The Worsfold coaching situation mega-thread, part 2

[Geoffe_Miles]

Re: Wooshas other coaching record!?

You're right, and I agree, but I must say i would much rather be West Coast than Sydney or Adelaide right now. We may be playing shit now but given we all had our time at the top at the same time, our future looks better than either of these two sides looking just at recruitment over the last three years.

Because Sydney and Adelaide haven't plummeted, they have missed out in this regard whilst never really challenging since.

I would rather be Sydney or Adelaide because the people running their clubs actually live in reality and are not total muppets, unlike the bozo's running our club who's response to this crisis is to throw out red herrings blaming the drug crisis they caused 4 years ago for poor on field performance in the present day.

I would rather be Sydney or Adelaide because they have A grade recruitment and development systems and are capable and prepared to make calls on people, both playing and non-playing staff, and make hard decisions when they need to to move their club forward. I would much rather be in their shoes.

How much more pain will our club have to go through due to weak and poor decisions already made by the decision makers at our club and how many more weak and poor decisions that will further hobble us will they get the chance to make before we can rid our club of them?

 

[Geoffe_Miles]

Because I have always hated the way he goes about his interviews with the smugness and arrogance of answering questions with questions and when he does provide answers they are usually riddles themselves.

Then the other week he told the fans/members to go and find a new club if they don't like the way the eagles are heading, again thinking he himself is bigger than the club, it is not the players I want to leave, it's you Woosha.

At a minimum, a bare bones minimum, if Worsfold has to be there next year they absolutely must take the right to have even a say, let alone the final call, on players and list management issues totally out of his hands and just tell him that is no longer one of his rights or part of his job responsibilities. He has conclusively proven that he is a very, very poor judge of the talent and capabilities of players and not willing and able to make calls on people. If they give him a say they know exactly what he will say already in every case every single time - back in every player all the time forever and never even bother weighing the positives and negatives of any player, let alone make an adverse judgement on anybody. Just back everybody in all the time. Thats just not good enough at AFL level. You have to be prepared to make decisions and to show some astuteness and selectiveness. If you don't have the ability to make those judgements then hand the responsibility over to somebody who does and if you aren't a big enough man to take responsibility for making calls on people don't put your hand up to be an AFL coach.

He can not be left in charge of list management or he will run the team into the ground even more than he already has. Given what a political animal Nisbett is and given that he will be furiously working the political angles with the WAFC as we speak to try and shore up Worsfold for next year and will probably succeed the best we can hope for is that hey will take away the opportunity for Worsfold to do more long term structural damage to our list with his poor judgement and choices and not let him waste more of our clubs precious resoruces backing crabs.

 

[Marlin01]

GM, do you not think the team below has the makings of a very good team? Add in a few players that we haven't seen much from as yet, such as J. Jones, Stevens and a few decent draft picks.

age in brackets

Smith (20) Mackenzie (22) Schofield (21)
Hurn (22) Brown (21) Butler (24)
Sheppard (19) Ebert (20) Stevenson (20)
Hams (23) Kennedy (22) Strijk (22)
LeCras (23) McKinley (23) Shuey (20)

NN (20) Swift (20) Masten (21)
Rosa (23) Selwood (20) Houlihan (21) Waters (24)

 

[swannies]

I was fortunate enough to attend Jason McCartney's seminar last night on developing elite youth players. Very interesting, some of the points he made. We would do worse than attract him as list manager.

Anyhow, he made the point that when he's coaching the AIS scholarship holders, the 30 most elite talents in the land, he wants them to play man on man, because zones are too difficult for inexperienced, younger players to adopt and execute properly for a full game. He noted that experienced teams will destroy inexperienced teams in executing the zone plan.

 

[Geoffe_Miles]

GM, do you not think the team below has the makings of a very good team? Add in a few players that we haven't seen much from as yet, such as J. Jones, Stevens and a few decent draft picks.

age in brackets

Smith (20) Mackenzie (22) Schofield (21)
Hurn (22) Brown (21) Butler (24)
Sheppard (19) Ebert (20) Stevenson (20)
Hams (23) Kennedy (22) Strijk (22)
LeCras (23) McKinley (23) Shuey (20)

NN (20) Swift (20) Masten (21)
Rosa (23) Selwood (20) Houlihan (21) Waters (24)

I don't know Marlin. Some of those players it is still too early for a layman like myself to know how they will turn out. I think we all know players like Masten, Ebert and Swift are going to very mediocre players if they don't improve their disposal. Will they improve or not? I don't know. But they need to improve a fair bit and there are plenty of players who have been where they are before who had bad disposal and needed to improve it to have a career and had all the resources of a top AFL club to help them and failed. The clock is ticking for them. If they haven't improved significantly in in 2 years time i think we will have to admit to ourselves that we bought a trio of lemons.

