Review 2024 Season Review - The Goodest, Baddest and Ugliest from the season

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The Good
Curtin
Dowling
Taylor
Nank
Max again
RT back in beast mode
Bond Hugh Bond
Rankine

The Bad
Sigh I hate doing this but the reality is gold passes can only last so long
Smith - retire
Laird - 2 more years means we need to get something but I am angry at his output
Tex - its time champ

The Ugly
Coaching - excluding Hombsch
The rest have displayed an uncommon ability to **** up every thing they touch. Passion fingers

From the use of the sub - both who starts and who finishes
The lack of support for Curtin until it was way too late
Game plan to start the year - 0-4 FRO
Waiting for injuries to play kids
If we were competing I could admit there is some high level 4D chess going on thats way past my intellect but we finished 15th and it just looks so Div 8 level

The Board and management - either incompetent or blind or both . Or more scarier intellectually too stupid to understand football

The best people? Come on Man!
 
Lessons learned from the season:
  1. Extending Nicks was a mistake. He is a poor game day coach, implemented a game plan that made us worse than last year, continues to make baffling decisions on the regular, is poor at developing players and takes no responsibility for his own performances

  2. We have little to no on field leadership. Our leadership group is a joke and has been selected with a priority for off field standards instead of leading on game day

  3. The senior experience we backed in way back in 2020 are actually poor leaders and have fallen off sooner than expected, leaving us devoid of useful leadership and players that set a good standard for those we need to be developing

  4. The club has failed to adequately plan for the future, leaving us with a list that is still very inexperienced as the older players start to drop away and retire. This includes a failure to prioritize younger players, a failure to play them in positions that best develop them, and a failure to build the list into a decent position 5 years into a rebuild.

  5. The club drank its own bathwater believing we'd easily make finals after last season. Our messaging at the start of the season got ahead of ourselves and was arrogant.

  6. The club continues to lie to members and manipulate messaging, creating false narratives about our poor position, our injury list this year and state of the rebuild. The club is unwilling to take responsibility for finishing 15th seven years after last making finals.

  7. We have decent younger players that have been held back through poor development, coaching and leadership. Players such as Zac Taylor and Billy Dowling debuted too late into the season. We didn't realize Dan Curtin wasn't a key defender until 3/4 of the way into the year, and when we did play him we severely and unfairly limited his time on ground. We threw Josh Rachele under the bus in the media.

  8. Despite having some decent youngsters, an almost decade long wasteland of drafting and development continues to hurt us and we lack quality in many areas on the ground.

  9. Our club is too insular and self protecting to admit we got various things wrong (including selection of coaches, list management, football staff) and make changes that will put us on a path towards a premiership. They are yet to even admit the season as a whole has been a disaster and below expectations, instead shifting the goal posts claiming we got unlucky with injuries. We have far too many key staff members that think their own ability in their position is far greater than it really is.

  10. We fail and shrink when there is expectation on the club to perform and win. This is not a good sign for the group performing in finals, if we ever make it there.

  11. Nicks seems to have not actually solved the club's cultural problems. The way the club and especially senior players threw Rachele under the bus was disgraceful and not indicative of a strong team first culture. We are continuing to set double standards between senior players and junior players, particularly around selection and performance standards on game day. Our player retention issues seem to have been solved more through dollars than turning the culture around and making us a club players want to play for.
 
Last edited:
My fear is that we finish 7/8 next year. And again in 2026.

Seen enough to know Nicks is a bad coach, but do think we have the talent to make the bottom spots of the Eight.


Nicks is not good enough to be a Premiership coach. I want a coach who is.


Minimal "success" in the next two years will just extend his tenure, without really getting closer to contending.



He won't be sacked this year, we need to bomb out next year as well for the long term good of the club.
 

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The biggest indictment on this season is that there are so many questions about our youth that remain unanswered, despite having a perfect opportunity to start answering them this year in a season that was over within the first month.

Is Dowling going to be a player of the future? He's shown glimpses, he's got something, but it took half a season to debut him and we dropped him twice along the way. Seems to get a fair bit of the ball, and can kick goals, but is that enough? We can't really say yet. Didn't get to see enough of him. What's his best position - who knows?

Is Curtin a midfielder, or a forward? Or for that matter, a winger? It seems the only things we've managed to establish this season is that (a) he's not a defender, and (b) Nicks doesn't have any faith in him.

Does Hugh Bond have a future at AFL level? Seems to have excellent defensive skills, but there are question marks on his offensive skills. Is he "only" a small defender, or can he be given tagging jobs in the midfield? Sure would have been nice to see him before round 18 so we could find out.

What are Ryan and Edwards' prospects at AFL level? Hope you weren't waiting to find out because we never gave them a game despite having multiple opportunities in dead rubbers!

At least in the case of Taylor, there are legitimate reasons why he didn't play until he did. He looks to be quality, in the Soligo mould.


The biggest positives to come out of this season, in no particular order:

Thilthorpe showed that he is continuing to develop and should play a big part in our future. With his added size he no longer looks out of place when he pinch hits in the ruck, and he is dangerous up forward.

