fr_ap

That was before the flag - we're talking now about what to add to sustain our run at the top. Agree, we can only deal with what's available - my point was we probably need to do something to the forward half directly - trade, draft or FA - and it's wrong to say Richmond had no trades to win in 2019 because Lynch was a FA.

You do realise Richmond solved their biggest deficiency with almost the best KPF in the game by adding Tom Lynch after missing their first back to back? And that he was crucial in getting them over the line in the PF that year, and in several finals series since? That's the position we are in now and at the moment it doesn't look like we will be resolving our (same) weakness in the same way I don't mind Grundy, but we're kidding ourselves if we think the same forward line is going to take us all the way next year. JVR better be bloody special to come in and be a KPF in a prem team in year 1. While I'm at it - Richmond added Short, Baker and Pickett to their GF team in 2019. They used 2018 and 2019 to introduce new players to the team who went on to become crucial cogs. Short of Bedford coming in and out and rotating veterans like Melk and Hunt, we don't look close to doing the same and picked the premiership 22 even when their form or fitness did not justify it Also, Richmond were clearly the best team in 2018 but blew up a PF. We were not in 2022 and went out in straight sets. I think the situations are quite different and for you to make an example of what they did is less relevant than you think

Entire saga is quite disturbing and deeply concerning. Unfortunately (as in, I wish my mind did not jump to a judgement), my immediate reaction is that there probably a reasonable degree of truth in the accusations. Without getting into any incriminating specifics, having had some dealings with the AFL I was often left very unimpressed and at times puzzled by their decision making, governance (or lack thereof), strongarm tactics and incompetence. So when these types of stories come out, I am more inclined to believe them. That said, I also think it is likely that the accusers and accusees have different interpretations of what occurred. I'd like to think whatever guidance the coaches and development managers provided to these players was at least intended to be in their best interest and either became a bit of an overreach, poorly communicated or misconstrued for its intent. Many of us would have often had to give some tough guidance to young mates when a girlfriend, location or other factor was clearly working against them and not in their best interest. I hope that is where this came from - notwithstanding it is inappropriate for an employer to be giving this guidance (or direction) directly rather than through an accredited, independent third party without a vested interest in the performance outcome. Clearly there are reasonable limits to this though which appear to have been walked past if these allegations are true.

Sheezel will go top 3. Every club after him.

Got to wonder what people are watching when they say he reminds them of Noah Balta, Jacob Weitering and Jack Riewoldt. Balta is all athlete, Weitering is very dour but a smooth mover and Jack is as mercurial as a big forward can be. JVR is nothing like any of them. He's hustle, bustle, reach and grab, push off and mark. 2nd and 3rd efforts on the deck. He's all heart. A bit of Hogan with more athleticism, a bit of mihocek with a bit more height and reach.

They're hard to win and B2B is rare because it's very easy to slip 5/10%. On field, culturally, both, you name it. That's it. I've only tried to articulate the slippage I see. You could argue we slipped on field instead, and that's fine. But that's not what you're doing - you're making excuses, trivialising and diminishing our failures by suggesting they were due to temporary problems, not our fault, and somehow defensible. It is 100% arrogant and disrespectful to our opposition, and your response is too. You highly doubt doing anything other than what we did could have been successful? (Because we are the exemplars and couldn't possibly be at fault? Do you honestly claim to have foreseen how every other scenario could have played out?) We've gambled successfully before so therefore we had the right to gamble again? (Never mind that May had extremely little influence on the GF - we won inspite of his injury/the gamble, not because of it. It does not afford us the right to play through injury again during a season proper with competitors breathing down our neck) You don't "endorse" the option of winning outside the 4? Finishing outside the 4 is an "alternative approach"? (As if our finishing position was entirely within our control? We picked and chose when to go and where to finish? Presuming if we benched our injured stars, our reserves would have been unable to deliver?) I literally cannot spell this out any more clearly for you. To be frank, if anyone from the club really believes that our season came down to a choice of either playing fit, 2nd choice players or missing top 4 (which is exactly the choice you're implying we made) then we're in deep deep trouble. You'll deflect, externalise and blame injuries, luck and exogenous factors. It's what arrogant people do. Humble people and humble clubs accept and acknowledge their shortcomings so they can address them and improve. It's one of the things that got us so far in 2021.

