Coach Men's Senior Coach: Brad Scott

[MiguelM]

pretty sure Josh Daicos was when you had to match 1st rd bids. he wasn't on the radar as a gun back then
And the first rd pick was nothing to do with the cap. no players shifted.

I'd argue we don't need to get elite players. We need our elite players to lift when it gets hard.
This is Brad's charge. And he kinda called it out early on. Our players have had it pretty soft since Sheeds. I can't remember the last hard call we made on a player. we could barely face Fantasia wanting to go after 2 years of zero output. Daniher similar.

This is it. Yeah, a key position marking target & elite line breaker aside, we go to water when the going gets tough.

There is probably no harder assignment than the reigning premier at their home ground (biggest home ground adv in the league atm) at the business end of the season. Lets see how Freo, Port & the Dogs go down there in the coming weeks.

It is physical and mental. The physical side of things will improve as we are such a young side.

The mental side is where the coaches come in. Scott has buy in so we just need to get the hunger. Cats have the knack of blowing us out of the water early in games killing any resistance. Experience will help but we need that burning desire to push through. Defeats can light the fire if it cuts deep enough and the coaches instill belief.

Cats will be hard to beat if they bring that form to the finals, even for the Pies.

 

[citizen-erased]

Do you not remember end of 2020? Stephenson? Treloar? Grundy and Treloar big contracts?

Don’t need elite players? Watching last night was clear we barely have any. We wouldn’t have one player in the All Australian team currently.

Yes we know Dodoro refuses to trade players to improve the list. How he didn’t trade Daniher at end of 2019 when he clearly didn’t want to be there and was a FA the next year I will honestly never know.

What im saying is the giving up of the F1 had little to do with the players Guy pushed out.
That move for the GWS picks came late in the piece.

I'd wager Merrett is in the AA side comfortably and Redman and Martin are in the squad.

Last line totally agree with. We had two options at the time - he signs an extension or take the sydney deal. Club was very dumb there.
History kinda repeating itself for me with Kane and Tottenham :S

It was a bad loss, and maybe not a bad reality check for the fans and something for Brad to use moving fwd.
really comes down to response. Said the same after Freo and we did well to push Port and beat the crows. Final judgment on us comes over next two weeks.
Swans and Dogs -> Beat both and we're on the right track. Lose both and we're middling again. Drop points to GWS, North and/or Eagles and i'd call that a failed season

 

[eth-dog]

What im saying is the giving up of the F1 had little to do with the players Guy pushed out.
That move for the GWS picks came late in the piece.

I'd wager Merrett is in the AA side comfortably and Redman and Martin are in the squad.

Last line totally agree with. We had two options at the time - he signs an extension or take the sydney deal. Club was very dumb there.
History kinda repeating itself for me with Kane and Tottenham :S

It was a bad loss, and maybe not a bad reality check for the fans and something for Brad to use moving fwd.
really comes down to response. Said the same after Freo and we did well to push Port and beat the crows. Final judgment on us comes over next two weeks.
Swans and Dogs -> Beat both and we're on the right track. Lose both and we're middling again. Drop points to GWS, North and/or Eagles and i'd call that a failed season

Redman no, Langford yes

 

[Pweter]

By me saying it’s even after top 4 I’m saying the rest aren’t very good teams. Geelong yes. WB, saints and us are in the 8. What does that tell you?

Yes we are flat track bullies and have been for years. 100% we are thank you for agreeing.

My point is people just expect we’re going to make a magic jump into the top 4. I honestly don’t know based on what ?

The pressure geelong applied was like a final. We get flogged when we play finals bc we aren’t built for finals. Which midfielder stood up last night when Merrett had someone sitting on him all game?

On the bolded, I'd say those people are in the minority. We're a notoriously glass-half-empty mob here but hey, that happens when you invest heavily in the fortunes of a side that has fluctuated between shit and mediocre for 20 odd years. Yeah we get excited when things look ok but it doesn't take much for the negative thoughts to override positivity these days.

I see more lamenting that our young talls are perpetually injured and concern they may not make it as a result due to so much football lost, lamenting that we don't have that explosive pressure based small forward, lamenting that we're undersized in the midfield, that all of this is impeding our ability to play with the big boys.

