It's the Culture

[fr_ap 2,463]

Since our ejection on Friday night I've been reflecting on our season and where it might have gone wrong. Or in particular, why this year never quite felt right. 

All teams have question marks on whether they have what it takes to get to the top. Supporters and the media focus largely on whether the playing group is talented enough, whether the coaching/gameplan can succeed and whether the off field administration is enabling success. These are no doubt important. 

For us though, none of these 3 elements have changed materially from last year. We know the team is good enough, we know the coaching group was good enough (notwithstanding tactics need to change) and we are stable off field. 

What has changed and I think why I felt 'uncomfortable' with a lot of the seasons successes - is the culture. This is what stitched it all together last year and in this sport in particular, with the largest ground and freeform positioning, is a crucial element to executing a defensive-minded gameplan. 

Bit by bit, week by week, I think our leaders (players and coaches) have let it slip, with a trail of markers going back to the end of last year:

- Gawn declaring at our premiership celebration that we'd salute in 2022 - I'm sure this was designed to be bold, but it imbued from the start a disrespect to our opposition and to some degree, embedded some underlying complacency

- the Carlton pre season game, conceding 8 50m penalties and clearly lacking some discipline and respect for our opponents and the umpires

- consistent selection of players who were underdone, out of form or blatantly injured, reducing accountability, reducing trust in the FD to be impartial, and denying our youth and second stringers of chances to grow. Not very selfless or trusting from our FD decision makers. 

- May/Melksham incident, notable not for it's drunkenness or timing but for what was said by May to Melksham, implying a clique of 'premiership heroes' to the exclusion of all others, and again a sense of entitlement stemming from achieving success last year

- coaching refusal to change structure or gameplan in the face of pretty compelling evidence that it was being dismantled

- clear on field selfishness in front of goals - Fritsch the poster boy but it arguably most damaging from players like Trac who repeatedly attempts to kick goals with 3 oppo players on top of him rather than using his gifts to release someone to space as he did more often last year

- clear drop off in accountability to team defense standards in guarding space appropriately or sitting at the defensive side of a contest. The selflessness that was such a hallmark is now difficult to see in this regard.

- clear drop off in willingness to work hard at the little things off the ball - they spoke about being the best teammates they could be last year. Being 3rd last in pressure implies they weren't very good teammates to each other this year at all.

- Continued poor discipline in both our finals, conceding 50m penalties to Sydney at crucial times and again against Brisbane, with the leadership group repeatedly at fault and a litany of downfield free kicks as we repeatedly dumped players after kicking

-players openly arguing, pointing and expressing frustration with each other on field, including the leaders

-Langdons poorly worded 'duck dinner' comment - I'm sure not wholly intended to be disrespectful but again a marker of an underlying arrogance in the teams evaluation of its opponents

-Consistently going ahead early in all our losses - indicating again our pure footy ability was clearly good enough - only to be overrun. I think fitness wasn't the issue. I think it was the teams mindset to run for each other, trust their teammate to win a contest and a collective belief in the system and team defense. 

-Gawn spoke about last year how their cultural change started with the removal of the 'little quips' around the club - not bringing each other down for fun. I'm sure I'm not alone in noticing that from about a 1/3 of the way through the year, the Gus and Gawny episodes took a bit of a turn...the quips of teammates returned in subtle doses in exchange for a laugh. By the last few episodes of the year I no longer enjoyed the show - arrogant, backslapping banter often at the expense of their guest or the team's lesser lights. 

- Gawn has a guest spot on Nova's breakfast show once a week. The hosts questioned Max a number of times about our form during the 2nd half of the year. It's a breakfast show and I don't expect it to be serious, but near the end of the year Max kept referring to our ladder position as his defense. "Well, we're still second so we must be doing something right". There was a clear denial of the trends within our game (at least to the extent he would admit it externally), again implying a level of disrespect for the opposition. Jonathan Brown more than once accused Max of living in the past. Brown is hardly a beacon of morality or good judgement, but I think he was on the mark. 

 

I'll stop here to avoid making this any longer - I'm sure others can add their own observations to this list. 

I've no doubt some of you will say I'm being pedantic, particularly on the final two points on how Gawn has presented in the media - but I just can't shake the sense that the selflessness, humility, and team unity that we had in 2021 has been pretty significantly eroded.

