Strafford

Just as important is the forward pressure these types of players can put on that is vital to modern team defensive structures. We need that forward fifty harassment of defenders trying to rebound and trying to hold the ball in there until support can arrive and or the forward press is set up.

The Bengals off season curse has struck again. Adam "Pacman" Jones has been involved in another incident in a career packed with them. He claims a woman threw a bottle at him in a night club and he then slapped her. Camera footage seems to show him hitting the woman after she poured a drink on him. Lovely. Just when we have signed up for the show Hard Knocks again. I'm sure the film makers are loving it....sigh.

I probably need to clarify my point on Toumpas a bit PM as I just realised it reads like I am dumping on him. All I am trying to point out is that if Jimmy played round 1, as he did, then given Neeld's subsequent comments he was either played too early and should have been given more time to prepare for his debut or the comment was irrelevant and just another excuse. Eitherway I don't think it reflects well on him. I just want our club to develop the kid right as he is potentially one of our blue chippers.

Statistics just like lists of behaviours are fine and can be very useful as long as they are used in the right way and in conjunction with other tools. You also need to take outliers into account

Not sure Neeld is backing you up on that one mate. As recently as last night he was explaining away his big losses by saying he didn't put players behind the ball because players don't learn that way. Personally I think his recollections could be a bit hazy

He is unlikely to be our next coach, but at least he says he takes some responsibility and has reflected on what he could have done differently.

I thought we were always training well and our matchday effort just didn't reflect our training form

Especially when you consider that at Collingwood he walked into a very structured club with an established senior coach. He never saw how they got there or how Malthouse went about building his list originally.

If we don't win five games do you think they will fine us for " not tanking" again?

So if we don't get Roos we are stuffed then?

I can see what you are saying PM24, but do you think it was a good idea not to have a matchday element? Do you think that perhaps it would have been better to use that list as a guide, as most clubs who use it do, rather than back yourself into a corner by saying it is the be all and end all? From a number of sources N.Jones was making up a lot of ground, so perhaps if they had waited and had that matchday element N.Jones may have been the man with the youngsters vice captains. Hopefully they didn't show them the results as it just adds to the picture of humilating the senior players for all that many of them to needed a wakeup call. How many people really think our process came up with the right outcome? Do you think being Captain has helped either of the Jacks? Luke Hodge has never been a training junkie although he has got better, but he is an onfield leader. I'm not sure our process would have picked him? If Toumpas was fit enough to play round one then any mention of his hip injuries was irrelevant and he was just like any other kid playing his first game coming out of the draft rather than an example of us being extra focused on the future. The fact that under Neeld half of our new recruits have been mature aged guys complicates Neelds assertion on our youth policy. I would have thought Toupas was dropped due to not getting near it rather than any thought to managing his workload.

Yeah could be. I forgot he was there.

You would think Sumich would be the obvious candidate if Worsfold walks, especially after getting a different look under Lyon, although will the club and the fans be able to forgive him going to the enemy in the Dockers?

Wonder how his meeting with the AFL went, or hasn't that happened yet?

Couple that with the new hope Hogan in the seniors, new leadership, a few new kids to pin our hopes on and hopefully the recruitment of a good experienced midfielder or two and hope can be sold and thus memberships:) Keeping the faith in season two and later on in season one re attendance might be a bit more difficult if results don't go our way, but hopefully people don't expect us to be a top eight side straight away, as I can't see happening.

Yep injuries can't be factored into these things unless they are known issues.

Haha. He doesn't really understand the concept either, although to be fair he did mention it wasn't only moneyball. Considering we gave pretty good deals to a number of these guys would fly in the face of moneyball principles. Dawes, Clark, Pederson, Gillies etc. Byrnes and Rodan in for experience, but even Byrnes has a reasonable deal. Terlich, M.Jones etc even Sellars perhaps do qualify, but are we a mile under the salary cap? Are the guys we got in cheapies? Half the guys we got in were still kids. Were these guys really statistically undervalued? As many have found baseball have a few things unique to the sport that make moneyball easier to apply to it.

I can see the attractions of Eade as coach. He has worked in environments that weren't ideally resourced and does know how to motivate teams not playing in front of huge crowds. I think working at the Pies also will have helped him see how one of the best organisational clubs goes about it. I listened to a piece on the ABC where Lindsey Gilbee talked about how Rocket first came to the Dogs and about how he persuaded him to stay at the Dogs because he rated him as a player. I think we could do with some of that. He does have his faults, but surely he is one of the top candidates.

Choco is such a polariser and a bit of nepotism was going on at Port. He does know his football though.

There is some truth to this as it wasn't moneyball. Those using the term moneyball to describe what we did don't really understand the concept, but they do love the catchy term

Ratts has a few of the same problems that Neeld has. In that he struggles to connect with larger groups and to get his messages across to both his staff and players. For mine just like Neeld he is much better suited to being an assistant coach and dealing with a smaller group under someone elses overall direction. I would love to get him as an assistant coach.

Although you have a point about the two Jacks and whoever our new coach is they will have to be very careful about how they appoint a new captain, if they do so, without making them feel like they failed, but I think you are being very charitable about Neeld's motivations here. He justified his choice of Captains again rather than "Not getting caught up in the question." He had his list of ten behaviours and by golly that was the only way to choose a captain, any relevance to matchday performance or other factors be damned. Again he linked Toumpas having hip surgery to Hogan being unavailable this season. As I mentioned in another thread if he believed Toumpas was so far behind the eightball due to his injuries, why set him up to fail in round 1 by playing him? This kid is one of the key planks of our future so why run the risk of shattering his confidence if you don't believe his body is right, and should be viewed more like Hogan. Yep he was interviewing for another job, but it was also plain to see that he genuinely believes he didn't make any mistakes and that he doesn't know what went wrong. For all the other extenuating circumstances, that blindness is part of why he failed.

Again I don't believe everything is his fault, but man...he still regrets nothing. He just lost his job... He just seems stuck in processes, but what if his processes are flawed, as the outcomes would tend to suggest.

Say what. Greg Wells was a demon supporter as a kid. Spent umpteen number of years at our club as a player. Has been a chairman of selectors, assistant coach etc etc for the Dees and you are trying to argue his first allegiance is to the Blues, because he won a flag in one of his couple of seasons there? It just isn't true mate.

It's all good then mate Just checking forums make you realise just how important the non verbal stuff is to human communication. I've tried twice to reply to your post in detail, but have lost it both times. So I'll try again tomorrow. Not that the new post will live up to the earth shattering insights that the two posts I lost contained. A bit like the fish that got away