Now we may have all of that on the list. If Jones, Cox and Reid all get fit and stay fit we could be set but that's looking every bit as unlikely as it is likely (maybe moreso unlikely), Jayden Davey could be that small forward but is a 100% unknown entity especially coming off a couple of knees, Setterfield seems to be our only true big bodied mid as Perkins is learning and may not make it in there instead being a damn fine half forward. Will Tsatas help change that dynamic? Who knows at this point?

We might have the players to help make that magic leap but it's a good couple of years away and relies on them being able to play consistent footy going forwards. It also leads to the argument that our current crop of good players might be waning by the time that happens.

All of the above would be plainly obvious to Scott plus more given he lives and breathes it daily. He's going to have to make some big calls list wise over the coming couple of seasons with the players we've got, they type of players we target through trade/FA, and the type of players we draft. The fact is we've been beating the teams we should and we've generally been highly competitive against the better teams. That's a foundation we haven't had for a while, even when you factor in Saturday night's shit show.

 

[Lore]

We might have the players to help make that magic leap but it's a good couple of years away and relies on them being able to play consistent footy going forwards. It also leads to the argument that our current crop of good players might be waning by the time that happens.

That's the crux of it right there. There is potential, but we are historically poor at capitalising on that, and have a list built in such a way that any sort of window of potential is fleeting.

 

[faible]

On the bolded, I'd say those people are in the minority. We're a notoriously glass-half-empty mob here but hey, that happens when you invest heavily in the fortunes of a side that has fluctuated between s**t and mediocre for 20 odd years. Yeah we get excited when things look ok but it doesn't take much for the negative thoughts to override positivity these days.

I see more lamenting that our young talls are perpetually injured and concern they may not make it as a result due to so much football lost, lamenting that we don't have that explosive pressure based small forward, lamenting that we're undersized in the midfield, that all of this is impeding our ability to play with the big boys.

Now we may have all of that on the list. If Jones, Cox and Reid all get fit and stay fit we could be set but that's looking every bit as unlikely as it is likely (maybe moreso unlikely), Jayden Davey could be that small forward but is a 100% unknown entity especially coming off a couple of knees, Setterfield seems to be our only true big bodied mid as Perkins is learning and may not make it in there instead being a damn fine half forward. Will Tsatas help change that dynamic? Who knows at this point?

We might have the players to help make that magic leap but it's a good couple of years away and relies on them being able to play consistent footy going forwards. It also leads to the argument that our current crop of good players might be waning by the time that happens.

All of the above would be plainly obvious to Scott plus more given he lives and breathes it daily. He's going to have to make some big calls list wise over the coming couple of seasons with the players we've got, they type of players we target through trade/FA, and the type of players we draft. The fact is we've been beating the teams we should and we've generally been highly competitive against the better teams. That's a foundation we haven't had for a while, even when you factor in Saturday night's s**t show.

As I said the other day, people might need to accept that it won’t be prime Merrett and Parish driving a Premiership run, but prime Hobbs and Tsatas with those other guys being in the latter stages of their careers.

 

[BrunoV]

The biggest challenge Scott faces is the very thing that blew North up.

He needs to look at the team and list brutally and force evolution to the point that it looks like something that is capable of being good.

Maybe it is my mistake, but I read a lot of comments which indicate that many people share the view that Brad and Chris are the same, that they are both ruthless, a perception which seems largely based on how they played.

Chris is ruthless, Brad has not been. That's not to say Chris is good and Brad is bad. I've always had a lot of respect for Brad's run at North at least until 2016. You can go and find my posts from 4 or 5 years ago when I was suggesting he should be our US style GM as part of a revamped and sensibly structured footy operation.

When Geelong could not play front half footy they basically swapped a 35 goal Menzel for the ground level bit of Rohan. There was industry wide disbelief about that move. Close and Miers then find themselves playing every game in a team making top 4 every year. Dalhaus is added too. Stengle then got recruited and Dalhaus was frozen out of the team.

Now Menegola is a VFL player while Bruhn, Holmes and Bowes play.

Brad decided North needed a rebuild midway through 2019. A minimum of 2 years too late.

I saw links to an article a few pages ago that made reference to us trying to be a front half side, for example. How exactly does that work when there is no speed among the smalls and slow talls with no running power?

A year to look at the list is the same old shit everyone says. Surely enough coaches have had a look at the list to know what its obvious problems are.

He had better get ruthless soon. Actually he will need to get brutal because he has already started his love affair with shit truck players who weaken the system the side needs to play to be good but who try hard.