I think this is encapsulated by our two finals games. We were deers in headlights when both Sydney and Brisbane cranked up the pressure. We clearly weren't running for each other. Uninspired and selfish can look a lot like being gassed. 

It was pretty alarming to see this team, our amazing, contested, tough, 'built for finals' team start playing hot potato and putting teammates under pressure with errant or 30cm hospital handballs. I think this reflected that the playing group to some degree lost the trust & faith they once had in one another. 

If I am unfortunately right, it won't be an easy fix from here.

Culture is the hardest and last thing to get right, and it's the easiest and first thing you get wrong. 

Looking forward to the offseason moves and all of that - but my eye will be watching for the return of some of the cultural markers we had in 2021. Or at least, the non recurrence of the markers of 2022. 

[Ted Lasso 19,334]

Nah

[Mr Steve 3,820]

Yawn-- They were hunted and simply not good enough this year. The players who were given a chance from Casey did not take them.  Brown Bedford Chandler Dunstan Weideman all got a go after staring at Casey. 

[layzie 33,753]

A couple of arrogance moments crept in but I don't think it was the overriding issue. 

[Satyriconhome 10,734]

Guff/Twaddle

[rpfc 28,267]

I think we showed some hubris, yes. Don’t know about some of these examples but we talked too often about how we are are the exemplar and we’re not. 

Primarily Roffey and Gawn.

[fr_ap 2,463]

Responses indicate I'm on the money. Carry on expecting the joys of 2021 to return. 

[NeveroddoreveN 1,034]

Culture is hardly fixed in one year....even if it was a Covid Premiership one,

We really went back to some old habits when under the pump.  Other teams saw this and ramped up the pressure knowing there was a good chance we would fold.

Last year i think we all could see that players were busting a gut for each other.   Often our bottom 6 was really hard to pick as we seemed to have a group putting in when required.  This year i could count maybe 2 or 3 of those type performances of overall consistency and effort..   In fact, i believe we dropped off so much that it was getting hard to pick a bottom 10 or 12 players, let alone bottom 6.

Too much is left to too few.   And that is compounded when games are getting close as our regular performers try to do more and generally get punished for trying to lift and compensate for teammates simply doing the bare minimum.

Great post and i agree, there has been an underlying arrogance.  Maybe this year will humble us into not getting too far ahead of ourselves.  I also went off the Gawny/Gus podcast at similar time mid way through season....the little barbs really annoyed me.

Respect is a massive part of culture, i am not sure our club as a whole quite gets it as yet.

[mo64 5,853]

I think the term "culture" is the most overblown term in AFL. Every year the premiership team will refer back to some isolated incident that changed the culture of the club. 

If you have talent, prepare well, are well coached and perform on the day, success usually comes your way.

For once I agree with Saty. It's twaddle.

[NeveroddoreveN 1,034]

14 minutes ago, Mr Steve said:

Yawn-- They were hunted and simply not good enough this year. The players who were given a chance from Casey did not take them.  Brown Bedford Chandler Dunstan Weideman all got a go after staring at Casey. 

Yet we have underperforming players all year across the field.

i hardly think Chandler got a chance, nor Dunstan.

We also seemed to pick Weid when he was out of form.  We don't really have selection criteria, or at least certainly not a rigid one.

[dl4e 5,851]

I will repeat it again and again. They suffered from mental fatigue.

[titan_uranus 24,979]

4 minutes ago, fr_ap said:

Responses indicate I'm on the money. Carry on expecting the joys of 2021 to return. 

Everyone disagrees with you, so you're right?

Presumably if everyone had agreed with you, you'd have been wrong?

FWIW, I don't think we have a widespread cultural problem. As I posted yesterday somewhere else, I think our season ended the way it did for a number of reasons, not just one as this thread suggests. I think the issues here are largely summed up by a group of players who struggled to find the inner motivation to gut run, chase, tackle, repeat lead, etc. when faced with a brutal fixture, opponents treating their games against us as finals each week, less stability, and drop offs in form from the bottom 6-10 players (who, unsurprisingly, provide the pressure/running a lot more than the cream on top - players like ANB, Sparrow, Spargo, Hunt, Rivers).

[fr_ap 2,463]

2 minutes ago, mo64 said:

I think the term "culture" is the most overblown term in AFL. Every year the premiership team will refer back to some isolated incident that changed the culture of the club. 

