Where are north at?

[Beerfish]

Next year? probably not. In the long term it will be though.

I only said one more year. So you tell me to 'jog on champ' despite agreeing with the premise of what I'm saying. Hilarious.

I love blokes like you. This year Harvey and North were getting shit because we were so old and harvey was selfish for not retiring.

Now hes gone its like you all loved him.

Classic Bigfooty bullshit.

Blokes like me? I presume you have some of my posts where I've said this ready to go to back up this claim or is it just more generalised horseshit from you? I've always been of the opinion he should have got another year. You seem to think he's been a contributor to your club's apparent 'shitty culture' of the last 10 years though. I didn't think you had a shitty culture. Can you elaborate on this for me?

 

[Devington]

"Defensively he became a liability". Sounds like a load of mealy mouthed codswallop not backed up by, well anything really.

Do you think your 22 next year would be better or worse with him in it?

Better, by a long way, we'll miss his skills into the forward 50 immensly. But selecting him week in week out when he's not doing the defensive work he should, would be sending the wrong message. Nickly Dal had more to offer too in all honesty, but this year could have potentially been one year too many and he had the same defensive flaws. Our selection policy in recent years has been a source of great frustration. Players continuing to get games when for drops, still getting them when it tanks even more. Playing underdone/injured players. Not dropping players for abhorent performances. Not trying enough of the younger kids, or the guys doing well in the VFL.

I saw the axing of the veterans as being a 'clean the slate' moment for the selectors. Out with the old and in with the new (selection philosophy as well as players). IF they make players more accountable on field, in terms of selection, then I will be overjoyed with their decision to not offer Boomer another contract. In the past the closest Scott got to making Boomer accountable was demoting him to sub one game. It's strange. In a lot of games last year I thought Boomer put in better/longer defensive efforts than he had in a long time. But even with some out-of-character chases, over all he was rather putrid defensively in most games, for a guy with arms like tree trunks, a decent amount of campaignerness, and his zip. He'd get his 2-3 tackles, but wouldn't position himself defensively often enough. He'd stay on the outside of the pack too much (his best place, but he often wouldn't go when it WAS his turn and he was the best option to retrieve the ball), he wouldn't shepherd enough. etc etc. Offensively he was great. And he would also do a lot of unrewarded offensive running as well. But defensively he was lacking for most of his career.

I think it was the right choice, and one that hopefully sends a message to the rest of the players, one that is further enforced by selection policy. I don't care who it is, but if any player significantly underperforms for no good reason in the first game of the season I would love to see them dropped for a game to signify a change in policy, even if that player is Goldstein or Tarrant.

I don't know at all what to expect next year, to be honest. But there is a lot of reasons to be optimistic IMO. A new head coach would have made me more optimistic, because Scott has shown himself to be stubborn quite often. But he WAS a first year senior coach when we hired him, and he has shown capability to improve during his tenure. Fingers crossed.

 

[Beerfish]

Better, by a long way, we'll miss his skills into the forward 50 immensly. But selecting him week in week out when he's not doing the defensive work he should, would be sending the wrong message. Nickly Dal had more to offer too in all honesty, but this year could have potentially been one year too many and he had the same defensive flaws. Our selection policy in recent years has been a source of great frustration. Players continuing to get games when for drops, still getting them when it tanks even more. Playing underdone/injured players. Not dropping players for abhorent performances. Not trying enough of the younger kids, or the guys doing well in the VFL.

I saw the axing of the veterans as being a 'clean the slate' moment for the selectors. Out with the old and in with the new (selection philosophy as well as players). IF they make players more accountable on field, in terms of selection, then I will be overjoyed with their decision to not offer Boomer another contract. In the past the closest Scott got to making Boomer accountable was demoting him to sub one game. It's strange. In a lot of games last year I thought Boomer put in better/longer defensive efforts than he had in a long time. But even with some out-of-character chases, over all he was rather putrid defensively in most games, for a guy with arms like tree trunks, a decent amount of campaignerness, and his zip. He'd get his 2-3 tackles, but wouldn't position himself defensively often enough. He'd stay on the outside of the pack too much (his best place, but he often wouldn't go when it WAS his turn and he was the best option to retrieve the ball), he wouldn't shepherd enough. etc etc. Offensively he was great. And he would also do a lot of unrewarded offensive running as well. But defensively he was lacking for most of his career.