Davey and Wanganeen would be playing under Chris. How many shit games of footy was Motlop allowed to play because Geelong lacked run? Voss probably would be too. They add the ground level bite we don't have forward. It may be that one of these guys would be Parsons and wouldn't work out. No issue there. Have a look at players because they have what the team needs.

At 1-7 v top 8 sides, or whatever it is, we're chasing finals we're not set up to play, again. How many times have we been here, not actually 'learning' anything about the list we didn't already know' being seduced by the possibility of finals?

I'd back Hawthorn at this stage to be good before us. They have a clear vision of what is required and the balls to implement it.

 

[citizen-erased]

Redman no, Langford yes

good shout on Langford.

 

[citizen-erased]

The biggest challenge Scott faces is the very thing that blew North up.

He needs to look at the team and list brutally and force evolution to the point that it looks like something that is capable of being good.

Maybe it is my mistake, but I read a lot of comments which indicate that many people share the view that Brad and Chris are the same, that they are both ruthless, a perception which seems largely based on how they played.

Chris is ruthless, Brad has not been. That's not to say Chris is good and Brad is bad. I've always had a lot of respect for Brad's run at North at least until 2016. You can go and find my posts from 4 or 5 years ago when I was suggesting he should be our US style GM as part of a revamped and sensibly structured footy operation.

When Geelong could not play front half footy they basically swapped a 35 goal Menzel for the ground level bit of Rohan. There was industry wide disbelief about that move. Close and Miers then find themselves playing every game in a team making top 4 every year. Dalhaus is added too. Stengle then got recruited and Dalhaus was frozen out of the team.

Now Menegola is a VFL player while Bruhn, Holmes and Bowes play.

Brad decided North needed a rebuild midway through 2019. A minimum of 2 years too late.

I saw links to an article a few pages ago that made reference to us trying to be a front half side, for example. How exactly does that work when there is no speed among the smalls and slow talls with no running power?

A year to look at the list is the same old s**t everyone says. Surely enough coaches have had a look at the list to know what its obvious problems are.

He had better get ruthless soon. Actually he will need to get brutal because he has already started his love affair with s**t truck players who weaken the system the side needs to play to be good but who try hard.

Davey and Wanganeen would be playing under Chris. How many s**t games of footy was Motlop allowed to play because Geelong lacked run? Voss probably would be too. They add the ground level bite we don't have forward. It may be that one of these guys would be Parsons and wouldn't work out. No issue there. Have a look at players because they have what the team needs.

At 1-7 v top 8 sides, or whatever it is, we're chasing finals we're not set up to play, again. How many times have we been here, not actually 'learning' anything about the list we didn't already know' being seduced by the possibility of finals?

I'd back Hawthorn at this stage to be good before us. They have a clear vision of what is required and the balls to implement it.

Chris did spend a few years plodding with Geel, propped up by 2 gun forwards and some serious leaders in Paddy and Joel.
This turnover was done in year 11 (?) of his stint. So i'd caution some recency bias there. Chris is a good coach but worth noting Geelong are decades ahead of us in terms of their overall club standards.

Ive seen the bold line a few times and it's right. But it's less about the now and more about next year for me.
I don't mind the selections so far. Necessity of Weid aside, this was always gonna be 12m of players needing to make it before they made way.

Things like McGrath back to defence
A whole season into Zerk
Ruck setup
Leaving Hobbs out only to bring him in and keep him in.
Shiel finding his place amongst Parish, merrett, Caldwell, Hobbs and even Perkins now

You want to understand a list before you gut it.
I'm interested in two things now (finals isn't one of them)

1-next two weeks against "gettable" opposition
2-offseason moves.

 

[BrunoV]

Chris did spend a few years plodding with Geel, propped up by 2 gun forwards and some serious leaders in Paddy and Joel.
This turnover was done in year 11 (?) of his stint. So i'd caution some recency bias there. Chris is a good coach but worth noting Geelong are decades ahead of us in terms of their overall club standards.

Ive seen the bold line a few times and it's right. But it's less about the now and more about next year for me.
I don't mind the selections so far. Necessity of Weid aside, this was always gonna be 12m of players needing to make it before they made way.

Things like McGrath back to defence
A whole season into Zerk
Ruck setup
Leaving Hobbs out only to bring him in and keep him in.
Shiel finding his place amongst Parish, merrett, Caldwell, Hobbs and even Perkins now

You want to understand a list before you gut it.
I'm interested in two things now (finals isn't one of them)

1-next two weeks against "gettable" opposition
2-offseason moves.

