Farewell Brodie Grundy

[beelzebub 23,382]

1 hour ago, Great Northern Summer said:

Probably because he wasn’t at the ground. On ‘gardening leave’ already.

He was there.

 

[Demonsone 2,043]

On 9/16/2023 at 6:20 AM, dazzledavey36 said:

One of the all time recruiting blunders under Goodwins coaching tenure. 

Stevie Wonder could see that it was never going to work with two genuine number 1 rucks in the one team.

Get whatever compo we can for Grundy and learn from this lesson.

The blunder was even larger not playing him with so many fwds going down in our 2 most important games & have schache as a sub incase Gawn wend down is a slap on the face to Grundy & all members/supporters… one questions how the rest of the coaching agreed to this & if so all should go! This may be harsh but I question why we extended his contract with another year to go, sure he’s our drought breaking premiership coach but 0-4 in finals all at the G is poor & who cares how many top 4 finishes, needed to watch and see… why port signed Hinkley again is beyond me! 

Edited September 17, 2023 by Demonsone

[dazzledavey36 55,316]

 

[adonski 12,423]

Feel sorry for Grundy, some more creative strategies involving the Gawndy pairing more have had better results but it was always a risk

We'll get a return on investment and move on

[Deecisive 1,709]

Bestof luck Brody our treatment of him has been poor, he should have played against Carlton. He should have come on at three quarter time if not earlier for tmac, and l suspect we may have won, we could not have done any worse. The experiment was our failure not his, as max was supposed to have been the one going forward. And if max had actually practiced his kicking a little more as a forward then again we may have won. But we did neither and went out in straight sets

[dazzledavey36 55,316]

 

[jacey 333]

9 minutes ago, dazzledavey36 said:

 

12 weeks ago Goodwin said Grundy is now at a club that values him. 

12 weeks ago.

Disgusting how Grundy has been treated. 

[Rednblueriseing 825]

Don't want to play hard ball but he has 4 years left. So we need to get a ready made forward or ruck in return...

[Demonsterative 3,020]

I kinda sit in the grey area with all this. Grundy needed provide a presence as forward and as a ruck. This was sold to him. He knew he wasn’t not going to a full time ruck option. He didn’t improve his forward craft or defensive craft..
 

The club saw a vision and got it wrong, Grundy didn’t provide fully to his role either. As a trainer a Grundy waddled behind the running drills. On ground I saw him jog on ground to defend on the goal line and not provide a contest too many times. IMO Grundy saw himself as rucking midfielder and played accordingly. Possibly why Collingwood wanted him out too. 
 

This is not completely a black and white, poor Grundy situation. It’s was fail and responsibility should placed in both camps. But there is an out for all parties to move on. 
 

kudos to all for seeing this and moving on 

[Sir Why You Little 37,121]

I could see it coming a long way out. 
But the fact that TMac played in 2 Finals and was mostly invisible, while Brodie sat in the Grandstand did not sit well with me at all

2 close losses could have been very different…

[jnrmac 20,179]

Grundy was dudded. He is what he is. 

Max can't play fwd because he can't kick for [censored]. Yet grundy was castigated because he can't take a contested mark. 

 

He would have been fired up to play Collingwood against their 2 rucks. And against carltons 2 rucks. Yet we went in with one injured ruck.

Beggars belief

We beat both Carlton and coll with 2 rucks in round 12 and 13.

[Adam The God 30,404]

The strangest thing for me is that we never tried Grundy in the ruck and Max behind the ball.

Just like we never tried Gawn in the ruck and Jackson as a mid.

I find it odd that we recruited a second ruck, saw that the forward / ruck thing wasn't working, but never tried the back / ruck alternative. Even just for one or two plays.

Edited September 18, 2023 by Binmans PA

[Great Northern Summer 708]

I remember one of the Fox commentators, maybe on On the Couch or First Crack point out examples of Grundy being very lazy in the Essendon loss when he was our sole ruckman, which led directly to Essendon goals. They showed examples of what Gawn had done in other games in the same settings and clearly, it did show Gawn covered far more ground and was willing to go way further than Grundy.

As pointed out, Gawn has to take some responsibility too. Why does it take Grundy getting dropped to finally stand up and assert some influence on the game? 

That being said, and as I’ve pointed out before, the fact that Goodwin went from saying mid-year ‘Grundy is at a club that values him’ to a month or so later being dropped effectually for good, shows that there is something else to this story. At least half the games Grundy and Gawn played together were in the wet, where the combo was never going to work. What does that leave? Maybe 7-8 games maximum in suitable conditions? How is that a proper sample size to get this combination working? We saw how useless GWS as an entire team was in its first 10 or so games with a new system/coach, but it stuck together and look at it now! 

We all love Gawn, but because of who he is, he is probably the most influential person at the club. Maybe he just said straight out, mid year, ‘I want to play as the sole ruckman’ rather than giving the combo time to work, and Goodwin had to make the call whether to sit on the fence and keep plugging away at the original plan without pissing off Grundy, or telling Grundy ‘sorry mate’, which would have hit Grundy for six. All strong personalities involved, so it’s hard not to think Grundy didn’t get sour grapes (he is human after all), and perhaps soured relationships in his handling of being dropped. So in all, it’s just led to one giant $&(@show!

 

[McQueen 17,867]

38 minutes ago, jacey said:

12 weeks ago Goodwin said Grundy is now at a club that values him. 

12 weeks ago.

Disgusting how Grundy has been treated. 

On the surface that’s an easy assessment based off rhetoric from Goodwin needling the Pies. Pretty stupid of the coach. 
 

