Brad Johnson's Weaknesses and Leaders 'Setting the Tone'

by Pembleton

Johnno is always terrible at doing the less rewarded type work. I will be kind though and suggest that it's merely because he is so focussed on creating goal scoring chances, rather than talking about it in terms of 'selfishness', although i do believe that Johnno is a part of the reason why the team as a whole falls into selfish and lazy habits much more often than is acceptable. Here are the main areas of Johnson's game that i am talking about...

He often abandons a contest to get into space by himself. The upside is that if we win the contest johnno is in a dangerous position by himself, the downside is we are much less likely to win the contest because we are now outnumbered.

He doesn't work very hard to prevent his opponent from being a handball/kick receive option. the upside is that Johnno is dangerous near goals and this means he stays in that area more, the downside is that his opponent running free can enable the opposition to easily sweep the ball forward.

He will almost never punch when out of position in a marking contest. The upside is when he pulls down the mark himself, the downside is that what should have at least become a ground level contest often turns into a mark to the opposition.

He is very blinkered around goals. He will take the shot from the boundary line even when he has time to check what other options are available. The upside is that he is willing to take a lot of responsibility, the downside is that we sometimes miss out on creating a better percentage shot.

In the Carlton game, there were plenty of examples of the downsides i have listed. In itself, i think you can tolerate the way Johnno plays because it is part of a package that also makes him one of the very best forwards in the league. The problem is that johnno is a lot more to this team than just a superstar forward. Micky O has a lot of similar traits, but the difference is he plays in a team that has a leadership group that as a whole sets a very different tone. In our case, Johnno is probably the main 'tone setter' in the team, not a fringe 'icing on the cake' type. He is the Captain of the club, and has only West as a peer (Darce and Grant not included due to mitigating circumstances) in terms of 'ownership' of the team.

Imagine you are a player trying to do your bit for the club, and the main man at the club, the captain and reigning best and fairest and AA captain, decides to take a low percentage shot from the boundary rather than kick it to you, or peels away looking for an easy kick, leaving you outnumbered in a contest, or tries to take a mark from behind instead of punching it in your direction, or easily lets his opponent get into space whilst you are doing your best to hold the ball inside 50. It would be very hard not to soak in the message all of that stuff sends about how to play. You will always have guys like Cross and Boyd who just automatically do all the little team oriented things you could hope for, but there is a reason that besides the guys that are naturally like that, we are a selfish, easily put off from doing the hard work type of team, whilst some other clubs, like Sydney West Coast and Brisbane seem to have a production line of team oriented work-a-holics. To me it is obvious that our issues stem from leadership problems. I am not merely blaming our 'leaders', because i think it is just one of those things that has developed with the evolution of the team. It just happens that injury attrition and the Kleiman years of drafting have meant that we have very few guys in the right stage of their careers to lay the kind of positive imprint on the team that other leadership groups in the league are able to.

If anyone is game enough to watch the third quarter again, you will see two chances early on that our players have to handpass to a better positioned teammate inside 50, and both times the ball holder decides to take a shot themselves. Interestingly enough, the would be receiver in the first instance is the ball holder in the second instance. These things are infectious, and you can guarantee that a player is less likely to give away a goal scoring chance if they have just been snubbed themselves. On another occasion inside 50 you will see no less than three players sprint away from a ground level contest in an attempt to get a handball receive and shot at goal. The one player they left behind to scrap for the ball was unable to get it out to them. They are just a couple of examples from one game and prove nothing by themselves, but i think they are indicative of a bigger trend that can be traced back to the tone set by the leaders at the club (and johnno is THE leader).

Evidence supporting the importance of the leadership group in how team oriented a side is can be seen by looking at our sides of the late 90's, when Wynd, Libba and Romero were the tone setters. Wynd would always put himself in the defensie 50 'hole' no matter who was charging towards his back, and even more noteworthy, he would always get his knees dirty battling alongside his midfielders on ground level, which for a ruckman is very rare. If your 200cm 105kg captain and ruckman with dodgy knees is throwing himself into the contest at ground level, you know for sure that no excuse for not doing likewise will be acceptable. I won't give desriptions for the others, because i am sure you get the idea of what i am saying by now.

I hope the Eade is working on this problem behind the scenes, but there is probably not a lot that can be done. Johnno is an absolute superstar and it would probably be unwise to try and tamper with his style at this stage in his career. The coach himself has a large role to play in setting the tone for the way the team plays, but Rocket says all the right things about what should form the basis of the way we play, so i don't think he is at fault. This is just something that changes with the evolution of the list. Amongst our next generation of leaders we have Cross Hahn Harris and Boyd who are all naturals at 'team oriented work' (for lack of a better term), so things are likely to start turning in the right direction reasonably soon.