binman

Earlier this year the booing of ablett for being a homophobic sniper was used by some as evidence that the booing of goodes wasn't racist. Leaving aside the mind boggling ridiculousness of such an argument the booing stopped after only a few weeks. Some argued continuing to boo goodes became a statement protesting being told to stop. People came out and said don't boo a champion when ablett was being booed. Where was the free speech outrage. Why did people not continue to boo in protest. Why are they not still booing ablett?

i wonder if Burgess shares Saty's ambivalence about the impact of interrupted preseasons?

An excellent point. Aligns with the two ladders someone (apologies for not recalling who), one with experience and the other age which both closely reflected the current AFL ladder. I reckon you could add the doggies to the hawks as an example and GWS have struggled with their young list to get up each year.

Not having a shot at ypu pitmaster but I'm not sure it is possible, or fair, to categorically say our prep has been poor this year (unless you have both inside knowledge and the relevant expertise). You might be right of course or our fitness issues might be down to bad luck but personally I'd hate to see misso's reputation get tarnished and for him to cop unwarranted, ill informed criticism.

Is it too early to start the 'It's all burgoes fault and we need to sack him ASAP' thread?

All of the players i listed, with the possible exception of kk are best 22 locks and melk is not available i dont think

Sorry. How do you figure that?. From our nominal best 22 we have the following players not available though injury: jeffy, Joel Smith, tmac, melk, kk, vdb, hore and weed a test. That's a third of our best 22.

Sorry LF you were wrong. 7No other club is in the same predicament injury wise as us. Not even close. We have by far the worse run. Top 22 players. Top 10 Top 5. Total number. Timing. Whatever metric you want to use we have had by far the worse run with injury.

Now that is a more interesting discussion and one that is worth exploring. Very hard to do so however in the absence of both inside knowledge and a strong understanding of what best practice is in that space. For example I wonder if they actually had to do all the surgeries preseason. Could have some waited to say the bye. Could have they done some during the 2018 season or even ended some seasons early? But of course i'm in no position to have an informed opinion on such questions. That said my gut feeling is they thought they had a shot at the flag last year and, not unreasonably put their eggs in that basket. I think they rolled the dice and hoped they would avoid major injuries and start hitting peak fitness by the bye. Rolled the dice and came up snake eyes.

As I and others have been at pains to point out this is plain wrong and to be honest is a really unhelpful narrative to be pushing as a dees fan. Why? Because it is wrong. You made that assertion a fee weeks ago and I posted the link of the article from may with the games missed by best 22 through injury ladder. I'm not sure if you read it but it showed we were hit hardest at that stage by a big, big margin. And things have got much worse since then. If that ladder was done now we would be so far ahead of second it is not funny. And as noted by wrecker45 the injury issue has to be seen in context of our shocking preseason and resulting lack of a strong fitness base (by the by the tigers had a great preseason, as did not coincendally all the teams in the top 5. Saints didn't and have struggled all season. Go figure). Caro should stick to footy politics if she doesn't understand that. Sure, debate the actuall impact of a poor preseason and injury. But please don't misrepresent how bad both have been for the dees. As I say it is an unhelpful narrative and just feeds all those lazy footy media people who love to reinforce such myths.

I simply don't understand why people (fans, media people and a high proportion of dl posters) can't understand that simple fact. Leaving aside that it is well documented having a high percentage of your list completing a high percentage of preseason sessions is critical to having a successful year it is plain as day we are strugglong to run out quarters ans games.

I could care less about the Neeld thing. And i don't mind his criticism of the club. All power to him. A terrific servant for the club and he has more that earned the right to knock us. What i mind is that he is a paid professional analyst who is rubbish at that job. I don't care how he 'feels' about the dees. Not in that role anyway. Maybe down the pub over a few beers, but not on a show that is supposed to offer some level of professional analysis, requiring some level of professional detachment. His comments sounded like a fan boy whose feelings had been hurt, who had been let down. If he truly believes last year was an aberration, do some basic research and back up that opinion with some facts. Do some work rather than waffle on. He's supposedly 'thought about it long and hard' and gives no substance to his argument. At all. Not single rational argument to back his opinion. That's the best he can do after thinking long and hard? I mean c'mon. Browny tried hard to get him to expand on his thoughts, for example asked him about the quality of the midfield. But got nothing from Gary. Embarrassing stuff. In all seriousness he sounded like many posters on Demonland. The difference is he is getting paid to have an informed view and make rational, well argued assertions. Cold, hard criticism? You are pretty easily pleased Steve. Personally i prefer a bit more rigor in my analysis. Each to their own i suppose.

