Akum

See, this is just plain wrong. According to the stats we saw many pages ago now (page 99, IIRC), Watts is elite (statistically, at least) in putting the ball inside forward 50 to our best advantage over the past 2 years. But he's also statistically elite in pressure acts / pressure points in the forward half, to keep the ball in there. I reckon all of us were surprised by the second one. Most clubs place great store in these parameters - they're exactly what they want their tall forwards to do for the team. They show that in both attacking and defensive skills, Watts not only is right up there, but that he HAS in fact taken his game to another level. It's simply wrong today that he hasn't made an effort to improve. Either you didn't know about these or you (along with our coaches) know about them and don't consider these areas to be important. But they're there. I don't really care if you don't want to see it. But if our coaches don't, then it's another thing altogether.

Seriously? No, it's a very dishonest answer. One of the least savoury aspects about this for me is the way the club's tried to paint that it's Jack's choice to leave or stay, when he hasn't been given the choice to stay. If Jack had the choice to stay, he would stay, even if it meant playing for Casey for the next 2 seasons if Goody refused to pick him. If your coach tells you, in effect, that you're no longer wanted in the team, you don't hang around. I really don't understand why, if the coaches (not just Goodwin) are pushing him out (and the captains are apparently right behind them), they have not thus far shown the character to own that decision. Or are there other reasons why the coaches are so eager to avoid responsibility for this decision? Serious question. I don't know for the life of me why Goody or Mahoney didn't just come out in the first place and say something like: "our game is going to focus much more on contested ball and strong tackling in 2018 and, while Watts has considerable skills, they aren't the skills we need to help us get to where we want to go". The rational response would then be: "fair enough, if that's what you're going to do, you have the right to make that decision". People can agree or disagree about whether that's the best way to go, but nobody could deny that it was Goody's right to make that decision. And it would have avoided the repeated and tacky and totally unnecessary ad hominem attacks on Watts. Goody has another chance at the B&F - he can show character and stand up and take responsibility for the decision, or he can duck responsibility and try to throw Watts under that bus one more time. Or, if he's secure in the decision and of the club's (& sponsors') support for it, he just won't take the bait and will leave it alone.

Yeah, you'd think so, wouldn't you?

No chance of that, unfortunately. Goody would be crowing.

Fair enough. But it looked to me more like the posture meeting, the theatre meeting. ... in which the jilted lover melodramatically declares his anguish and his thirst for reparation to his audience, and hastily departs the scene in high dudgeon ... It never at any stage looked like the meeting at which the deal was going to be made.

As much as I'm reluctant to take down the sense of theatre, which may be the most important part of trade week ... The clubs haven't been able to even start negotiating yet, not until tomorrow. All they can do is just to state and restate their opening gambits, with a lot of mayo thrown around by Adelaide, who after all are giving up a player they don't want to give up - like someone said, imagine if Petracca was in Lever's position. Adelaide have generally been good with trading players out, once they accept that said player is gone. Over recent years they've been forced to let some very good players go, and have been mature & pragmatic in not pushing things to the limit. They were very good with Bock & Davis, for example - they made a lot of noise then too, and had good cause to, but once they accepted the inevitable, they worked out some quite reasonable deals from memory. They only stumbled when they came across a Carlton who absolutely refused to budge on their opening bid of 2 first rounders for Gibbs. It's very unusual for a club who refuse to move from their opening bid, but considering what Gibbs contributes to Carlton these days, it's not too difficult to understand why they did it. I'd be very surprised if the two clubs didn't reach a deal fairly early, they're really not that far apart. Unless their chief negotiator is now Brett Burton where it wasn't before. The rest is all theatre - to involve The Crowd.

And if we get anything better than a mid third, there will be much rejoicing and praise that our satanic majesty has indeed favoured us mightily.

Except that by the end of next week, Jack Watts is no longer a going concern for us. Any further arguments about who's to blame are futile, and as with almost all such matters, there's blame on both sides. Goody et al are. There the ones that will be taking our team into the future for us. And a lot of what they've done over the last few weeks fills me with foreboding rather than confidence. If you're feeling complete confidence in them, it's despite rather than because of how they've handled this.

At the end of a game in which he'd already run himself into the ground. He was also the only one alive to the possibility. If he hadn't of run, Harmes would have had to either retain the ball, or kick it aimlessly forward. The whole point about this one incident is that it stands in direct opposition to the "he's never given 100%" claim.

I've often had the feeling ever since then that, though we picked Watts, we really wanted Hurley. And we've been trying to turn Watts into Hurley ever since. Where Jack goes now, he'll fit into the team (or not) according to where they think his skills will be most valuable to them. That would be much better for him than having to play like somebody else. Seems to me that to some degree, we've been trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. And then try to hammer that peg when it won't fit.

Again, good post. We both want the best for the club, we just differ on how that might come about. Like every poster on this thread.

