Mega Thread The Western Bulldogs - The Sack Macca saga

[charcoalchicken]

Time for bed for you play school tomorrow

the irony in this post is astounding.

Try to at least make sense when you post.

 

[Mattdougie]

Ignore for chickens, just picking me coz I disagree

Wow I wonder how your family cope when they have the temerity to disagree with you

Don't bother responding I won't see it, ignore

 

[Super Hans]

God your pathetic

You actually add nothing just troll around and make attempted humouring comments about people you disagree with

Followed me all nite an not one comment other than childish stupidity

I'm not right ?? Go back and look

If you have an issue ignore me or grow a set and add something other than a gif

Ahhhhh. I have not posted on gif, but k.

And when I look back at what I've said you have not answered one question, just gone on a random rant and deflected to something else. So you're either really delusional or just trolling. And don't flatter yourself, I'm certainly not following you around.

 

[stmookeyj]

Geelong's rebuild took 7 years to bring a flag to the club

They also were consistently making September action during those 7 years, being a couple of kicks from a GF in 2004 and 5 seconds from a PF in 2005 plus winning a VFL flag in 2002 with many of the cornerstones of their 2007 side.

 

[Mattdougie]

Ahhhhh. I have not posted on gif, but k.

And when I look back at what I've said you have not answered one question, just gone on a random rant and deflected to something else. So you're either really delusional or just trolling. And don't flatter yourself, I'm certainly not following you around.

You haven't asked a question without a wise a&$ comment behind it

 

[brmi]

"If we spend too much time looking at the ladder and scoreboard we'll forget what we're doing" Brendan McCartney's press conference after today's loss.

I've tried hard to like this guy, I want him to succeed as we all do for the sake of the club we love but everything he says has an undertone of buying himself more and more time in job. In his first year it was almost copy paste for every press conference about buying more time, contested footy, young people learning etc.. How much longer until we get some consistent effort and two way running. My god we look slow when the ball is outside of 5m of the contest. I can't remember a time us collective looking as slow when the ball is away from the contest as we do now.

 

[David Schwarz]

Jeez...

Add a few of our wasted chances in the first and take away the abortion that was the third and we're looking at a comfortable win.

I would have thought the week prior, when we thought we'd try playing croquet instead of footy, would have sent everyone foaming at the mouth and not a game where we did all the right things save for us shooting ourselves in the foot through some kind of S&M fantasy.

'Sup to fellow Bay scragger, charcoalchicken

 

[charcoalchicken]

Ignore for chickens, just picking me coz I disagree

Wow I wonder how your family cope when they have the temerity to disagree with you

Don't bother responding I won't see it, ignore

lol no worries,if you can't come up with a proper argument to backup the crap that you regurgitate on these boards don't try to go on with it, you've effectively lost and put me on ignore because you have become so frustrated within yourself and thrown the toys out of the cot. Maybe this can be used as a lesson for you and just admit it when you're wrong.

 

[immortalmike]

o lmao I just realized mattdougie is on my ignore list (having the distinction to be the only one ever on it).

I just gave everyone on my ignore list a second (or is it third) chance and immediately regretted it.

 

[Proffessor]

He's two years into a rebuild ffs, it's not like we've been down for that long.

We have been down for as long as McCartney has been in charge. Coincidence? I think not.

 

[TheHoneyBadger]

We have been down for as long as McCartney has been in charge. Coincidence? I think not.

McCartney took the job when almost everyone responsible for the 'up' period in 2008/09/10 was on the wrong side of 30 and the list was filled with duds.
We were always set up to fall down the ladder. Even Mattdougie has said McCartney walked into a death trap.

 

[charcoalchicken]

McCartney took the job when almost everyone responsible for the 'up' period in 2008/09/10 was on the wrong side of 30 and the list was filled with duds.
We were always set up to fall down the ladder. Even Mattdougie has said McCartney walked into a death trap.

It's crazy how some people don't understand this point.

 

[the dog's kennel]

Mattdougie - let me discuss that Port Adelaide thing one more time, because I don't feel anyone's really tried to explain the other side of the debate. They're just berating you.

You say Port Adelaide's only been rebuilding for 2 years because they started from scratch. Others (including me) have said they started rebuilding in 2008.

I understand where you are coming from. At the end of 2012 they cleared the place out. Hence you say the latest rebuild started then.

But of course they didn't clear out the players. As much as Hinkley did amazing things with his playing list, when he entered it contained a stack of top draft picks that were just reaching maturity. And that isn't hindsight talking. Even at the time, people recognised the quality of Boak, Hartlett, Trengove, Wingard and Gray (who admittedly was a low draft pick, but was universally recognised as being an exceptional talent).

