binman

Don't usually listen to Whately as i'm at work but was driving and caught that. I was really surprised Riewoldt (who i usually don't like but found quite interesting today) didn't mention the fitness and injury issue or for that matter neither did Whately as apparently he said just yesterday that it was THE reason for our form. All the things Riewoldt mentioned - not getting back, structures etc (and factors he didn't mention like skill execution) - are no doubt issues but i see more as symptoms of having a crap pre season. The difficult pre season obviously impact not just fitness levels but also the opportunity to practice skills and at an individual level and systems, strategies, plays etc at the team level. They also discussed the fact that WC and the dees both had full contact, mouth guards in, training sessions this week, which was interesting. Riewoldt noted that such sessions were rare in season (as most sessions in season are about recovery,the game are what build fitness and there is big risk of injury) and that they represent one of the few opportunities coaches have to influence the mind set of the team on the track. A break glass in emergency sort of thing (my words). I hadn't really considered that the games build fitness (which is a bit stupid i know given how taxing games are) and this gives me some hope that, injuries notwithstanding, we might be getting closer to an appropriate level of fitness.

Finaly a footy pundit gets it. He is 100% right. Well 90%. The injuries to Smith, preeuss, kk and may (and now viney) have made things even more difficult. Perfect storm. Footy culture is that you never blame injury and fitness. Soldier out, soldier in, gives a player a chance yada yada yada.Goody's comments about no excuses is yet one more example of this culture. And the media and fans generally buy into this silly narrative. Instead they fixate on furphys such as game plan and stupid rumours of ructions to try and make sense of the poor form. Blind freddy can see we are not fit enough, key players are carrying injuries in games and that a third of our best players are out injured.

Not sure I agree. Needs to stay in the team but his development has stalled - particularly in terms of his leading patterns, timing and game craft. That said he does not look fit and seems a bit proppy. By the by I didn't know he was married to tmac.

Pretty quiet on the magpie rumors front

I reckon Misso must be trolling with this comment about preuss (my bolded bit) Braydon Preuss | Shoulder – 1 week “He’s not quite there yet, so he’ll need another week. It was quite a significant injury and he did really well to get up for the St Kilda game, but playing in the second half under duress probably sent him backwards a little bit. We’re really confident he will be OK next week though.”

I put one poster on ignore and thread has gone from 5 pages to four posts. Brilliant

Again this a really, really big call. You write as if it is fact not supposition. What is your evidence (supposition from Caroline Wilson or another journo, or scuttlebut from inside the club isn't evidence by the way)? Like you i feel terrible about where we are at ATM, as all true fans are. I do wonder how helpful right now it is for dees fans to be debating if we got the right guy and used the right process and repeating rumour an innuendo from journos. Even less helpful to be stating things as inflammatory sa the notion that the AFL controlled pert's appointment not the MFC board as fact not supposition. Hence my cynicism about your motives. But i have been watching Counterpoint so perhaps i'm wired to look for conspiracies.

I can neither confirm or deny. I won't name my source either. Nor will I even confirm if it is a 'reliable' source.

I'm confused. In several of your recent hundreds of posts you have lambasted other posters for resorting to personal insults rather than engaging in 'logical' debate. Any whoo i will take your advice to put you on ignore. If nothing else it will making scrolling through threads much easier.

Big call. Any evidence to back it up? And please not a quote from a journo, unless they cite specific, verifiable evidence not just a 'source'. As I suggested earlier I wonder about your motivation for the op. My source tells me you have an agenda fuelled by a powerful dislike of Gary Pert.

100% agree with this theory. And I have little doubt it is one goody (and roos before him) subscribers to. You only have to hear his talk about building a style that wins finals and the finals being a new season to understand that. I reckon we rolled the dice with all the surgeries. Most were so called clean ups and i wonder if they could have been staggered rather than allat once, allowing more players the chance to build fitness before xmas. Yes that would mean some players not ready at the start of the season, but as it turns out that has happened with injuries, which have compounded our evident lack of of fitness.

By the by, interesting thread given it is the first post by the op since May 2017. Curious.

Good post prior about the pert interview. To be honest I have misgivings about pert being so involved in fd matters. Probably misplaced but my sense is pj had the opposite approach and let them get on with things. I wonder how much goody like's perts involvement. An interesting difference between PJ and pert is pert was a decorated AFL player, and no doubt has strong views on how the game should be played. PJ struck me as more intetersted in whether we won or not (though of course holds views on the game) - though did place a value on us playing entertaining footy. On the question of whether PJ wanted pert or not I think the excellent Demonland podcast interview with him is very instructive. Grapeviney (I think) directly asks PJ about Pert and the process to select him. You don't have to be good at reading between the lines to get the strong sense that he was not a fan, or that PJ would not have chosen him. From memory he emphasised they had different aporaches and made clear he wasn't involved in (shut out?) of the decision. I think he qualified his comments somewhat by stressing he favoured a succession model for coaching and leadership positions. Clearly he would have gone with Mahoney. Many on dl wondered what the possible ramifications might be of the decision by the board to basically over rule PJ and run their own process and ultimately getting a complete outsider, albeit a highly qualified one. Was there a risk of creating some unnecessary disharmony? Are we seeing any ripples of that decision now?

