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I’m trying to come to terms with what the loss of Moloney & Jurrah and the retirement of Green means for our list and our chances of an improved season in 2013. Between these 3 players we have 2 B&F winners, and the majority of our goals from the 2010 - 2011. Over the last handful of weeks, Neeld has spoken about a number of stats in various interviews and press conferences. The one spoken about more than all has been “average number of games per player in the selected team” or “total number of games per side”. Each time he points out that we are a young side - only in 3 games this season did we have more games of experience than our opposition on the park (against GWS and GCS). Often I’d ask myself, if experience is the answer then why is he refusing to play Bate, Morton or Moloney? - Obviously he isn’t sold on them, the effort they put in and the style of football they play, and rates getting games into other guys as more of a priority. Fair enough I guess. We have also heard guys like Green, Howe and other players talk about the need for players to ‘buy in’ to Neelds game plan and style. We still haven’t really seen a game plan to date, but as a starting point I guess Neeld requires that his players push themselves to their limits on game day and at training in order to get the most out of themselves. This is fair enough, but is a terrible indictment on previous FD’s and coaching groups if this isn’t part and parcel of playing professional sport. So what to make of all this? IMO we end up with only a few players who fit into Neeld’s ideal category – experience at AFL level, and being prepared to work hard and do ‘whatever it takes’ to get the best out of themselves. I guess this is why he is culling off some of the playing group! I’ve never really heard Skill come into the discussion. I’m assuming Neeld is content enough with the general skill level of the playing list. It also seems to me that the most highly skilled players on our list are amongst those with the poorest attitudes - those that think that they can sit on their hands and become good afl players. My worry is that Neeld is reluctant to ‘manage’ the players he has on the list to become the type that he wants. Either these guys are so set in their ways that they cant be managed or Neeld has no time for developing players. In my line of work I value being able to adjust my communication style in order to effectively communicate and foster relationships with people from a wide range of backgrounds and personality types. It staggers me that Neeld could not, or chose not to manage a guy like Moloney, who is approaching 150 games of AFL football and was our B&F in 2010 in a way that would help both the team, the club and through win loss record, Neeld himself. Neeld is burning the list to the ground and building from scratch as he has a 3 year contract -he has time. But is the culture of our list really so bad that there was no other way to approach this? I hope that we won’t be discussing Green or Moloney leaving in the same way that we do Jnr. I hope that we won’t be speaking about Neeld as a coach in the same way that we do Bailey. But most of all I hope that we are able to replace the experienced players that we are losing in Green & Moloney with other seasoned players, because if we don’t, we really are back to square one - It may as well be Dean Bailey in 08 holding the press conferences in 2013, talking about being competitive and how our young players have what it takes to become AFL stars.