What about when Chris didn't talk to Geelong greats like Chapman about retiring them?

Also it's definitely not about now. That's my whole point. Almost certainly we're at that point that we can't pick a development team because we're in the 8 or can still play finals or whatever other reasons that has been given to stifle the development of the list.

As for understanding a list, what had anyone learned we didn't know last year? We pick the same team.

 

[faible]

What about when Chris didn't talk to Geelong greats like Chapman about retiring them?

Like how known hardass Rutten didn't give Bellchambers a farewell game?

It's easy to cherry pick things. Most young players who've genuinely deserved to play have played.

Baldwin, Davey and Wanganeen are all currently in form and pressing for spots, so we'll see whether they get a look in over the next fortnight. None of them replace the obviously struggling Weideman however in terms of filling the team structure, that would be bringing Phillips in and retaining Bryan who was passable against Geelong.

 

[BrunoV]

Like how known hardass Rutten didn't give Bellchambers a farewell game?

It's easy to cherry pick things. Most young players who've genuinely deserved to play have played.

Baldwin, Davey and Wanganeen are all currently in form and pressing for spots, so we'll see whether they get a look in over the next fortnight. None of them replace the obviously struggling Weideman however in terms of filling the team structure, that would be bringing Phillips in and retaining Bryan who was passable against Geelong.

I suppose I have to respond.

I was challenged for recency bias.

 

[citizen-erased]

What about when Chris didn't talk to Geelong greats like Chapman about retiring them?

Also it's definitely not about now. That's my whole point. Almost certainly we're at that point that we can't pick a development team because we're in the 8 or can still play finals or whatever other reasons that has been given to stifle the development of the list.

that feels like an age ago....an aside, i feel old
That was part of that middling era. where they were good, but kept falling short in finals.....i say that like its a bad thing

Part of the transition to holmes, atkins, bruhn has been necessity. Duncan, Menegola, Guthrie injuries, Selwood/Danger nursed through seasons. They looked cooked last year then steamrolled the flag. they looked cooked this year but are peaking nicely.
And their recruiting has been top notch.

But more to that, Chris didn't have to fix a club. Brad is less than 12m in and the improvement is already stark. Im wary of new coach bounce, but this feels different this time round.
Still a lot to fix. Still a lot to do. But it's been a promising first step in the right direction. We need patience after losses like this. they will happen for the next 18-24m i reckon before things click into place and the foundations are strong.

 

[citizen-erased]

I suppose I have to respond.

I was challenged for recency bias.

oh, wasn't a challenge. i think its common amongst most to see Chris as a master coach.
Inherited a flag and took 11 years to win another with arguably the best run club this century.

He's a good coach in many ways, but Geelong being such a great club support that.
Brad has had 2x shit shows in Norf and now us to deal with.

 

[BrunoV]

oh, wasn't a challenge. i think its common amongst most to see Chris as a master coach.
Inherited a flag and took 11 years to win another with arguably the best run club this century.

He's a good coach in many ways, but Geelong being such a great club support that.
Brad has had 2x s**t shows in Norf and now us to deal with.

All good. Nothing wrong with being challenged, criticised, etc.

I'll need to take time, I don't currently have, to respond to the rest.

 

[TheGreatBarryB]

Far easier for Chris at Geelong who’s had experienced players right throughout his tenure. And as Cats show signs of going down they pinch generational talent like Dangerfield and Cameron. Brad has never had that luxury at North and wanted a rebuild earlier than the club.

 

[faible]

Far easier for Chris at Geelong who’s had experienced players right throughout his tenure. And as Cats show signs of going down they pinch generational talent like Dangerfield and Cameron. Brad has never had that luxury at North and wanted a rebuild earlier than the club.

In Christ Scott's first game as coach he had;

Enright, Scarlett, Bartel, Kelly, Johnson, Taylor, Corey, Hawkins and Selwood all playing.

Hawkins and Selwood have basically underpinned his entire coaching career, one is probably the 2nd or 3rd best forward of the last decade, the other is probably inside the best 2 or 3 leaders of the modern era and pretty consistently a Top-5 midfielder for most of that time.

Handy.

 

[Lore]

The biggest challenge Scott faces is the very thing that blew North up.

He needs to look at the team and list brutally and force evolution to the point that it looks like something that is capable of being good.

The thing with North is that from what I understand he explained the available options to the board and recommended the most ruthless option, and the board chose to top up instead.