But the pragmatist and stoic in me won’t be drawn into the emotion - but rather see it for what it is.  
It was a hunch that they thought they could copy cat Geelong with two talls (Stanley and Blicsavs) and win a flag. 
 

Unfortunately for both parties it hasn’t worked. 

[Superunknown 4,223]

I think members deserve, and should demand, an explanation from the custodians of OUR club

[YesitwasaWin4theAges 6,708]

Personally i hope the Grundy money goes into a key forward but there is no much out there. It might not even happen next year either due to cap space.

Both BBB and Tmac have one year remaining on their deals, so i would estimate its nearly 1 million of Salary cap space that should be devoted to a key Forward in 2025.

Any Brody Mihoeck's floating around at VFL, SANFL or Bush league level?

Edited September 18, 2023 by YesitwasaWin4theAges

[DeeSpencer 26,072]

1 hour ago, Demonsterative said:

I kinda sit in the grey area with all this. Grundy needed provide a presence as forward and as a ruck. This was sold to him. He knew he wasn’t not going to a full time ruck option. He didn’t improve his forward craft or defensive craft..
 

The club saw a vision and got it wrong, Grundy didn’t provide fully to his role either. As a trainer a Grundy waddled behind the running drills. On ground I saw him jog on ground to defend on the goal line and not provide a contest too many times. IMO Grundy saw himself as rucking midfielder and played accordingly. Possibly why Collingwood wanted him out too. 
 

This is not completely a black and white, poor Grundy situation. It’s was fail and responsibility should placed in both camps. But there is an out for all parties to move on. 
 

kudos to all for seeing this and moving on 

Thanks for saying it so I didn't.

He barely had the coaches trust as a ruck/forward. He didn't have it as a forward/ruck.

The SCG and full time ruck will both suit him perfectly and Sydney are desperate, but John Longmire's going to lose his freaking mind at some of the stuff he does if he doesn't change his ways.

[Gawndy the Great 9,011]

29 minutes ago, Superunknown said:

I think members deserve, and should demand, an explanation from the custodians of OUR club

I think too much is being read into this.

The combo showed many times it just did not work. Neither of those two were capable forwards.

I think we knew he was going to go and that we had seen enough and didn’t want to risk an injury to Grundy. We need the pick(s).

[Supreme_Demon 3,899]

53 minutes ago, Sir Why You Little said:

I could see it coming a long way out. 
But the fact that TMac played in 2 Finals and was mostly invisible, while Brodie sat in the Grandstand did not sit well with me at all

2 close losses could have been very different…

Agreed!

I am very disappointed that this plan of playing two elite ruckmen in our team didn't work.

I was genuinely excited about it after Pre-Season games against St. Kilda and Richmond.

Sadly, it wasn't given enough of a chance to work.

I want to thank Brodie Grundy for his efforts throughout the season. Especially when Max Gawn was out injured. If it wasn't for Brodie Grundy we would of been screwed.

In the end though, the harsh truth is, the buck stops with Simon Goodwin and Max Gawn. The experiment of having both Brodie Grundy and Max Gawn in the same team was a disappointment and a failure. Although, Brodie Grundy also needs to take responsibility for his own lack of ability to be a forwardline threat and being unable to take contested marks.

Nevertheless, I wish Brodie Grundy all the best up at Sydney (except against us), and hope we can maximise a good deal in a trade for the Melbourne Demons.

Edited September 18, 2023 by Supreme_Demon

[Undeeterred 3,124]

37 minutes ago, Superunknown said:

I think members deserve, and should demand, an explanation from the custodians of OUR club

An explanation as to what exactly? 
Is it not being run to your satisfaction?

[rpfc 28,758]

Those of you trying to placate your own Dees bias is a bit rich; we knew what we were getting. A ruck who struggles forward coming to a team with the worst situation imaginable for that player; a better ruck and a dearth of healthy forwards to enable Grundy to play a small role in our forward line.

It was a mistake from the point they spoke to Grundy last year. We may not be too adversely impacted from a long term or draft capital POV but I would have much preferred we spent $650k on forwards who might have been a chance to play the last two weeks

Its ok, mistakes get made but can we just admit that and move on - some of you are contorting yourselves to avoid that admission.

[LakesideOval 2]

The problem with Brodie is 1) his personality and 2) his contract. He is an intellectual and is mentally already past footy, unless he had a contract that actually incentivised him. 

[jnrmac 20,179]

So now if max goes down we will ruck with ????.?

[Mel Bourne 4,534]

A lot of people here talking down Grundy’s forward craft, and completely overlooking how little he was offering defensively too. My take is that this latter factor played a very large part in the abandonment of the “Gawndy Experiment”. 

But my main takeaway from this fairly embarrassing blunder was that Goodwin made a poor call in deciding to recruit him in the first place. A bizarre attempt to fill the Luke Jackson-sized hole with a player who was never going to provide the same qualities, and who would neither have been comfortable as a rucking understudy. The lack of vision is concerning. 

The final crescendo in this symphony of mistakes was placing him in the grandstand for a semi final where his presence could have made all the difference. Or at least a helluva lot more difference than the inactivated-sub that was Schache, another player who’s recruitment makes as much sense to many here as Chinese algebra. 
 

None of this exactly fills me with faith. 
 

The end of an error. 

Edited September 18, 2023 by Mel Bourne

[Mel Bourne 4,534]

1 hour ago, LakesideOval said:

The problem with Brodie is 1) his personality and 2) his contract. He is an intellectual and is mentally already past footy, unless he had a contract that actually incentivised him. 

Let’s not get carried away here. It’s not like we recruited Bertrand Russell. 

Edited September 18, 2023 by Mel Bourne