KozzyCan

Honestly I blame the swans mids more for that. Can't let the Lions walk it out the front like that.

Yeah I don't think our footy department should be patting themselves on the back for correcting their mistake and getting rid of Grundy. I'm sure we had a crack at a number of tall forwards but unfortunately there just wasn't much on the market without having the clairvoyance to see Waterman turning into a gun or something. When people talk about inventiveness, I would have preferred we looked at playing a smaller structure with the good players that were available rather than trying to brute force a tall forwardline with a bunch of guys who weren't good enough.

It would have been a good idea if there was an actual idea but it really just felt like we were trying to shove a square peg in Grundy into the round hole left by Jackson.

He never should have come to us in the first place. We never knew what to do with him.

Amazing performance and season from the Lions. Came back from a shocking start, had one of the most incredible finals runs ever and dominated the GF. Sydney just didn't turn up, got bashed in the midfield and just weren't up to the fight. Brisbane were awesome and it does show how important it is to punish the opposition when you have control of the game. Within ten minutes in the late second quarter they killed the game and crushed the Swans spirits.

Sort of funny comparing us in 2017-18 to the past few years. Our gameplan isn't all that different. Heavy contested ball, clearance focused side. We still had similar problems, high density of inside 50s, often struggled to find a target but we were still able to score far more easily than we do now. So what changed? I think back then we had very little going for us in defense so we backed ourselves in to win contested ball and cheated forward a lot more than we do now. Our forwardline wasn't great then either which is why I've never bought the excuse that our current forwardline isn't capable of kicking a decent score. We moved the ball in there a lot faster and that speed and willingness to sacrifice a bit on defense gave us opportunity. We kicked a LOT of joe-the-goose goals. We left Frost and Oscar Mcdonald on a bit of an island as a result but were willing to cop that since they weren't going to hold up defensively anyway. It would be nice if we could find a happy medium between the two philosophies.

But this conclusion once again raises the flaw in that logic: Yze is a great midfield coach who solved our issues to get us the flag in 2021, but McQualter couldn't get the midfield working for us after being the key to Richmond's midfield dominance during their dynasty. I'm not convinced that Bassett is the key to fixing our forward set up because our philosophy the past few years has been to deliberately sacrifice the potency of our forwardline to prevent intercept marks and easy rebounds from the opposition. Unless Goodwin is willing to make significant changes to our gameplan those problems will still be there.

Yeah I guess my problem with that is it's historically not a very reliable indicator of quality. For instance McQualter was the midfield coach at the Tigers for their dynasty and not many seem to rate him. A lot of coaches from dominant sides went on to become senior coaches and failed miserably while guys like Scott and Goodwin were assistants at mediocre teams and found success. Very hard to work out assistants. Ultimately they have to fall in line to the senior coach so they can only do so much as far as changing the game plan goes. If Bassett is coming in to coach the forwards it doesn't necessarily mean much will change unless Goodwin is finally ready to totally change our philosophy towards moving the ball.

Genuine question. How do people actually come up with their judgements of assistant coaches? Is it success of the clubs they've been at? How others in the industry have spoken about them. While I appreciate the change is needed I find it hard to get super excited about assistant coaches because it's hard to know if they are coming in to give new ideas or help better execute the status quo.

Only reason we were in that Carlton game was because Trac went into god mode

PETA have been doing this for decades. They exist to produce ragebait. Just ignore them.

Hardly Hunter's fault the coaches didn't rate Jordon.

You say this as we're getting ourselves ready to recruit Wade Derksen and Tom Campbell.

Parfitt seems like a good ANB replacement.

I watched the Roaming Brian that started all this. Hind really has no chill. Might as well have introduced the guy as his gangland mate.

Yep. Everyone knows it's Brashaw

This argument would be more convincing if those teams struggled when away from their home grounds. Lions the only one of them who have really struggled at the MCG but even they have overcome that in the last couple of years. Our own record at the MCG under Goodwin is pretty ordinary. It might even be <50%. We're more reliable away from home than at the MCG. A bit of an oddity in my time watching Melbourne.

Yep. Cats should play all their home games there imo.

Do you disagree with my assessment. Do you think having a slightly better finals winrate is more impressive than making prelims almost every year? Fair enough if you do but I stand by what I said. Think the Cats home ground advantage is a bit of a cop out. They won more games away from home than they did at Geelong this year, plus they play fewer home games at their actual home ground than any other side.

Not a stretch, no. But a bit of hindsight there too. I remember 2010, Ablett and Thompson leaving, most thought the Cats were on the slide and Collingwood were destined to be the next dynasty. Scott came into a good side but he didn't screw it up and has reinvented them twice over since.

I already explained how finals win percentage is a flawed stat, you haven't really countered that. Also compared the amount of finals qualifications for both coaches in my first post in the thread. But yes, clearly making finals is better than not making finals are you seriously contending that?

You seem to be taking issue with things others have said and applying them to a separate argument I am making. For the record I don't think Goodwin is a bad coach at all but I do think his style is very similar to his own former coach Neil Craig. He drills his players to play a very particular way and backs them in to get it done playing that style. It worked really well in 21 when we had all our players in ripping nick and form but it became less effective in the following years as other teams started to chase different trends and worked out how to strangle our forwardline and we struggled to stop that. In that way I find him quite inflexible which I think holds him back at times. He's not getting sacked any time soon so he has time on his side to get the team going again. For comparison I think Chris Scott got a bit inflexible inbetween 2017-21 which held the Cats back a bit. In 2022 they changed things up by going all out attack and reaped the rewards.

Well, I mean he's still won two flags so I wouldn't say that's a portrait of mediocrity anyway. Geelong have been thereabouts for nearly every year of his tenure, they always give themselves a chance to win.It's a pretty good position for a club to know that every year they are a very good chance of going deep into finals. As I said, flags are the pinnacle but I think we can go a bit deeper than that when we measure coaches. Agree it's difficult to determine where the influence of a coach begins and ends but I tend to believe they are the most important figure within a football department so if we can't make a judgement on them based on results then who can we judge?

Chopping and changing? What are you talking about. I've been pretty consistent. I have a lot of posts because people like you are responding to me so I'm having a conversation. Maybe don't engage if you're not interested in the topic. Never said half of what you've suggested. You're making massive inferences. I suggest you re-read or don't bother engaging.

I don't think it's a particularly outlandish view. Maybe for Demonland it is.