Possession
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AFLW 2024 - Round 10 - Chat, game threads, injury lists, team lineups and more.
Opinion Commentary & Media VII
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That’s kinda exactly like something Heath would say if he was trying to throw someone of his scent
I’m onto you Gaso.
The Talent Scout
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Ha ha ha, Possession, THE THING is, that was a good post!
That’s kinda exactly like something Heath would say if he was trying to throw someone of his scent
I’m onto you Gaso.
He was on the top 2-3 best performed captains playing this year. He had a pretty sensational year. I don’t mind it.
Uncle_Leo
Premium Gold
This bloke is incredibly negative, imagine someone doing this to the club when he was there, he would have been going bananas
Sounds like a jilted lover. Embarrassing
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Health's voice always annoyed the hell out of me.
Event Horizon
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Yeah, strange comparison from Heath. Brown wanted a long term deal on huge coin. Darling would come relatively cheaply on a 2 year deal (or one with a trigger).
Hearts to hearts
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Absolutely - in his prime there would have been more interest in him from other clubs, and Melbourne would have had to pay a higher price and/or offer a longer deal. Everyone including North saw the same issues. I wish he’d taken a shorter, smaller contract and stayed with us but that’s the way it went. The guy literally just retired after barely playing for two years in a side that needed key forwards so it’s a ridiculous suggestion that if North had kept him they wouldn’t need anyone senior to come in now.
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BB was offered a long-term deal by North in early 2020 and would have become the highest-paid player at the club if he'd signed. He wanted an even longer term so he held out. Then Covid happened, and his injuries became a serious issue and it made no sense to extend him long-term. It's worth noting that if North had buckled and given him what he wanted, he'd still be under contract to the end of next season. He only managed to play 45 games in 4 years at Melbourne, and that's a side still desperate for a key forward.
tazaa
Hall of Famer
Geez I don't want to distract but I am pulling up Heath's final few posts on here, before he cracked the shits and told us all to piss off before cancelling his account.
This was in relation to selling a 4th game to Tasmania. The infamous "if we play 4 games in Tas and win them all (or most) and make the finals ... then make the grand final .. the win a premiership ... the sky is the limit!"
What's hilarious is in the 6 years since this post was made, we have won 4 games in Tas. That's it. 4 wins out of 22.
4 Wins 1 Draw and 17 losses. Money talks hey?
From what I understand about what Carl Dilena was saying back then and what Jenn Watt is saying now - no one at the club has any idea on how to bring 11 homes game back to Victoria. And so our long term viability in Melbourne, as much as we believe it is safe, is always going to come into question whilst we sell home games.
Don't forget, the club will sell a 5th game if it could, if it would net them more money.
Then the infamous final post. Just amazing he can tweet today, like he did over the weekend and has all year, and take pot shots from the outside about list management and strategy, but when your on the payroll then its don't you dare mess with the club. F***ing save it mate.
The reality is the club has totally messed up list management and done little to no work on Tasmania and our exit strategy.
We will even beg Spirit of Tas to keep us on board and for the Tassie government to allow us to stay down there, even once the Devils come into the competition. Have some shame.
I genuinely believe no one at the club has any idea what our medium to long-term strategy is and no one even has the balls to put in writing a plan for flag number 5.
Bag Richmond all we want, but Gale and O'Neil set out to achieve what they wanted and lived and died by their words. Pressure to perform and they got 3 flags out of it. Should have been 4.
Our current leadership can't even tell us what's wrong with our current performances. Grim.
EDIT: Re reading the last bit, the irony on how this place was called out for making stuff up, and for being abusive and critical - and yet 2019-2024 has turned out some of the most tumultuous and statistically, the worst years of our existence. Everything the club did off field from the back half of 2016 onwards has just been mistake after mistake after mistake.
No matter how many times they got it wrong, each time they worked up a solution and thus far it has ended in more pain.
I don't know how so many on here just blindly fall into line and back in the club, when it clearly has made a series of poor decisions and yet it feels like the board and leadership is the same. One term endorses the other. And so the stench continues. The reality is any dumb campaigner on here could build a side using just draft picks and for every other KPI such as trades and free agency, the club has got no f**ing idea.
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When a club is so rudderless that even Clarko can't get us out of this mess as quickly as we would like, then that pretty much says it.
Post-2016, this club didn't have a clear direction after it completely bottled the chances it had to take advantage of a very good senior spine.
It's no surprise we haven't looked quite as difficult to beat since then. When you remove all the blokes from the Pagan-Laidley era that only knew to put everything out there and make the opponent earn every kick, that puts the team culture in jeopardy.
Our current co-captains have not seen enough of what a proper successful regime looks like and that falls on the club for making the footy dept second priority. Always a line coach on the axe to save $$$, giving up on our academies and zones then blowing the whole thing up eventually before getting Clarko.
I haven't even talked about the membership experience but we already put up with a lot that it's impossible to even comprehend how much we are missing out on. We're that cooked mentally.
Post-2016, this club didn't have a clear direction after it completely bottled the chances it had to take advantage of a very good senior spine.
It's no surprise we haven't looked quite as difficult to beat since then. When you remove all the blokes from the Pagan-Laidley era that only knew to put everything out there and make the opponent earn every kick, that puts the team culture in jeopardy.
Our current co-captains have not seen enough of what a proper successful regime looks like and that falls on the club for making the footy dept second priority. Always a line coach on the axe to save $$$, giving up on our academies and zones then blowing the whole thing up eventually before getting Clarko.
I haven't even talked about the membership experience but we already put up with a lot that it's impossible to even comprehend how much we are missing out on. We're that cooked mentally.
