To J.Brown: Going forward, don't go back
 
Peter Ryan, AFL Record Writer: Jonathan Brown has once again been the victim of his own courage. North Melbourne's Levi Greenwood showed similar courage yesterday as did a bunch of St Kilda players on Saturday night running into packs. When does courage become stupid rather than smart?
 
Callum Twomey, AFL Record Writer: When it costs your team rather than aids it. We talk about setting standards but it doesn't help a young team like Brisbane to have its captain on the sidelines again after an act of courage that wasn't really necessary. I remember speaking to Adelaide's Patrick Dangerfield last year about the same thing after he had copped some heavy hits, and he said he realised he needed to "step back" sometimes and that you can be part of the play without always having to be under the packs. It's the same philosophy Brown could, and should, take.
 
Michael Lovett, AFL Record Writer: I agree with Callum. I think it's time Brown thought about the team, instead of running head-first into packs. I'm not sure he was ever going to take that mark yesterday given there were two Geelong defenders running at him, plus Mitch Clark. Perhaps by getting front and square to the odd contest, Brown might serve his team better and save himself from further punishment.
 
Nick Bowen, AFL Record Writer: It's such a fine line. In Greenwood's case, North simply couldn't afford to take a backward step at the start of yesterday's game. Club pride was on the line and his courage helped set the example for the rest of the team. Even if he'd been cleaned up, I'm sure North Melbourne coach Brad Scott would have liked what he saw. In Brown's case, he seemed to be invincible for so long. Much like Wayne Carey he used to run back with the flight of the ball every other week and emerged with the ball - leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. His recent injuries just highlight what a brutal game the AFL is.
 
Ryan: One factor to remember with Brown is that his actions are inspirational. As a teaching tool for what is required to become a great of the game, he shows week after week what is required. There are times when fearlessness is required and teammates who are called back in need to go but the action needs to be backed up with technique. In Brown's case I think football people are concerned for his welfare. No-one who plays the game is without courage. None should be without fear either. At this point in his career Brown needs to become like Dennis Lillee who became a smart, swing bowler late in his career rather than a tearaway quick.
 
Lovett: It's interesting that Carey was never cleaned up in his attempts to mark the ball running with the flight. Just shows how great he was, not that Brown is any lesser player for what he did yesterday. I recall Brown taking a great mark at the 'G many years ago hurtling backwards with the flight of the ball. I think his mum admonished him and told him never to do it again!

Collins: Wasn't the Duck always running back into the paddock that had been created for him? Only kidding. Carey and Brown are as courageous as each other.
 
Ryan: Brown's mum is probably the only one that could admonish him. Gavin Brown was too courageous for his own good early in his career. Maybe it's the surname. Campbell Brown. Fraser Brown. Mal Brown. Is that why our own Ashley Browne has an 'e' on the end of his surname?
 
Ben Collins, AFL Record Writer: You're a lot better on the field than off it, so Brown needs to temper his approach slightly.
 
Shutting players down
 
Ryan: St Kilda's Leigh Montagna had 17 touches in the first quarter. Essendon's David Zaharakis had 20 touches in the second half. Fremantle's Nathan Fyfe had 31 touches, North's Jack Ziebell 41 touches. Why can't coaches put the clamp on players who are running riot?
 
Twomey: I would assume that every time a player is moved as a reaction - i.e. 'Let's move Scott Selwood from Nick Dal Santo to Leigh Montagna' - it offsets everything else and can have a bit of a ripple effect for the rest of the midfield set-ups. That's not to say that coaches can't think on their feet as we saw very early on Friday night as Essendon chose to move Michael Hurley forward when it realised it was in desperate need of a target. But maybe Adelaide, with two players down with injury already, just didn't have anyone capable of stopping Zaharakis. For what it's worth, Zaharakis has been brilliant the past six weeks. People talk of Dyson Heppell winning the best and fairest, but I'd say Zaharakis would be leading the count right now.
 
