Out:  All players not carrying a niggle, injury and all those required for next season.

In:  All fringe players / rookies (yes, including Bradtke & other first gamers), Lewis and anyone else who is expendable.  Even i'm happy to sit on the bench handing out oranges at quarter time and running on with the occasional water bottle after a goal if it means making up a mock 22!

NS's curse is ever present! ...

..."Barring major problems in the final round against North Melbourne in Hobart, it will give incoming fitness boss Darren Burgess - who was appointed in late July - a chance to make an immediate impact on the group that is expected to undergo a fierce pre-season after winning just five games for the season..."

@Rusty Nails  (or anyone who brings it up). 

 Can you do me a favour mate and explain how curses work in general, and then more specifically how the Norm Smith one influences the current day FD, or individual athletes.

  On 22/08/2019 at 05:52, Engorged Onion said:

@Rusty Nails  (or anyone who brings it up). 

 Can you do me a favour mate and explain how curses work in general, and then more specifically how the Norm Smith one influences the current day FD, or individual athletes.

  On 22/08/2019 at 05:52, Engorged Onion said:

@Rusty Nails  (or anyone who brings it up). 

 Can you do me a favour mate and explain how curses work in general, and then more specifically how the Norm Smith one influences the current day FD, or individual athletes.

No don't rusty. Trying to explain the NS curse only makes it worse. 

It is enough to say it is real. 

Good. I had a feeling we'd be stuffed for 2019 when they announced the long list of surgeries last spring. There's no good reason to expect a side to have a healthy and successful season ahead when 12-15 of your list are coming back from surgeries.

Sounds like Weed (hip) and Lever (possible ankle surgery)  might have delayed starts to the pre-season. Hopefully everyone else can hit the ground running and some other sides can cop the long list of surgeries this time around. 

 

  On 22/08/2019 at 06:24, binman said:

No don't rusty. Trying to explain the NS curse only makes it worse. 

It is enough to say it is real. 

Correct Bin.  Only the most tainted minions know the NSC is something not to be meddled with!

  On 22/08/2019 at 05:52, Engorged Onion said:

@Rusty Nails  (or anyone who brings it up). 

 Can you do me a favour mate and explain how curses work in general, and then more specifically how the Norm Smith one influences the current day FD, or individual athletes.

It's actually quite simple. When a Bad Thing is spelled out upon an entity (any entity, but particularly a sporting team), all Bad Things that happen to that Entity (or sporting team) are forevermore attributed to the Bad Thing. This is called the Curse. When a lot of people stop believing in the Curse (or resolve themselves to just, y'know, succeed?!), then the Curse is dispelled forever and everyone can go on living their lives.

After that, the Curse then goes about its un-merry way, eager to haunt another overly-superstitious entity (again, any entity, but particularly a sporting team as mentioned above).

Edited August 22, 20195 yr by Chook

Oh yaaaay

  On 22/08/2019 at 06:45, Bring-Back-Powell said:

There's no good reason to expect a side to have a healthy and successful season ahead when 12-15 of your list are coming back from surgeries. 

 

Some of those players have actually produced decent seasons. 

Petracca for instance. 

Making a comment like you have is pointless. We all know it's highly unlikely that a side will have a successful year if a host of players will be requiring some sort of surgery. 

However, what you and so many other happy-go-luckies fail to make mention of is that a team competing in a prelim final falling to 17th the following year simply can't be explained by injuries.

In short - 

Yeh, it's hard to have a 'successful' year with that many surgeries, but it's equally as hard to finish second bottom and win only 5 games for the year unless there are some other suspect reasons at play. 

  On 22/08/2019 at 12:21, stevethemanjordan said:

In short - 

Yeh, it's hard to have a 'successful' year with that many surgeries, but it's equally as hard to finish second bottom and win only 5 games for the year unless there are some other suspect reasons at play. 

Can you elaborate?

I also think there is something amiss, but I don’t know and would only be speculating. 

  On 22/08/2019 at 12:21, stevethemanjordan said:

Some of those players have actually produced decent seasons. 

Petracca for instance. 

Making a comment like you have is pointless. We all know it's highly unlikely that a side will have a successful year if a host of players will be requiring some sort of surgery. 

However, what you and so many other happy-go-luckies fail to make mention of is that a team competing in a prelim final falling to 17th the following year simply can't be explained by injuries.

