1858

Yeah nah

You mean you did not follow dad.

Who does dad support?

I am genuinely interested

Dad is a Crow - we are originally from SA but have lived interstate over the years - I have no afinity with the Crows and have followed the Dees since '87, dad jumped on the Crows in '91 but didn't really follow a VFL/AFL team before they came in.

He also knew Neil Craig at Norwood quite well from when he was a young player up to coach. Can't speak high enough of the man - ultra professional as a player and brilliant developer of young players as a coach.

Yes, I suppose it is.

I'll also be signing the "old man" up for next year too. MFC isn't his team but he hopes they win on my account - that's enough.

Matthew Lloyd did.

God help him if true.

I feel like we are going around in circles.

The feeling is similar to reading an article from Matthew Lloyd - one is left disoriented and ashamed.

...and to think the off season has only just begun.

Lloyd is not talking about analysing or reviewing data, or being short-staffed in the back office. He's talking about monitoring (= collecting) GPS data. Which you do with a GPS unit.

"only some players at the Demons can be monitored each session as they don't have the funds to monitor all players"

Yes I know. The question is why does he think we are not collecting enough information via GPS.

He suggests the reason is that we don't have the funds to monitor them - I see that as a generic comment because it is. Others believe it is a direct pot-shot that we can't afford the the units themselves - that's fine, on one level or another he is indeed having a shot at us.

I did, and Neil Craig did.

Which nobody would conceivably beleive that we actually couldn't afford GPS units for crying out loud.

Also don't discount the "player" spoken to could be someone like Brent Moloney or one of the 'unknown' players that refused to buy in to Neelds methods....

Completely plausible.

At the end of the day who knows what has been said and by whom? - you're right.

By implication Lloyd has made the assertion that we have insufficient monitoring which (to me) is more of a source of debate than whether he has/hasn't accused us of being able to afford GPS units (which nobody would conceivably beleive).

I hope it is all BS and appreciate Craigy coming out and addressing any conceptions/misconceptions.

Huh?

You accuse me of being ironically afflicted with an affliction that you don't know?

Am I being punk'd?

Are you Matthew Lloyd?

You're being something...

Please tell me why we wouldn't collect as much data as we could even if we didn't have enough resources to analyze it week to week?

Keeping data for later analysis when time permits is cheap. Also even if we didn't have resources to analyse every player in detail every week, a player with a problem might stand out without the need for a detailed analysis. I think the defense of Llyod must be reduced to ' it is too much effort for the players to put them on every time'. I hope that wouldn't be the case.

You raise a good point. I'm happy to profess my ignorance on the intricacies of the average training session wrt the monitoring side of things and why/why not certain players would be monitored at any given time. I could offer circumstantial reasons at best.

I think though that he has been given feedback of some nature from the players and based on that information he has the impression that not all the players are monitored when they should be. He may be right, he may be completely wrong but when you read an article you have to give it some context.

It's possible he may have plucked the whole thing out of thin air and completely misrepresented how we train and (and why we train that particular way) and contorted any information passed on to him. Heck he may not have even talked to any players. At some point we have to draw a line in the way we consume information though. If our players all use GPS at the appropriate times and he has presented a fallacy then be it. I won't disagree that he is a goose and we all move on.

Spending all of my time at Essendon, I thought it was standard practice that every player was monitored throughout every session with GPS data to get 100 per cent accuracy on workload and fatigue. This, obviously, costs money but I was shocked to hear that in 2012 only some players at the Dogs and Demons can be monitored each session as they don't have the funds to monitor all players.

Maybe just me but I read that as rather unambigious. He says we dont have the money for enough GPS's and as such cant monitor all players.. Its exactly what he says !!

He's giving us a whack no doubt with the povo stick but I chose to give this statement a little bit more context than just the units themselves ie personell and other related costs. It is simply my take on it, I'm not trying to convince anyone else otherwise and in no way do I think Matty Lloyd is worth defending, it's just the way I interpreted his point.

There is a future for you as a spin doctor. So the interpretation now is that we have enough GPS units but are not using them..

That was my exact inference in post 119

"The intimation is that not all of our players WEAR gps units. Affordability of the units themselves IMO makes up no part of his point."

You're as sloppy as a politician.

So Lloyd shoudl get credit for points made by someone incorrectly inferring what was meant in his article?

Lloyd is truly a magical show pony.

Oh, won't he come and save us from Royal and be our midfield coach?

He can say something and then Craig can make a brillant point to the boys on what he thinks.

But Craig would never had said it if it wasn't for Lloyd...

It's all there in Lloyd's new book:

'Brillant things others have said misinterpreting things I have said'

Mark Stevens - "It's a must read. Would have liked more stats though."

Mark Robinson - "I couldn't put it down. No, seriously, I had some chocolate when I was reading it and now it is stuck to me!"

Gerard Whateley - "No-one has made a book so tangential and misdirected. The brillance is in not what he says - it's in what others say after they think they know what he means."

Ok, I may have gone all out on this one.

Mate you talk about MFCSS (or what ever it is) and then trot this out.

1858: To say that the implication of Llyod's article was that we didn't do enough analysis rather than we didn't have enough GPS units is the sort of desperate spin you'd expect from a politician trying to defend a blooper he made in a speech.

I didn't say that, I said the implication of the article (to me) was how many we were using, rather than how many we could afford.

The lack of GPS units being used may be an indicator of how much use we are getting out of them at this time due to other constraints. IMO Lloyd made a pretty general comment about that and everyone is crying that he is kicking us while we're down and saying we can't afford GPS units when he said no such thing.