Bowen: Of those guys you mention, Pete, only one has regularly come in for tags - Montagna. If you tag Ziebell, you've got to leave Daniel Wells or Andrew Swallow free, which is a big call. Similarly, teams have probably gone to tag guys like Watson and Stanton before Zaharakis. Teams can't tag everyone. But if JZ and DZ keep up their current form they can expect to have a regular shadow before too long.
 
Twomey: 'JZ and DZ'. Are they teaming up to produce a rap album, Nick?
 
Ryan: With DJ Shadow perhaps by the sound of things.
 
Bowen: Yep. I'm going to produce it. Not surprisingly, JZ will be on lead vocals, DZ on support and the turntable. They're fairly raw at the moment but developing their 'sound' all the time. Not sure what Mike Brady will make of it though.
 
Collins: Malcolm Blight often says a coach should let the scoreboard dictate his next move. In other words, if an opposition player has it on a string but you're leading by 40 points, how much damage is he actually doing? And why would you change the status quo. As always, it's not about the number of possessions, it's the quality.
 
Ryan: That's true but surely sometimes a coach needs to be proactive, gaining a sense of the shift in the game to stop the opposition building confidence and momentum and scoreboard pressure. The problem for Craig was that the Crows were creating opportunities but not taking them so he had a dilemma. Keep going and hope some goals come or make a move in the middle. Ross Lyon said he clamped down on Andrew Gaff when he was threatening in the third quarter. Montagna was actually sent to the Eagles' playmaker Shannon Hurn. That was a great move by Lyon, making one of their more creative players responsible to one of his more dangerous players.
 
Lovett: Call me old fashioned, but I thought the first thing you did when a team got on a roll was play man-on-man footy. Everyone be accountable for a man and as Blighty says, the scoreboard will look after itself.
 
Ryan: Yep, sometimes you just have to put the hard tag on the player running hot and hope another doesn't spit out as a result. It's tough though because you are right Nick. You can't apply too many hard tags. Responsibility for the most dangerous player is everyone's responsibility, which comes down to teamwork and communication on the ground. It is not easy, particularly if you are down on rotations.
 
A candle in the wind or a six-goal wind
 
Ryan: We rarely see wind affecting games these days as it did in Cairns. What did you think about watching the game as a hark back to the old days?
 
Twomey: It was like local footy. Everyone close to the action, a good atmosphere and a wind that dictated how the game was played. What can you do about it other than build a big grandstand? Elton John once said he knew he had let his celebrity go to his head when he complained at a hotel he was staying at that the concierge "had to do something about the wind" outside his hotel room. Professional footballers should be able to adapt to the conditions.
 
Collins: Are players so pampered these days in superb stadiums that block out much of the wind or don't have any wind (i.e. Etihad Stadium) that they can't adapt to windy conditions? An essay could be written just on the art of playing in the wind. It brings with it a number of different elements in relation to disposal, positioning, etc. We all did it as kids. I can recall a teammate kicking the ball only to watch it blow back over his head. He obviously didn't go on to play in the AFL.
 
Ryan: Funny, I was at the MCG with no idea about the conditions in Cairns so it was interesting hearing the updates and seeing the swings in scores on the scoreboard. People were having a good chuckle at what appeared to be Richmond's woes. Windy days were the worst to play in. The potential to be distracted was high.
 
Bowen: I agree, Benny. Anything that tests a player's skill can't be a bad thing. We don't want every game to be played in the same conditions surely, do we? You only have to look at some of the punch shots guys played at the British Open over the weekend to see how some can rise to the challenge when the weather turns feral. Then again, Rory McIlroy had a whinge about copping the worst of the weather. Boo hoo, Rory.
 
Ryan: Not sure they're pampered but teams hate the uncontrollable and the wind definitely adds to the uncertainty. Players want to kick long but it is not necessarily efficient. Horses hate the wind. Did you know that? I reckon footballers hate it too. And Rory, he hates losing.
 
Collins: Who cares if horses hate the wind? You're sounding like a nag yourself Pete with comments like 'teams hate the uncontrollable'. Great teams expect adversity and stare it down.
 
Ryan: Who cares? Horses.
 
