Coach Men's Senior Coach: Brad Scott

[Old Campaigner]

Yeah alot of what you say is what Ive been saying for most of the last two years.
I just think there a couple of factors that has me starting to worry,

1. as Miguel and I mentioned above it felt like there was significant change in approach at midpoint of the year. Was this as you said just due to a long season catching up to undermanned list or did the coaches genuinely think we had a shot at top 4 and tried to take a short cut through tweaking of the team structure/style? I really cant answer that at the moment

2. with the list issues, I feel like we have really hamstrung ourselves from overhauling the list. I fear we have been too cute with the way we have managed the salary cap/impending pay rise by handing players longer terms to offset the lower pay rate. Just feels we have locked ourselves in with too many guys that are not bad but just average to good and are contributing to the list imbalance/leadership void.

3. this is probably recency bias/reactionary but Hawks/Cats seasons have been real eye openers to me. I dont think either team has complete lists either, I would say they both have sub-par midfields and hawks key position stocks arent amazing either, but they have identified certain areas of the ground that they know are key in the modern game and havent wavered all season in focusing at excelling in these areas. Being brave in both list management calls and game style has paid dividends for them whereas we seem to prefer to tread water.

Re point 2
It’s really only Merrett, McGrath and Parish on long contracts, so it’s hardly indicative of a systemic issue at the club. There’s legitimate questions over some of those players but when fit they’re comfortably best 22, so its not like they’re offering four years to Menzie.

What we’re actually seeing is the club taking a firm stance against longer contracts for some players, which has and may again see some players leave the club to chase a longer contract elsewhere.

 

[P Money]

Anyone else seeing Lyon overrating his list and trying desperately to trade out all St Kilda's draft capital to lure older players (28/29YO+) to have a crack at a flag? Very glad he didn't come to Essendon to put us through that again

 

[Old Campaigner]

Anyone else seeing Lyon overrating his list and trying desperately to trade out all St Kilda's draft capital to lure older players (28/29YO+) to have a crack at a flag? Very glad he didn't come to Essendon to put us through that again

Hopefully we can cash in

 

[faible]

Yeah alot of what you say is what Ive been saying for most of the last two years.
I just think there a couple of factors that has me starting to worry,

1. as Miguel and I mentioned above it felt like there was significant change in approach at midpoint of the year. Was this as you said just due to a long season catching up to undermanned list or did the coaches genuinely think we had a shot at top 4 and tried to take a short cut through tweaking of the team structure/style? I really cant answer that at the moment

2. with the list issues, I feel like we have really hamstrung ourselves from overhauling the list. I fear we have been too cute with the way we have managed the salary cap/impending pay rise by handing players longer terms to offset the lower pay rate. Just feels we have locked ourselves in with too many guys that are not bad but just average to good and are contributing to the list imbalance/leadership void.

3. this is probably recency bias/reactionary but Hawks/Cats seasons have been real eye openers to me. I dont think either team has complete lists either, I would say they both have sub-par midfields and hawks key position stocks arent amazing either, but they have identified certain areas of the ground that they know are key in the modern game and havent wavered all season in focusing at excelling in these areas. Being brave in both list management calls and game style has paid dividends for them whereas we seem to prefer to tread water.

I think we got worked out a bit, the flaws on our list - poor forward-half pressure at ground level, lack of contested marking options, limited numbers of genuinely elite ball users - meant you saw things like the Port game where they just went man-on-man and we kind of melted down.

You can only coach what you've got, if for example we want to play a Sydney style game, but without Sydney style players, it's not really worth trying IMO. Having different levers we can pull, like slowing up coming out of the back half, or going fast, or moving guys around to see what works or what doesn't work is all part of the process. If teams have worked out Plan A, and we're not good enough to force Plan A to happen regardless (e.g. Richmond at their peak) then we need to be able to change-up what we're doing.

 

[Vander18]

Did I read somewhere that Kelly had a two year deal to n the table from the club but made the personal choice to retire?

If true, and I’ve been supportive of Kelly, that’s a big red flag to me.

Benefit of the doubt is that he was offered a role as depth, play VFL, role model
for young blokes etc. Jeez I hope this is what it looked like….

 

[Old Campaigner]

Did I read somewhere that Kelly had a two year deal to n the table from the club but made the personal choice to retire?

If true, and I’ve been supportive of Kelly, that’s a big red flag to me.

Benefit of the doubt is that he was offered a role as depth, play VFL, role model
for young blokes etc. Jeez I hope this is what it looked like….

Someone posted it here but said it was originally just a rumour from bomber blitz