The art of the tag: How the AFL’s best players shake attention from footy’s stoppers
Taggers have come back into vogue this season and are set to have a huge say on this year’s finals series. TIM MICHELL investigates how the best players deal with attention — and how footy’s stoppers hit back.
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Ross Lyon put the AFL’s premier players on notice in June.
Tagging was back — and in a big way.
“It’s like the mullet, everything comes back into fashion doesn’t it? It’s back in,” Lyon said.
“There was the rhetoric that you can’t run a tag and play team defence … you can certainly play team defence and have a tag — that’s a moot point really.”
Lyon became renowned for his use of a tagger during his first stint at St Kilda and his reign as Fremantle coach, turning Ryan Crowley into one of the game’s most feared stoppers.
Now, it was Marcus Windhager’s turn.
That week Windhager was given the task of blanketing dual Brownlow medallist Lachie Neale, who was coming off a 38-disposal, two-goal outing against Western Bulldogs.
“They do it and then they become really good players themselves. It’s a good way to learn. We think it’s a win-win,” Lyon said.
Windhager restricted Neale to 20 disposals, tracking his every move in a performance Crowley, Cameron Ling and other taggers of the past would have been proud of.
As Lyon foretold, tagging was back in vogue.
John Longmire was one of the first coaches to reintroduce the tactic, turning to former Demon James Jordon for roles on stars including Lachie Whitfield, Tom Stewart and Jordan Clark.
Adam Kingsley transformed Toby Bedford from a forward line goalsneak into a feared midfield stopper.
Michael Voss entrusted Alex Cincotta with the job of curtailing Brownlow Medal fancy Zak Butters, one of the stars who has become a magnet for opposition attention.
Matthew Nicks tried Max Michalanney on Chad Warner.
Craig McRae sent Steele Sidebottom to Errol Gulden.
And Adem Yze threw Seth Campbell the ultimate challenge of trying to stop a red-hot Nick Daicos.
“There’s definitely room for it. I just don’t understand why clubs don’t do it more … narrow your focus down to which two you should possibly attack and take away potentially 80 possessions,” Collingwood premiership player Mick McGuane said.
It is the AFL’s equivalent of fight or flight.
Do you wilt under the mental pressure of a tag or find a way to turn the tables on a run-with player?
Ed Curnow, who was Mick Malthouse’s go-to stopper during his time in charge at Carlton, said his toughest opponents were the players who responded to his threat physically.
“They were really aggressive, they weren’t passive in terms of their physicality,” Curnow said.
“Usually the tagger is the one making the moves, whereas the guys that combat it well gave it back — and tenfold.
“Generally that was the way to beat it. The other way was intidimation verbally.
“My experience with the battles I loved the most were with the guys that probably beat me a couple of times and generally they would bring the fight back to me.
“They would be really aggressive, they would be verbal. There was a lot of abuse.”
Curnow said the best players had a “counter move” and did not allow taggers to dictate their movement.
“If you think you can just beat a tag sometimes by just playing your natural game, it’s difficult,” he said.
“Some players are good enough to do it, but you need help from your teammates, you need help from your coaches, you need positional changes, you need to have some moves designed and then you need to have a different strategy.
“Are you going to kind of fight it with some aggression and get your tagger to think about what he’s doing or are you just going to let him hit you first every time?”
Jude Bolton shared a midfield with Sydney legend Brett Kirk, who ranks alongside Crowley and Cameron Ling as the most tenacious taggers of the modern era.
Bolton watched from metres away as opposition on-ballers tried to shake Kirk, coming to appreciate the tactics they would draw on to still have an influence.
He said having the fortitude to not surrender to a tag was half the battle.
If you did, the war was lost before a shot had been fired.
“The better players just have to fight their way through it,” Bolton said.
“You do want support from your teammates but in the end it has to come to that player’s willingness to fight their way through it.
“You’re going to cop a lot of contact from other players as well as that initial tagger.
“That mental side of the game is so hard to navigate, I guess, when you’re being tagged.
“I really struggled with it and I was probably lucky that other players probably got tagged ahead of me.”
McGuane agrees the mental battle can be what decides the ultimate success of a tag.
“A lot of blokes can just surrender their energy when they’ve got someone living in their shadow,” he said.
Bolton has watched the evolution of Jordon and Bedford into crucial members of the Sydney and GWS midfields with interest this year.
Jordon and Bedford shape as two of the defining figures in Saturday’s qualifying final, should Bedford prove his fitness after missing round 24.
Bolton regards Brownlow Medal favourites Nick Daicos and Patrick Cripps as the stars who navigate a tag best.
“You’ve got be an elite runner, which those guys are. (Daicos has) been terrific,” Bolton said.
“Cripps, because he’s got such a big body, he’s hard for anyone to stop.
“Those sort of players that are first-possession players, they are the hardest ones.”
Curnow said stars such as Daicos, who were capable of playing multiple positions, were the hardest to rein in.
“Because when you’re tagging, you want a simple, straightforward task — you’re playing on Lachie Neale who’s just playing midfield,” he said.
“But all of a sudden Lachie Neale is moving to the corridor, he’s moving to winger, he’s changing positions constantly. He’s going forward but coming up to a stoppage.
“Anything like that that can confuse or mess with the opposition tagger or mess with team structure and system.”
Denis Pagan became accustomed to his North Melbourne stars of the 90s being targeted.
Often, it was Brent Harvey who opposition teams went after.
Pagan would instruct the AFL’s games record holder to “run around the centre square” as a warning to taggers that they were about to be physically tested.
“Most people who are getting tagged go into some sort of panic mode when they’re not getting the ball and there are so many things you can do,” Pagan said.
“There are so many things you can do. For 10 or 15 minutes you can go and tag the opposition.
“The thing that you’ve got to do if you’re being tagged, you have got to change the tagger’s psyche and you have got to break his concentration. Make him change or do something different.
“I’ve seen John Platten when he was playing for Hawthorn run down and touch the point post. This is before the ball’s bounced. Then run up the other end and touch the point post and say to the other bloke, ‘keep up with me’.”
Taggers are set to have a huge say on the outcome of this year’s finals series.
Bedford, Jordon, Cincotta and Willem Drew will be earmarked for roles which will help determine this season’s premier.
Does a-fit Bedford go to Warner or three-time Brett Kirk medallist Errol Gulden in the qualifying final?
Can Jordon halt Lachie Whitfield and the famed orange tsunami?
Will Cincotta or George Hewett be sent to Neale?
And, does Drew zone in on Patrick Dangerfield or Stewart?
“You have got to embrace that challenge,” Tony Liberatore, who transitioned to tagging late in his decorated Footscray career, said.
“I was coming towards the end of my footy career so I had to change the way I played.
“Footy’s not all about, I think, getting X amount of possessions. You’ll see that in finals footy it’s all about team and playing your role. To me that’s more important than getting 30 possessions every week.”
Liberatore said endurance beasts such as Andrew McLeod posed the greatest threat to taggers.
“When you’ve got a guy like Patrick Cripps, for argument’s sake, that gets tagged every week, you have got to put some blocks on for him,” he said.
“Teammates have to do that and that’s probably where you actually can beat taggers.”
Bedford will likely find that out the hard way if he’s fit to track Gulden on Saturday.
Originally published as The art of the tag: How the AFL’s best players shake attention from footy’s stoppers
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