In short - 

Yeh, it's hard to have a 'successful' year with that many surgeries, but it's equally as hard to finish second bottom and win only 5 games for the year unless there are some other suspect reasons at play. 

I'm far from one of those around here mate. I'll be the first to say we've been an absolute disgrace this year. Such a disgrace that the head coach should just about be shown the door for such an epic collapse.

I was merely stating that I had grave concerns during the off season, and reading the training reports in January that most of our midfield was still in the rehab group, that we'd possibly go backwards this year. They don't say you need a good and healthy pre-season for no reason.

  On 22/08/2019 at 12:21, stevethemanjordan said:

Some of those players have actually produced decent seasons. 

Petracca for instance. 

Making a comment like you have is pointless. We all know it's highly unlikely that a side will have a successful year if a host of players will be requiring some sort of surgery. 

However, what you and so many other happy-go-luckies fail to make mention of is that a team competing in a prelim final falling to 17th the following year simply can't be explained by injuries.

In short - 

Yeh, it's hard to have a 'successful' year with that many surgeries, but it's equally as hard to finish second bottom and win only 5 games for the year unless there are some other suspect reasons at play. 

While agreeing there seems to be potentially more at play than just injuries, it surely has to be the major factor in what has happened this season. There are a couple of reasons:

- The pre-season surgeries naturally put teams behind, but we also had our shortest pre-season ever. With the majority of the core of the team sitting with between 50-120 games  (Gawn, Viney, Trac, Harmes, Brayshaw, Salem, Oliver, Lever, Weid and with the majority of the fringe players also in the same boat) means they don't have the 'miles in the legs' as some of the teams that have competed regularly in finals. We've seen in the past Geelong, Hawks, Richmond, the Eagles and the dogs have a down year/s when they've gone deep into finals with younger squads, those mentioned (with the exception of the dogs (yet)) have all come back again and been successful.

- Add on the in-season injuries, it was in another thread - and don't quote me on exact figures - but up until the Richmond game we'd lost something like 120 games to our best 22 players, the tigers had lost 90 and the Pies 60. Those teams were used as examples as they were discussed at the time as teams with large injury lists. On top of that the injuries seemed to be very concentrated at one end each week, early in the season we'd be missing 4 or 5 of our best defenders then as the season progressed it transferred to the forward half. Very hard to build anything in season when we've got such deficiencies. 

I'm not saying there aren't other factors but a limited pre-season and in-season injuries are certainly big factors. I'm very happy there'll be limited off-season hold ups and we've got Burgess to hopefully get them super fit. Only then will we be able to reliable assess if some of the issues are (as discussed on the many forums here) - the coach, game plan, the captains, selection, Pert, selling games to the NT etc. 

 

  On 23/08/2019 at 00:14, Red and Blue realist said:

While agreeing there seems to be potentially more at play than just injuries, it surely has to be the major factor in what has happened this season. There are a couple of reasons:

- The pre-season surgeries naturally put teams behind, but we also had our shortest pre-season ever. With the majority of the core of the team sitting with between 50-120 games  (Gawn, Viney, Trac, Harmes, Brayshaw, Salem, Oliver, Lever, Weid and with the majority of the fringe players also in the same boat) means they don't have the 'miles in the legs' as some of the teams that have competed regularly in finals. We've seen in the past Geelong, Hawks, Richmond, the Eagles and the dogs have a down year/s when they've gone deep into finals with younger squads, those mentioned (with the exception of the dogs (yet)) have all come back again and been successful.

- Add on the in-season injuries, it was in another thread - and don't quote me on exact figures - but up until the Richmond game we'd lost something like 120 games to our best 22 players, the tigers had lost 90 and the Pies 60. Those teams were used as examples as they were discussed at the time as teams with large injury lists. On top of that the injuries seemed to be very concentrated at one end each week, early in the season we'd be missing 4 or 5 of our best defenders then as the season progressed it transferred to the forward half. Very hard to build anything in season when we've got such deficiencies. 

I'm not saying there aren't other factors but a limited pre-season and in-season injuries are certainly big factors. I'm very happy there'll be limited off-season hold ups and we've got Burgess to hopefully get them super fit. Only then will we be able to reliable assess if some of the issues are (as discussed on the many forums here) - the coach, game plan, the captains, selection, Pert, selling games to the NT etc. 

