In the final part of Coach Justin Leppitsch’s Season Review he discusses the Lions’ offence and defence and what they will be hoping to improve on in 2016.
In a telling statistic, Leppitsch refers to a graph showing when the opposition had scored more than three goals in a row against the Lions.
“We’re AFL (rank) 18 in this particular stat, only 21 times Fremantle the best team in the competition (at the end of the home and away season) had three goals scored in a row against them, we had 54 which is quite a big number,” he said.
“We’d love to call a timeout as a coach sometimes but it’s really important that we can change the momentum on the football field and that’s something we’ll be working on hard in the pre-season with our planning.”
Leppitsch said despite the obvious disappointments of the season, it is imperative that Lions fans recognise what the Club is working on and the improvements that the young group has made over the year.
“I think this is the most important part you need to know as fans,” Leppitsch said.
“We won 10 first quarters, we beat a top eight team in the last game of the season and not only that we beat a team that finished just outside the eight in Port Adelaide.
“We’ve had more than double the AFL average for injuries and while that’s not optimistic it means the amount of players and stability we bring back into our group next season will be really important for us and just a natural improvement of our younger group again,” he said.
“Dan McStay will be another year older – Lewy Taylor, Harris Andrews, Liam Dawson and so on.
“It might seem a lot but to get to the top eight we need 800 points, that’s six goals per game, that’s 133 more contests that we either stop or we score ourselves and that’s only one contest, per player, per month.
“When you break it down, it’s only a small thing,” Leppitsch said.
“We’d like to thank you for your support as members, it’s been quite a difficult year for you, for us and our players.
“We’re excited about the direction of where our Club is going and hopefully you all get on board next season and fill out your memberships because I’ve got a feeling 2016 is going to be an exciting year for our group.”
