Remove this Banner Ad

Official Club Stuff 2023 AGM - held on Friday 9th Feb 2024

🥰 Love BigFooty? Join now for free.

Yes, the most readily available excuse.
They could've blamed the rucks as well.

And for the record, you can blame it on the defence last year, sure, but in the end, you have been responsible for the defence for the last decade. A nice follow up questions would be "why didn't you make sure your defence had the right players, wasn't undersized, wasn't old, wasn't injured, as it has only been a decade?

But yeah, the young midfield shrunk against strong, contested, hard ball in the finals like it had during the year struggled with the physicality and dropped their heads as it was a bit too hard. Now, they are only one year into playing together in the midfield so they have a lot of room to grow but it was a tad concerning.
Tall defenders has never been a priority for Ken. It's 100% on him.
 
I suspect you and I both know what is going to happen.

  • Leave the SANFL and join the VFL using the PB's
  • Revert to the chevrons in the AFL reserves

The olde spoonful of sugar to make the VFL deal go down, then once we are in the VFL we have no way to negotiate.

Its why I'm uncomfortable about the whole bloody thing and feel we should be negotiating with the SANFL to get back our zones and underage competitions, but of course that won't happen under the current constitution.
Hell will freeze over before the SANFL give us anything back.
 
We should have a concert down there to relaunch the ground when everything is complete. Apart from Jimmy Barnes, the Hilltop Hoods are big Port fans.
Haha someone told me if Tredders gets Jimmy Barnes to endorse him, Aber will get the Hilltop Hoods to endorse him.
 

Log in to remove this Banner Ad

Tall defenders has never been a priority for Ken. It's 100% on him.

I can’t like this enough.

Ken made a 188cm medium his defensive general for a decade, repeatedly saw his battleship sunk by the opposition’s skyscraper forwards and genuine tall defenders — yet only at the end of Year 11 have he and the football department finally scrambled to populate the backline with multiple genuinely tall backmen.

Crikey moses.
 
Can we stop buying into their pathetic excuse making?

May and Lever are 190cm and 194cm respectively which is on aggregate shorter than McKenzie and Aliir at 191cm and 196cm respectively.

There is nothing wrong with key defenders being a little shorter. It's hard to find big athletic beasts like Aliir, Moore, Andrews, etc. Most really tall defenders are useless logs like Howard that just cost you goals through being unco.

The only reason the club have suddenly jumped on this excuse after 11 years is because it was the media's narrative about why we would fail in 2023. The actual reason why we failed is the dickhead in the coaches box and all of his mediocre enablers.
 
I suspect you and I both know what is going to happen.

  • Leave the SANFL and join the VFL using the PB's
  • Revert to the chevrons in the AFL reserves

The olde spoonful of sugar to make the VFL deal go down, then once we are in the VFL we have no way to negotiate.

Its why I'm uncomfortable about the whole bloody thing and feel we should be negotiating with the SANFL to get back our zones and underage competitions, but of course that won't happen under the current constitution.
The whole zone thing just doesn't make any sense anymore. We are not an SANFL club anymore. The Victorian clubs moved away from that stuff in the 90s. You can't farm players from the Le Fevre or Eyre Peninsula anymore. It just doest work like that. It is the reality of Football in the 21st century. Those days are gone forever. No use pining for them.
 
Hell will freeze over before the SANFL give us anything back.

and through their own stubbornness, they are a pen stroke away from being a third ranked irrelevant competition.

If their list rules for the AFL clubs didn’t stump player development, they might have been able to keep milking the money that they don’t deserve.

Im waiting for the uproar when the AFL does have a reserves competition and Port and Adelaide start harvesting the “cream“ of the SANFL as top up players for the reserves. Oh wait…. The cream is all ex-AFL delists anyway.
 
The whole zone thing just doesn't make any sense anymore. We are not an SANFL club anymore. The Victorian clubs moved away from that stuff in the 90s. You can't farm players from the Le Fevre or Eyre Peninsula anymore. It just doesnt work like that. It is the reality of Football in the 21st century. Those days are gone forever. No use pining for them.
With respect I disagree.

There is absolutely no reason why Port and the Crows can't have zones in the way the other 8 SANFL teams do now.
There can be a cap placed on the funds spent within those zones.
Players from those zones could play in SANFL Juniors and in U16 and U18 competitions for these clubs.

Those players would then head into the AFL under the current system, but obviously we would have helped contribute to players in zones we manage.

Would it be good for SA football - of course.
Would it be good for the kids themselves - of course.
Could we get some sort of advantage from it - of course.

Would the AFL/VFL allow us such an advantage - of course not.

Imagine our AFL squad intermixed with zone players in both a SANFL and a SANFL reserves side, with real pressure on the AFL squad members to earn their position in the SANFL league side and not fall back into the SANFL reserves side.

It is all 100% doable, but there are a tonne of shit castles to drive through to make it happen.
It would need true generational change, but it's not impossible.
 
and through their own stubbornness, they are a pen stroke away from being a third ranked irrelevant competition.

If their list rules for the AFL clubs didn’t stump player development, they might have been able to keep milking the money that they don’t deserve.

Im waiting for the uproar when the AFL does have a reserves competition and Port and Adelaide start harvesting the “cream“ of the SANFL as top up players for the reserves. Oh wait…. The cream is all ex-AFL delists anyway.
I'm not up with all of these types of things, I just enjoy watching and analysing footy but you would think that once the AFL Reserves competition is up and running that the SANFL and other leagues around Australia are even more doomed than they are at the moment.
 

