9 hours ago, Lucifer's Hero said:

 

Our recruiters must have left skill and talent offer the Demon's job descriptions for a lot of our players...

Lack of skill has been the biggest criticism of our team in recent times, 2018 achievements not withstanding. 

No offence intended Lucifer but I get really frustrated with these kinds of glib disparaging statements about the club and its players. People seem to constantly misunderstand how much of skill execution, particularly under pressure, is in the head. 

We didn't just spend 3 years in a linear progression only to fall off a cliff this year because we don't have any skillful players. We played and won 2 finals games last year and fell in a heap against a side we beat 3 weeks before. Our skill didn't vanish in that 3 weeks or evaporate. Nor could we have gotten into the prelim without skillful players. What happened was mostly mental, coming off the back of some initial tactical errors. 

Our skills actually deteriorated this year as we fell further into a hole. That began because of the million reason that have been explored on DL ad nauseum,  but it continued, and got worse because of loss of confidence and the inability of whoever does our sports psychology to help the players to refocus on the now rather than get drowned in negative self talk (christ I sound like a new age pop psychologist but hopefully my meaning is clear).

We don't have a bunch of unskilled nuffies, we have some excellent players and some fairly decent role players and some gaps like most teams. When they lose their confidence they stop playing instinctively and start making rudimentary errors because they are over thinking things. That got us in spades this year, you could see it every time we got in front of goal. We went from one of the most accurate, high scoring teams, to one of the most inaccurate and low scoring ones. Because of confidence. 

Interestingly richmond turned this around in one year, in no small part due to a new mindfulness coach. 

 we don't believe what we see just wow

Didn't Howe leave Melbourne because The Filth PROMISED him the forward job. He played forward for a few weeks and was moved back to where Melbourne was trying to develop him. 

5 minutes ago, Mr Steve said:

Didn't Howe leave Melbourne because The Filth PROMISED him the forward job. He played forward for a few weeks and was moved back to where Melbourne was trying to develop him. 

The real point is why did we not see what he could do and keep him.

He left because we lowballed him. He didn't get bucketloads from the Pies. We showed him he wasn't wanted.

We wanted Ben Kennedy, another master stroke.

28 minutes ago, Redleg said:

The real point is why did we not see what he could do and keep him.

He left because we lowballed him. He didn't get bucketloads from the Pies. We showed him he wasn't wanted.

We wanted Ben Kennedy, another master stroke.

He was a massive Buckley fanboi as well, plus he was told his best position was as a back. There was no low balling, he would have been paid more by us, that was well known at the time.

yes, we wanted to keep howe

he walked out on us and we had to then facilitate a trade to the team that he wanted to take unders to go to, following a drinking session in bali with his childhood hero and future coach, in which he intended to play forward

from my memory it was a relatively complex deal that helped us move up to take oliver

hibberd got howe's role

both have been named (in the) all australian (squad, but only our player has made the 22)

Edited September 21, 20195 yr by whatwhatsaywhat
thanks @dazzledavey36

2 minutes ago, whatwhatsaywhat said:

yes, we wanted to keep howe

he walked out on us and we had to then facilitate a trade to the team that he wanted to take unders to go to, following a drinking session in bali with his childhood hero and future coach, in which he intended to play forward

from my memory it was a relatively complex deal that helped us move up to take oliver

hibberd got howe's role

both have been named all australian

Wrong.

Howe has never made the actual final All Australian squad. Hibberd has.

1 hour ago, dazzledavey36 said:

Wrong.

Howe has never made the actual final All Australian squad. Hibberd has.

Think poster is referring to Hibberd and Oliver as All-Australians

14 minutes ago, Ben E said:

Think poster is referring to Hibberd and Oliver as All-Australians

Not once has he mentioned Oliver in his thread..... might want to re-read mate

5 minutes ago, dazzledavey36 said:

Not once has he mentioned Oliver in his thread..... might want to re-read mate

You sure? Maybe read again!

46 minutes ago, Mach5 said:

You sure? Maybe read again!

Well [censored] there you go ?‍♂️

Apologies to both @Ben E and @whatwhatsaywhat

Yet to see anything to suggest his gone...all games by both sides as many moves need to be made all just playing their cards.

6 hours ago, Redleg said:

The real point is why did we not see what he could do and keep him.

He left because we lowballed him. He didn't get bucketloads from the Pies. We showed him he wasn't wanted.

We wanted Ben Kennedy, another master stroke.

We swapped out Toumpas for Kennedy, at worst a nil all draw. I thought Kennedy had more than enough talent to take a chance on. Howe was replaced by Melksham to play down back, which failed but getting Melk helped to have Hibberd lined up from a long way out the next year to go in to that role.