Taken down by logic. Gold. And by the by it is binman.

You suggesting other posters of being embarrassing? Irony, much. You can't work out if you want to simply be a troll, or want people to take your views seriously or a bit of both. Now that's embarrassing.

I had mate say precisely the same thing the other day. His point was all clubs have trades that are busts and draft players that don't make it, including high picks. it's the nature of the beast. 50 50 is bloody good result. People just focus on the ones that worked out. But when assessing our our own recruiting many people do the opposite and just focus on the busts. My issue with out recruiting is not who we have picked up as such, more the type of players Roos (yes he should shoulder some blame) and Goody have asked the recruiting team to prioritse. We should have been into Jack Martin 5 years ago for instance. The problem we have is we have focused on competitive, contested ball winners at the expence of pace and skill, for 6 or so years. Which is all well and good, but the problem with that is once a player get to the AFL their kicking skill is by and large fixed (though of course can improve) as is their pace (ditto). Easier to teach a really good kick that isn't naturally a contested ball winner to play solid defense and harden up.

I A grader. Salem might get there, but no other on that list will. A couple closer to c grader than A grade. And one who is C grade. And only one can reliably hit a target. And he plays on the hb so does not kick it inside 50. For a negative nellie you are remarkably unrealisticly positive in your assessment of those players.3 A graders and the potential of 2 more? Sheesh.

I'm not one for bagging players but Lewis was terrible against the tigers. Leaving aside his fumbles, lack of pace and inability to pick the ball of the ground he is supposed to offer leadership. He offered zero leadership in this game. I stamped his card late in the last quarter when he took a half step at a contest and didn't put his body on the line. Game was over but you can tell a lot about where a player is at attitude wise by the way they play late in games where their team is going to lose. The thing i most admired about Robbie Flower was not his abundant skill but his ticker and approach to the game. It didn't matter if we were winning, it was close or we were getting pumped he never dropped his head and always played to the final siren. Respect. I lost some respect for Lewis on Wednesday night.

Fun thread.

Agree on all three PD. The interrupted pre season to so many players and injuries explain to a large degree why we are going so badly. But it doesn't explain why our contested ball numbers have fallen off a cliff. That is real concern. Halfway through the first quarter against the Saints we were done by something like 8 contested ball. To me that is raises flags in terms of attitude and intent.

Totally agree fitness levels, pre-season and availability of key players are the key reason we are travelling so poorly this year. It is a given those things are fundamental to a teams chances in any given season. But i'm talking in a more general sense about what we need to be flag contending side, not why we are rubbish this season. That said having some of our best players out means we have even poorer kicks come into the side.

It's number one on my list. Well one, two and three. Skilled kicks two, players with pace three and players with both number 1. I was surprised we drafted Sparrow. Does not seem that quick and skills seem just ok. A player like Jack Martin is what we need and who we should be focused on trading in. One reason why i was disappointed to lose Watts is that he was our best kick. Yes we got fritta but there is no reason we could not have had both (to be clear I understand the cultural stuff and as i have said previoulsy i understand and respect the decision)

I reckon the biggest part of the problem. A situation exacerbated by the facts that: Many opposition teams have adopted WC's spread strategy that requires speed to cover free players (and those that haven't look to do so against us to expose our lack of pace) Our woeful turnovers from missed kicks expose and exacerbate our lack of pace as everyone is out of position when we turn it over You can't kick goals if you continually butcher the ball going inside 50 and when you do actually get a shot hit the behind post from 30 direct in front or fail to make the distance from 35 When we do butcher the ball going inside 50 we don't have single player who pick the ball off the ground and turn a crap kick into an opportunity (by the by if i hear the stupid expression ground ball one more time my head will explode)

I'll tell you why. As i have said on any number of occasions across multiple threads - and at the real risk of repeating myself and boring posters to death - our communication at the club is appalling. There are any number of examples from big to small. PJ made it clear that our focus in terms of our resourcing had to be the football department as you are going nowhere if not winning. And hard to argue against that. Implicit though in that focus was that once winning began other aspects of the club would get attention. I can only assume that has not occurred because our communication and membership engagement is not up to scratch and is a black eye on the club. And on Gary Pert i reckon. Maybe the last point is bit tough on Pert, but he has had enough time at the club to sort things and communication and membership engagement must be among his KPIs. Our messaging (or more accurately mixed messaging), our website, our social media, how we respond to membership queries (not blaming the staff by the way on this - it is clearly a system issue and reflects a lack of investment) and our members engagement strategies are all poor.

And people knock misso. Anyone who can bring a fella back from the dead is ok by me. That is high performance. I heard he helped get that star j. Christ back on his feet as well.