 

Very well summarised. How others can't see this beggars belief.

  On 23/08/2019 at 00:14, Red and Blue realist said:

While agreeing there seems to be potentially more at play than just injuries, it surely has to be the major factor in what has happened this season. There are a couple of reasons:

- The pre-season surgeries naturally put teams behind, but we also had our shortest pre-season ever. With the majority of the core of the team sitting with between 50-120 games  (Gawn, Viney, Trac, Harmes, Brayshaw, Salem, Oliver, Lever, Weid and with the majority of the fringe players also in the same boat) means they don't have the 'miles in the legs' as some of the teams that have competed regularly in finals. We've seen in the past Geelong, Hawks, Richmond, the Eagles and the dogs have a down year/s when they've gone deep into finals with younger squads, those mentioned (with the exception of the dogs (yet)) have all come back again and been successful.

- Add on the in-season injuries, it was in another thread - and don't quote me on exact figures - but up until the Richmond game we'd lost something like 120 games to our best 22 players, the tigers had lost 90 and the Pies 60. Those teams were used as examples as they were discussed at the time as teams with large injury lists. On top of that the injuries seemed to be very concentrated at one end each week, early in the season we'd be missing 4 or 5 of our best defenders then as the season progressed it transferred to the forward half. Very hard to build anything in season when we've got such deficiencies. 

I'm not saying there aren't other factors but a limited pre-season and in-season injuries are certainly big factors. I'm very happy there'll be limited off-season hold ups and we've got Burgess to hopefully get them super fit. Only then will we be able to reliable assess if some of the issues are (as discussed on the many forums here) - the coach, game plan, the captains, selection, Pert, selling games to the NT etc. 

 

Best thought through article that i have read on this topic , well done

Better start working on new excuses for 2020 then. You know, just in case...

  On 24/08/2019 at 09:25, Jaded said:

Better start working on new excuses for 2020 then. You know, just in case...

Knock yourself out over the off season thinking of them

  On 23/08/2019 at 00:14, Red and Blue realist said:

While agreeing there seems to be potentially more at play than just injuries, it surely has to be the major factor in what has happened this season. There are a couple of reasons:

- The pre-season surgeries naturally put teams behind, but we also had our shortest pre-season ever. With the majority of the core of the team sitting with between 50-120 games  (Gawn, Viney, Trac, Harmes, Brayshaw, Salem, Oliver, Lever, Weid and with the majority of the fringe players also in the same boat) means they don't have the 'miles in the legs' as some of the teams that have competed regularly in finals. We've seen in the past Geelong, Hawks, Richmond, the Eagles and the dogs have a down year/s when they've gone deep into finals with younger squads, those mentioned (with the exception of the dogs (yet)) have all come back again and been successful.

- Add on the in-season injuries, it was in another thread - and don't quote me on exact figures - but up until the Richmond game we'd lost something like 120 games to our best 22 players, the tigers had lost 90 and the Pies 60. Those teams were used as examples as they were discussed at the time as teams with large injury lists. On top of that the injuries seemed to be very concentrated at one end each week, early in the season we'd be missing 4 or 5 of our best defenders then as the season progressed it transferred to the forward half. Very hard to build anything in season when we've got such deficiencies. 

I'm not saying there aren't other factors but a limited pre-season and in-season injuries are certainly big factors. I'm very happy there'll be limited off-season hold ups and we've got Burgess to hopefully get them super fit. Only then will we be able to reliable assess if some of the issues are (as discussed on the many forums here) - the coach, game plan, the captains, selection, Pert, selling games to the NT etc. 

 

Wonderful post. Time will tell. 

  On 24/08/2019 at 10:39, BarassiWisdom said:

I hear @Lord Nev is going in for heart surgery to replace the pea with something hopefully a little larger.

@drysdale demon is going in for his routine IQ check. Hoping to crack it for triple figures this time.

Decided to go out in a blaze of glory hey? Good for you, I'm sure it will make all your problems go away.

Not many players experienced contact this year to need surgery 

  On 23/08/2019 at 00:14, Red and Blue realist said:

While agreeing there seems to be potentially more at play than just injuries, it surely has to be the major factor in what has happened this season. There are a couple of reasons:

- The pre-season surgeries naturally put teams behind, but we also had our shortest pre-season ever. With the majority of the core of the team sitting with between 50-120 games  (Gawn, Viney, Trac, Harmes, Brayshaw, Salem, Oliver, Lever, Weid and with the majority of the fringe players also in the same boat) means they don't have the 'miles in the legs' as some of the teams that have competed regularly in finals. We've seen in the past Geelong, Hawks, Richmond, the Eagles and the dogs have a down year/s when they've gone deep into finals with younger squads, those mentioned (with the exception of the dogs (yet)) have all come back again and been successful.