Howe just refused to believe he was a defender. It's one of Roos' greatest fails in not convincing him but unfortunately a coach can't warp minds. A few awful games as a forward for the Pies and Howe finally got the message. A great shame that he didn't get the message whilst at Melbourne.

Anyway, not all that relevant to Frost, who mostly knows what he is as a player. How adventurous a new team is with his ball use probably depends on the coach and circumstances. I'm tipping it's lack of confidence in his defensive smarts and positioning that will see him undervalued by the Melbourne list managers if that's our plan more than his ball use.

2 hours ago, Demonsone said:

Yet to see anything to suggest his gone...all games by both sides as many moves need to be made all just playing their cards.

I'd just like to know where these DF reporters came up with our so-called low ball offer, as according to Frosty, we haven't even presented him with an offer as yet?

Once again HS showing their genuine journalistic ability! Rag Mag.

On 9/20/2019 at 11:35 AM, Mach5 said:

Give me nothing but players with work ethic and the right attitude, and the wheel will turn in time.

 

On 9/20/2019 at 12:45 PM, Mach5 said:

I expect they should have a requisite amount of these to make it onto an AFL list. However the work ethic and attitude would see them improve these attributes over time anyway.

 

This hypothetical team will carry all before them, then in the finals come up against a team with work ethic, attitude, talent and skill. Then what?

An amazing victory against the odds, maybe, and then comes up against a team with work ethic, attitude, talent, skill, and X factor. Then what?

A team of worker ants is a great recipe for consistency. Every team needs its worker ants, but also needs its butterflies and christmas beetles.

5 hours ago, whatwhatsaywhat said:

yes, we wanted to keep howe

he walked out on us and we had to then facilitate a trade .... (etc)

(not really replying to you, wwsw, but just chiming in generally on the subject of superhero howe)

Howe sooked his way through his last season with us and who wants a player with a bad attitude? He was hellbent on going to the mudpies and who's to say he would have woken up if we had kept him? Sometimes the win-win is to let the player go.

5 minutes ago, Mazer Rackham said:

(not really replying to you, wwsw, but just chiming in generally on the subject of superhero howe)

Howe sooked his way through his last season with us and who wants a player with a bad attitude? He was hellbent on going to the mudpies and who's to say he would have woken up if we had kept him? Sometimes the win-win is to let the player go.

Here's hoping he is in another losing GF next week.

Not looking good

Apparently North gone cold... if u like bugfooty rumours.

I think nothing happens in this space until other signings have or haven't happened.

Sounds like at a guess the report that Dees have cap issues is true 

6 hours ago, Unleash Hell said:

Apparently North gone cold... if u like bugfooty rumours.

I think nothing happens in this space until other signings have or haven't happened.

Sounds like at a guess the report that Dees have cap issues is true 

Yep, appears most are looking at Frost as a back up option if their first choice defender falls through during the trade period. I think Frost's selling himself around (as per a rumour he was up in Sydney recently), but there are very few buyers atm and he's learning that he's not worth what he thinks he's worth.

On 9/21/2019 at 5:18 PM, Demon Disciple said:

Here's hoping he is in another losing GF next week.

Sometimes reality is even better than dreams.

5 hours ago, AshleyH30 said:

Yep, appears most are looking at Frost as a back up option if their first choice defender falls through during the trade period. I think Frost's selling himself around (as per a rumour he was up in Sydney recently), but there are very few buyers atm and he's learning that he's not worth what he thinks he's worth.

Think his manger has talked him up big time and got into Frost's head that he's worth a whole lot more than he really is. That's ok, he's 26 has had his best season yet, so it's not surprising, but I think there's a lot of clubs that'll be intrigued with his athleticism but when they get into the contract/trade side might cool off. Fair chance we might be happy to wait and then only offer a 1 year reduced deal and let him show that he's worthy of bigger $

On 9/21/2019 at 11:28 AM, whatwhatsaywhat said:

yes, we wanted to keep howe

he walked out on us and we had to then facilitate a trade to the team that he wanted to take unders to go to, following a drinking session in bali with his childhood hero and future coach, in which he intended to play forward

from my memory it was a relatively complex deal that helped us move up to take oliver

hibberd got howe's role

both have been named (in the) all australian (squad, but only our player has made the 22)

Did we go as hard as we could i wonder WW?

But yes he always had intentions of going to the Pies and probably would have gone for similar $ / terms or even slightly less.

He made it well known he wasn't a happy camper at the MFC prior to the deal and it was his dream to play in the black & white so no matter what we did we were probably on a hiding to nothing and we just had to get what we could from the trade.

5 hours ago, pitmaster said:

Sometimes reality is even better than dreams.

Yes Christmas came a week early for me @pitmaster ?

Whether or not we low-balled him, the club and many demonlanders thought he was expendable.