If it's a non issue, then Lloyd is the one that raised it, and perhaps needs to find some actual issues to report upon. If it is a non issue Neil Craig would not have thought it worth responding to if he didnt think that Lloyd was taking a potshot at our sports science facilities and resourcing.

The notion that Lloyd may or may not be making a trivial statement about our ability to afford GPS units is (really) a non-issue. I don't think he was, some posters think he was, the world goes on...

Again, if we can't analyse/process all the data then we may be rationalising we don't need to collect all of it on every player at this point in time. Obviously our players have said something directly to Lloyd about how they train, most probably quite harmless. Our infrastructure is the issue here but many are getting too caught up with what Lloyd (didn't say) and using that as a defence mechanism to addressing the greater issue and castig his article off.

The substance of Lloyd's article is that there is a gap between the haves and have nots and he used first hand feedback to illustrate that we have a monitoring "discrepancy" compared to other clubs. It could be reasonably assumed that he is making a more robust point than simply saying that we can't afford GPS units.

Unfortunately image is important and Neil Craig is right to come out and defend the brand of the club. He also clarified the situation in saying that we need more resources in the monitoring and analysing of player performance - as a supporter I commend this type of transparency. We're making in-roads all the time and know where we have to improve.

Neil's comments which also should not be misconstrued that we are underspending on staff, it's more that he is suggesting that rather spending money on 'gear' which we adequately resouced for, that he would recommend that spending is better utilised for bringing in additional specialist staff into the club.

I agree. We need additional staff so that we have more than one person analysing the GPS performance data of our list. Relative to other clubs we are probably deficient in this area. Whether we are underspending in this area or not is semantics - we aren't spending in this area but hopefully we will improve. However, as a result of not spending in this area our hands are tied and IMO Lloyd is simply commenting on the symptoms of that.

Well Neil Craig was be as naive as I am.

He's free to address any possible misconceptions he thinks may exist as a result of Lloyd's comments or address any possible questions put to him in light of Lloyd's comments. Furthermore his emphasis on the human capital side was quite apt and he may not have made it if not for Lloyd's article.

FCS. The intimation from Lloyd was that we don't have enough units, as evidenced by Neil Craig also inferring the same: "we’re not sitting here as a club wishing for more in the area of GPS units."

The intimation is that not all of our players WEAR gps units. Affordability of the units themselves IMO makes up no part of his point. Our players have obviously passed this on and LLoyd (knowing more about the industry) would realise we are perhaps prioritisng which players we are collating data on based on where they're at and our resources. People are getting caught up over a non-issue, even if we didn't have enough units for every player it wouldn't be due to funds and I doubt Lloyd would be that naive to suggest otherwise, it is the ancillary costs here (FCS).

Spending all of my time at Essendon, I thought it was standard practice that every player was monitored throughout every session with GPS data to get 100 per cent accuracy on workload and fatigue. This, obviously, costs money but I was shocked to hear that in 2012 only some players at the Dogs and Demons can be monitored each session as they don't have the funds to monitor all players.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/the-offfield-battle-rages-20120922-26e24.html#ixzz27R8ETdWc

The suggestion from Lloyd is that we don't have enough money to monitor all the player which is clearly bollocks, Craig put that to rest.

Just as I thought nothing about GPS units which was your original claim.

We are under resourced (if you can't analyse all the data then you can't monitor all the players in the most meaningful sense of the word) Craig verified that - he also said that once our funds improve he hopes to address this so there is a clear monetary link. I think we all need to deal with it (like the club hopefully will) and move on.

James Aish, son of Andrew and nephew of legend Michael Aish will be a star of the future.

Bassett will likely be at Hawthorn next year as an assistant coach. I wish we snared him last year, would have been a great replacement for Wellman.

What he said was that the club couldn't afford enough gps units for all the players, which is clearly not the case.

Show me the quote.

Craig makes sense and I truly hope we can (continue to) improve our human capital year in year out.

Having said that I don't think what Lloyd said is too far removed from our need to improve in this regard. He didn't specifically mention GPS units he mentioned having enough funds to monitor all players. "Monitor" is a broad term here, it isn't just about strapping GPS units on, as Craig said we need more personnel to analyse all the data - surely that falls under the monitoring umbrella.

Lloyd can be a goose but I don't think he is out of line here.

You're saying we're not in the bottom 3 we're in the bottom 6?... Im relieved lol.

Point being that unless we spend big time on the football department and do it NOW we can forget about on field success...if no success we can forget about memberships...and in turn forget about big sponsorships. We've put all those new coaches in place now, I just hope its being backed up with the technology. Id hate to read in a few years time how we wasted another batch of prime picks by being ill prepared to train them well.

I'm saying we've closed the gap on those clubs we could reasonably be expected to catch. What more do you expect in such a short time ffs.

Ok so from his chat with some of our players about limitations of resources we've been wacked with the povo stick. Whether it is justified I don't know but I would have thought there would be a few more clubs in this ballpark. We've closed the gap on the Saints of late regarding operations revenue & membership haven't we? I know the big clubs are getting bigger but I didn't think we were isolated down the bottom like 3 or 4 years ago. Maybe I'm wrong.

So many players are dropping from our list it is getting to the point where we have to get someone. As long as we draft well, try our best to jag a big name player or seasoned mid (or two) then I have no problem with picking up a game-starved senior player who could add some value for a couple of years and set an example. Just as long as we don't get carried away with this player type.

Well, he must be doing something right.

It sounds like most material matters of our financial statements could be looking promising - heres hoping anyway.