Eagle Review v Giants: Pressed them into Orange Juice
After a troublingly long time of doing everything in our power to not play our gameplan, last week and this week we’ve shown just how effective it can be. This was a game where you could see that every player was giving 120% and it’s not too surprising that it was enough to get us our 3rd win for the season against the orange team.
Our Attack:
| ** ** | Chain to Score | D50 to F50 | D50 to Score | Def Half to F50 | Def Half to Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eagles | 20.4 | 13.9 | 5.6 | 17.3 | 5.8 |
| Eagles’ 2026 Ave | 19.5 | 18.8 | 8.8 | 27.1 | 12.1 |
| 2026 League Ave | 22.2 | 23.8 | 10.3 | 32.5 | 13.8 |
| Surprisingly, our transition numbers in attack were pretty poor this week, but I do have an explanation. This game was HOT. Trying to move the ball for both teams was extremely tough (as we’ll see below). We scored 8 points from back half, but 55 points from front half, and 25 points from centre bounce. So with that in mind, we’re writing off all back half transition and focusing on Chain to Score, which at 20.4%, is a pretty good effort in such a high pressure game. Outside of transition, we had 50 inside 50s, good, above our average, but not great (pressure a factor once again). From them, we had an inside 50 efficiency of 46% which is just about the cusp between bad and good, and 11 marks inside 50 which is pretty good. We also locked it in our front half for 54.1% of the game which is amazing. |
Overall it’s kind of a strange game to rate the attack on its own, but I think it was good despite having some things to improve.
Our Defence:
| ** ** | Chain to Score | D50 to F50 | D50 to Score | Def Half to F50 | Def Half to Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Giants | 18.9 | 14.6 | 2.4 | 22.2 | 6.3 |
| Giants Ave | 21.5 | 28.0 | 12.3 | 34.8 | 14.5 |
| 2026 League Ave | 22.2 | 23.8 | 10.3 | 32.5 | 13.8 |
Take a good look at the best defensive transition numbers you will ever see. I checked back and these numbers for GWS are overall worse than our numbers against the Swans this year. That’s how good our ground defence was. Not only did we stifle their ball movement with our pressure, we forced their disposal efficiency through the floor. Down 7.9%pp on their average at an abysmal 65.4%. All of this resulted in them recording 45 inside 50s (16 of them coming in the first quarter), and conceding an inside 50 efficiency of 46.7% (44.8% after quarter time). Both great metrics. Our pressure was phenomenally good, but I’ll touch more on that later.
Ridiculously good!
Our Midfield:
| ** ** | CBA | CC | CC/CBA |
|---|---|---|---|
| Williams | 24 | 3 | 0.13 |
| Callaghan | 23 | 3 | 0.13 |
| Reid | 21 | 4 | 0.19 |
| Kelly | 20 | 4 | 0.20 |
| Oliver | 20 | 2 | 0.10 |
| Yeo | 19 | 0 | 0.00 |
| Briggs | 19 | 3 | 0.16 |
| Daniels | 13 | 1 | 0.08 |
| Ash | 12 | 0 | 0.00 |
| Duursma | 11 | 0 | 0.00 |
| Hough | 7 | 1 | 0.14 |
| Coniglio | 7 | 0 | 0.00 |
| Riccardi | 7 | 0 | 0.00 |
| Greene | 3 | 0 | 0.00 |
| Jilliams | 2 | 0 | 0.00 |
So many players with 0 centre clearances this week because Reid and Kelly were stealing all of them for themselves. They were the best on the ground in terms of ratio, but Williams also put in a great effort of his own. Those three in particular made sure we won centre clearances 13-12, but unfortunately stoppage clearances were lost 24-27 and contested possessions were lost 136-142. Obviously not ideal, but close enough to be considered a draw in my opinion. The only worrying stat was losing ground ball gets 87-108. That is bad, but we’ll see that our defence made up for that somewhat.
| ** ** | CBA | Tackles | Pressure Acts | CBA | Tackles | Pressure Acts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Williams | 24 | 9 | 15 | Callaghan | 23 | 7 | 17 |
| Reid | 21 | 8 | 23 | Oliver | 20 | 8 | 14 |
| Kelly | 20 | 7 | 23 | Briggs | 19 | 7 | 14 |
| Yeo | 19 | 4 | 16 | Daniels | 13 | 2 | 12 |
| Duursma | 11 | 5 | 25 | Ash | 12 | 1 | 10 |
| Hough | 7 | 3 | 10 | Coniglio | 7 | 0 | 8 |
| 102 | 36 | 112 | 94 | 25 | 75 |
Pressure was out of this world. Yes we have more CBAs in this group of six, but if you remove Hough, even 5v6 we destroyed them. Plus 8 tackles and 27 pressure acts is elite. Like he had an extra Reid running around on defence.
