Assistant Coach Danny Daly has labelled our tackling performance in our Round 19 loss to Port Adelaide at the Gabba as “really, really poor.”
On the weekend, we missed 35 tackles - Daly said it was an unacceptable amount for a football team.
“(It was a) disappointing part of our game,” Daly said in the latest Vero Coaches Wrap.
"We had 35 missed tackles on the weekend, which is just unacceptable for a football club.
"We were off our man a little bit too much.
"The result of missing one tackle can mean the opposition win the ball far too easy, then get down to their other end and kick goals."
Daly gave example after example of missed tackles hurting us on the weekend, and said that, from here until the end of the Season, tackling will be our main focus.
"It’s the area we’re focusing on in the last four week’s of the Season,” he said.
When it comes down to numbers, 70% tackling efficiency is the pass mark for our players and Daly expressed that not enough of our players were reaching this target.
"70% is what we aim for individually as an effective tackling result… we don’t have anywhere near enough players getting near that,” he said.
"Tom Rockliff is our number one tackling player, who sits on the 70% border."
With such a young group, you'd expect the tackling numbers to naturally get better as the players get bigger and stronger, but in order to speed up the process, those who do not reach targets are working together.
"The boys who don’t reach that 70% go into a special group who work on tackling throughout the week.”
The table above shows individual players and their tackling efficiency for the last six weeks. (Full table in Vero Coaches Wrap video)