In fact I heard just this week that Graham Cornes in 2012 described Port Adelaide as "containing 3 potential Brownlow Medallists".

Now - don't get me wrong, I'm not taking away from what Ken Hinkley's done. And I'm not saying that these same players would have replicated these performances under a poor coach. But I'm saying that any fair assessment of a "rebuild" begins when you start turning over your playing list to net quality players - either intentionally, or simply through bad play. That's the difference between a "rebuild" and a "refresh".

For Port that started with the Number 4 draft pick in 2008, followed up by the Number 8 and 9 draft picks in 2009. Until 2012 we had only landed ourselves one top 10 draft pick (Jarrad Grant) in 8 years.

2011 is when we started our deep dive down the ladder. So you can't possibly regard us as rebuilding before then. Personally I would say 2012 is when the rebuild really clicked into gear, with the Number 5 and 6 draft picks. So we are either in the 3rd or 4th year of our rebuild, depending on your definition. And Port are either in the 6th or 7th year of theirs.

Anyway, that's my view.

 

[Proffessor]

We were set for a down cycle regardless given the abhorrent state of the list - yes, it finished higher than we did in 2012/13, and no, it wasn't going to be continually capable of that, so that's redundant. If Eade had stayed on and we'd fallen down the ladder as we have you wouldn't consider him the used car salesman you seem to think McCartney is.
You might say that the pro-macca camp don't consider what's been said to be excuses - it's short, sweet summaries of what we're attempting to do to keep the media happy - and see the proof of the party line in the accelerated development of Liberatore, Macrae, Hunter, Roughead, Dahlhaus, and so forth..

I find it ironic that people who defend the coach can be so dismissive and critical of our players, and our playing list. Aside from being a ridiculous statement about a list that included a healthy number of past and future All Australian footballers and greats of the club, the fact a supporter can call any list of our club's players abhorrent shows the level of rationalisation required to justify continued belief in McCartney's coaching ability.

Apparently the longer he coaches, the worse the list he inherited needs to be to justify the lack of success.

I think while it would be good to see more results, the patches of quality football we're playing give a glimpse of what we're aiming at, and I think we'll be much better off having built a defense from the ground up and looking at getting games up forward into Stringer and Jones rather than recruiting another Jade Rawlings type player as an ill conceived quick fix as we might've a decade ago..

This is a true McCartney-like statement. What does 'built from the ground up' mean and what relation does it show to our present team? Our defence if you hadn't noticed has struggled pretty badly, and still relies heavily on inherited mature players like Morris and Murphy.

It's too early to say that they're empty promises and there most definitely have not been any excuses. As I've said with the rapid improvement in many players and the quality football we play when it clicks I think it's worth persisting with McCartney for some time yet. Of course people differ in their assessment of how players are tracking, the brand of footy being played, the character of the coach and the bigger picture. I just think it'd be moronic after 3 years to sack a coach we'd committed to for the purpose of building a sustainable football department as a longer term project. There'd be nothing wrong with getting a Mark Williams, Mark Thompson or Rodney Eade (not appropriate for us but match day tactical nous was near unmatched) into the box to help on match day and with tweaking aspects of how we operate, though.

Rapid Improvement in many players? Yet another unprovable statement used in a vain search for positives. If many players have improved, rapidly or otherwise, why have the results been so bad?

Not that many McCartney supporters seem to realise this, but we actually had a pretty sustainable football department prior to his appointment. Despite being one of the poorest (if not the poorest) football departments in the league under Rodney Eade, we made the finals 4 times in 7 years including 3 preliminary finals, and our lowest winning percentage in a season was 40.9%. No-one can prove that we were definitely on a downward trajectory after 2011, we had an identical winning percentage in 2007 but followed that up will 3 prelims in a row.

 

[TheHoneyBadger]

Going to waste no time dissecting that post because you'll just muddle up the posts and throw it back in my face as another load of barely intelligible nonsense, but know how selective you're being in information and circumstances from that period of time with no consideration for the state of the list in each year including this one.

 

[the dog's kennel]

Roberts doesn't get played and we all lose it...(after we lose the game of course... we were all fine with the changes initially of course...)

I was going to reply with the world's longest string of quotes of people complaining about the non-selection of Roberts on Friday and Saturday. But unfortunately the thread is now locked. So you'll have to see for yourself....
http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/threads/changes-and-discussion-vs-adelaide.1059419/page-14
Start from Page 14. There would be at least 15 people who all say the same thing.

This was most definitely not an example of people using hindsight to criticise Macca.

 

[immortalmike]

I was going to reply with the world's longest string of quotes of people complaining about the non-selection of Roberts on Friday and Saturday. But unfortunately the thread is now locked. So you'll have to see for yourself....
http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/threads/changes-and-discussion-vs-adelaide.1059419/page-14
Start from Page 14. There would be at least 15 people who all say the same thing.