I rate pressure super highly, so I think this was a good to great performance from the mids.
So where did we win? PRESSURE
If you’ll allow me a pat on the back, I said last week that with better disposal efficiency, we would’ve won. Well, we had an insane disposal efficiency of 74.7% this week and won. Alright, self-congratulations over because we all know that wasn’t the main reason we won this week (but it’s worth pointing out).
Alright so pressure. I mentioned it in all three aspects of our game this week because it was so crucial to how this game played out. That was one of the hottest games I have ever seen. We were awesome with our tackling, laying a massive 82 of them. In return, GWS also laid 78 tackles. At 160 combined tackles, you’re creeping up towards all time territory (192 being the start of the top 20).
But it wasn’t just tackling. We also blitzed them in pressure acts 293-235. To dive deeper into that stat for people who might not know, a pressure act is essentially any act that restricts their opponent from disposing of the footy in the way they’d prefer (think corralling, chasing, or simply being in the way). Winning by 58 is massive. Duursma led all comers on the ground with 25 pressure acts, so from the perspective of GWS, it felt like they were playing against 18 plus an extra two Wuurms when they were trying to move the ball forward.
Following on from pressure acts is the oft misunderstood pressure rating. We finished the match with a pressure rating of 204. That’s extremely good for a quarter. Getting it for an entire game is ludicrous. To demystify the pressure rating a little, it measures the average disposal of the opposition. A rating of 204 indicates that on average, for every single GWS disposal they had an Eagle running at him trying and make contact. That’s why GWS’s disposal efficiency was a horrendous 65.4% they rarely had a chance to think with ball in hand. But not only that, Mini mentioned in his presser that at one point in the last quarter we managed a pressure rating of over 300 for a ten minute patch. I wouldn’t be surprised if that is the best ever recorded. The maximum possible pressure rating is 375 and that would mean that every disposal was made whilst being tackled. To break the 300 barrier is an unbelievable effort. Edit: Just found out today that our forward half pressure rating was 202 for the match and was the 2nd highest ever recorded. Our pressure in the final quarter? 232. Complete and utter madness and the 6th highest rated quarter in our club’s history.
Finishing on a less flashy but still important note, we restricted GWS to only 57 marks this game. That’s 31 marks below their average and shows that our defensive work wasn’t just raw effort and pressure, it was also structural, preventing them from kicking to anything that wasn’t a contest. Mini has mentioned that stopping uncontested marks is a key goal of our game plan, but it’s something that we’ve only really managed to pull off in the Kangaroos game and this one. With the new stand rule essentially allowing free transition on a mark, I think this area of our game is crucial to get right.
The BOG Candidates:
Not sure I even need to write anything for these next two. Everyone saw how good they were.
Harley Reid: Career best game? The lad had 34 touches, 19 contested, 10 clearances, 12 inside 50s, 2 goals, 9 score involvements, and 8 tackles. The fact that I hesitate to call it his best is a testament to just how good he is. He had PBs for disposals, clearances, and inside 50s, and tackles. 14 touches and 2 goals in the second to swing the game in our favour and 6 tackles in the last to make sure we won (If I ever hear that Harls is lazy on defence again, I’ll tear my hair out). Easily BOG for me, but credit to the next guy.
Bailey Williams: Big Bailey Williams pulled off a career best performance for sure, and only 6 six weeks after his last career best game against the Cats. 16 disposals with 11 contested, 7 clearances, 2 goals, 7 score involvements, and 9 tackles. But not only that, he put on a genuine clinic in the ruck with 41 hitouts with 7 hitouts to advantage. That number feels low, but I think it’s probably because he took the ball directly out of the ruck contest whenever he pleased. This was an AA ruck calibre performance.
The Not as Good as Harls and Bailey but Would've Been Close to BOG Any Other Week Candidates:
Tim Kelly: 24 touches of the pill, 10 of them contested, 6 clearances, for 7 score involvements. For that alone it’d be a great performance, but pleasingly he also had 23 pressure acts and 7 tackles. He’s been ramping up on his defensive efforts in recent weeks and it makes him such a complete player.