Bowen: Now, now, you two. Cal, sounds like Benny and Pete need to go off and listen to Dazza Braithwaite's Horses. They'll go in ready to kill each other and come out holding hands.
 
Bumping in and bumping out
 
Ryan: Why do players persist with bumping when they should tackle?
 
Bowen: Pete, if someone can tell me what's going on in their noggins I'd be grateful. In yesterday's North-Dogs game, Ben Hudson tried to bump Drew Petrie when he could have tackled and cost his team a goal. Tom Williams was another culprit. This does my head in on two fronts. One, if you don't tackle and you miss with your bump, or the player bounces off you, the opposition still has the pill and can hurt you. Two, if you bump and hit the bloke high you're guaranteed a holiday. Sheer stupidity on both levels.
 
Collins: Players who bump rather than tackle these days have made the wrong decision. It's a double-whammy: there's the risk of heavy suspension, and you could be doing yourself and your team out of a free kick for holding the ball. Come on boys, use your heads, not your hips and shoulders.
 
Twomey: Matty Boyd's bump on Andrew Swallow was a nice one in yesterday's game as well. Fair, solid and was well executed.
 
Ryan: I think you are right about taking the bump from your repertoire but Dermott Brereton's bump on Paul Vander Haar was a game changer, Mark Ricciutto's on Dean Kemp, Mark Yeates' on Brereton are part of football folklore hence people mourning its passing.
 
Bowen: Yes, Peter. But Brereton would get six weeks for that now. Others not public enemies so may have copped lesser whacks, but would have been whacked nonetheless. You're reminding me of Don Scott who have Derm best on ground in that game simply for flattening Vander Haar and Daisy Williams.
 
Collins: Vander was concussed and 'from memory' was later reported and got off due to being scatterbrained at the time. Dermie's was a great bump in that era but like Nick said he'd get six (weeks) now. As for Yeates, off-the-ball hits, regardless of whether they are legitimate bumps, are never legal. Not sad to see that out of the game.
 
A pressing issue
 
Ryan: I had to laugh yesterday when I heard a radio commentator say that Geelong was 'falling back into their press'. We hear the phrase press all the time but can anyone explain the forward press, and it is much different to what old-timers used to call 'setting up the wall'?
 
Twomey: Good call, Pete. I swear I was doing the forward press when I was playing under-12s at the Caulfield Bears and my coach use to yell out to us to "set up the wall". Clearly it's more evolved and intricate than that, but it does seem to be a part of footy vernacular accepted rather than necessarily dissected.
 
Bowen: At the risk of being overly simplistic, I think it's similar with two differences - players are positioned further up the ground with the press and it's a more rigid system applied from go to whoa rather than when the coach decides to push the panic button.
 
Ryan: Good point, Nick, but we're funny how we reinvent football using different terms. Sure players are pushing up more and leaving space behind them, which is always uncomfortable for defenders. There are partial presses and fake presses and full presses but not really sure what it means except for closing down space in certain areas and opening it up in others. Basic principle applies, get it forward and keep it there until you kick a goal. Fitness improvements and rotations are allowing more numbers to reach certain positions more quickly for longer, which is why conditioning is the next important advantage to separate teams.
 
Collins: If you don't have a general idea of what the press is, and what's more, if you reckon it's like the old-fashioned wall, you shouldn't be contributing to this forum. The wall was a fairly stationary formation across your forward 50-60 and perhaps as far back as the wing. My basic understanding of the press is that it's more in-your-face to the ball-carrier like a press in basketball (from where the term has obviously been derived), where you try to get a turnover in your forward half rather than let the point guard dribble unmolested up the court into three-point territory. Actually, I'll stop right there - maybe I shouldn't be contributing to this forum any longer myself.
 
Ryan: Don't press me on that last sentence. We know what it is but we don't really understand the mechanics, why some teams are better at implementing it than others and why you hardly see it in some games and it's all over other contests. It does take a lot of coordination to work.
 
Bowen: Cal, give me forward press over structures any day. Everyone in footy seems to utter that like it's got mythical qualities.
 