Keays was fantastic this year, and with him locking down that "midfielder cast as a forward" role we insist on playing, we haven't seen so many of our young players forced into it.

Soligo announced himself as a certain part of our future midfield group.

Fogarty had his best season to date.

Taylor has an AFL future, and seems versatile enough that we can fit him wherever there's a gap.

Sholl had a surprisingly good season.

Rankine is going to be an absolute star. Still only 24 years old.
 
And while I'm at it, the things that absolutely didn't work this season:

Going from being the best offensive team in the competition to one of the worst. Our game plan in the first four rounds was infuriating. The architect of it was rewarded with a contract extension.

The Burgess experiment was a failure, and Gollant seems unable to make an impact at AFL level. The fact that both of them were outperformed by Himmelberg - Himmelberg! - is an indictment.

Our management of Curtin bordered on disgraceful. We're fortunate that Walker got injured, or else he probably wouldn't have been given a chance up forward.

Rachele was hung out to dry by the club not once but twice, with the most recent time coming in the final round so he didn't even have a chance to get his redemption arc. I'm sure that will sit nicely in his guts for the next six months.

Somehow, after 23 games, we still don't know what our best mix of KPDs is. Do we go with Keane, or Butts? Or even Borlase (okay, no, not Borlase). Or will Keane just leave and make the decision easy?

We gave Cook 15 games to convert his potential into something worthwhile, and outside of a three-goal cameo against Hawthorn, he barely fired a shot. Three goals against North and two against the Eagles were his only games with multiple goals, both fellow cellar-dwellers. He seems to be invisible for 95% of every match. Why can't he get involved in the play? Who knows.

The ongoing selection of McHenry and Murphy despite every possible statistical measure showing them to be consistently in our worst two or three players on the ground. At least McHenry was given the boot at last. Meanwhile Jones is in no man's land. Three players with a combined 277 games experience between them, and none of them should be anywhere near our side.

Strachan proving that despite being an excellent SANFL ruck, he just can't make the step up to AFL level. We need another ruckman so badly.

Pedlar going from one of our most promising young players last year to an afterthought this year. I keep forgetting he's even still on the list.

The Laird and Crouch duo that, thank goodness, was finally done away with towards the end of the season. It doesn't work. It's never worked. End it.

Nankervis' second half of the year was disappointing.

Sloane taking up a list spot when every man and his dog knew he was cooked.

Thanks for your years of service Smith and Walker. I think it's time to say au revoir. Unfortunately we still don't actually have a replacement for Walker. Burgess and Gollant aren't up to it, Himmelberg is redundant with Thilthorpe in the side and likely to leave anyway, Toby Murray isn't ready. Gallagher shouldn't be on an AFL list. Welsh is still a kid. Maybe we should just lock Curtin in as his replacement. Or else give Walker another year and hope he doesn't tarnish his legacy too badly.
 
Last edited:
cmndstab said:
Pedlar going from one of our most promising young players last year to an afterthought this year. I keep forgetting he's even still on the list.
Click to expand...

Thought about him during the week. Wow, has he really fallen off the radar. Is his shoulder injury that bad, or is it something else?

Would love to know what's going on with him.
 
One each that I don't think any one else will mention.

Good: Soligo eliminated any doubts I had over his consistency. His bad games last year were in the bottom 1% of all crows games IMHO. Nothing even close to that this year.

Bad: The Sam Berry situation is a strange one. He recovered a bit this year to the point where he is probably in the best 22. But there's still no improvement over 2022. The big thing is that he doesn't seem like a top-tier midfielder, but also if he moves elsewhere it will be a non-trivial effort to replace him. So it's likely the club will be worse off if he leaves.

Ugly: Elliot Himmelberg somehow fell on Nicks' bad side years ago. And Nicks has spent 5 years trying to replace him, and failed every time.

Footypie32 said:
Thought about him during the week. Wow, has he really fallen off the radar. Is his shoulder injury that bad, or is it something else?

Would love to know what's going on with him.
Click to expand...
From a marketing perspective the shoulder injury is the best thing to happen to him. It changed the conversation from "What the hell has happened to this guy? He's awful!" to "Wow! such a shame this talented player is injured again!"

Without the 3 late goal assists vs Gold Coast, his figures when he played were basically indistinguishable from McHenry
 
Season rating D

Even though we failed to get anywhere near the expectations of the season there were some shining lights.

The Goodest A
Dowling, Curtin, Taylor, Nank, Bond all proving Nicks wrong. Like astonishingly wrong. Imagine going out of your way to state to the media you had no plans to play debutants and warning supporters of having the attitude that new players are the answer, only for each one of those players to prove you wrong. He didnt even get one right.

