Carrot Top

So what do you do as a coach? Put another man in to man him up, and clog up the 50 more? A loose man in defence is a tourniquet against a good forward line. Against an OK one they are there for pressure and some rebound. For what we had they are there to pick up stats and Chas votes. If we had real forwards there they'd lead to make him run to keep their hands off it. That opens up the forward line for others to run into. And if they don't double team the real forward the he gets an easy mark 40 odd out on a 35% angel.

Who were you going to replace him with? And you said yourself that Frawley on him made no difference. And the loose man: No. Our forwards didn't make him cover them. They just weren't good enough for him to respect them enough to worry about them. He backed his man to take care of them and then floated around looking for easy kicks. Do you think they do that when Buddy is on song? Do you think the'd have done that with a fit and firing Clark a FF?

I see nothing in that post that says we were out coached. Badly hurt by lack of big, mobile men, and by having a second string forward line that didn't demand the respect of the loose man and thus made them a floater able to do what they wanted. We are missing a massive amount of big men, and two more were taken out of the game through injury reasonably early on. We weren't outcoached. We were badly hurt by key losses to big players over the last 6 or so weeks. The spine is as important as the mids. You can't have one with a dysfunctional other, and almost our entire first choice spine is hurt right now. If you win at CHF and break even at CHB you'll win a lot of games - we had no hope of both before the game, and either shortly into it.

Was it Vic Park where they'd only give teams cold water to shower in? Maybe it was Moorabbin. Anyway I'm digressing. I think it's a great idea, Chook, and if PJ doesn't put it to the AFL then he's not earning his coin.

Whatever will be will be. I'm done panicking over every damn iceberg the SS MFC sees on the horizon. Stay, go, sign a contract, don't sign a contract. Whatever. Nothing that I do will change anything, and nobody even knows what is really happening to panic about.

Rather lose the game than the plan. Haven't we seen enough of quick fixes?

I suffer from Stockholm syndrome.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. Winston Churchill said that and he was pretty smart when he wasn't drunk.

Not 'happy'. I'm just not going to weep about a player that has always been a NQR wandering off into the sunset.

Dunn has spent most of his career as a bloke that is picked in the team once 16 others have been decided upon. So far he's played bit parts and the occasional cameo. Hopefully his preseason form carries into the real matches, but based on the rest of his games I'm unconvinced that he'll ever be someone that we would regret losing.

Saturday won't make any difference to anything. He's either decided to go already or the first half of the H&A will decide it for him - one way or the other. Edit: lost track of the day. Not unusual for me though. I was [censored] off to find it was only Tuesday today and I wouldn't be able to read the training reports.

Odd. But it is what it is. He'd be really nice to keep as FB's don't grow on trees. FB's that can play tall or short moreso. Dunn... meh.

I am shocked and appalled that the worst team of last year (minus a forward line) couldn't compete with the premiers of last year. This is a disgrace and I call for a Royal Commission into this.

Of course I'd rather he played than didn't, but it's not reach into the bottom draw for the revolver time, no matter what some might think. More important than the forwards is having mids that work for and trust each other, Jones, Vince, Cross or Tyson missing 6 weeks would worry me more than Clark. Dawes or Hogan.

If a bloke that has never played an AFL game misses a couple of weeks, and from that our season is derailed, then it was derailed before it began. Sure I'd love him to be fit and firing, but he's still a boy with a lot of learning and footy ahead of him,

Yeah. I've been thinking that he reminded me of someone that played for us but couldn't make the connection. That's who it was.

Yes... and no. It's misleading if it means that a turnover is coming. However if it's ugly and you keep the ball then it's good. After all if you have it then they don't, and if they don't have it they can't score. That'll be the real test of the list and the plan.

I thinks that we'll always have a spot for a player like him - assuming it translates to the H&A stuff, which I reckon it will. He will make at least one player on the ground earn every touch. We could ask for more but lets face it, we've been given much less recently. In a full strength backline he is going to make the job of the playmakers much easier, and the job of his fellow backmen less pressured. People like him are gold. They might not win games but they'll make sure that the rest of the team has the best chance of doing that.

He drove me nuts with his constant: 'Sydney, Sydney, Sydney, O rose smelling poo Sydney that can do no wrong' cheerleading. I will probably have a different opinion of his cheerleading style these days.

So don't. I didn't ask you to join a bandwagon. In fact I couldn't give a fried rats arse about any of your illiterate posts. You hate him. Good for you. He doesn't even know your name. Better for him. Just out of interest did you cheer when he did good things, or did you find negatives in that too?

Sure in principle, but maybe not in reality. I'm not sure I'll ever look at Chook as anything but a traitor to the club and his ex team mates no matter what else he gave us, and if a 40 year old Scully was introduced at a function I'd walk out. But that's all for a different time and place. Col is a demon even if he got a bit lost and put on the wrong jumper for a bit.

I didn't back the playing group after the 186 horror, and I thought Neeld was right to wield the ax on some of the egos, but he was a bad coach. One of the worst ever maybe. He deserves the spleen venting even if this thread isn't the place to do it.

I almost feel sorry for him. Col was a high pick in a very ordinary draft, and would have been in the high teens in quite a few other drafts. Yes, he had limitations and seemed to zone out if it wasn't his day, but at the same time the club failed him and all the rest of the players for years. I understand him wanting a fresh start, but at the same time moving to a club on the go, and with a well drilled team, 4000 kms from all that matters isn't going to end well if he doesn't get the breaks go his way. I'm not sad he left. It was a good thing for us IMO. And I tend to think he was given a gentle nudge, but I get the feeling he has ridden off into obscurity among people that really don't care about him other than what he gives on the field, and I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say that it won't be much other than a cameo. He's always welcome back in a red and blue tie in my eyes, even if I wished he'd given us more than a highlights reel.

I missed the Essendon game - which turned out to be a good thing - but even better was missing that 1/2 time speech, Half of the players looked like they were going to sleep and the other half looked like they'd rather be home watching the B grade movies on the TV. Boring, uninspiring and embarrassing. I'm now going to make myself repress those years. Roos reminds me of someone I played under in the local leagues. We weren't world beaters, but we punched above our weight, and dropped of dramatically once they left. It was all about wanting to earn praise from someone you respected. Someone that even when they were pointing out where you went wrong didn't belittle you, but let it be known in a round about way that he knew you were better than that, and smarter than that, and with a pointer or two you'd get it right next time. It's hard to put into words because leadership can come in many forms, and if saying x and y makes a leader we'd have millions of them, but he has that something. He talks and you listen, and you want to be better because you don't want to let him down. Northy had it too, and other than that I haven't seen it at the club in my lifetime.

Woot! 238 days into the 18 game festival of the greatest game ever invented, and we're still in the top eight.