Twomey: I was watching that TV show Megastructures last night and all I could think of was post-match interviews with players spitting out lines of structures and systems. Ruined the program.
 
Ryan: A structure, for what it's worth, is like a field setting before a ball in cricket. In football terms those structures are put in place at a stop play, a stoppage or a kick in. Mark Harvey said yesterday that Sydney Swans games have 20 per cent dead time so they had to get those structures right. If you want to see structures then watch what is happening away from the ball, where players are positioning in dead time.
 
The bounce
 
Ryan: By the way, interesting to note yesterday that time keeps going when there is a bad bounce or throw in, with three seconds elapsing at the start of the last in Sydney v Fremantle game. Imagine if a game is tight with 10 seconds to go and the ball up costs a team three seconds. Hate to be the ump. I'd throw it up.
 
Lovett: 'Razor' Ray Chamberlain just ran the show at the SCG yesterday. The other two umpires tried to 'out-Razor' the little fella and made some big calls which the fans didn't like. The 50m penalty against Tadhg Kennelly which took the ball from one end to the other at a crucial time and then the throw call. Boy those Sydney Swans fans vented their spleen at the end! Got to love it when BT calls a game involving Razor Ray though.
 
Ryan: Goanna's Razor's Edge was written 20 years too early. It was fascinating television. BT calling a game is brilliant. Anyone who can incorporate Lady Gaga into the flow of commentary has my vote. I'd like to see the umps ball it up at critical times like when the game is tight and there is not much time left.
 
Bazza
 
Twomey: Barry Hall has now kicked 100 goals with three different clubs. He now has 665 goals in 261 matches (average 2.54 goals). Where does he rank among the greats?
 
Bowen: Barry Hall has been a fantastic player but is not a champion in the ilk of Carey, Brown, Nick Riewoldt, even Warren Tredrea. Although he monstered North's Luke Delaney yesterday arvo, I don't think he was an elite contested mark like these other blokes.
 
Ryan: Barry Hall's longevity and ability to fit into clubs and perform well has been remarkable. He must have some sort of personality. I reckon your assessment is right Nick but Hall remains underrated in many ways. He can dominate a forward line like few before him and he has played in the tightest defensive era we've seen.
 
Carlton shaky, St Kilda storming
 
Lovett: The top four and top eight is more open than ever after yesterday's results. What are your thoughts after the weekend's games? How many wins will get you a top four and top eight spot?
 
Twomey: Big game for Carlton this week against the Bombers. The Bombers have beaten the Blues six of their past seven meetings and are in some form, but if Carlton can get up, and Fremantle can beat West Coast in the local derby, a top four spot would almost be assured for Brett Ratten's side. For the top eight, 11 should be enough I think.
 
Bowen: The last spot in the top four looks like fought out between Carlton and West Coast. I reckon the Blues have to win at least another four games, to take them to 58 points, but may need to win five. The Eagles are half a game behind them at the moment and have got two tough games coming up, against Fremantle and the Bulldogs at Etihad. But after that they've got a relatively easy run in, with Richmond (home), Melbourne (away), Essendon (home), Lions (away) and Crows (home). As for the eight, who knows? The fact teams 7-10 all have had a draw adds an extra element. I think 11 1/2 wins may just be enough for a team to sneak in.
 
Ryan: West Coast are a lock for top four with their run. I reckon the battle is between Carlton and Hawthorn. They have similar runs home but the Hawks have a game up their sleeve. If Carlton can't beat Hawthorn in round 22 they don't deserve to finish top four anyway because they would not have beaten a top four team, despite getting close on a couple of occasions. Imagine the pressure on the Blues playing St Kilda (or Essendon) in a cut throat final week one of the finals. Great win from Fremantle yesterday keeps them in the mix. They play the contenders (Hawthorn, Carlton, West Coast, Collingwood) so will keep climbing if they keep winning. Still need 11 and a half wins to make the eight. I'm bullish about the Saints with Sydney the team most vulnerable now. How costly must the last minutes of the first two rounds seem to St Kilda now?

The views in this article are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the AFL or its clubs