in matches the game opens up slightly and lane changes are a little more threatening. For Carlton, though, the opposite has held true while opponents find things more open than usual.

A wider effective ground also creates more gaps in the Carlton defence to be attacked in a straight line towards goal — a cascading effect making it harder for Weitering and co to cover for.

Even more concerning is how the Blues’ vaunted contested game fares as the game progresses.

Most football analysts break down stoppages into three broad categories — forward 50, defensive 50 and “mid arc”. 

At either end of the ground these contests tend to be set up with a numbers imbalance and different strategic outlook. But mid-arc contests are good opportunities to see how teams work in relatively even strength.

Early in games Carlton dominates these contests — in both forcing opposition sides into conceding throw-ins or ball ups and winning them when contested.

But as the game progresses the Blues get worse at all facets of the mid-arc stoppage — from forcing fewer contests to winning fewer clearances to scoring fewer points from clearance to conceding more points from lost clearances. 

This may point to sharp mid-game opposition analysis, a lack of variety of concepts or personnel or fatigue from those in the contest.

Regardless of the cause, the symptoms need addressing if Carlton has any chance of finals.

Ball movement blues

It’s also worth noting Carlton’s ball movement changes this year. Lachie Fogarty signalled the change in the preseason towards a system potentially inspired more by one of their arch-rivals.

“We’ve had Josh Fraser (assistant coach) come in from Collingwood — obviously a successful club there, and he’s looking after our ball movement.”

Voss has also talked about moving from a more prescriptive system to allowing players to “play what they see” — a freedom about choices relating to ball movement within a broader framework.

Some of the indicators seem to suggest that this shift is real, with the Blues taking longer kicks, handballing it more often and gaining more than twice the number of handball metres than they did last year. 

While they aren’t moving it by hand at the same rate as the Gold Coast or Collingwood, there is a marked shift in how they move the ball.

Unfortunately, it hasn’t translated to how successfully they’ve moved the ball up the ground. 

Carlton sits in the bottom two at moving the ball from the defensive half to inside 50 and bottom four for moving the ball from defensive 50 to attacking 50. Last year the Blues were in the top half of the competition for both measures.

When they do get the ball in their attacking zone they have struggled to find a target, especially as the game progresses.

Changes often take a while to embed but it appears some of these changes are not bearing fruit yet. They also might be putting their team defence under more pressure given the lack of territory gained from the back.

New systems, especially relating to ball movement, often take time to bed down but the early returns might suggest that Voss hedges back to where they were before in order to better protect the rest of their game.

Despite all the doom and gloom in the media around Voss and the club, the season is still young. Carlton started last season with four straight losses before rallying up the ladder to finish 11th. 

Slow starts to the season will have extra time for redemption with the newly expanded finals series.

However, if Carlton can’t address their structural issues soon any hope of finals will soon disappear. The Good Friday blockbuster with North Melbourne may be the perfect opportunity to deploy any tweaks to their system, with the following three matches against finalists from last season.

If Carlton can’t win at least one of those games changes bigger than mere tweaks may be afoot at Blues HQ.