Reuben Ginbey: Almost played a tagging role on Cadman rather than his usual defensive wall role. When you see him with 7 intercept possessions, 2 intercept marks, 5 spoils and only 1 defensive one on one win from 1 contest, you might think he had a bad game (by his godly standards, I mean), but his work on Cadman was world class. He kept Cadman to only 5 touches for the match, and during the third quarter while Ginbey was resting, GWS kicked 5 of their 10 goals for the match. If it was anyone else, I’d claim coincidence, but Ginbey seriously makes us look so much better that maybe he was the difference.
Brady Hough: Houghy, baby. He’s back! He only had 6 touches, Toxic. What are you on about? Well, his work on Callaghan was elite, keeping him to his lowest disposal tally (19) in 2 years. Those touches were at only 63.2% and he only gained 288m for the match. For reference: Callaghan has been averaging 29.1 disposals and 517.2m gained. Houghy murdered him.
Milan Murdock: Speaking of tagging roles. Murdock was also unbelievable. He was tasked with manning Whitfield and wore him inside out, keeping him to his lowest disposal tally for two years (barring injury affected games) and that’s with 5 of his 21 touches being from kick ins. Also managed to keep him to 284m gained compared to his average of 484.8m (5 kick ins basically guarantees 250m gained which only makes this more amazing). But not only that, Murdock had 12 touches and 2 goals the other way. Call him Goat, Buddha, The Enlightened One, maybe Mongrel after pushing Whitfield over about 8 times in a row, he lives up to everything.
Tylar Young: Now he’s been heavily maligned this year (at times fair and at other times not so fair) but he was phenomenal today. Had 2 intercept marks, a game high 8 spoils, and 4 contested one on ones for 0 losses. He was playing like Ginbey out there.
Jack Hutchinson: He’s a player that gets a weird amount of hate for his contract length, but this week he showed off exactly why he was offered it. Only had 6 touches down on the stat sheet but he was everywhere. Constantly involved with little taps and contest wins that gave us field position. The one play where he won the ball on the wing despite being 1v2 in a footrace was particularly impressive. Ended up kicking 2 goals and having 7 tackles in a really good display.
Great:
Jake Waterman: Sometimes playing as a forward is easy. You can be held for the better of three quarters only to pop up with 3 goals and have a great performance. But to be fair to Waterman he didn't do it easy, 2 of those goals came from huge contested marks inside 50 as he worked his arse off against an on-fire Idun. Not to mention, 3.1, are the yips finally over?
Hamish Davis: I chewed him out two weeks ago for his lack of defensive effort, but he brought that back strong this week with 3 tackles, 20 pressure acts, 2 spoils, and a crucial intercept mark (mark?). Was also really good the other way with 18 touches, 8 contested, for a goal assist and another 4 score involvements. Probably unlucky not to be up a tier.
Malakai Champion: My only knock against him has been low possession count, but this week he practically doubled his usual up to 11 touches at 81.8% resulting in 2 goal assists and another 4 score involvements. Also provided pressure as usual with 3 tackles and 15 pressure acts.
Liam Duggan: 22 touches with only one kick in. Going at 72.7% with only 3 turnovers. 3 intercept marks, 3 spoils, and 3 tackles, and a game high 3 goal assists. I am Duggan’s biggest critic, but there’s no denying that he had a great game today. First time in a long time where it felt like he was playing a role and executing it too. Let’s hope he keeps up his last two weeks of form because despite what it might seem like, I don’t actually like having to rant about a premiership player.
Josh Lindsay: I’ve been harsh on Linners in recent weeks but part of that is because he already looks like a 150 game player. He had 19 touches (5 from kick ins) this week at 94.7% which is amazingly already standard for him, but I thought he improved his defensive side this week as he also picked up an intercept mark, 2 spoils, and 3 tackles which is why he's back in the great tier. Edit: Rising Star! About bloody time.
Liam Baker: Do my eyes deceive me? Did both captains play well? Bakes was back to his hard nut best as he picked up 19 disposals, 11 contested, 7 intercepts, 3 clearances, 1 goal assist, 2 spoils, and 4 tackles. He wasn’t particularly damaging with the ball by himself, but consistently got it out to players who were. Very solid game after, to be honest, a pretty poor year.
Good:
Elliot Yeo: Only 15 touches for Yeoy this week but he made them count with 7 of them resulting in scores. A bit hard to say for sure watching on telly but it looked like he spent a lot of the time blocking for Harls and TK, which he was brilliant at if I’m correct and still he was still pretty good even if I'm wrong.