Well researched Taz
It’s given me much annoyance reading his posts and to re read these reminds me of why I was so annoyed
Well he’s in the cheap seats like the rest of us were back then (and yeh I also remember the crap he copped) and the wheel has turned full circle
They are garbage seats yeh?!
tazaa
Hall of Famer
We speak of 2016 and 2019 like they were recent.
In the past 5 years Collingwood has lost a grand final, sacked their coach, finished 2nd last and then bounced back immediately and won a flag.
Geelong has missed finals just once, lost Ablett to retirement, won a flag, lost Selwood to retirement and just finished 3rd on the table.
Hawthorn finished 4th in 2018, fell away, moved on Clarko and replaced him with Mitchell, rebuilt, just finished 7th and arguably should have finished 2nd, and because of that are a good chance to go deep in finals.
Sydney have also missed finals on a couple of occasions, bounced back to play in a Granny in 2022, lost, saw Buddy retire the following year and now have just finished top and won the minor premiership.
Good clubs with strong leaders and solid structures. These clubs have been the benchmark for so long. What pisses me off is between 2007 and 2015 these 4 clubs won every f***ing flag on offer with just 2016 the anomaly before Richmond entered the scene.
And still, still apparently we're on the right track and our strategy is sound and stacks up. By what f***ing metric is this being measured? What guarantee? I don't bloody buy it.
I am waiting for that cultural change to take effect. Sadly its going to be on Sheezel's back. He's 19.
I just don't think anyone whose been at the club in an official capacity prior to 2023 should be allowed to stick around. Not based on the failures that have come beforehand.
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We had a much better culture of winning obviously in the Laidley/Bard era, but we had even more of a habit of choking at important times.
Last game of the ‘08 season was terrible…
All those elimination finals in Sydney…
The 6 or so games where we lost by less than a kick after having commanding leads.
And we had experience and true champions still playing for us then…
Some say we over achieved but looking back, we should have really had the class and composure to finish top 4 in 2008 and play finals in 2013.
That would have meant:
Top 3 finish 2007 (after finals)
Top 4 finish 2008
Top 8 finish 2013
Top 4 finish 2014 (after finals)
Top 4 finish 2015 (after finals)
Top 8 finish 2016
As Essendon are now finding, Bard just cannot get it done in the HA when he needs to. If we had averaged two more wins in this period, we may have been playing with 2-3 more double chances and who knows what would have happened had we not had to play the WC best 25 in Perth.
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We would have been smashed on a 30 degree day on a return trip from Perth
As much as we were on the end of that dubious decision, we were on a hiding to nowhere had we have made it v Hawks
Only Forwards
Just you wait and see
Because the clubs that you are comparing us to are incomparable to what we have done.
Since 2016 we have cut away all senior player stability, while at the same time going through massive off field instability. We have changed basically everything from the president down, cycled through coaches and administrators.
Yeah they are and this is what makes what we have done incomparable to them.
I keep banging on about it but there are really only 2 clubs that we compare to, or should look to for any sort of timeline.
2007 - 2018 Melbourne
2014 - 2023 Carlton
These are comparative clubs not because they are the benchmark of stability and what a good club does but because they were the opposite. Just as we have been.
2017 - 2028 puts us on par with Melbourne
2017 - 2026 puts us on par with Carlton
If you want an industry timeline for what we have done it is that. That is how bad we have been.
Using 2007 as the starting point the amount of years finals have been missed
Geelong - 2/18
Sydney 3/18
Collingwood - 6/18
Hawthorn 7/18
Each of these sides either have high quality senior cores who practically make finals every year, or have been able to rebuild around high quality senior players while providing a high level of off field stability.
We have had neither of those things.
I really don’t think Collingwood should be regarded as a benchmark club.
They succeed in spite of themselves every 10-20 years. Huge advantages and still miss finals an awful lot.
They succeed in spite of themselves every 10-20 years. Huge advantages and still miss finals an awful lot.
Dean Margetts does not like this.
tazaa
Hall of Famer
My question then is how long does North need to become comparable?
5 years? 10 years? 15? 20?
This is the issue. What the club is apparently striving to achieve and telling us it’s trying to do - it has not done in 30 years. And that’s using the 90s as an example.
In the 18-team, free agency era?
We have nothing to show for it.
Cutting away senior players like we have has also been done at rival clubs. So why is it when North cut ours we ended up on life support?
I used examples such as Higgins and Tarrant before.
Brady in all his wisdom thought this is the way to go and cooked the rebuild before it even began. That’s the difference between us and our opposition.
The challenge is to shake off the status we have adopted for ourselves so that we are not perennial cellar dwellers.
Starts with drafting and list management.
For some reason we don’t target and identify the right senior players to hold us in good stead.
We locked in Simpkin and McDonald and that has been a bust. And that’s why we are where we are. Giving out long term contracts to B-Graders who can’t set a high level of standard for the group to stick to.
When you look at our issues, it seems to get debated endlessly whether the captains were the right choice to take on responsibilities of nurturing this group. They weren’t and the people in charge of putting them there must go. But they won’t because of the fear of destabilising the joint again.
And so we pray we get our draft picks right in November and just hope we don’t stack up on C-Graders again in October who will do nothing to advance our cause. As I said hope is all we have but it’s grim.
TennisPlayerAndy
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It’s a feedback loop.
We want to be a stable, but stability in what we have is taking us backwards.
Good times.
Unyielding Bosom
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I don't want to see Darling in North colours as he's a squib and the opposite of a clutch player. But I didn't realise not agreeing to terms with Ben Brown means we can never look to recruit another key forward.
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