This was most definitely not an example of people using hindsight to criticise Macca.

I'm going to back up this post as I even made a joke to the effect that I wanted to see the reaction if Roberts wasn't picked. Then I did and was immediately sorry.
Roberts should have played, poor selection by McCartney.

 

[Doggies_13]

Have been indifferent about macca i believe he is a good teacher and developer but his match day coaching and selection of teams is killing us. We have looked a tall forward and tall defender short all season then this week he drops Williams which fine his form warranted it but didn't bring a defender in to replace him and we are left with 3 medium types trying to take podsiadly then he throws liam jones back and subs out tom campbell leaving us with no true key forward in the forward half. Not ready to cal for his head just yet but these sort of things need to improve think we need to go all out at the end of the season for a experienced senior assistant as i believe he will remain for at least one of the two years he was resigned for.

 

[Leon]

I started this thread and have been critical of Macca in it and elsewhere, especially when we hit the low point last year (that awful 2 week period where we lost to Melbourne and barely beat GWS)

I came around a bit on him towards the end of last year when we started playing well and looked like we'd turned the corner a bit, I'd accepted in my mind that we were still a work in progress and that the foundations had at least been laid

Whilst I still hold that view, I have another criticism of him and as this is a monstrous thread I'm not sure if it's been raised so sorry if it has but anyway;

Does he ever actually blast the players? Get angry with them?

It's all very nice and swell to be a "teaching" coach and mentor the young players etc but the job of a coach is to get the team to play well and if they are playing like crap then he needs to man up and give them a blast.

I watched him at 3QT today addressing the players after and he was addressing them just as normal as ever as if they had not been stinking the place up for the past two quarters. Not good enough. You look around the league at all the other coaches and I reckon you've seen them go off their nut at their players at least once, I don't recall McCartney doing it once since he's been with us, and he has had plenty of shit enough performances in which to let rip on then

 

[Dav1d]

Does he ever actually blast the players? Get angry with them?

It's all very nice and swell to be a "teaching" coach and mentor the young players etc but the job of a coach is to get the team to play well and if they are playing like crap then he needs to man up and give them a blast.

I watched him at 3QT today addressing the players after and he was addressing them just as normal as ever as if they had not been stinking the place up for the past two quarters. Not good enough. You look around the league at all the other coaches and I reckon you've seen them go off their nut at their players at least once, I don't recall McCartney doing it once since he's been with us, and he has had plenty of shit enough performances in which to let rip on then

I don't have a problem with him giving them a blast, but getting angry with them would seem pretty stupid
you don't think optimally when you are are angry and some players respond to it, others don't

 

[immortalmike]

Not that many McCartney supporters seem to realise this, but we actually had a pretty sustainable football department prior to his appointment. Despite being one of the poorest (if not the poorest) football departments in the league under Rodney Eade, we made the finals 4 times in 7 years including 3 preliminary finals, and our lowest winning percentage in a season was 40.9%. No-one can prove that we were definitely on a downward trajectory after 2011, we had an identical winning percentage in 2007 but followed that up will 3 prelims in a row.

So who on this list would you have retained and expected to make finals in 2012?

Primary list:
Dylan Addison
Daniel Cross
Nathan Djerkurra
Lindsay Gilbee
Barry Hall
Ryan Hargrave
Josh Hill
Tom Hill
Andrew Hooper
Ben Hudson
Brian Lake
Lukas Markovic
Brodie Moles
James Mulligan
Sam Reid
Jayden Schofield
Justin Sherman
Zeph Skinner
Brennan Stack
Patrick Veszpremi
Callan Ward

Rookie list:
Ed Barlow
Mitch Hahn
Matthew Panos
Eddie Prato

This is the list McCartney was handed. Thanks Bazza.

 

[Bazza Bulldog]

This is a true McCartney-like statement. What does 'built from the ground up' mean and what relation does it show to our present team? Our defence if you hadn't noticed has struggled pretty badly, and still relies heavily on inherited mature players like Morris and Murphy.

Is Wood, Roughy, Higgins (when fit) contributing more than

So who on this list would you have retained and expected to make finals in 2012?


This is the list McCartney was handed. Thanks Bazza.

Doubt he will answer ... I've asked the same question 3 times now. Thanks for trying again.

 

[immortalmike]

Is Wood, Roughy, Higgins (when fit) contributing more than


Doubt he will answer ... I've asked the same question 3 times now. Thanks for trying again.

I think we should bring it up everytime he posts then.

 

[David Schwarz]

That list is woeful, a handful of retirees at the end of the season chucked in too for good measure.