The dees would kill for that injury list.

Agree with most if not all of the above. With one exception. Fair dinkum surely a TV show like On the Couch, which is supposed to be all analysis, should be able to express the points you make in the post above an hour of TV. But i agree they can't. or more accurately choose not to. And that is largely because the footy media in Australia is simply woefiul. Embarrassingly so. And a big reason is that is predominately made up of ex footballers who are 'stars' and seemingly have no interest in doing any meaningful research to inform their views or don't have the skills to do so or both. So lazy. And Gary is one of the worst in this regard. Not the worst though. BT takes that honor. Follweed by Cameron Ling. They do have producers though. But they have no interest either it would seem. They are happy enough to serve up ill informed pa wrapped up in the occasion interesting stat they but of champion data and a nice graphic or two.

Those 2 have been injured. When they went they improved. You won't give gawn? Oliver has improved, no question. And you don't count Hore just because he was a draft pick? He was dropped early in the season, came back into the team and steadily improved, until the injury God's took their pound of flesh.

Gawn has become an all Australian lock. Tmac had a stellar 2018. Hannan also had a great 2018. Oliver has improved. Jetts had his best year in 2018. Hore has improved out of sight this year. Frost has had his best year this year.

Perception is a funny thing. You use this information to mount a case how bad our season has been. But that info more accurately reflects what PJ said about linear improvement being rare in tbe AFL and cautioning dees fans not to expect it. 5 clubs in 19 years have fallen back badly after making finals. That is statically significant. We are third on tbat list and we still have 5 games to go so might even get to the tiger's 8 wins. And of course the tiger's famously won in 2017. So one of the 4 clubs (25% if you like) won a flag the following year after falling away. Interesting. I'll bet london to a brick the tiger's equivalent of demonland had the same number of card burning, nervous nellies wanting to sack that yank chick and big Bennie gale and get rid of that bombers filth hardwick. And the same number of posters calling for calm and rationality. History look rather kinder on the latter group.

Good. Do that. The dees don't need fans who want to bail when they are most needed.

Prodee where are you? You have been proven correct about preuss. He's a no from me.

You should have taken the bet STMJ. You clearly were worried he wouldn't be dropped and you would lose it. Understandable.

Does he? Better let goody know.

This is simply not true. In 2017 and the first half of last year when we lost it was usually because we got smashed on transition and gave up too many out easy out the back goals (ie player running into an empty 50 and running it to the line) as we employed such a high, aggressive press (which is also why we won a lot of games and with big scores, such as the corresponding Alice game last year v the crows). Goody adjusted that mid season and we became much harder to score against (the hardest team to score against round 13 - 23). The few losses we had thereafter were usually a result of poor kicking for goal (eg v the swans) and/or teams spreading wide and stretching us with chip/kick/hold it up and cross it style (eg WC in the prelim). This approach has hurt us this year too but again we have really improved, in part because we have modified our style and also the players are probably finally near peak fitness. This year the key factor in our losses has been our inability to covert our inside 50s and our woeful kicking for goal (and field kicking for that matter), which were both an issue at times last year but nowhere as bad an issue as it has been this year.

Exactly. Appalling decision.

Even if it means omac that means at least 9 of the pl a years who played in our prelim had interrupted pre seasons. And I actually think it was close to 15.

As noted on another thread that I just read (coincedeetally as part of a conversation on a similar subject - or perhaps not given you are part of that conversation) there are a number of relatively recent examples of team going backwards and rebounding soon after to win flags. The common thread of those teams have been stability st board and executive level. And as I noted a real positive is that seems to be the case at the dees. Granted few have fallen as far as we have. But few have had the sort of run we have had with injury and interrupted pre seasons. As i noted before this is the worse run I can recall us having. To be clear this is not the only cause of our issues, but it is the most significant. I am complete agreement that if we have not righted the ship by round 10 2020 we are in trouble. But I am confident (based on the evidence of our steady improvement in the last six years, the quality of people in place -particularly goody - and the stabty at board and exec levl) tbat we will rebound.