And maybe you'd be happier at Tullamarine. Keep buying what the club are selling. A) Not once did I say we have a culture problem. I said there are signs it slipped. B) Your response is exactly the slippage I'm talking about. You are literally proving my point. According to you, we lost the flag because: We were banged up Our reserves wouldn't have been any better than injured stars We 'gambled on winning a final' "We'll win more but not consecutively" So in summary - we assumed we could get most of the way on one leg, lost integrity at selection and banked on being entitled to an extra week off. Having lost, we then have the excuse that 'the way we play is taxing', and that we never should have expected to go back to back in the first place. If that isn't a description of an arrogant, entitled and disrespectful approach to an extremely competitive season, I don't know what is. "We could have accepted we'd have to win it outside the top 4"....Really? And you're arguing against my observations of complacency and disrespect for our opposition? Oh & by the way, Casey isn't Melbourne. They didn't win the flag last year. In fact, they've come close for years without succeeding, and the entire club has been enormously driven to deliver for quite a while. Almost all of the 'signs' I listed had roots in us winning the flag - none of these were present at the Casey level.

Is that how it works? Or would he have just reached a required threshold # of games? Seems very confusing

Why is Bowey ineligible? Surely played 10+ VFL games this year

Mentioned again in Damian Barrett's sliding doors today. Seems to be a fair bit of smoke about this one. Disastrous if it happens - tracking better statistically than just about any small forward since Stephen Milne. And every bit as exciting as Eddie, Cyril or Jeffy.

Thanks for providing these extra details. I'm certainly not against him and think he looks alot better than Jefferson who is supposedly the next best KPF in the pool

I've only watched a couple of mins of footage but there are question marks for me. Wasn't sold on his ability below the knees, marking or kicking to be honest (particularly within play rather than set shot). That said, he certainly seemed to find space off the ball which is extremely important. Almost the opposite of how Weideman looked at U18s - he had the technical attributes but never seemed to get any ball in space (mostly as he didn't need to as he outreached everyone when the ball was plonked on his head) KPFs are so hard to judge in U18s. They get very little of the ball, their opponents usually aren't very good and the games are often one-sided - a good midfield can make them look much better than they are. It's almost preferable drafting someone who's shown ability at both ends - ala JVR, Naughton to a degree, Hogan etc. You just see them exposed to more situations - coming at a pack from behind, the side, as well as leading, plus more ground ball / rounded stuff

Thanks for the reply and all great points. Agree it is no guarantee on its own, just as putting the best talent together is no guarantee on its own. You need the sum of all parts. Lots of our parts are and have been proven to be in good order, hence my suspicion that culture is where we've fallen back a bit. Very hard to measure and/or pin down to a definition/formula though and even harder to then turn that into real behavioural change/standards - which is why it's so illusive. Innumerable small, seemingly inconsequential things that the leaders and others need to do consistently over a long time. It's a grind. Don't forget Roos assessed that this was the key element he had to change in his time at the helm. He knew how important it is and I think he got us a long way. I think Goody and Gawn took us further and had the club humming last year, probably more off field than on. Very very hard to find and maintain...nothing like a shock exit to drive standards though, so Im hopeful the club can recapture it