According to the article below this happened in 2018, presumably with regard to the off-season at the end of 2018. By the end of May 2019 he had resigned from the post. Tell me it's not related...

Vindicated by North’s crash: why clubs should look at Brad Scott​

Jake Niall April 4, 2021 — 7.36am
This was published 2 years ago

In 2018, Brad Scott presented the North Melbourne board with three options to take the club forward on the field into the 2020s.

One was to keep topping up with mature players, in order to remain thereabouts, North having finished in their typical mid-table position, missing the finals by a game and percentage.

Option two was a hybrid of going to the draft - making judicious cuts to the ranks of senior players - and bringing seasoned players in, a kind of each-way bet on short and long term objectives.

The third option was precisely where North have found themselves today under David Noble: a total rebuild of the playing list, with a huge investment in the draft. This would also involve trading out players to gain draft currency, a formula that invariably involves pain over a period of years, but has the advantage of being unambiguous.

Scott favoured the rebuild - which would not have been the scorched earth version of 2021. The North board did not.

Instead, in a telling tale of recruiting folly, North acquired Jared Polec and Jasper Pittard from Port Adelaide, Dom Tyson (Melbourne) and Aaron Hall (Gold Coast), giving up the first rounder for Polec that was turned into Zak Butters (ouch).

While the Roos knew their first rounder was probably being swallowed by bids for Tarryn Thomas (their next generation academy prize), the post-season of 2018 would be fateful for both the Roos and Power, as North headed south.

The events of 2020 and 2021 have vindicated Brad Scott’s judgement. North are in a much deeper rebuild and recession than would have been necessary two or three years ago, when they had a stronger core of senior players.

Had they traded Shaun Higgins in 2018 and left Polec alone, they would have had a nice hand in a super draft. Who knows what other North players might have fetched (albeit Ben Brown was very much required) then?

The embarrassment of a team conceding 10 goals, not to Tom Hawkins or Jack Riewoldt, but to Bulldog Josh Bruce underscores where North sits in 2021 and the hard road ahead.

One less obvious consequence of North’s flat-lining this year should be a reappraisal of Brad Scott’s nine and a half years at the helm of the Kangaroos, who never dived to the bottom in his time, reached two preliminary finals and usually out-performed external expectations.

Scott was a better coach and club leader than was appreciated then, even though his teams never made a grand final.

Scott was forced out out of North by Ben Buckley’s board a little earlier than he wished during 2019. That he was viewed as having “checked out” in 2019 should not overshadow a) that he did a pretty good job for 7-8 years, and b) the difficulty of coaching unfashionable North compared with stronger clubs.

A further part of the Scott reappraisal should be that clubs who end up in the market for a senior coach this year ought to have Scott high on their list of candidates; Ross Lyon isn’t the only experienced campaigner who’s been in the cold since 2019.

Scott has gone to work for the AFL, taking over the challenge of running Football Victoria - responsible for the vast ecosystem below AFL and for picking up a grass roots game, VFL and NAB League that were closed down by the pandemic. It’s a job that appears only slightly less traumatic than coaching North.

Scott has not been keen to return to club life. Some who’ve worked with him reckon he has the capacity to be a club chief executive; certainly, he could reinvent himself as a football department boss.

But the siren call of coaching is hard to turn down. Only Scott can say what he’d do if a club had serious interest.

Greater Western Sydney are odds-on to be looking for a new coach. Collingwood are a chance, too, subject to results and the desire of both the club and Nathan Buckley to continue beyond a decade together. Simon Goodwin, looking better than pre-season, is still no cert to hang on, while Alastair Clarkson, contracted till end of 2022, is entitled to explore his options.

There also may be others in the market.

Scott’s time at North was dented by the nature of his exit. Like his twin at Geelong, Scott can be headstrong and ended up on the wrong side of influential past players and a portion of the fan base. In Brad’s case, it’s the 1990s crew who’ve been front and centre, to a borrow a Denis Pagan-ism, in the criticism.

What was little understood by Scott’s critics was how the landscape of free agency and a liberalised player market made North a far harder club to coach successfully than the Wayne Carey-led teams.

No mid-career, sought-after player of note - from Dustin Martin and Josh Kelly to Adam Treloar - would choose North, irrespective of money offered.

They signed Shaun Higgins, Jarrad Waite and Nick Dal Santo as veteran free agents. Under Scott, Higgins and Waite played the best footy of their careers. Few players of talent underachieved on his watch.