Baddest and Ugliest merge together
  • Nicks gets an F, got nothing right this year.
  • Clubs support of Nicks and its disdain for supporters and disregarding of our intelligence gets an F
  • Nicks blaming everyone, like hed blame the guy down the street for the selection of a player if he could get away with it.
  • The club blaming everyone else but Nicks for the problems
  • The treatment of young players
  • Nicks making up the role of Non statistical shape runner and acting like it cant even be questioned, like how dare we. Only to quietly ditch it a month later when non statistical quite literally became non statistical.
  • Nicks complete lack of selection integrity by having every single player who comes in, including debutants and rookies have a greater impact on a game than Murphy, only for Murphy to remain selected rain hail or shine, while players seem to be scapegoated out of the side. It by far is the biggest head scratcher.
  • Nicks, leadership group making shit up to punish a player for having a personality.
 
pjcrows said:
The worst moment of the season was all the way back in Round 2 - playing Pedlar as a defensive forward on Tom Stewart, with Nicks even announcing it on Fox pre-game half an hour before the bounce. Solidified that he had NFI.
Click to expand...

Nicks is not the brightest crayon in the box.
 
Good

- Several young players stood up and showed they can hack it at the level.

- Thilthorpe and Fogarty showed their pedigree. I think we can see a life after Tex.

- Winning away in Melbourne and in close games.

Bad

- Only ever putting speed on the ball when we are five goals down. The blueprint is there - why don't we play that way from the start?

- Missed Rankine too much both in terms of quality and quantity.

- Midfield problem still not solved.

Ugly

- Nicks

- Nicks' contract

- The way the club handled basically everything this year.
 
Scorpus said:
Lessons learned from the season:
  1. Extending Nicks was a mistake. He is a poor game day coach, implemented a game plan that made us worse than last year, continues to make baffling decisions on the regular, is poor at developing players and takes no responsibility for his own performances

  2. We have little to no on field leadership. Our leadership group is a joke and has been selected with a priority for off field standards instead of leading on game day

  3. The senior experience we backed in way back in 2020 are actually poor leaders and have fallen off sooner than expected, leaving us devoid of useful leadership and players that set a good standard for those we need to be developing

  4. The club has failed to adequately plan for the future, leaving us with a list that is still very inexperienced as the older players start to drop away and retire. This includes a failure to prioritize younger players, a failure to play them in positions that best develop them, and a failure to build the list into a decent position 5 years into a rebuild.

  5. The club drank its own bathwater believing we'd easily make finals after last season. Our messaging at the start of the season got ahead of ourselves and was arrogant.

  6. The club continues to lie to members and manipulate messaging, creating false narratives about our poor position, our injury list this year and state of the rebuild. The club is unwilling to take responsibility for finishing 15th seven years after last making finals.

  7. We have decent younger players that have been held back through poor development, coaching and leadership. Players such as Zac Taylor and Billy Dowling debuted too late into the season. We didn't realize Dan Curtin wasn't a key defender until 3/4 of the way into the year, and when we did play him we severely and unfairly limited his time on ground. We threw Josh Rachele under the bus in the media.

  8. Despite having some decent youngsters, an almost decade long wasteland of drafting and development continues to hurt us and we lack quality in many areas on the ground.

  9. Our club is too insular and self protecting to admit we got various things wrong (including selection of coaches, list management, football staff) and make changes that will put us on a path towards a premiership. They are yet to even admit the season as a whole has been a disaster and below expectations, instead shifting the goal posts claiming we got unlucky with injuries. We have far too many key staff members that think their own ability in their position is far greater than it really is.

  10. We fail and shrink when there is expectation on the club to perform and win. This is not a good sign for the group performing in finals, if we ever make it there.

  11. Nicks seems to have not actually solved the club's cultural problems. The way the club and especially senior players threw Rachele under the bus was disgraceful and not indicative of a strong team first culture. We are continuing to set double standards between senior players and junior players, particularly around selection and performance standards on game day. Our player retention issues seem to have been solved more through dollars than turning the culture around and making us a club players want to play for.
Click to expand...
Great post Scorpus.

After reading again the article after the Richmond disaster that quoted Olsen at the season launch, it dawned on me that the AFC heirachy are happy clappers themselves and not the tough insightful group you need to be to succeed in the AFL. We have more than a whiff of Essendon about us.

This is a wasted year that has almost no redeeming points. Nicks wasted 2024 the moment he tied his flag to a raft of has been's and never will be's. What's infuriating is us amateurs here on BF called most of the errors at the start of the year so HTF couldn't idiot Nicks see it?

I am so disillusioned after last night, Swans rested players before and through the match last quarter, went at half rat power most of the game protecting themselves for finals and we were embarrassed.

Nicks must go, he is incapable of getting us to finals in 2025
 
Good: It is over. Pick 4 better be a gun midfielder.
Bad: We are 5(?!) years into a rebuild and have not developed our list. Only injuries forced Nicks to play the youngsters. Do we even know what our best 22 looks like next year?
Ugly: We extended Nicks' contract. That will be expensive to get out of.

On SM-S901E using BigFooty.com mobile app
 

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Review 2024 Season Review - The Goodest, Baddest and Ugliest from the season

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