Others like McKinley are not likely to be there. Others like Jordan Jones i have not even seen so i don't have an opinion there.

In any case, from what i can see right now, if i was bave enough to make a call this far out, i would say that even when that team that you have put down is fully matured i don't know that iw ould back it to do any better than scrape into the 8. It doesn't look like an elite side in the making.

 

[Geoffe_Miles]

I was fortunate enough to attend Jason McCartney's seminar last night on developing elite youth players. Very interesting, some of the points he made. We would do worse than attract him as list manager.

Anyhow, he made the point that when he's coaching the AIS scholarship holders, the 30 most elite talents in the land, he wants them to play man on man, because zones are too difficult for inexperienced, younger players to adopt and execute properly for a full game. He noted that experienced teams will destroy inexperienced teams in executing the zone plan.

I agree. I rarely agree with Tony Shaw about anything but the comments that he was making in the commentary on Sat night game rings true to me - if what you are doing isn't working and the game plan you are trying to implement has a high degree of difficulty and precision required and seems way outside the capabilities of your current team then for gods sake change it to a simpler game plan that you can actually execute and then down the track when you have the personel to execute that game plan start transitioning into it. There is no point in carrying on with a game plan you are not capable of executing. The word for that is denial - you just refuse to admit that you are not as far down the track as you wish you were and that you have to start from a lower base and work forward from there.

 

[Jimmy_the_Gent]

I agree. I rarely agree with Tony Shaw about anything but the comments that he was making in the commentary on Sat night game rings true to me - if what you are doing isn't working and the game plan you are trying to implement has a high degree of difficulty and precision required and seems way outside the capabilities of your current team then for gods sake change it to a simpler game plan that you can actually execute and then down the track when you have the personel to execute that game plan start transitioning into it. There is no point in carrying on with a game plan you are not capable of executing. The word for that is denial - you just refuse to admit that you are not as far down the track as you wish you were and that you have to start from a lower base and work forward from there.

It's interesting that you see it like that. The first thought that came into my head was "Even though we can't execute the gameplan now, at least we're learning it while we're young so there'll be no transition period down the track".

 

[Jimmy_the_Gent]

Just watched 'The Winners' and in Woosha's press conference he said how proud he was of his team, being so young, blah blah blah and then said that they had so many players who had played 20 games or less.

The host of the show wrapped up Woosha's interview saying that 'for the record both Eagles and Port had 6 players under 22 games" or something along those lines, I had a quiet chuckle.

As I do when I listen to Woosh being held accountable by the only person in Australia, Brad Hardie on the 6pr segment.

In Worsfolds defence, you can make a lot of crap up with numbers.

The fact was we went into that game with 1294 games of experience, while Port had 1597. For an interstate game that's a certain loss, and I think you'll find that for a team with less than 60 games per player a 1 point loss is freakishly good. Usually when teams line up with less than 1320 games in the team they get belted (see RD20 Coll V Ess).

 

[Geoffe_Miles]

It's interesting that you see it like that. The first thought that came into my head was "Even though we can't execute the gameplan now, at least we're learning it while we're young so there'll be no transition period down the track".

I have heard that argument before but i don't buy into it. I don't think it's such a big deal to change the game plan down the track when the personel is there to execute it. Maybe it would take a year to fully transition when the time comes but this is going to be long rebuild. We are not short of time. Better off going with a plan that emphasises developing players in individual positions now and worrying about game plans that can win a flag when the time comes that we have the team to do it. I don't buy into it that whatever game plan you go with now you are stuck with for 5 years because it is impossible to change as some people intimate. You can change when the time comes.

I also think that it would be psychologically better for the young players and their development, morale, confidence, motivation etc if you give them a task they can actually successfully perform week in and week out and therefore they get that sense of achievement and progress rather than ask them to keep banging their heads against a wall in frustration and anguish trying to do something that they can't do and teh demoralising feeling of failing to do what you were asked to do and playing in a losing team every week..

 

[Jimmy_the_Gent]

Fair enough.

Well put.

 

[Marlin01]

I have heard that argument before but i don't buy into it. I don't think it's such a big deal to change the game plan down the track when the personel is there to execute it. Maybe it would take a year to fully transition when the time comes but this is going to be long rebuild. We are not short of time. Better off going with a plan that emphasises developing players in individual positions now and worrying about game plans that can win a flag when the time comes that we have the team to do it. I don't buy into it that whatever game plan you go with now you are stuck with for 5 years because it is impossible to change as some people intimate. You can change when the time comes.