Scott and his crew made blunders, such as failing to rebuild in 2016 when a raft of veterans (Brent Harvey, Drew Petrie, Michael Firrito, Dal Santo) were retired. But his teams were usually spirited, well-drilled and fell short really only because of a talent deficit.

Whatever Scott did and didn’t get right at North, the more pertinent question is whether, like Brett Ratten, he will be better in his second coming, if he’s up for it.

Vindicated by North’s crash: why clubs should look at Brad Scott

The events of 2020 and 2021 have vindicated Brad Scott’s judgement. North are in a much deeper rebuild and recession than would have been necessary two or three years ago.

www.theage.com.au

Maybe it is my mistake, but I read a lot of comments which indicate that many people share the view that Brad and Chris are the same, that they are both ruthless, a perception which seems largely based on how they played.

Chris is ruthless, Brad has not been. That's not to say Chris is good and Brad is bad. I've always had a lot of respect for Brad's run at North at least until 2016. You can go and find my posts from 4 or 5 years ago when I was suggesting he should be our US style GM as part of a revamped and sensibly structured footy operation.

It's an interesting thing to explore, since they started out genetically identical – as much as Brad himself doesn't find it interesting

Of course, Chris is the one who got his face broke in his football days, while Brad had to take the long road via Hawthorn to get a debut, so there is that to set them apart.

When Geelong could not play front half footy they basically swapped a 35 goal Menzel for the ground level bit of Rohan. There was industry wide disbelief about that move. Close and Miers then find themselves playing every game in a team making top 4 every year. Dalhaus is added too. Stengle then got recruited and Dalhaus was frozen out of the team.

Now Menegola is a VFL player while Bruhn, Holmes and Bowes play.

Brad decided North needed a rebuild midway through 2019. A minimum of 2 years too late.

I saw links to an article a few pages ago that made reference to us trying to be a front half side, for example. How exactly does that work when there is no speed among the smalls and slow talls with no running power?

I think ant555 might've been the one to explain it, but we started the year with a defensive zone that was relatively simple and laid out around D50 line, and have been working on setting it up further up the ground throughout the season. In theory that's the point where you create turnovers, which means you either rebound from D50 or lock it in F50, depending on where that zone is.

Of course both of those things are dependent on having the ball goal-side of the zone, and should only be in play when you haven't won the clearance.

A year to look at the list is the same old s**t everyone says. Surely enough coaches have had a look at the list to know what its obvious problems are.

Scott's in a funny sort of position coming into the club at the end of last year because he wasn't in a football role before that and didn't necessarily do a lot of opposition analysis as a line coach at GWS or something. He didn't know our players from a bar of soap, and they didn't know him. So there's that.

The other side of it is, of course our list manager should've heard it all before... but has he done what needs to be done as a result? Why not? Who has to be convinced in order to get it happening?

He had better get ruthless soon. Actually he will need to get brutal because he has already started his love affair with s**t truck players who weaken the system the side needs to play to be good but who try hard.

Davey and Wanganeen would be playing under Chris. How many s**t games of footy was Motlop allowed to play because Geelong lacked run? Voss probably would be too. They add the ground level bite we don't have forward. It may be that one of these guys would be Parsons and wouldn't work out. No issue there. Have a look at players because they have what the team needs.

Would they? Geelong is notoriously old, tends to recruit players who are already in their 20s, and doesn't give draft kids a run until they've played a couple of seasons in reserves.

At 1-7 v top 8 sides, or whatever it is, we're chasing finals we're not set up to play, again. How many times have we been here, not actually 'learning' anything about the list we didn't already know' being seduced by the possibility of finals?

Yep. But on the other hand, when is the last time we beat everyone below us, and didn't Essington the **** out of it?

If Essington's only appearances this year have been against North Melbourne (which we thankfully still won, but the coach was not happy with the performance) and Geelong, reigning premiers, then I'd say that's evidence of a level of mental improvement, focus, tenacity, resilience, etc. and a pretty good indication of where we are as a side.

I'd back Hawthorn at this stage to be good before us. They have a clear vision of what is required and the balls to implement it.

yuck Bruno, wash out your mouth with soap!

 

[Lore]

In Christ Scott's first game as coach he had;

Enright, Scarlett, Bartel, Kelly, Johnson, Taylor, Corey, Hawkins and Selwood all playing.

