Coach’s Review Round 9

Norwood Senior Coach Jade Sheedy has reflected with both disappointment and positivity following a devastating four-point loss to Sturt on Monday.

Facing the undefeated Double Blues on their home deck, Norwood enjoyed the better of the play for much of the day and led by 15 points with six minutes to go, but let through three late goals to fall agonisingly short.

Sheedy had mixed emotions after the game, but was happy with how his team approached the contest and took it up to the competition pace-setters.

“It is about the process, and we felt probably after quarter time up until the 22-minute mark of the last quarter, we had controlled a fair bit of the game,” Sheedy said.

“We felt like we planned pretty well for them, and we thought we knew where we could potentially beat them, and for the majority of the day we thought we executed that really well.

“Clearances in the end I think we were -4 with a couple of late ones they got and inside 50s were even for the day, so we gave ourselves enough looks and chances.”

However, Sheedy said his team needed to learn from some errors late in the game that proved costly.

“It was just a couple of fundamental errors that gave them goals as well, which are hard in a tight contest and can be the difference at the end of the day, which it was.

“Being 2-3 goals up in footy is probably the hardest position to be in a lot of the time. The opposition then try and go hard to win it, and the ball lived in our backline for a little bit and the weight of numbers and some errors hurt us late, which resulted in the loss.

“It comes down to composure and moments and just training them and understanding roles a little bit more in tough, high-pressure situations.”

Sheedy also admitted that Norwood were beaten around the ball in the first quarter, but he was pleased with the response from his midfielders thereafter.

“It is always hard when you’re on your heels a lot and playing the game inside your D50 (defensive 50) and not winning the territory battle. It is hard to change that mind-set, and the only way you can do that is to win it around the contest and in the first quarter, we were down in contested possessions and down in clearances.”

“We put it on the mids a bit to challenge that part of the game, which they did strongly. That allowed us the ability to get it into our forwards with a bit more direction, which allowed us to hit the scoreboard.”

A major positive on the day was the performance of forward Jayden Gale in the Reserves, who collected 28 disposals and four goals in a terrific display.

“Jayden has had a clear focus on what he needs to work on going back (to the Reserves), and he’s done that tremendously well in the last couple of weeks.”

“He had a really strong game on the weekend and ended up with high 20s (disposals) and four goals, which is good to keep putting pressure on the players above.”

With the mid-season bye this weekend, Sheedy will take the chance to reflect on the first half of the season and some areas that need improvement.

“Clearly, it’s not been great from a win-loss record, which we are all judged on, but I think progression throughout the year and getting the list together more consistently through more games has been better.”

“It is important for Lowey (Baynen Lowe), Tom Donnelly and Luke Surman and the like to get consistent games into them, so if we can stay healthy and keep building on that, we’ll really front up for our best footy in the back end and we can really challenge any side on our day.”

“We have probably finessed with the ball a little bit too early in games when the heat’s on. We probably need to play a little bit more territory and surge footy and get the ball in our forward half, and then I think off the back of that, your natural game prevails.”

“Then other little areas arise, like holding on in tight games or trying to win in tight games, and that will be the next part of our process moving forward, but also keeping on doing what we do really well.”

Sheedy said the bye has come at a good time for his group and is an opportunity for the players to take a break before tackling the second half of the season.

“This week the playing group get a week off. The players need a mental and physical freshen up, and they’ll have a small little program to make sure we keep moving, and then we roll into a Sunday game against South Adelaide (June 22 at Coopers Stadium), which gives us four really good sessions again.

“I think one thing we’ve done really consistently over the last four or five weeks to get our game back up is that we’ve trained really hard, and we’ll continue to train really hard, and that gives us the best preparation to play a competitive brand of footy.”

Watch Jade Sheedy’s full interview here: