David King on the Melbourne blueprint

[BrisbaneDemon 1,575]

Neeld was crippled by the playing group he inherited regardless of game plan and injuries. Roos has also been significantly handicapped by the same group, though he did manage to get a few really good players in last years draft. This year will be another significant cleanout and infusion of more talented players than the ones they are replacing. Roos game seemed to me to be around cutting down the loosing margin, being within striking distance near the end of the games so that we could potentially overhaul and win a few, which i think he did reasonably well, were were in quite a few games before we fell away. This year we have again some good pickups and with a fit forward line have a chance to play more attacking football. I think we should win quite a few more games this year possibly 8 or 9 wins.

I agree with you on the injuries front, but this is what comment that irks me. In no way was Neeld crippled by the playing group. Neeld failed to implement a game plan that suited the current list, Dont get me wrong i understand that the playing list was Shite but we did win 8.5 games or something like that the season before. Being in queensland it was fascinating seeing Rocket on the news the other night saying, he is seeing what the group can do first before he implements his plans. You can only use what you have on the list.

Neeld was a shite coach who failed to have a plan B,

[Slartibartfast 18,039]

I'm not sold on the game plan either 'Bob'. I'm hoping with a bit more scoring power up forward (Garlett, Hogan, Howe) and run off the back line ('H' and Frost) we might focus a bit more on attack.

Agreed. If we can get fit there will be no more excuses.

What was confusing were the regular preseason statements by Jackson and Roos that the Club needed to play attractive football to win back the supporters and yet we went out and played the most boring footy in the competition.

It's just interesting to note that under Roos in 2005 when they won the flag the Swans only kicked 8.10 in the GF and only scored more points during the season than the second and third bottom teams.

I hope we do add that attacking string to our bow. But I'm making these comments in hindsight and you're not a fan of that!

[Wells 11 5,476]

I agree with you on the injuries front, but this is what comment that irks me. In no way was Neeld crippled by the playing group. Neeld failed to implement a game plan that suited the current list, Dont get me wrong i understand that the playing list was Shite but we did win 8.5 games or something like that the season before. Being in queensland it was fascinating seeing Rocket on the news the other night saying, he is seeing what the group can do first before he implements his plans. You can only use what you have on the list.

Neeld was a shite coach who failed to have a plan B,

I agree, and I think all the player bashing that happened after 186 got the club deeper into the mire. It always looked like the club as a whole made them the scapegoaats for a whole series of inadequacies and stuff ups. Was it really such a shite playing group, or did we have shite fitness coaches or shite development or shite support for a coach the players loved ( Bailey) . One thing that is absolutey undeniable is that Neeld really brought the shite out in them. THAT he could really do. Neeld not only had no plan B......but he also had the worst plan A the game may have ever seen. Im just glad those tortured days are largely done.

[Scoop Junior 3,573]

What was confusing were the regular preseason statements by Jackson and Roos that the Club needed to play attractive football to win back the supporters and yet we went out and played the most boring footy in the competition.

I don't think they said we needed to play attractive football, rather I recall them saying we needed to play competitive football and to be in games (as supporters don't want to see matches that are over by half time).

We really need to break the season down into two components. Unfortunately we always seem to reflect on how a team finishes a year - in our case that was really poorly. There's no doubt our last 8 or so games were terrible (taken as a whole) and there were patches where we looked as bad as we did in 2013.

But we also shouldn't forget what happened in the first half of the year (after the first two games) - beating two finalists in Essendon and Richmond, knocking over Carlton who we hadn't beaten in years and winning in Adelaide for the first time since 2001. We did everything but beat the Bulldogs at the MCG, were reasonably competitive against the Grand Finalist Sydney, led preliminary finalist Port Adelaide midway through the last term and were right in the match against the Pies on QB.

It's not exactly world conquering form but from where we had come from in 2013 it was bordering on an exceptional performance from the coaching staff and players. At that stage Roos was being bandied about as a potential coach of the year.

Yes we fell away significantly and played some shocking footy late in the year. But we need to look at the season as a whole. While we only won four games (compared with four in 2012 and two in 2013), the 2014 season for me was on a different planet to what we saw in 2012 and 2013 because of what we showed in that 10 week period earlier in the year.