Hawkins and Selwood have basically underpinned his entire coaching career, one is probably the 2nd or 3rd best forward of the last decade, the other is probably inside the best 2 or 3 leaders of the modern era and pretty consistently a Top-5 midfielder for most of that time.

Handy.

I started exploring a couple of weeks back but haven't managed to put it together in a digestible format to post on the forum yet, but I was investigating the relative success and list builds of different clubs and at what point they brought in a new coach.

There's a pretty strong correlation between "successful coach reputation" and "joined a club that had already built most of it's list and probably played finals in the last 5 years, hit bottom 4 the following year, sacked the coach and the new guy got all the credit when they went top 4 the following year and won a flag the year after". From what I can see, it's true of Clarkson, Simpson, Beveridge, Chris Scott, and even Bomber Thompson. Will probably be true of Fly at Collingwood this year as well.

Damien Hardwick is the outlier among recent premiership coaches. To fit the pattern he really should have been sacked after the list was built with Truck/Cara/someone getting all the credit.

There's also a pretty strong correlation between successful clubs and building lists around priority picks some years earlier.

 

[faible]

I started exploring a couple of weeks back but haven't managed to put it together in a digestible format to post on the forum yet, but I was investigating the relative success and list builds of different clubs and at what point they brought in a new coach.

There's a pretty strong correlation between "successful coach reputation" and "joined a club that had already built most of it's list and probably played finals in the last 5 years, hit bottom 4 the following year, sacked the coach and the new guy got all the credit when they went top 4 the following year and won a flag the year after". From what I can see, it's true of Clarkson, Simpson, Beveridge, Chris Scott, and even Bomber Thompson. Will probably be true of Fly at Collingwood this year as well.

Damien Hardwick is the outlier among recent premiership coaches. To fit the pattern he really should have been sacked after the list was built with Truck/Cara/someone getting all the credit.

There's also a pretty strong correlation between successful clubs and building lists around priority picks some years earlier.

As we've seen at EFC, it's much easier to look like a good coach when you have the cattle to implement it.

Would Clarkson have been as successful without a generational FF to kick off Hawthorn's success, and Hodge to direct traffic on-field for a decade?

He wasn't there when Hodge was drafted, and Franklin was their second selection which tells me they had no idea he'd be as good as he ended up being.

The first draft (2004) in Clarkson's time was Roughead, Franklin and Lewis. Pretty handy timing.

 

[Stopher]

I think we just found our next moderater.

A method to your madness

 

[andleanback]

You do realise why 5-12 is so even? Bc the top 4 are so far ahead of everyone else except Geelong who have come good.

We are 1-7 from 8 games v top 8 teams. If you think we’re close you’re delusional.

Yeh don’t rate my opinion yet you cry and ban me when I disagree with you. Sad really

More like the top 2 or even just collingwood. port, Melbourne and Brisbane are not that far in front of everyone else. It’s so even 5-14 because usually there are 5-6 really good sides that beat the sides below them and are all fighting for top 4. Usually the team that finishes 5-6 and just misses top 4 have 15-16 wins. This year it could be as low as 13. Even Melbourne could’ve dropped back into the pack if they didn’t pull Friday out of the fire, and they’ve got a tough run home.

 

[Eleven 38]

As we've seen at EFC, it's much easier to look like a good coach when you have the cattle to implement it.

Would Clarkson have been as successful without a generational FF to kick off Hawthorn's success, and Hodge to direct traffic on-field for a decade?

He wasn't there when Hodge was drafted, and Franklin was their second selection which tells me they had no idea he'd be as good as he ended up being.

The first draft (2004) in Clarkson's time was Roughead, Franklin and Lewis. Pretty handy timing.

Introduction of GWS and GC was also handy timing for Clarko. When clubs up the top of the ladder need that pick 10-15 to challenge the hawks they ended up with a pick in the 30s.

 

[faible]

Introduction of GWS and GC was also handy timing for Clarko. When clubs up the top of the ladder need that pick 10-15 to challenge the hawks they ended up with a pick in the 30s.

Otherwise known as The Accident of History

 

[BrunoV]

Far easier for Chris at Geelong who’s had experienced players right throughout his tenure. And as Cats show signs of going down they pinch generational talent like Dangerfield and Cameron. Brad has never had that luxury at North and wanted a rebuild earlier than the club.

It wasn't easier for Clarkson or Hardwick whose sides fell out of contention.