5 minutes ago, adonski said:

Most of the kids we've drafted will have better careers than Gus Brayshaw

Thats an odd call. Was this in response to something? I probably missed it.

I would hope none of them will have to retire at 28 and have their careers cut short of 6-8 years. Gus would have been a 250-300 game premiership player and I believe our next captain.

Not sure what you're defining as 'career'. I'm not as certain as you are but I do hope these kids can get to Gus' level and above. I also hope that some of these kids can play with the heart and guts Gus did every time he went out onto the field.

5 minutes ago, Petal said:

Thats an odd call. Was this in response to something? I probably missed it.

I would hope none of them will have to retire at 28 and have their careers cut short of 6-8 years. Gus would have been a 250-300 game premiership player and I believe our next captain.

Not sure what you're defining as 'career'. I'm not as certain as you are but I do hope these kids can get to Gus' level and above. I also hope that some of these kids can play with the heart and guts Gus did every time he went out onto the field.

I thought it was strange too. Very blunt and slightly uncalled for.

7 hours ago, At Least I Saw a Flag said:

But there are losses ... and there are losses. And this falls into the latter category.

A loss is a loss.

But for me this goes the heart of it. If you start putting caveats and conditions on the type of losses you'll accept, you're not actually prepared to accept losses.

For a team under a new coach, with a largely new game plan and significant personnel changes, losses like Saturday’s are exactly the kind you tend to see. For sides in this kind of transition, inconsistency is part of the process: beating stronger teams while slipping against those below you in the table, following big wins with disappointing defeats, momentum swings where you lose big time after being ahead at half-time etc. etc.. It all comes with the territory. (Plenty of research out there on this if anyone's interested.)

People talk about roller coasters and our season in this context. Roller coasters actually soar and plunge between real extremes, they don’t just trundle along with the occasional dip and bump.

19 hours ago, titan_uranus said:

You are so unbelievably sanctimonious, but you're also hypocritical.

So we're all supposed to expect losses, however bad, to however bad of an opponent, and we're all supposed to expect inconsistency, no matter how wildly good or bad it is.

And yet your first post on this postgame thread was:

"Doesn't augur well"? I thought we were supposed to expect inconsistency?

And then saying you "hate to say it" but Essendon's kids looked better than ours? The same kids who looked awful when they were 0-4, whilst ours helped us beat Gold Coast (plus St Kilda and Carlton)?

You're so quick to insult anyone who is disappointed by the result and yet after one bad game from our kids, and one good game from some of Essendon's, you're now arguing that their kids are better than ours?

It's a bit pathetic really.

45 minutes ago, jnrmac said:

Lindsay just isn't a backman, I presume he is in defence for his disposal skills and these aren't quite there yet either.

Lindsay should be removed from defence and put on the wing or at Casey.

There is nothing about him that screams defender and his effort (or lack thereof) that lead to Durham’s goal in the second quarter shows exactly that.

His debut against GWS last year was excellent and I’m pretty sure he played on the wing that day.

Interesting to see Essendon's Jacob Farrow take the Rising Star nod this week. 22 disposals and 12 marks.

Was taken one pick before Xavier Taylor, just behind Robey.

5 hours ago, GS_1905 said:

the one thing we have going is that pundits in the media (ex players and coaches and the like) seem to have wraps on our youth.... so they obviously see something there that we obviously dont.

We all see something in him too. But there are also a few tendencies that we wouldn't want to develop much further

6 hours ago, bing181 said:

A loss is a loss.

But for me this goes the heart of it. If you start putting caveats and conditions on the type of losses you'll accept, you're not actually prepared to accept losses.

With the utmost respect, I think that’s a bit of a binary trap. There’s a fundamental distinction between being 'prepared' for an unfavourable outcome and being indifferent to the qualitative manner in which it occurs. To suggest that any critique of a performance constitutes a 'caveat' on acceptance is to dismiss the very nature of elite sports.

Sport isn’t merely a spreadsheet of wins and losses; it’s a performance of intent and an execution of systems. One can be perfectly composed in the face of a defeat—accepting the four points are gone—while still identifying a performance that falls below the threshold of professional expectation. If we view every loss as identical, we lose the ability to distinguish between a team that is building toward something and a team that is experiencing a systemic collapse.

Requiring a baseline of effort and tactical discipline isn't about 'conditional' acceptance; it’s about maintaining a standard. To conflate the two is to ignore the indicators that actually determine a club's long-term trajectory.