Really good post, I'm just wavering on that last phrase. Let me ask you this: Does it not concern you in the slightest that two of the three strongest clubs over the past 10 years or so - Sydney & Geelong - see him totally differently? That the one player in our side who is statistically elite in both pressure acts in the f50 and disposals into the f50 has been pushed out by these coaches? That Paul Roos, who knows this club as well as anybody could, has expressed misgivings about the decision to get rid of him, and even cautioned against going back to the way we were before he came?

And this is what confuses me and makes me feel uneasy - you write as if these two (winning flags & being a good place to work) are either mutually exclusive, so that being a good place to work gets in the way of winning flags, or they have no relationship to each other. I'd stand with Hardwick, Bevo, Roos, Bellamy and others and say that the secret to winning flags is creating a good place to work - one that's challenging and encouraging and inspiring and a place where everybody wants to go. If you create a workplace where the players feel fearful and intimidated and get baked for all their mistakes, that's not going to win any flags or get great performance. It's going to make your players go right into their shells, a bit like our team seemed to do from the Swans game on. And my great concern is that Goody and Macca share your view, not mine, and not Watts's. And we'll be worse off for it - yet again. So I've never hoped so much that I'm totally wrong.

At least four clubs who seriously want him. We KNOW that. And they're not the "desperate" clubs too - they're good solid clubs. And it's my GUESS (yes, I don't know this) that Watts has probably had more positive feedback from four other clubs in the past week than he's had from his coaches at MFC for the past year. Come on man, you won! You should be happy, you can kinda stop your carping now, you don't have to chase down every positive post about Watts and run it into the ground any more. You fought the good(win) fight and your side won!

Well, whether he is or not, I'd be absolutely gobsmacked if you thought he was, even for a fleeting moment.

Cos yeah, everybody who's been in our leadership group has been an inspired choice. Mitch Clark, Shannon Byrnes, Chris Dawes ... We seem to like picking our leaders from players who come to us from other clubs. What I can't understand is: he's leaving, he's gone. You've got your wish. I have no idea why you feel you have to keep fighting the battle. It's over and you won. We'll get Goody's third rounder and have to pay half his salary for two years and he won't be our player any more.

Trouble is, there are at least 4 or 5 clubs that don't share your blind faith and just aren't buying it. They'd be only too glad to take Watts off our hands.

Tell you what - next time you attend a club function, seek out Jesse Hogan and ask him who he'd prefer in the forward line. His answer will be blindingly obvious to a lot of us here, but you may be surprised by it.

Good to see that you & Jimi are getting used to the fact that he's gone.

"Whoever else" would be Libba. Despite his immense value to the team when he's playing well, my Bulldog mates here out west tell me that the clud would be open to moving him on. And apart from JV, I can't think of any other player who so much epitomises Goody's ideal type. He'd be the closest thing to having two Jack Vineys.

Wish I could believe you.

I'm interested to know whether you think Norm Smith would have tolerated the deficiencies pointed out in the post you quoted. Or whether it's just what Watts is bad at that's holding the team back, so we can safely ignore everyone else's weaknesses and mistakes?

Watts has been gone ever since Goody told him that he wasn't wanted, probably at his end of season review. I realised that long before most others here and I'm fine with it. But I'm concerned with what's left behind. Our coaches seem to fetishise what Watts isn't good at, while totally disregarding what he is good at, which they've never once praised him for, at least in public. We apparently have standards of intensity or whatever that doesn't tolerate anything but the highest levels. But every player has his weaknesses. There seems a massive tolerance for some players winning contested ball and then banging it anywhere, and for some players missing easy targets and causing turnovers or holding up a chain of uncontested possessions. That wouldn't be tolerated for long at a club with high standards - imagine repeatedly missing Hodge or Selwood by 5m on a 30m pass after they'd worked really hard to lose their tag and get into space. So while we fetishise about one aspect of footy like no other club does, we are woefully slack about other aspects of footy (which, by the way, Watts happens to be very good at). I don't care what happens to Watts now, but how about seeing standards raised across the board? Players, even team leaders, who cost us by refusing to take care with their disposal should be sanctioned just as hard as those who don't improve their intensity. Why do our coaches tolerate poor or careless disposal? These guys are professionals, all they do in life is get paid to get their footy right. Why do we tolerate, say, 40-something i-50s in a game for 8 goals because we can't hit targets and our f50 entries are far too predictable?? And do our coaches know how to encourage and inspire their team to greater effort, or are they only able to slam them when they do something wrong? Wherever Watts goes in 2018, these issues will stay with us unless we consider them important enough to do something about. Rather than bleating - only in the past 24 hours, mind you, that we fell short because "Watts set such a bad example to our younger players".

Agree mate, that was my original point too.

If that was the move that allowed them to snag Caddy as well as Prestia & Nankervis, yes. (and if I actually gave a sh!t about Richmond, I would know that)