If you have talent, prepare well, are well coached and perform on the day, success usually comes your way.

For once I agree with Saty. It's twaddle.

Your 2nd last paragraph is the entire point mate - 'perform well on the day' - what do you put that down to? Try and articulate it. Most articulations come back to something resembling culture. 

People don't talk about it and most of you won't acknowledge it - because it's boring, intangible, and not formulaic. 

We all like to think team sport is as simple as smashing the best individual players together and analysing back room videos to come up with a cutting edge gameplan. Video games have done this.

To some degree, some sports are like this - basketball and soccer come to mind - as the field is smaller, positions are fixed and the intangible variables are much more fixed. 

There's a reason Paul roos spoke about cultural change as his biggest challenge.

All comes down to people and how they feel - talent a given at this level. 

You can all bleat about 'insert player [A] kicking it to player [B] and it's solved. It never works in AFL and has been proven not to work over and over and over and over again. 

But as I said, carry on. Y'all don't get it. 

[58er 6,399]

28 minutes ago, fr_ap said:

Since our ejection on Friday night I've been reflecting on our season and where it might have gone wrong. Or in particular, why this year never quite felt right. 

All teams have question marks on whether they have what it takes to get to the top. Supporters and the media focus largely on whether the playing group is talented enough, whether the coaching/gameplan can succeed and whether the off field administration is enabling success. These are no doubt important. 

For us though, none of these 3 elements have changed materially from last year. We know the team is good enough, we know the coaching group was good enough (notwithstanding tactics need to change) and we are stable off field. 

What has changed and I think why I felt 'uncomfortable' with a lot of the seasons successes - is the culture. This is what stitched it all together last year and in this sport in particular, with the largest ground and freeform positioning, is a crucial element to executing a defensive-minded gameplan. 

Bit by bit, week by week, I think our leaders (players and coaches) have let it slip, with a trail of markers going back to the end of last year:

- Gawn declaring at our premiership celebration that we'd salute in 2022 - I'm sure this was designed to be bold, but it imbued from the start a disrespect to our opposition and to some degree, embedded some underlying complacency

- the Carlton pre season game, conceding 8 50m penalties and clearly lacking some discipline and respect for our opponents and the umpires

- consistent selection of players who were underdone, out of form or blatantly injured, reducing accountability, reducing trust in the FD to be impartial, and denying our youth and second stringers of chances to grow. Not very selfless or trusting from our FD decision makers. 

- May/Melksham incident, notable not for it's drunkenness or timing but for what was said by May to Melksham, implying a clique of 'premiership heroes' to the exclusion of all others, and again a sense of entitlement stemming from achieving success last year

- coaching refusal to change structure or gameplan in the face of pretty compelling evidence that it was being dismantled

- clear on field selfishness in front of goals - Fritsch the poster boy but it arguably most damaging from players like Trac who repeatedly attempts to kick goals with 3 oppo players on top of him rather than using his gifts to release someone to space as he did more often last year

- clear drop off in accountability to team defense standards in guarding space appropriately or sitting at the defensive side of a contest. The selflessness that was such a hallmark is now difficult to see in this regard.

- clear drop off in willingness to work hard at the little things off the ball - they spoke about being the best teammates they could be last year. Being 3rd last in pressure implies they weren't very good teammates to each other this year at all.

- Continued poor discipline in both our finals, conceding 50m penalties to Sydney at crucial times and again against Brisbane, with the leadership group repeatedly at fault and a litany of downfield free kicks as we repeatedly dumped players after kicking

-players openly arguing, pointing and expressing frustration with each other on field, including the leaders

-Langdons poorly worded 'duck dinner' comment - I'm sure not wholly intended to be disrespectful but again a marker of an underlying arrogance in the teams evaluation of its opponents

-Consistently going ahead early in all our losses - indicating again our pure footy ability was clearly good enough - only to be overrun. I think fitness wasn't the issue. I think it was the teams mindset to run for each other, trust their teammate to win a contest and a collective belief in the system and team defense. 

-Gawn spoke about last year how their cultural change started with the removal of the 'little quips' around the club - not bringing each other down for fun. I'm sure I'm not alone in noticing that from about a 1/3 of the way through the year, the Gus and Gawny episodes took a bit of a turn...the quips of teammates returned in subtle doses in exchange for a laugh. By the last few episodes of the year I no longer enjoyed the show - arrogant, backslapping banter often at the expense of their guest or the team's lesser lights. 