Remove this Banner Ad

I was really impressed with Connor at the AGM. A very calm but confident manner & he emphasised that he wants to win a flag. That may sound an obvious aim but at PA in recent years no player has been willing to own that as a priority. It was clearly a message to the members & I felt he understood our frustration. He talked about the different qualities of the leadership group & touched on his leadership style. It was a no BS approach which I appreciated & I believed every word he said (a rarity for me these days). I feel very confident that Connor & Zac are the right leaders to take the club to great success. I'm also really happy with the rest of the leadership group. We finally have a group that lead by example. So that was the biggest positive from the night for me & obviously the election of Treds who spoke well & made it clear his priority was to help restore the clubs winning ethos & get that elusive flag. Finally some winner talk instead of the constant negative BS such as 'finals are scary' & non-stop 'learnings' (this word should be banned from the English language). And there's no doubt we have a badly fractured membership base but the minority white noise narrative has been blown out of the water. We are a sizeable proportion of the supporter base and the board etc now know this. This division is the clubs making for lacking the courage to make difficult decisions & prioritise stability over ultimate success. The reason PA was so successful was because we were always prepared to pull the trigger if something wasn't working, there was never a lack of courage.
 
I'm not up with all of these types of things, I just enjoy watching and analysing footy but you would think that once the AFL Reserves competition is up and running that the SANFL and other leagues around Australia are even more doomed than they are at the moment.
100% and how is that good for the local kids.

Not to mention how it further devalues our SANFL premierships.
 
With respect I disagree.

There is absolutely no reason why Port and the Crows can't have zones in the way the other 8 SANFL teams do now.
There can be a cap placed on the funds spent within those zones.
Players from those zones could play in SANFL Juniors and in U16 and U18 competitions for these clubs.

Those players would then head into the AFL under the current system, but obviously we would have helped contribute to players in zones we manage.

Would it be good for SA football - of course.
Would it be good for the kids themselves - of course.
Could we get some sort of advantage from it - of course.

Would the AFL/VFL allow us such an advantage - of course not.

Imagine our AFL squad intermixed with zone players in both a SANFL and a SANFL reserves side, with real pressure on the AFL squad members to earn their position in the SANFL league side and not fall back into the SANFL reserves side.

It is all 100% doable, but there are a tonne of s**t castles to drive through to make it happen.
It would need true generational change, but it's not impossible.
I'm very keen to see the end of our Sanfl participation. It is an unecessarily hostile environment which inhibits player development. Can't wait until our players are in a National reserves competition & I'm happy to see our reserves wear our Afl jumper most of the time. As long as we get to wear our PB jumper at the Anzac game (first priority for me to honour our players who fought) & home SD (less important to me) so the jumper does not die I will be a happy camper. And I'm a Magpie supporter from way back & my love of the Magpies will never die, it's in my blood.
 
Can we stop buying into their pathetic excuse making?

May and Lever are 190cm and 194cm respectively which is on aggregate shorter than McKenzie and Aliir at 191cm and 196cm respectively.

There is nothing wrong with key defenders being a little shorter. It's hard to find big athletic beasts like Aliir, Moore, Andrews, etc. Most really tall defenders are useless logs like Howard that just cost you goals through being unco.

The only reason the club have suddenly jumped on this excuse after 11 years is because it was the media's narrative about why we would fail in 2023. The actual reason why we failed is the dickhead in the coaches box and all of his mediocre enablers.
It's not an excuse to me, it's of their own making. I have always believed a premiership team starts from a top CB & you build from that position. Obviously the midfield is also crucial but I think the importance of the CB position is underrated.
 
If we’re not trying to have our own board what does it matter owing the AFL money?
Because the Afl bang on about it, use it as a negative lever against us (as do the most financial Afl clubs) & it's bad PR for our club. We need to be as dependant on the Afl financially as say Richmond, Melbourne or Carlton are imo.
 

🥰 Love BigFooty? Join now for free.

Because the Afl bang on about it, use it as a negative lever against us (as do the most financial Afl clubs) & it's bad PR for our club. We need to be as dependant on the Afl financially as say Richmond, Melbourne or Carlton are imo.
What’s the lever they use?
Eg are we to get a better fixture? Better umpiring?
 
I'm not up with all of these types of things, I just enjoy watching and analysing footy but you would think that once the AFL Reserves competition is up and running that the SANFL and other leagues around Australia are even more doomed than they are at the moment.

The SANFL is screwed. The WAFL less so, as the WAFC owns the WA licences still.

It will be interesting to see what happens to the non-AFL VFL clubs and those in NSW/ACT/QLD. A NEAFL-lite? whilst the VFL will need to recreate themselves again.
 
Went very hard litigating that point after the thing had ended.

“If you remove the coach you aren’t just removing the coach, you’re resetting the whole program, you’ll lose some players, others won’t come if they don’t know who the coach is. There’s not one thing that can guarantee you a premiership”
This is a big load of shit that says if I'm playing Roulette, I'm only putting down $2.50 a shot, on red or black, because I don't want to take too much of a risk.

Lay it all down, chuck it all on a number and take a ****in risk.

The whole just 'work hardery for longery' mentality permeates through the entire club. Imagine the concept of trying something different or working smarter. FFS. It's not rocket science. Coach spends a historically long period in charge, results are consistent and no success is obtained. There's no real surprise there. I guess every other club that's ever existed just hadn't found the secret of stability to success that we appear to have done.
 
Last edited:

Remove this Banner Ad

Official Club Stuff 2023 AGM - held on Friday 9th Feb 2024


Write your reply...

Remove this Banner Ad

🥰 Love BigFooty? Join now for free.

Back
Top