belzebub59 said:

What made the Daniher finals sides competitive?

I take this to mean that the sides playing in the finals were competitive..... they werent particularly.

2000 possibly the better effort... all to no avail... other years tripping over ourself to fall into finals...only to stumble further without any real solidity.

As alluded by another... consistency was lacking

lets not get too carried away in purporting we were really that good !!

A side that wins enough games to make the finals must be competitive.

You can be competitive without being the best - and you can be competitive even there are a handful of teams that will beat you every time...... and you can be a competitive unit .... even if you are thrashed from time to time

I agree that we over-rated ourselves. ... and that we had serious weaknesses. No - we weren't that good .... but we were competitive.

Hoopla...you may be missing my point.. getting to the finals is one thing... being competitive once youre there is another....just ask the Filth !!

many things can conspire to embellish a teams performance throughout the H & A...in the finals all that will be laid bare

BB59 and I are rarely on the same page we agree in this thread - why is there such a love of teams that couldn't go deep into September?

I don't like going to the G in September knowing my team cannot win the whole effing thing.

It is deflating.

I repeat - the only time I thought we could win a flag was August 2004, and that hope was dashed inside of a month.

Why would we want that?

Daniher did a good job with what he had but now we have more than ever and that is thanks, in part, to Bailey and Co.

  BattlerBailey said:

Agree Dan. I was never a fan of the way we played. There were certain players I loved watching like Neitz but we were never going to win a flag with how Daniher had us playing with a foward set up based around Neitz.

Maybe another couple of quality talls at either end and maybe we could've progressed further.

Actually, I think the complete lack of a midfield hurt us more. When Neitz was up and flying, there was no greater demon in my time watching the red and blue... But as Sam Newman said during the 2002-2006 period, we were a one-player team.

Think about it. Name me one genuine A-grade midfielder we had during those years. Bruce, Green, Yze and Johnstone were all good players in their heyday... but none were anything like the great mids of their time. In fact, none are even n the same league as Acker, Voss, Lappin or Black.. and that's just one team I'm using as an example.

This is the reason I'm so pumped about Trengove/Scully... along with Strauss, Blease etc