- Gawn has a guest spot on Nova's breakfast show once a week. The hosts questioned Max a number of times about our form during the 2nd half of the year. It's a breakfast show and I don't expect it to be serious, but near the end of the year Max kept referring to our ladder position as his defense. "Well, we're still second so we must be doing something right". There was a clear denial of the trends within our game (at least to the extent he would admit it externally), again implying a level of disrespect for the opposition. Jonathan Brown more than once accused Max of living in the past. Brown is hardly a beacon of morality or good judgement, but I think he was on the mark. 

 

I'll stop here to avoid making this any longer - I'm sure others can add their own observations to this list. 

I've no doubt some of you will say I'm being pedantic, particularly on the final two points on how Gawn has presented in the media - but I just can't shake the sense that the selflessness, humility, and team unity that we had in 2021 has been pretty significantly eroded.

I think this is encapsulated by our two finals games. We were deers in headlights when both Sydney and Brisbane cranked up the pressure. We clearly weren't running for each other. Uninspired and selfish can look a lot like being gassed. 

It was pretty alarming to see this team, our amazing, contested, tough, 'built for finals' team start playing hot potato and putting teammates under pressure with errant or 30cm hospital handballs. I think this reflected that the playing group to some degree lost the trust & faith they once had in one another. 

If I am unfortunately right, it won't be an easy fix from here.

Culture is the hardest and last thing to get right, and it's the easiest and first thing you get wrong. 

Looking forward to the offseason moves and all of that - but my eye will be watching for the return of some of the cultural markers we had in 2021. Or at least, the non recurrence of the markers of 2022. 

When the total of many of the listed parts adds up there is no doubt that the selfless team oriented culture took a nosedive and the AFL team being protected by negative selection it's enough to have a serious impact plus the injury issues and stemming to trivialise some meant we were not sure about fitness of our players.

we definitely missed on our last half's scoring plus the careless forward work when we were on song which came back to bite us. 

Reset in 2023 with a new forward coach and more positive ideas in our game plan and get the best out of our ability and another flag is indeed possible.

[58er 6,399]

8 minutes ago, NeveroddoreveN said:

Yet we have underperforming players all year across the field.

i hardly think Chandler got a chance, nor Dunstan.

We also seemed to pick Weid when he was out of form.  We don't really have selection criteria, or at least certainly not a rigid one.

Agree 

[fr_ap 2,463]

5 minutes ago, titan_uranus said:

Everyone disagrees with you, so you're right?

Presumably if everyone had agreed with you, you'd have been wrong?

FWIW, I don't think we have a widespread cultural problem. As I posted yesterday somewhere else, I think our season ended the way it did for a number of reasons, not just one as this thread suggests. I think the issues here are largely summed up by a group of players who struggled to find the inner motivation to gut run, chase, tackle, repeat lead, etc. when faced with a brutal fixture, opponents treating their games against us as finals each week, less stability, and drop offs in form from the bottom 6-10 players (who, unsurprisingly, provide the pressure/running a lot more than the cream on top - players like ANB, Sparrow, Spargo, Hunt, Rivers).

Fixture, opposition yeah of course all factors. "Lacking inner motivation" is culture. You're agreeing without realising it. 

[Wrecker46 2,963]

We finished 2nd on the ladder.

How many players were injured in the finals? Gawn, Kozzie, Brayshaw, Petracca, I won't count BBB because he is cooked.

I'm guessing there were more we don't know about.

They are injuries not culture.

[Lord Nev 13,512]

When you can't be bothered going over the full context and grey areas of our year, different impacts of different factors, just roll out the classic "culture"...

 

[Mach5 4,767]

20 minutes ago, rpfc said:

I think we showed some hubris, yes. Don’t know about some of these examples but we talked too often about how we are are the exemplar and we’re not. 

Primarily Roffey and Gawn.

I think Gawn was trying to inspire and maintain belief.

I think Roffey believed it, and believed it extended to off-field too.

Culture is a delicate specimen.