I also think that it would be psychologically better for the young players and their development, morale, confidence, motivation etc if you give them a task they can actually successfully perform week in and week out and therefore they get that sense of achievement and progress rather than ask them to keep banging their heads against a wall in frustration and anguish trying to do something that they can't do and teh demoralising feeling of failing to do what you were asked to do and playing in a losing team every week..

That's a fair point, but obviously Worsfold believes it is better to go the other way. I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt because he's won 2 premierships as a captain and 1 as a coach. As opposed to Tony Shaw who's won a premiership as a captain and was a shocking failure as a coach. Let's face it, if Tony Shaw knew what he was talking about, he'd still be coaching and not commentating.

 

[CursoryMercenary]

Officially our worst season, finishing with 4-18 and a wooden spoon. Resign Worsfold you've brought this club to it's knees.

 

[TurleyBurley]

Question for the Woosh supporters

It's obvious that I don't think that Woosh is the guy to take us forward, but this query is neither a provocation nor a troll. A number of folks here do think he is the man for the job. What I'm wondering is, following our disastrous season, what will you guys consider:
a) success (offering him a new contract)
b) a middling campaign
c) failure

Is there any kind of consensus on this?

 

[KaLL]

Re: Question for the Woosh supporters

Success - 9th or 10th at least, preferably in the eight.

Middle - 12thish. Do not want this to happen as it would probably give woosh a pass, and is a mediocre effort.

Failure - skills go further backwards, Shuey gets injured again, Masten continually played in the FP, persisting with Lynch, Priddis et al, 15th or 16th position.

 

[Quinz]

Re: Question for the Woosh supporters

Failure- Bottom four
Mediocre- 9-13th
Success- Top 8

If we have a good run with injury, we should push the eight, or else he should go. No excuses for another poor season.

 

[patsmith]

Re: Question for the Woosh supporters

No finals, no job for Woosh.

 

[WCEforeverman]

Re: Question for the Woosh supporters

You would think that we would have to make the finals for him to keep his spot.

 

[Ochre]

Re: Question for the Woosh supporters

Success - Premiership
Failure - Anything other

Thats the eagles i grew up supporting

 

[Audacious]

When was the last time a coach who won the wooden spoon....

.... continued to stay on and eventually lead the same club to a premiership? From memory it hasnt happened in the last 30 years. The simple matter is, if you win the wooden spoon, the coach gets the sack. Danniher, Wallace, Pagan, Rohde, Drum, Watson, Shaw, Merrett, Hutchison, the list goes on.

What makes Worsfold different? The old adage of having the runs on the board counts for squat in my book. We've hit rock bottom, and its not just the players that need to be cleaned out.

You probably have to go back 50+ years or more to find a coach who has won the wooden spoon and been kept on to win a premiership. Woosha is up against history thats for sure.

 

[Arecsa]

Re: When was the last time a coach who won the wooden spoon....

Staggering that Woosha is under very little pressure considering our last 3 pathetic seasons. Meanwhile Knights is being absolutely crucified at the moment.

 

[Rids]

Re: Question for the Woosh supporters

Failure- Bottom four
Mediocre- 9-13th
Success- Top 8

If we have a good run with injury, we should push the eight, or else he should go. No excuses for another poor season.

Yep agree. Another year like we just had with injury and we should still finish 9th - 12th ... just have so much more depth because of the experience the kids got this year. A good run with injuries and I would expect us to be in contention for the 8.

I consider myself a supporter but if Whoosh can't achieve this then I will be jumping off the bandwagon

 

[CursoryMercenary]

Re: When was the last time a coach who won the wooden spoon....

Staggering that Woosha is under very little pressure considering our last year 3 pathetic seasons. Meanwhile Knights is being absolutely crucified at the moment.

Yeah it's absolutely ridiculous.

 

[Double the Fist]

No finals, no job for Woosh.

Finals being mentioned a lot.
Can we inject some realism in here please!

 

[tesseract]

Re: Question for the Woosh supporters

It's obvious that I don't think that Woosh is the guy to take us forward, but this query is neither a provocation nor a troll. A number of folks here do think he is the man for the job. What I'm wondering is, following our disastrous season, what will you guys consider:
a) success (offering him a new contract)
b) a middling campaign
c) failure

Is there any kind of consensus on this?

There's no middle ground. Middle ground is perpetual mediocrity, like annual mid table specialists like the Crowbots and Norf. They always look like they're about to take the next step, but fail to do so.

 

[Marlin01]

If it were up to me, anything short of a top 8 finish would be unacceptable and I wouldn't offer Worsfold another contract. However, in a recent article, Nisbett was quoted as saying he expects the club to come out of the bottom quartile, so that sounds like what he needs to do, to get a new contract.