Gibberish

My guess is the two points are probably linked. The significant deals being given out to existing players have us hamstrung with the talent we are able to bring in. Although, now that I think about it, I'm not sure how we could have brought in Houston, but maybe Kossie got some of that cap. I don't know what Trac and Oliver's contracts are, but it seems that they are being paid so much that it does not come close to their output of late. I'd hate to see them traded and us paying some of their salary for years to come. I hope that they can improve under a new coach. We have certainly lost a lot of depth without adequate replacement.

I was listening to the Port v Carlton game and the discussion was the lack of leadership at Port. They were under pressure and they had no leaders talking up and directing their team. I do wonder if we are in the same boat where we are lacking on field leadership. Plenty of good players, but missing that on field direction. Or maybe the players have just given up on the season?

I think that's a bit unfair on Chaplin. How much change do expect him to effect on the team in 3 weeks. The forward 50 disconnect has been symptomatic for 4 seasons at least.

You mentioned stability and prematurely sacking coaches, but maybe I misunderstood your point. I agree that sacking a coach won't necessarily improve struggling teams, their plight is more often having enough talent (I see us more as having an under performing team, there is enough talent there). Ultimate success, yes, but there are more measures for evaluating success.

Are you suggesting Essendon should not have sacked Sheedy and that they would have been more successful if he had stayed on? St Kilda didn't sack Lyon, he left for more money at Freo. So I'm not sure that's comparable. I don't think anyone is saying that sacking the coach is a magic bullet. I think the consensus being that a change was required. Stability is probably one of many things the board would have considered along with performances, membership and sponsorship impact etc etc. And success is subjective. I would consider winning finals 2 out of 9 seasons not a success. But each to their own.

The board didn't have to wait until 2024, they just needed to see out the finals. Melbourne is the only team to finish top 4 in consecutive regular season and lose all finals games. The knock on the contract isn't the length per se but that it was a guaranteed contract.

I was under the impression that Jones is one of two midfield coaches and he was more focused on stoppages?

If we have Buckley, or anyone for that matter, already locked and loaded then I will lose any semblance of sanity that is left. We need a deep dive on the available candidates and a considered decision, to have it locked up already would be a joke. From my understanding of the Football Department spending, there's no front ending or back ending of contracts. Hawks and Clarkson did negotiate spreading his final year over multiple years to minimise the effect on the cap, approved by AFL (another hurdle for MFC).

How do you know he wasn't given that opportunity? Maybe SG wanted a clean break. Nothing has been announced by the club yet, I'm not saying I disbelieve the reports, but we're speculating a lot when there's not much real information in front of us.

Disrespectful would be not telling him when we had made a decision.

Are we hoping Norf can break our record from last week?

I hope we don't see the father son rule removed. I know the Pies and Lions have been gifted talented players recently but I think the points system is the problem and not the father son rule. It's too easy to get a billion 8th round picks to add up to pick 1, no-one is making that deal. And to get a discount on top of that is just insulting. The academy picks should be looked at too. But just like the biased fixture, rules won't be changed if it's going to effect their cash cows.

I think you may have missed a year, it's 1,408 as at today. Getting a talent like Darcy in our forward line would have helped our fortunes this year. Not a Beveridge fan but he's had them in the finals most years.

Richardson is out of contract so I would at least expect someone to have started a process of evaluating his position and made some inquiries as to the availability of possible replacements. If we're waiting for the CEO and President to arrive first then we may have missed opportunities.

I think you missed his other platitude, not wasting another session, not wasting another game. Goodwin and the FD must think that they know this is how it's going to work, so any experimentation is just wasting valuable time. It would certainly explain their stubbornness to make any significant changes.

Whilst I am not disagreeing with any of your points, I am concerned that we need to make so many changes and wonder if anyone within our organisation has the capacity to make the right changes and appointments. There's only a few weeks left in the season, we have some time between then and trade period but it is still not far away? When do we start making changes? Who is going to start reviewing our personnel? I think the head of the football department needs an immediate review. There needs to be some urgency in our plans for change (improvement).

That's not what I heard. It's amazing what a mild case of delusion can do. Still too many "we'll learn from this" for my liking. It's okay to say that but there has to be some measurable improvements as a consequence. But we're just going backwards.

We're kind of living in dead air at the moment. Waiting for some adults to arrive to make some decisions. I hate using amateur hour as a term but if the shoe fits....

I'm not buying that we can't let Goody go. The soft cap increases by $750k next year, so there's wiggle room at least. However I think the more likely scenario is for there to be serious changes in the football department. Interesting that you can't backend coaching contracts.

I think this is the absolute least of changes that we need to make. If Goodwin is contracted to next year and we don't relieve him of his duties before hand then there needs to be other changes made in the football department. I did read someone remarking on the selection of Richo being a good friend of Pert. And someone else talking about how good our development was with McCartney. I do wonder if our recent downturn in performance stems from picking Pert over Jackson's preferred candidate of Mahoney. A bit revisionist I know but that's where I'm at. In any case, I find it hard to believe that there's anyone in the football department and or selection committee that is challenging Goodwin (or anyone) on team selections. It seems to me that they are no longer rewarding sustained good form at Casey or poor form in the seniors. This is not an outlier and has been the case for a considerable time. I don't dislike Goodwin, but I dislike what he represents for our club. He has managed the ultimate goal and a time of sustained success (albeit wanting from finals success) but all we seem to get is the same rhetoric to explain the same poor performances. We are lacking dynamics. Goodwin is the face of the football department (and no doubt the most compensated), so in that regard I understand why he gets the most attention for our poor performances. Maybe he turns it around (and maybe the cow jumps over the moon) but I can't fathom it being with the same football department that has lead us to where are today.

There's not much that is free these days.

He was concussed and can't play this week anyway.