[rpfc 28,966]

I don't remember any regular promises of attractive football.

I do recall an emphasis on percentage as a measure of competitiveness, as Scoop Junior says above.

I don't like the outward preoccupation of defensive attitudes - if all you care about is stopping your bloke from getting the ball, then only one of you wants the ball - but I knew the style of football we were going to get was what we got.

The fans will come back when we start winning, not when we play in end-to-end shootouts and get beaten by ten goals.

[rjay 25,347]

Agreed. If we can get fit there will be no more excuses.

What was confusing were the regular preseason statements by Jackson and Roos that the Club needed to play attractive football to win back the supporters and yet we went out and played the most boring footy in the competition.

It's just interesting to note that under Roos in 2005 when they won the flag the Swans only kicked 8.10 in the GF and only scored more points during the season than the second and third bottom teams.

I hope we do add that attacking string to our bow. But I'm making these comments in hindsight and you're not a fan of that!

Not if you're setting out to tell us the blueprint 'Bob'...

[Ted Lasso 19,566]

Jetta

Develop this well and we will be okay

Frost

McDonald

Hogan

Toumpas

Trengove

Viney

Kent

Salem

Tyson

Jkh

Brayshaw

Mccartin

Stretch

[pitmaster 3,589]

I thought the end of year fade out had been worked over pretty well in the media at the time.

It was supposedly lack of conditioning and match fitness.

I don't even know what "Roos had lost the players" is supposed to mean in this contex. It's such a bland generalisaton that could not be proved either way.

To go back to the conditioning issue, match fitness is a lot more than running and stamina. It has to do with playing with injury, coping with getting physically belted at least half the time you go for the ball, and getting up again and sprinting, bullocking and shepherding. It's heavy duty stuff, hence all the wrestling that featured in preseason.

Roos was telling anyone who asked at end of season functions that there was another 15% fitness improvement to come from this preseason. Maybe that means we will run out of steam four weeks from the end of the year, rather than eight. Who knows?

We have no choice but to watch and learn but I hope our group analysis can do better than "lost the players". Neeld lost the players, of that there is no doubt. Roos, in one season, with his rep, I don't think so.

[Deecisive 1,709]

Yes 2015 will be more hard yards, so will 2016 and 2017 as we do have a long way to go to compete with the top sides. But i expect a lot more given the new players we have coming in plus hogan. We had no goal kickers this year other than Dawes who was usually smothered by multiple opposition players, inclusion of Hogan and Garlett alone should improve that, hopefully Kent can find more consistency. Midfield is stronger so I would expect the ball to be going our way more often than it did last year. We were ahead in quite a few games last year but lost it in the last quarter or two. I would hope the changes made will mean we will win a few of those games and perhaps surprise in a couple of others.

[Its Time for Another 4,304]

Having his nose splattered all over his face by Merritt may explain some of he drop off.

Oh come on, according to the MRP that was a love tap not worthy of a suspension. Must have been something else.

[poita 3,919]

I'm not sure what people expected King to say. Our finish to 2014 was as bad as anything we displayed under Neeld, and I cannot see our recruits adding anything of note, at least in the short term.

If King is of the opinion, like me, that we will be putrid again in 2015, he'd be hung, drawn and quartered by all and sundry.

If he thinks we will be markedly better, he is essentially betting (a) on a kid who is yet to play an AFL game and who has barely played a game at any level for 18 months and (b) on the addition of a bunch of fringe players and teenagers. As much as the diehards on this forum want to believe this, I'm not sure that any of that reads particularly well in an analytical article either.

[praha 11,253]

I rate King. He told us Neeld was no good very early with his "mature bodied game plan for a bunch of kids". He was spot on whilst swimming strongly against the tide.

There are a few home truths in his article. He tells us our last 8 weeks (which is a fair slab of the season) was in fact no better than our last year under Neeld/Craig. I for one didn't realize that. He tells us we are the highest stoppage team with the worst stoppage numbers. Surely that's concerning. He tells us we are the worst tackling team in the competition. Rather ironic given Roos' ethos and scathing criticism of Richmond's failure to tackle in previous years.

