Chook

Shades of 186 for Brisbane right now. I have to say I'm not feeling too depressed about it.

Yep. He's a diamond-studded, gold-plated half-empty box of Belgian chocolates. You just never know what you're gonna get (and half the time you get nothing at all), but every now and then you fall in love with this guy all over again.

*PUTS ON LUKE DARCY'S SMUG FACE* I just love the way this kid goes about it. You just know what you're gonna get from him every week. I'm a big wrap for him. *SCRATCHES EYES OUT AND COMMITS HARI KARI*

Touche.

Yep. Only boast when you're certain it can't come back and bite you in your bugular.

Does anyone remember how much trouble the GWS side had getting it through our defensive zone in the first quarter? Think hard now. You'll have to delve back a little further than the very last thing you remember. That was good, right? I blamed the players last week for our fade out, so it's only right that I give them credit for the good stuff this week. Namely, sticking to our structures in the first quarter and doing all the things that led us to just go gangbusters in the last. Likewise, I'd love for the Neeld bashers to give him some credit for the good things we did this week (even if you only think our last quarter was our sole piece of good performance today).

Semantics.

The thing about confidence is there's high confidence, there's low confidence, and then there's the level we've been at for the past however long. You look at the rest of the competition, and they run and spread and do the hard things because their confidence is still there to some degree. Ours was just shot to pieces - so much so that our desire to do the basics was so easily washed away that the slightest ill turn just ruined us.

Fair enough, but the fact that I'm surprised he touched it that often speaks to the fact that he had no impact on the contest.

I hate what Tom Scully did as much as the next guy, but I wish our boys had the guts to run as hard and as long as he does.

We all know our spread sucks, and that's why we NEVER win the uncontested possession. To point to that as a sign that West Coast played great last week is pretty disingenuous.

Good win today, but Jack Watts is honestly screwed. He just does not have the courage or desire to impact games of footy. Get him out of the side ASAP and create that high-performance culture we're all looking for.

Should be a week's suspension for that.

I think the danger lies in only going halfway. Either you turf em all and everyone forms new bonds or you keep em all and maintain the bonds that already exist. If you don't go all the way, the ones that remain feel [censored] off that their mates are gone; while the new boys can't join the circle because the ones that remain have become too insular. I fear that getting rid of Neeld half way into his cleanout will only serve to further the divide between those who remain and those who are still to come.

It's not the injury I applaud, but the mental toughness to come back after it. Anyone can fall, but only a few are willing to get back up. When it comes down to it though, "soft" is just a word. I can't tell you what it means or to whom it applies any more than you can tell me what it means or to whom it applies.

Anyone who breaks their leg and goes back for more is automatically not soft. He may not be hard at the contest, but he shall never again be labelled soft. He's earned that right.

Unless he drops dead tonight, he'll be around for a little while.

Relax . . . we've got this:

There's definitely correlation, but is there causation?

Mark Neeld

All I can say is that it is not a simple fact. It's a complex fact and just saying that Neeld isn't up to it is a gross oversimplification of the problem.

Sure, but I'm saying that perhaps our situation is a little more complex than at other clubs. The tanking issue, the prolonged poor performance, the amateur boys club environment and a whole host of other issues have been working against Mark Neeld. Surely they have made his job a lot tougher, and may go a long way to explaining our worse performance this year.

I can understand keeping him in the team against GWS. If we were playing someone else I would definitely like him to be dropped, but in this case I think his selection is warranted.

Each footy club is so different that you can't simply say "Look at Club X. Such-and-such worked there so clearly we're doing it wrong." It's just not that simple.

How come he didn't play last week yet was named as an emergency?