Remember when Bailey left and he said this staggering statement "whoever takes over the coaching position at Melbourne will be given a golden ticket" or something along those lines. To me that sums up Dean Bailey in a sentence. I'm just upset that his power point presentation worked at the interview and we would of had Damo Hardwick at the helm for the past 5 seasons!

  On 13/03/2013 at 07:04, Crawf52 said:

I beg to differ. We will be more competitive than last year by a long way. We've seen this in the NAAB Cup games. There's a decidedly harder edge to the structure. I think we have the capacity to cause some upsets along the way this year. I'm sure we will have a considerably better year than 2012. As the year progresses and we get games into the team they will begin to function more effectively and we'll surprise a few. I agree with your premise that we need more players in their prime but I don't think it precludes us from starting the year on an optimistic note.

GO DEES!

Yeah, you didn't read what I wrote.

I am saying, aside from Billy's diversion, that we are thankfully removing ourselves of project players and bringing in solid pros so that we can start to compete against teams.

However, it is a long road and if anyone thinks this year is going to be roses and finals then that is not optimism - it is delusion.

Such was our armada of invincible youth, Michael Voss warned that we may be the next 'super power' didnt he? The problem was so few of this

armada turned into battle-hardened pros.

  On 13/03/2013 at 10:14, rpfc said:

Yeah, you didn't read what I wrote.

I am saying, aside from Billy's diversion, that we are thankfully removing ourselves of project players and bringing in solid pros so that we can start to compete against teams.

However, it is a long road and if anyone thinks this year is going to be roses and finals then that is not optimism - it is delusion.

I think this describes my state of mind and being:

PSYCH BASICS

Optimism

positive thinking

Optimists have a tendency to make lemonade out of lemons, and to then see the glass as half-full when it's half-empty. It's an admirable quality, one that can positively affect mental and physical health. Some optimists consistently ascribe benevolent motives to others and interpret situations in the best possible light, others simply disassociate their internal mood from external circumstances, no matter how sticky. Adding in a bit of complexity, the latest research shows that tempering a sunny disposition with a small dose of realism or even pessimism might be the best way to build resilience and achieve one's goals.

If you read my post you'll see that this is exactly what I've done. More often than not the glass is half full. Nothing delusional about that!

In the end if you think can't do something, you're probably right. Is this the sort of thinking we want to encourage?

GO DEES!

  On 14/03/2013 at 00:40, Crawf52 said:

I think this describes my state of mind and being:

PSYCH BASICS

Optimism

positive thinking

Optimists have a tendency to make lemonade out of lemons, and to then see the glass as half-full when it's half-empty. It's an admirable quality, one that can positively affect mental and physical health. Some optimists consistently ascribe benevolent motives to others and interpret situations in the best possible light, others simply disassociate their internal mood from external circumstances, no matter how sticky. Adding in a bit of complexity, the latest research shows that tempering a sunny disposition with a small dose of realism or even pessimism might be the best way to build resilience and achieve one's goals.

If you read my post you'll see that this is exactly what I've done. More often than not the glass is half full. Nothing delusional about that!

In the end if you think can't do something, you're probably right. Is this the sort of thinking we want to encourage?

GO DEES!

Look beyond the effing pun in the title. This thread is not about optimism, the beauty of optimism or any derivitive thereof.

I am showing you a statistical fact that we have players that are untried and/or incredibly young compared to a cross section of the clubs we compete against.

Not everything has to come from a point of happy feeling optimism or grumpy pants pessimism.

I am not foretelling how quickly we will go down the road to relevance - I am just illustrating how far away we are from that road.