Most of the world including DL have unquestioning faith in Roos. King is now questioning that and is one of the first to do so. I don't expect him to be Nostradamus about next year, in fact I'd think less of him if he tried to be. I happen to be in the King camp and have for some time questioned Roos' game plan and methodology. I'm not saying it's wrong, just not accepting as most do here, that "is Roos is good".

The reality is that the last third of last season, a time when we should have been adapting to the Roos game plan better, was as bad as we've ever been. That's a worry.

I thought it was a good short form article by King, let's face it, he's not writing a thesis he's writing a article to the footy reading public about MFC.

Pretty good I would have thought.

Our average losing margin for the last 10 matches was 41. We almost *should have* beaten Port in Adelaide. We played very well against North. Should have beaten the Dogs and Lions.

Our 2013 season comparatively over the last 8 rounds (8 loses in a row to end the season) was an average 47-point losing margin, but we never, ever looked like winning in *any* of those games. Our average losing margin for the whole year was 64 vs 36 for 2014. Our only *bad* loss in the second half of the year was against GWS, which was our worst game for the year. We lost to Freo and Geelong by 10 goals. They finished top 4. We should have bloody beaten Port in Adelaide and they were a kick away from a GF appearance and probably a flag.

Roos didn't lose the players in the second-half of the year. A bad team just came up against some good opponents, and in some cases came very close to beating them if not for just broad inexperience at crucial times.

I reject the notion that we were as bad in 2014 than at any point in 2013. It's just not true. Yeah we lost our last 10 games. This is just a team that doesn't know how to win.

I'm not blindly following Roos here, but I'm just looking at this objectively. We had some bad loses, but we also had some good loses (if there is such a thing), and 2014 was far and away a better and more promising season than 2012 and 2013 combined.

[jnrmac 20,304]

Can you all please give yourselves a two week holiday.

How dare you think that you can come on here and have a proper football discussion without resorting to name calling, puerile arguments and bagging Jack Watts.

Its a disgrace.

[TGR 1,367]

I rate King. He told us Neeld was no good very early with his "mature bodied game plan for a bunch of kids". He was spot on whilst swimming strongly against the tide.

Spot on. King put his nads on the line be saying the Neeld was gone after 3-4 rounds.

The thing with Paul Roos, and he ticks most boxes with a big thick tick, is that his ability to put in offensive plays and strategies is highly questionable. Even Sydney at their prime with Goodes, Hall, O'Loughlin would often get slow delivery from D50 to I50. When the Swans under Roos were down by 4-5 goals, that was essentially it for them.

The 2000's was the decade of defence, epitomised by Roos' Swans, and Lyon's Saints. This decade might require more offensive flair to cut through professional defensive structures.

Roos, like Rossy Lyon, hasn't been able to discover the offensive switch. Lyon declared that Freo would go for 2 goals extra per game in 2014, and failed.

I realise that the cake (basic skills) needs to be decent before the icing can be put on; but Lyon's difficulty with Freo's offensive progress tells us me that the defensofiles (Lyon, Roos) might never find the switch.

[Sir Why You Little 37,342]

Spot on. King put his nads on the line be saying the Neeld was gone after 3-4 rounds.

The thing with Paul Roos, and he ticks most boxes with a big thick tick, is that his ability to put in offensive plays and strategies is highly questionable. Even Sydney at their prime with Goodes, Hall, O'Loughlin would often get slow delivery from D50 to I50. When the Swans under Roos were down by 4-5 goals, that was essentially it for them.

The 2000's was the decade of defence, epitomised by Roos' Swans, and Lyon's Saints. This decade might require more offensive flair to cut through professional defensive structures.

Roos, like Rossy Lyon, hasn't been able to discover the offensive switch. Lyon declared that Freo would go for 2 goals extra per game in 2014, and failed.

I realise that the cake (basic skills) needs to be decent before the icing can be put on; but Lyon's difficulty with Freo's offensive progress tells us me that the defensofiles (Lyon, Roos) might never find the switch.

it is pretty hard to have an attacking offencive strategy when the forward line is sitting in the Grand Stand.

[rpfc 28,966]

it is pretty hard to have an attacking offencive strategy when the forward line is sitting in the Grand Stand.

It's even harder when your midfield is historically bad at getting the ball.

You can be as attacking as you like but if the other team has the pill - they won't give a [censored].

[rjay 25,347]

Spot on. King put his nads on the line be saying the Neeld was gone after 3-4 rounds.

The thing with Paul Roos, and he ticks most boxes with a big thick tick, is that his ability to put in offensive plays and strategies is highly questionable. Even Sydney at their prime with Goodes, Hall, O'Loughlin would often get slow delivery from D50 to I50. When the Swans under Roos were down by 4-5 goals, that was essentially it for them.

The 2000's was the decade of defence, epitomised by Roos' Swans, and Lyon's Saints. This decade might require more offensive flair to cut through professional defensive structures.

Roos, like Rossy Lyon, hasn't been able to discover the offensive switch. Lyon declared that Freo would go for 2 goals extra per game in 2014, and failed.

I realise that the cake (basic skills) needs to be decent before the icing can be put on; but Lyon's difficulty with Freo's offensive progress tells us me that the defensofiles (Lyon, Roos) might never find the switch.

it is pretty hard to have an attacking offencive strategy when the forward line is sitting in the Grand Stand.

It's even harder when your midfield is historically bad at getting the ball.

You can be as attacking as you like but if the other team has the pill - they won't give a [censored].

I would say Lyon at Freo has had a limited forward line to work with, that being Pav and Ballantyne. Walters missing most of the year.

Even with a quality midfield you still need to have forwards who can kick you a winning score.

[Go the Biff 3,473]

Spot on. King put his nads on the line be saying the Neeld was gone after 3-4 rounds.

The thing with Paul Roos, and he ticks most boxes with a big thick tick, is that his ability to put in offensive plays and strategies is highly questionable. Even Sydney at their prime with Goodes, Hall, O'Loughlin would often get slow delivery from D50 to I50. When the Swans under Roos were down by 4-5 goals, that was essentially it for them.

The 2000's was the decade of defence, epitomised by Roos' Swans, and Lyon's Saints. This decade might require more offensive flair to cut through professional defensive structures.

Roos, like Rossy Lyon, hasn't been able to discover the offensive switch. Lyon declared that Freo would go for 2 goals extra per game in 2014, and failed.

I realise that the cake (basic skills) needs to be decent before the icing can be put on; but Lyon's difficulty with Freo's offensive progress tells us me that the defensofiles (Lyon, Roos) might never find the switch.

I agree with a lot of what you say. However when the Swans were under Roos I always thought they were at their best to watch when they were 4-5 goals down, especially at the SCG

It was like the playbook got thrown out the window & caution thrown to the wind. They could really turn it on & attack when they needed to

[jnrmac 20,304]

I would say Lyon at Freo has had a limited forward line to work with, that being Pav and Ballantyne. Walters missing most of the year.

Even with a quality midfield you still need to have forwards who can kick you a winning score.

How we would love to have a limited fwd line like that......

[rjay 25,347]

How we would love to have a limited fwd line like that......

Hopefully with Hogan and McCartin we can have better.

[BIG JIM 508]

Paul Roos broke a 72 year drought at the Sydney swans with his coaching so everyone just sit back and know that this man knows how to win games of Aussie rules and get the best out of his players. Paul Roos will not win a flag at Melbourne but he will build a Melbourne team that's ready to have a real crack at winning a flag under Goodwin. I will back these two outstanding leaders to build our team back to we're we want it. The joy of going to the MCG watching this great club win will start in 2015 and you watch our players finally start to reach there true potential under the master. Paul hates losing and that's what drives him everyday.

[Tony Tea 2,816]

The secret to a career in football punditry is to talk heaps, show graphics, and tell us absolutely nothing we don't already know.

[La Dee-vina Comedia 17,072]

Whatever the source he put his hand up very early and was 100% correct

Mind you, if you state that a coach, any coach, should be sacked, you'll end up being right about 98% of the time...eventually.

[jnrmac 20,304]

Mind you, if you state that a coach, any coach, should be sacked, you'll end up being right about 98% of the time...eventually.

Sadly hasn't happened with Hird,, yet

[Slartibartfast 18,039]

Mind you, if you state that a coach, any coach, should be sacked, you'll end up being right about 98% of the time...eventually.

King called Neeld very early. I'm not sure if he called for his sacking either, just that MFC had picked a coach who was wrong for the list.