- Add on the in-season injuries, it was in another thread - and don't quote me on exact figures - but up until the Richmond game we'd lost something like 120 games to our best 22 players, the tigers had lost 90 and the Pies 60. Those teams were used as examples as they were discussed at the time as teams with large injury lists. On top of that the injuries seemed to be very concentrated at one end each week, early in the season we'd be missing 4 or 5 of our best defenders then as the season progressed it transferred to the forward half. Very hard to build anything in season when we've got such deficiencies. 

I'm not saying there aren't other factors but a limited pre-season and in-season injuries are certainly big factors. I'm very happy there'll be limited off-season hold ups and we've got Burgess to hopefully get them super fit. Only then will we be able to reliable assess if some of the issues are (as discussed on the many forums here) - the coach, game plan, the captains, selection, Pert, selling games to the NT etc. 

 

Really good post.

However, to those who, in response to this good post and elsewhere, are saying that the posters who've been critical are blind to the impact of injuries, your assertion is completely erroneous. No one is denying the impact of a bad preseason and injuries throughout the year. The criticism is about how the coaching staff have failed in response to this, and also the overall direction of the team. Some on here feel that the way the team plays is not conducive to winning games of football, regardless of injury (the cult of contested football, for example, particularly when the midfield has been the healthiest group). Others feel that the coaching staff continually make poor decisions that they fail to either adequately address or rectify (Fritsch playing back when the team couldn't score, for example).

The point is that both injuries and a horrendous coaching performance since October can be true at the same time. Goodwin has even now admitted this - that the coaches got it wrong. So the base was already poor to begin with, the injuries just amplified the problems.

No denying injuries were a factor, but we did totally change our coaching structure midway through the season too...

 

  On 23/08/2019 at 00:14, Red and Blue realist said:

While agreeing there seems to be potentially more at play than just injuries, it surely has to be the major factor in what has happened this season. There are a couple of reasons:

- The pre-season surgeries naturally put teams behind, but we also had our shortest pre-season ever. With the majority of the core of the team sitting with between 50-120 games  (Gawn, Viney, Trac, Harmes, Brayshaw, Salem, Oliver, Lever, Weid and with the majority of the fringe players also in the same boat) means they don't have the 'miles in the legs' as some of the teams that have competed regularly in finals. We've seen in the past Geelong, Hawks, Richmond, the Eagles and the dogs have a down year/s when they've gone deep into finals with younger squads, those mentioned (with the exception of the dogs (yet)) have all come back again and been successful.

- Add on the in-season injuries, it was in another thread - and don't quote me on exact figures - but up until the Richmond game we'd lost something like 120 games to our best 22 players, the tigers had lost 90 and the Pies 60. Those teams were used as examples as they were discussed at the time as teams with large injury lists. On top of that the injuries seemed to be very concentrated at one end each week, early in the season we'd be missing 4 or 5 of our best defenders then as the season progressed it transferred to the forward half. Very hard to build anything in season when we've got such deficiencies. 

I'm not saying there aren't other factors but a limited pre-season and in-season injuries are certainly big factors. I'm very happy there'll be limited off-season hold ups and we've got Burgess to hopefully get them super fit. Only then will we be able to reliable assess if some of the issues are (as discussed on the many forums here) - the coach, game plan, the captains, selection, Pert, selling games to the NT etc. 

 

You left out poor recruiting. Why do clubs like Richmond get Tom Lynch for example and we scrape the barrel? We are full of VFL level players at present. Also I hope the players are not run so hard in the off season that they sustain over use injuries such as stress fractures. They need hours of skills training including goal- kicking practice!

  On 24/08/2019 at 09:25, Jaded said:

Better start working on new excuses for 2020 then. You know, just in case...

On it.

  On 24/08/2019 at 22:45, Lord Nev said:

No denying injuries were a factor, but we did totally change our coaching structure midway through the season too...

 

And that changed Coaching Structure made no difference at all...

Problems are deep