And I'll never understand this garbage about Port only having a two year rebuild, 2007 was a fair while ago.

The only thing I can think of where this wrong idea came from was when Kochie bailed them out, but their club almost vanishing into thin air simply does not correlate with the start time for a period of list rebuilding.

 

[grassman75]

I'm really having trouble with the fact (I hope it's a fact) that one week people are calling for maccas head because he is a tactical dunce on match day and makes no changes. It seems to many he would prefer to leave guys on the same opponents all day to deliberately make us lose. Then, the following week, he recognises a problem (jones this week is the example) and throws him back into a defence that due to injury, is undermanned, to try and mix things up and bring an under performing player into the game. He is then accused and criticised that he doesn't know what he is doing and why would he dare attempt to try different things. A player with 61 games of experience is then lambasted for costing us the game. It's a team sport fellas, no one individual is responsible for the loss. If they were, then Dahl is responsible because he missed from 5m out. Hunter is responsible because he hit the post and so on. For those who wanted Roberts in, can you honestly say hand on heart that a guy with 2 games experience would have been any better in this particular game?

I am a firm believer that macca is trying to play players out of position (sometimes out of necessity-see Wood and his improvement) and young guys on some of the games more talented players eg: Jong on dangerfield as a learning experience. If you believe his press conference, he could see that dangerfield was getting a lot of the ball and he was concerned, but he left Jong there as the stats showed danger wasn't being overly damaging. He failed to kick a goal too. Jong has played 9 games of AFL. Again, he might not make it, but macca is trying to teach these kids something by playing on and learning from the best. Someone else stated that Jong will probably make way for Clay when he returns. This is probably right, but we have now gotten more games and experience in to Jong which IMO should bode well for the future.

Yesterday, we lost the game by 9pts. We had our chances and with more experience into players such as hunter (14 games), dahlhaus (55), macrae (19), Campbell (15) we could have (and perhaps should have) won. For what it is worth, Crameri has only played 63 games. Libba, 61 and some expect them to be standing up as a senior players and turning games already. Patience grasshoppers. Go and have a look at the team lists on footywire and see the core group we are building. This will only be enhanced by having our own VFL side. The last time we had our own reserves team, guys like west, smith and Johnson all grew up together. They won a reserves flag together and formed the core of our last tilts. We cannot underestimate how important this will be to us in the coming years.

I find it is incredible to read how many people screaming out as to how badly we miss Roughead at the moment. Well without maccas planning and ideas and foresight to develop another side to his game, big Rough would probably still be a struggling forward. Aka what jones apparently is now. Roughy has played just 60 games, most of them up forward, yet he is becoming a cornerstone for our team and a must have in defence.

I have already stated plenty of times that I believe you need a core of players with over 50 games experience before they really start to make their mark on games (in reality it's probably when they get to 80 to 100, depending on size and ability etc) when we should really expect consistency and regular finals appearances.

Our list was a shambles, after being pushed to limit of trying to 'buy' that elusive premiership. It was left with several good players that were in decline, some youth that hadn't been tried because we were in 'the window' and a whole lot of dead wood - players who were never gonna make it, list cloggers. They have been named before, so I won't bother again. We then had 2 of our best young players who were in that age / games played bracket lost to expansion clubs, who then took all the best draft picks as well. Talk about having to push shit uphill.

I can see the point that some are trying to make that some of the players (Dickson, for example) might not make it, so we should play kids to try and get the necessary games into them rather than using him as a stop gap measure. To use Dickson as an example again, he was drafted to help fill that void of 23-26yo players that was ripped from us. He was a goal kicker in the lower leagues (think he got 100 for noble park) and he is a strong body to help the kids. He may or may not be there when the whips are cracking but who knows. He is for 'the now'

I will give you Howard, even though he has been injury plagued and only managed 18 games (a long way from the magical numbers) can't see him making it, but again maybe it was the choice between say for example Howard and Brennan Stack. The choice was made for Howard as a better option to fill a list spot until we can delist and replace with a better talent which wasn't available due to the compromised drafts.

So please, be patient with what macca and the club are trying to do and while you are at it, have a read of an article published last week (can't find link -someone may be able to help) about Geelong and why they are so consistent since their drought breaker in 2007. It us a great read and you can see how far we have to go with our list. I could write some more on how I think we don't help ourselves as a club by allowing guys to go on too long, but that is a story for another day.

Anyway, that's my take on the current situation and the feeling on this thread. Feel free to shoot me down, but if you do feel the need, please try and provide some research and evidence to back up your arguments as I have tried to do. I might not be right, but I think I have tried to stay balanced and fair to everyone's opinions.

If you read this far, congratulations