IT'S FAIR to say some of the lustre has gone off Saturday night's Essendon-Geelong clash given the Bombers' form slump over the past month.

On paper, the Bombers, without injured skipper Jobe Watson, will start rank outsiders against the undefeated ladder-leader.

However, the clash will carry some added spice for the Cats judging by Jon Pierik's report in The Age on Tuesday.

Former Geelong president Frank Costa told Pierik it could be another six years before two-time premiership coach Mark Thompson was officially welcomed back to the club.

The background to Costa's comment is as follows: Thompson left Geelong with a year remaining on his contract at the end of last season, citing burnout; barely a month later it was announced he would be returning to his former club, Essendon, as an assistant coach to former teammate James Hird; in the following months, there were widespread reports Essendon identities had been in regular contact with Thompson from the middle of last season; and when the Cats subsequently poured over their phone records they said they showed Thompson had been in contact with "Essendon people" since July 2010.

All of this left a bitter taste in the mouths of some officials at Geelong. It seems that bitterness still lingers for Costa.

Costa, who as Geelong president from 1999-2010 presided over Thompson's 10-year coaching reign, told Pierik "trust and loyalty" were stronger at the club this year - a clear dig at the messy way Thompson departed the Cattery.
  
Costa said he wished Thompson had been upfront with him when he was first contacted by Essendon.

"I just wish he had come up and spoken to me then because I think we would have been very mature about it," Costa said.

"We wouldn't have tried to hold the coach if he didn't want to coach for us … It could have been handled in a much more positive fashion."

Costa said he hadn't spoken to Thompson since his departure but would be happy to, and looked forward to the day when 'Bomber' could return to the club as a "hero".

Pierik said "close friends" of Thompson said he had never intended to mislead the Cats over his future plans but had found it difficult to tell them in the end.

We're sure Thompson will eventually be welcomed back at Geelong as the two-time premiership hero that he is. However, he won't feel any such love from Cats fans on Saturday night. 

Jobe leaves a massive hole
As we've mentioned, Essendon is in a tailspin after flying high in the opening months of James Hird's coaching reign.
 
At the end of round eight, the Bombers sat third on the ladder with five wins and a draw. However, since then they have lost five games in a row and slid to 10th place.

Worse still, the mauling they received last Friday night at the hands of Hawthorn suggests this is not a tailspin the Bombers will recover from this year.

In Tuesday's Herald Sun, chief football writer Mike Sheahan attempts to diagnose the causes of Essendon's woes.

The biggest factor has been the hamstring problems that have dogged Bombers skipper Jobe Watson since round eight, Sheahan says. "Nothing has gone right since," he says.

An accompanying table, "Tale of the Jobe", showed just how much Watson's output has dried up in the three games he's played since returning in round 12. In rounds one-eight, he averaged 29 disposals, 14 contested possessions. 6.4 clearances and 8.8 score involvements, and kicked 13 goals. From rounds 12-14, those numbers fell to 20, 10, 4, 5.3 and 0 respectively.

The correlation between Watson's injury absences/subsequent diminished form and the Bombers' slump prompted Sheahan to ask: "Can one man be so important in team sport as Watson appears to be?"

It's a throwback to the catchcry that was often heard whenever North Melbourne didn’t win in the 1990s: "No Carey. No North." 

Of course, a football side's fortunes are never decided by one man alone, no matter how imposing he is on the field.

Sheahan acknowledges the Bombers have also been hurt by Heath Hocking's round eight suspension and their faltering three-talls strategy, while there is also a popular view they got a jump on the rest of the competition with their advanced fitness early in the season.

Whatever the reasons, the Bombers will again have to cope without Watson against the Cats this weekend, their skipper likely to be sidelined for the next three weeks after straining another hamstring against Hawthorn.

As Sheahan rightly says, he will leave a huge hole in Essendon's team.

Stats evolving as fast as the game
It is inevitable AFL football will continue to evolve. The fact the competition's coaches are hell bent on unlocking the next tactical edge over their opponents ensures that.

It makes sense then that the statistics measuring team and player performances need to evolve too, if we are to continue to understand the game at a meaningful level.

So, in recent times, we've seen the advent of a whole new range of statistics, including metres gained, pressure acts and score involvements.

Now, statistics guru Ted Hopkins, the founder of Champion Data, wants to give us "the release".

Hopkins told the Herald Sun the extreme congestion zones and forward presses have introduced to football in recent years has forced players to find new ways to extract the ball from stoppages.

"They're training to tunnel-ball a lot now, push the ball through the legs because of the incredible density," Hopkins said.

"The players are becoming amazingly inventive at coming up with what I call the trigger point … How are they going to fumble and get the ball moving around?
"Ultimately everyone is hunting for the trigger points. (For) what gives you the release."
 
Hopkins said "the release" was often a knock on, or even a lucky squirt out of a pack.

Players who can find clean "trigger points" to execute releases in heavy traffic are increasingly valuable, Hopkins said. He nominated Collingwood's Scott Pendlebury, Carlton's Chris Judd and Geelong's Joel Selwood as being among the best exponents of this emerging tactic.
 
In short
Port Adelaide ruckman Dean Brogan is poised to announce his retirement on Tuesday, The Advertiser reports. Brogan confirmed he had been in discussions with the Power about his future and would decide whether to retire in "a day or two". The tabloid said Brogan was expected to make himself available for selection for the remainder of the season, with a farewell game a possibility, perhaps against Collingwood in round 20.

Karmichael Hunt used to be able to play an NRL club match and State of Origin game in the same week but doubts he could play two AFL games in the same timeframe. In his regular Gold Coast Bulletin column, Hunt said he used to pull up sore from the body contact involved in rugby league games, but since converting to AFL had found it took him two days to recover from the running required in the AFL. "It initially surprised me how much maintenance was done during the week between (AFL) games," Hunt said.

The Western Australian Cricket Association has not offered budding star Stephen Coniglio a contract to play for WA next season leaving the door open for the multi-talented 17-year-old to choose football as his preferred sport, The West Australian reports. Coniglio has been in superb form for WA in this year's NAB AFL Under-18 Championships and is popularly tipped to be on GWS' radar if he nominates for this year's NAB AFL Draft. However, he has also represented WA in its under-17 state cricket side, and is yet to make a decision on his sporting future. 

The views in this story are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL