Toast 2024 Best and Fairest - Skilton Medal

[Callipygian]

I thought Horse spoke mostly impressively. Fluffed a bit in the middle and brought it home strong.

He said words to the effect of we know what went wrong but we don't know why and we're trying to figure that out.

The part I didn't like was when he said he doesn't think we'll ever have the answer. While, to a degree, that may be true, it is not a satisfactory answer to the question. At some point the club has to give some kind of an account and if not at the B&F when's it going to be? Sounds like they're going to squib it like they did with their explanation of Callum Mills

14

Callum Mills

Age

27

Ht

188cm

Wt

86kg

Pos.

Mid

Career

Season

Last 5

D

18.2

5star

K

10.8

4star

HB

7.4

5star

M

5.3

5star

T

2.6

4star

CL

0.6

3star

D

18.4

4star

K

11.5

4star

HB

6.9

4star

M

5.4

5star

T

3.4

4star

CL

1.4

4star

D

17.0

5star

K

9.4

4star

HB

7.6

5star

M

4.4

4star

T

2.8

5star

CL

1.2

4star

' injury - it was not enough to say "we're extremely disappointed" in him without ever saying why. I also would have liked to have him lay out clearly the what. It still needs to be done, even if the club decided the B&F was not the occasion to do it.

After that he did a good job of actually refocusing people (players, supporters) on the future with some reason for optimism. I didn't get the impression he was unfazed by what happened or that he won't be looking into it and questioning really deeply. Everyone (players, coaches) say no stone was left unturned in the preparation.

I also found it instructive to hear the coach confirm that the club were believers in the game style played all year. Whether we agree with that assessment, is a different question. It was illuminating to hear Horse's take.

****

Otherwise, rapt to see recognition for Rowy as best clubman.

I would have preferred to see Melican rewarded as most improved but satisfied with McInerney and can kind of understand because Melican's improvement was a lot to do with not being injured. Also may have been a factor that McInerney is younger and even though not necessarily logical I think they may tend to favour younger/developing players with this award.

Robbo clear winner of Rising Star.

No surprises with Heenz winning other awards.

Mitchell was rewarded ahead of Francis and Cleary for playing more games and being uber-consistent. Works damn hard. Well deserved.

 

[GoTheSwannies]

Callipygian, thanks for the summary.

I find this part pretty illuminating:
"I also found it instructive to hear the coach confirm that the club were believers in the game style played all year."

I (and many others) have questioned the game plan throughout the year. The question you ask is "will it stand up in finals", and ultimately, the answer to that has to be no.

There are countless examples of where we leaked multiple consecutive goals, multiple occasions where we started poorly and let the opposition score the first 2-5 goals of the game. And in many of those games, the pressure and intent from the players was evidently there. There were occasions where players looked a little confused, as if they'd done everything they should be doing, they were applying enough pressure, but for some unknown reason their opponent was piling on goals. Something was amiss and the players didn't have the answers.

In many of those games, we stuck to it and eventually turned it around and got the game going on our terms. But the question for me was, what happens when that occurs in a big final. The fact that it happened in 2 of our 3 finals is a concern, and to me suggests that there's a significant issue with our gameplan that needs to be addressed.

Edit: interesting part is that the same could be said about the Lions. But they managed to pull a rabbit out of a hat twice, and then managed to do to us what we were hoping we'd be able to do to them. The silver lining there is that the GF loss, and perhaps the loss to the dogs, provide a blueprint for what we need to get right next year.