Jack Williams: 8 touches for 0 goals isn’t that good at first glance, but I thought he was better than the stats showed. All 8 of his touches were contested and 3 of them were ground ball gets which is kind of impressive for a big man. He had two contested marks, one of them an intercept, and it felt like he was very good at getting the ball to ground even when he wasn’t able to mark. He was also surprisingly good in the ruck with 9 hitouts from 23 attempts. All in all, a solid game.
Willem Duursma: He was just a little off today. There were multiple times where he just took a single step in the wrong direction and burned himself. That being said, he finished the day with 15 touches, 9 contested, 7 ground ball gets, 2 clearances, 5 tackles, and a game high 25 pressure acts. That’s a solid outing regardless of what went wrong for him.
Rhett Bazzo: 12 touches at 100% leaps off the page as pretty good and he also had an intercept mark, 3 spoils, and 2 contested one on one wins with 0 losses. For his first game in the big leagues for a while it was really solid. I’m not entirely convinced he did a better job than Brock would’ve done, but definitely did enough to keep his spot and competition is always good.
Ryan Maric: 16 touches at 93.8% but that’s just about it for Maric. Had a goal assist and had 2 tackles and 14 pressure acts on the wing. Played his role really well, but didn’t excel.
Better than Okay but Worse than Good:
Harvey Johnston: Only the 6 touches again this week, but this time it included his first goal in the AFL. Those 6 touches were all contested and included 5 ground ball gets so he was actually pretty damn good when the ball was in his area, but like last week, he just needs to be in that right spot more often.
Jobe Shanahan: 8 touches just like Willow, but I thought he was a bit more quiet despite kicking a goal. Took 5 marks, 2 of them contested but it looked like he was pretty often running into packs rather than leading by himself. I think that’s more a product of our inexperienced forward structure rather than himself but he gets marked down for it anyway.
Not Bad but Okay Would be Pushing it:
Tom Cole: Was rapt to be rating him highly last week despite his critics and then he goes ahead and dishes this up for the critics. He had 2 clearances (including, surprisingly, a centre bounce clearance), 2 tackles, and 3 spoils. What really let him down was his disposal. 8 touches at 37.5% is not good however you slice it. I still think he was more good than bad but only just.
Tom McCarthy: Bad week to be a Tom apparently. The lowest rated Eagle on the ground by quite some way. 13 touches with 5 of them from kick ins and only 1 score involvement. He had 3 tackles but was otherwise completely invisible.
Stat Leaders: (It's all Harley)
Eagles who topped the game in a particular stat. Brackets show the best player from the opposite team.
Harley Reid & Liam Duggan - 12 & 6 Inside 50s (Toby Bedford 6)
Harley Reid - 786m Gained (Lachie Ash 557)
Harley Reid - 14 Ground Ball Gets (Harvey Thomas 13)
Bailey Williams - 41 Hitouts (Kieren Briggs 30)
Harley Reid & Tim Kelly & Bailey Williams - 4 & 4 & 3 Centre Clearances (Finn Callaghan 3)
Jake Waterman - 3 Goals (Jake Stringer 2)
Liam Duggan & Malakai Champion - 3 & 2 Goal Assists (Harvey Thomas 1)
Jake Waterman & Harley Reid - 5 & 5 Shots at Goal (Jake Stringer 5)
Harley Reid & Elliot Yeo & Bailey Williams & Tim Kelly & Liam Duggan & Malakai Champion - 9 & 7 & 7 & 7 & 6 & 6 Score Involvements (Harvey Thomas 6)
Jack Hutchinson & Willem Duursma - 4 & 4 Tackles Inside 50 (Aaron Cadman 4)
Willem Duursma - 25 Pressure Acts (Harvey Thomas 24)
Tylar Young - 8 Spoils (Harry Himmelberg 6)
23 Stat Leaders (+8 from last week) (8 Draws)
Wuurm Watcher
Liam Baker - 4 Repeated Sprints (Ryan Angwin 3)
Milan Murdock - 9.1km/h Average Speed in Attack (Toby Bedford 8.9km/h)
Willem Duursma & Josh Lindsay & Tom Cole - 9.1km/h & 8.8km/h & 8.7km/h Average Speed in Defence (Lachie Whitfield 8.7km/h)
Thanks for reading this ‘way too long even by my standards’ report, but I felt that an amazing effort such as that deserved it.
The pressure!
I can’t go on about that enough. We could beat premiership contenders with that sort of pressure, and our fitness to be able to execute that over four quarters is incredible. Hopefully we’re able to recover from that in a week, because if we bring that same pressure next week, we’re all but guaranteed to do the funniest thing.