There have been some really interesting posts about lacrosse lately. Two of them have been extremely insightful and critical looks at what might be holding lacrosse back from growing and gaining respect. The third, some Tweets from Paul Stewart, have been more exciting for me. Keep reading for my thoughts on all three.
Andrew McKay wrote about the old boys club, holdouts and player agents. It might be the best piece I've read of McKay's. It is persuasive and critical, and there are no glaring holes in it like there were with his attempt to be controversial in calling the new rules anti-Canadian. How Rabil was playing before the holdout, and how the league will survive without him, suggests that the rules aren't pro-Rabil, and that smart coaching has worked around some of the rules, but the goalie equipment changes and the concentration of talent have lead to increased offence (coincidentally, I argued that offence would be up because of the concentration of talent, but I grossly underestimated the impact of the reduced goalie equipment - snipers are picking corners better than I've ever seen - otherwise, I was basically correct thanks to stealing ideas from McKay and Jake Elliott).
The second article was posted by Marty O'Neill over at IL Indoor. It's a scathing look at player behaviour and how it is preventing the game from becoming more professional. As with McKay's article, it is persuasive and he talks from a position of authority. I can't talk about any of these issues credibly, because I don't know any of the players, coaches, managers, owners, peanut vendors, or referees. If McKay and O'Neill are correct about these important issues, then I hope that George Daniel, the owners and all the players are taking a hard look at what they want for the league, and how they might best get there. I'll leave this to more capable people.
These articles have excited my passion for the game, but not as much as exchanging witty banter on Twitter with Paul Stewart. I pointed out that he's not so good at making predictions, and he pointed out that I know nothing about the Xs and Os of the game. We're both right, so I asked him a question that he has promised to answer in his next IL Indoor mailbag about the risks and rewards of taking penalties versus giving up open looks in front.
I also asked Stewart, in the interests of learning more about the game, if it was possible for him to create coaching videos with commentary and telestration - a sort of "Stew's Studies" that might help fans learn about the game the way Coach's Corner helped us learn about hockey strategy in the 80s before Cherry really went off his rocker. I asked him this because he told me to watch the game tape again, but without his guidance, I'm not going to know what I'm looking for. Stewart said that I should just come to a Jacksonville Bullies practice. Maybe I'm weird, but the possibility of sitting in on a video session with a team excites me a lot more than getting autographs. Yeah, I'm weird.
Since Stewart won't do it, I'm going to give it a shot, because I want to learn about the game, especially strategy, and the fastest way to learn is to make horrible crash and burn mistakes (I hope). My passion is the reason I soak up stuff like Marty O'Neill's ode to the screeners. My attempt at analysis is going to be ugly, because I don't have access to multiple camera angles, and I don't want to get sued by the NLL, so I'm not even going to try to find a way to chop up their game videos from Livestream. I'm going to do this with screen captures. So check back later today for my first post about lacrosse strategy - an analysis of one successful power play setup.
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