[Dee Zephyr 19,267]

Don’t think it’s culture, almost impossible for any club to get it 100% right. 
A lot suggested we would be battle hardened for finals after our last 6-7 weeks, maybe those weeks took their toll. We looked banged up and gassed the two finals we played. 

[mo64 5,853]

12 minutes ago, fr_ap said:

Your 2nd last paragraph is the entire point mate - 'perform well on the day' - what do you put that down to? Try and articulate it. Most articulations come back to something resembling culture. 

People don't talk about it and most of you won't acknowledge it - because it's boring, intangible, and not formulaic. 

We all like to think team sport is as simple as smashing the best individual players together and analysing back room videos to come up with a cutting edge gameplan. Video games have done this.

To some degree, some sports are like this - basketball and soccer come to mind - as the field is smaller, positions are fixed and the intangible variables are much more fixed. 

There's a reason Paul roos spoke about cultural change as his biggest challenge.

All comes down to people and how they feel - talent a given at this level. 

You can all bleat about 'insert player [A] kicking it to player [B] and it's solved. It never works in AFL and has been proven not to work over and over and over and over again. 

But as I said, carry on. Y'all don't get it. 

Craig McCrae took over the club that was considered a "cultural cesspit". And right off the bat, his star player DeGoey reinforces that opinion.

Fast forward, and a team most expected to finish bottom 4 are now in a Prelim.

If you think that "culture" is so important, then it clearly hasn't been a challenge for McCrae. Or maybe his players are just playing a better brand of football and have self belief.

 

 

Edited September 11, 2022 by mo64

[NeveroddoreveN 1,034]

3 minutes ago, Wrecker46 said:

We finished 2nd on the ladder.

How many players were injured in the finals? Gawn, Kozzie, Brayshaw, Petracca, I won't count BBB because he is cooked.

I'm guessing there were more we don't know about.

They are injuries not culture.

What do we have a squad for?  There is no way that Salem showed more on the training track to get automatically reinserted into the team. Did he put his hand up say i am right?   Did we just pick him with blind faith that even though clearly not fit he would be better than other fit players?

I would say both culture and injuries affected our season.   We had plenty of chances to freshen players up. We had an in form Casey team all year.  We gave virtually the same 22 opportunity all season and by the end of it they were banged up.

To say that it just one area or another is complete folly.

If we review this years fadeout simply due to injuries we are in for a world of hurt next year!

[fr_ap 2,463]

6 minutes ago, Lord Nev said:

When you can't be bothered going over the full context and grey areas of our year, different impacts of different factors, just roll out the classic "culture"...

 

Never said nothing else is important. You need lots of stuff to go right. Injuries, fixture, yes it all matters. 

You think the culture explanation lacks nuance when it is actually the most nuanced of all - every team has talent, every team gets injuries, every team can make excuses for why they lost week to week. 'we kicked behinds rather than goals'. 'player Y got injured in the 2nd quarter'. It's surface level thinking and will never get you to real meaningful improvement.

There's a reason every elite sporting organisation, heck every successful organisation in any field  - invests so much in culture and invests so much in picking the right people in the first place. It's not nonsense and it is part of the equation you need to get right. 

As I said, supporters don't like this explanation because it's intangible, hard to speculate on and worse, if true makes the club hard to trust. We all like to think they've got basic things like respect sorted out.

They often don't. 

[The heart beats true 18,110]

I thought our culture was great in first halves, but at half time we obviously stopped calling our mums and helping old ladies cross the road.

[Lord Nev 13,512]

3 minutes ago, fr_ap said:

Never said nothing else is important. You need lots of stuff to go right. Injuries, fixture, yes it all matters. 

You think the culture explanation lacks nuance when it is actually the most nuanced of all - every team has talent, every team gets injuries, every team can make excuses for why they lost week to week. 'we kicked behinds rather than goals'. 'player Y got injured in the 2nd quarter'. It's surface level thinking and will never get you to real meaningful improvement.

There's a reason every elite sporting organisation, heck every successful organisation in any field  - invests so much in culture and invests so much in picking the right people in the first place. It's not nonsense and it is part of the equation you need to get right. 

As I said, supporters don't like this explanation because it's intangible, hard to speculate on and worse, if true makes the club hard to trust. We all like to think they've got basic things like respect sorted out.

They often don't. 

No, I don't like this explanation because it's a cop out to blame one factor, and "culture" is so often that one factor supporters go to.