You seemingly get a lot of joy out of being deliberately obtuse but I'll bite... I clearly outlined you need a lot of things - culture being one of them. The beauty of us having a largely unchanged team, coaches box and off field situation from 21 to 22 is that you can remove a lot of variables or question marks as to why we couldn't do it again. You can't say that for other teams. Carlton fans don't know if their current group, or Voss, have the capacity to deliver a flag - ever. West coast know that their core and Simpson can, but had some extreme injury and COVID circumstances to blame. So on and so forth. Unless you want to make the case that Tom McDonald was the difference between winning a flag or not, our team, coaches and off field was largely the same. The team that gets most of these things the most right - the culture as well - that swell of belief and team unity you saw with your own eyes last year - will be the team that wins the flag. It's incredibly hard to capture and is the reason why flags are so hard to win. A thousand coaches have gone formulaic and smashed the best players together and asked them to deliver. It doesn't work. You need the players, you need the coaches, you need the system, you need some luck...but most of all you need something to stitch it all together. That's what I'm referring to as culture. It's people, relationships and environments, individually and in aggregate. These things drive effort and behaviours that ultimately make the difference on field. Every single person who has ever worked in a serious team knows how important it is. Lots don't want to acknowledge it as it can be wishy washy, vague and intangible. It's much more fun to say that BBB is slow or that another KPF fixes the puzzle. But that's simple, surface level stuff and ultimately misses the point about what drives success. So yes - 17 other clubs - or 16 as one will salute this year - either don't have all of the 5 elements sewn up - or if they do, they might be lacking the cultural element on top. And yes - we captured something in 2021 that we didn't have in 2020 or in 2022. Honestly - you lived it....is it really so hard to believe? Do you really think we won the 21 flag solely because the football skills of our squad and a gameplan coincidentally combined and peaked at the same time? That we won the flag because in a given week we had more inside 50s or that trac kicked it to spot X instead of Y, or that our players were just more skilful than the opposition? The same squad and coach finished 9th the year before. It's pretty clear that what we found in 21 was not a magic footy formula of goals, behind and inside 50s, but a collective discipline, desire, selflessness, humility, drive and set of values/behaviours (collectively, culture). The players and coaches have spoken about it ever since, and every flag team is the same. Talk to a Bulldogs fan about 2016 - they didn't even need all 5 of the other elements - such was the strength of the culture they found. Go ahead and pick holes in this by all means. It's just my opinion and not a perfect theory. At least one of us has gone to the effort to put something forward and explain it.

Im fairly ambivalent about Jackson leaving...but Kozzie....would break me. Wanted us to draft him when he was nowhere near the first round discussion and love watching him - a player other teams always seemed to have before we finally landed one. Would be utterly heartbreaking Looks like scuttlebutt but unfortunately this is exactly how Jackson started last year. Very very flat

We were still very close to getting through to a prelim and granny, so yes - we're clearly still a good team with good players and a good gameplan - but something was off 10-20% - pick a number... I've made the point that what was off was the summation of lots of small cultural things. I also never said it dissipated in its entirety. My word was 'slipped'. Further I never claimed it was the sole reason for our success in 21. I said a number of times you need heaps of things to go right. Hilariously hypocritical of you to bemoan the 'kick it long' types when you're incapable of any sort of nuance, either in debate or in your evaluation of footy.

Very good post and agree with the comments on Max. Great in a lot of ways but "talks first, listens later" is a good succinct summary of his shortcomings. My brother was in the loading camp and insists we've fallen short this year due to luck, nothing else. If only we could have philosophical discussion!

Fantastic post. To the naysayers - why don't you believe it even when it's come from the horses mouth? The players spoke about the selfless culture last year. Goodwin spoke about it. Gawns book describes it in detail. When we utterly destroyed Geelong and WB - Goodwin's post game address to the players said "that's your culture coming out, right to the end". It's not crazy, nor lazy, to suggest it slipped this year. It's almost self-evident.

Excellent example, thanks for making my point. I presume you haven't watched them that closely or listened to any pies media. His players have spoken about the cultural shift. He's emboldened his young players to take risk, he has backed them in publicly, privately and at selection, and gotten the team to believe in each other unerringly. They're a very unified team and it's clear to see in the way they play. They're also highly respectful of their opposition. As for De Goey - he's a young foolish bloke who lets his temptations get the better of him. McCrae is not responsible for that, and it happened before McCrae arrived. What McCrae has done is taken him out of the spotlight and clearly enabled him to start delivering on field. Dusty was in a similiar conundrum and openly credits cultural change, coaching staff and the resilience project for his turnaround. The fact Collingwood can go from 17th to a prelim makes this point. Clearly their footy ability was always there. What they've changed is gamestyle, coaching and culture. It's not just coaching. There is no silver bullet. Ive said a number of times that culture is not the only ingredient - just a part of the equation, and the part we let slip this year.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Whilst he has games where he is a true game changer, I'm now in the camp where I'd like him to go. Securing two first rounders at this point in our journey with our flag window still wide open could be just what we need (presuming we don't stupidly spend one on Grundy). Put simply - if someone offers you two first rounders for your backup ruck, you take it. I'm not sure his ceiling is all that higher than we've already seen. He'll get more consistent no doubt, but I think we can probably replace 70% of his output with a 2nd stringer ruckman from elsewhere.