When speaking at an AFL coaching conference in Adelaide earlier in the year, senior coaches such as Neil Craig and Mark Williams were in agreement that a team’s ultimate success may lie with their willingness to take risks.
That is, teams might be more inclined to play on and players possessing an 'x-factor' - the ability to make something out of nothing - could be the difference between success and failure.
While predicting a football trend can be an inexact science, Neeld pointed to the recent AFL tendency to emulate the styles of winning teams.
And while he is not certain that Geelong’s attacking game-plan will prevail again this season, he does believe the teams that will go deep into September will share a commonality: a sound defensive structure.
It is in breaking down these almost impenetrable stopping lines that AFL coaches and teams will turn to flair and the ability to create opportunities in front of goal.
“St Kilda’s defensive work was absolutely outstanding last season, although keep in mind they’re not the premiership team,” Neeld told afl.com.au.
“Hawthorn was the premiership team [in 2008] and they had an outstanding defensive zone.
“It has become evident over the last two years that … the offensive strategies are critical.
“I would suggest after watching three weeks of NAB Cup games that the offensive strategies are becoming more and more important and people are putting more and more time into them because, currently in AFL football, there are a number of teams that have developed an extremely good defensive system.”
Neeld believes clubs, aware of the stiff defensive pressure they are likely to face, will dedicate more than the usual amount of time to their attacking plays over the summer months.
“We now have sophisticated defensive systems that know what they’re doing in all parts of the ground, so there’s a lot more to it than just win it and kick it forward.
“I don’t know whether that will be obvious to everybody that watches the game, but internally at football clubs and when coaches go and watch other teams … you can tell there’s more time being put into the manner in which the ball is to be moved.”
As for the season ahead, it is likely to be a case of wait and see.
“If the defensive systems are still ruling the roost, the average punter might say ‘well, we’re not attacking enough’,” Neeld said.
“Well, maybe [their sides] are but they just can’t beat the defensive systems.”
Neeld said the Pies had tinkered with their game plan over the summer but knew they didn’t need to make wholesale changes.
“There’s always modifications made to plans and in reality there’s always modifications made to the way each individual player goes about it as well,” he said.
“Depending on how close you think you are to No.1 depends on how much tinkering goes into the game plan.
“We finished fourth [and] in the preliminary final we were soundly beaten by Geelong so, sure we’ve done an analysis of that match as well as all the other matches that we’ve had
"There are some things that we believe we have to change slightly to be more competitive against Geelong, St Kilda, Bulldogs … the teams that finished up the top last year”.