I think it was the right choice, and one that hopefully sends a message to the rest of the players, one that is further enforced by selection policy. I don't care who it is, but if any player significantly underperforms for no good reason in the first game of the season I would love to see them dropped for a game to signify a change in policy, even if that player is Goldstein or Tarrant.

I don't know at all what to expect next year, to be honest. But there is a lot of reasons to be optimistic IMO. A new head coach would have made me more optimistic, because Scott has shown himself to be stubborn quite often. But he WAS a first year senior coach when we hired him, and he has shown capability to improve during his tenure. Fingers crossed.

Good post. That I can understand. I guess from my perspective to get rid of all 3 and then lose Wells (not sure if the club knew it was coming - if they did it makes it even more baffling to me) is cleaning the slate a bit too much all at once. As I said, he wouldn't have to play every game and in all reality at worst he could have just been plonked in the forward 50 to crumb goals. I guess we'll see but in my mind he would have been pretty handy to have around next year.

 

[Dazb86]

Don't think they'll bottom out but they probably need to.

 

[Devington]

We gave Wells (Prickering) all the bargaining power. By announcing the retirement of the other players before we had him sewn up we let him know just how much we would require him. That meant he could ask for more, from a position of power. I'm kind of glad he left in the end. I think the pies will regret it. At that price tag, after his last few contracts, it simply wasn't a smart choice for us to re sign him. And he has been getting 'old man' injuries recently, on top of the ongoing injury management. And not to speak ill of a player I used to love, but there has always been a feeling of... softness... about Daniel. Specifically in regards to being able to mentally push through adversity/injury/pain. I think the pies was the worst club for him to chose. The BIG spootlight is on him now, a spotlight he has never really embraced, and I think that will make matters worse. That's all just my opinion though. I genuinely hope that he can get his shit together and deliver. The man has a Brownlow in him somewhere, I would love to see him get it.

As for too much too quickly... We don't really bottom out. Even in our worst recent years we never got any great picks. If the decisions weaken us too much, then the silver lining will be us getting some primo draft picks, which we never got during our last rebuild. If we don't bottom out, then it probably shows that we made the right decision, and probably shows we should have made the call sooner.

Time will tell, as it usually does. IMO the worst case scenario would be to be fighting for a top 8 spot in the last half of the year. I don't want the clubs eyes to light up and for them to sacrifice a development year in the hopes of finishing 8th and getting smashed in an interstate final. Develop players. Develop gameplan. Develop some accountability into our otherwise (IMO) great culture. Don't chase a finals berth. Play every game to win it, but don't shape our year around aiming for finals, shape it around finding out what we need to achieve our next cup, getting a good look at our current cattle, and then working towards developing the appropriate squad to properly challenge in the future.

 

[Thats Wright]

Good post. That I can understand. I guess from my perspective to get rid of all 3 and then lose Wells (not sure if the club knew it was coming - if they did it makes it even more baffling to me) is cleaning the slate a bit too much all at once. As I said, he wouldn't have to play every game and in all reality at worst he could have just been plonked in the forward 50 to crumb goals. I guess we'll see but in my mind he would have been pretty handy to have around next year.

The problem with Harvey, Wells, Dal Santo, Thomas etc is that when the going gets tough, the opposition could steamroll this lot through pure aggression.

It's always been there. They all were and are easy to run through or soft/weak/tiny.

If your best players or even the selfish clowns that always get in the way (Thomas) are this type - small, small forward, largely outside, meek or even lazy and selfish.. you might as well accept you'll always fall short. The tougher teams/players just won't tolerate these types when it really matters.

 

[Bojan KantKick]

Even when we were winning games last year, we couldn't stop the opposition kicking big scores against us. Boomer and Dal were at the heart of this problem as they provided no defensive pressure. It wasn't just them but they were constantly bad. Drew's tradionally provided excellent defensive pressure for a KPF but he dropped off last year too. Need a few hungry kids in there who know that their effort will be rewarded.