3183 Dee

I’d say that any potential player or coach would be insane to look at us until our new off field set up is (a) highly credentialed and (b) settled in place. I have no inside knowledge but it now appears that the Pert/Roffey era has been quite damaging for the club. Did they ride the coattails of our fantastic premiership without using the opportunity to propel the club forward? I don’t know - but the noises and whispers of the past 2 or 3 years, coupled with on field stagnation in the same period would possibly suggest this. I wonder if too much was based on the assumption that Gawn, Brayshaw , Oliver and Petracca would automatically and effortlessly bring an era of greatness? Instead, I think the untimely loss of Angus has brought the whole house of cards down and exposed a lot of rot behind the facade.

A Twitter?

To me, it Speaks volumes about the way the club has/is being run.

Chag Pesach Sameach!

Sadly, the Coach himself has also been saying it for 3 years. The fact that nothing has changed in that time (in fact it’s got worse) is astounding.

💯 We need to find a CEO, a President, make a decision on our whole coaching team, make decisions on our senior ‘stars’, put together a coherent game plan to at least try to win a couple of games this year….then look around to see which players are on the market.

Nail. Head. Hit.

If he said the list of candidates was underwhelming, then that is great news. It means we have someone overseeing things, who won’t look at mediocrity. It feels like we may have been slipping back into our boys’ club ways over the past couple of years, where people within the club, may have been content to ride on the coattails of 2021 and think that it’s all just ‘going to happen’. There seems to have been a fair bit of protectionism around the place - including at coaching and playing level.

While I will still be going to games and supporting the club, the last two games have been a continuation of the downturn which began, truthfully, in 2023. Even though we made top 4 that year, there were not that many games where we looked convincing. Last year, maybe the Dogs and Hawks games early on were dominant performances but, after that, we were not very good at all. This season, apart from a workmanlike performance against GWS, we have regressed. I can’t believe that a whole squad of professional sportsmen have not been able to grasp and implement a change in game style. Sure - it may take a few games to perfect, but I literally cannot see what the new game plan is - I really can’t. It’s very much like 22 individuals playing together for the first time.

30 minutes of the purest footy. We were unstoppable in that Finals series. Unstoppable.

Just got back - that was absolute garbage from start to finish. I would say only Bowey, Chin and maybe Henderson and Langford got pass marks. Skills are atrocious, really really bad. We played like The Dog and Duck today and made a not very good Gold Coast look brilliant. I have a hunch that something is not right within the four walls - I have nothing to base this on, other than watching a team that looks completely disconnected from each other. And this is supposed to be a group that has ‘healed’ and ‘full of love for one another’? Give me a spell. Also - this new system we’re trying? I can’t even tell what it is, unless it’s to lull the opposition into a false sense of security about how bad we are, and hope to jag a few goals when their guard is down. Can’t wait for the press conference: “there are certainly areas we need to get better at.”, “not up to the level”, “well done to Gold Coast”, “beaten in all phases”. Tick them off the list. The buck has to stop with Goody now - granted, he’s not out on the field, but he is in charge of this rabble.

He’s part of the problem - has not distinguished himself at all in the last two games.

Agreed, although the expectation of finals, which I’m sure most of us have, may actually be very different from the reality, which comes as a bit of a shock. From a team that expected top 4, we seem to be now looking at trying to scrape into the 8. It’s quite a fall, considering the list - you have to say we have underachieved so far, despite 2021 (which was magnificent). This is on the organisation as a whole - the reality is that the club hasn’t been run the best way it could be - on and off the pitch - since 2021. For me, that’s why all this ‘love and healing’ stuff wears pretty thin. Stop talking about it, create a system that gets the very best out of your current players, win games (or die trying) and you’ll soon find a happy and joyful playing group and supporter base. As I see it, this latest mantra about (to paraphrase) ‘there are still winnings, even if you don’t win the game’ as well as ‘it’s incredibly hard to win games of AFL’ is kind of accepting and validating defeat. Fair enough, your players will feel warm and comforted by it, but those of us who turn up each week, spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on memberships, expecting a certain standard of football and commitment are not going to wear it for too much longer.

100% - You can spruik or spout an ideology, but sprouting is just weird.

Claptrap, I'm afraid. It's so vague and cliched, that it makes it impossible to measure success against it, which in turn makes players and coaches unaccountable. I'm off the Goody train.