Youngsters Vs Seniors

[docko911]

What is worse, playing senior players and losing by 50 or playing youngsters and losing by 50?

Apparently you need some senior players to add experience to the team...

Bulls***

So far troy simmonds, shane tuck, ben cousins and jake king have provided nothing to the team. relton roberts whilst not experienced is already 24 and has showed virtually nothing (why are we wasting our time). matt white and adam thomson both 23 tried at afl and have severely failed barring phenomenal performances at VFL level neither should be considered. Then you have mcmahon and polak who havent played yet and shouldnt play as they are part of our failed wallace era that provide no benefit to the club.

So if we forget about these players we will only have two players over 24 playing moore and newman (who could both be considered good enough at AFL level) and then we have a host of young developing players. We cant do any worse then we are already doing and at least we will be developing our young players.

So is there any reason to play our senior players?

 

[CQTiger]

I wish we had recruited some mid aged players to give some excitement this year. We certainly wouldn't lose every game by 50 with some older players. There is no direction and these young players will develop a losing mentality before long. At least when we had Richo there was someone to draw a crowd Wake me at the start of round 1 2011

 

[CotchNCoke]

2013 is the target but don't write of BennyC just yet.

 

[ata33cro]

i wish B cousins would be fit enough to stay on for another year. We need his experience and skills around the club.

 

[BadGuy]

The biggest blow to us came when Richo retired early this year, sucks his hamstrings werent able to go one more season, as I think we could've done well with Richo in the side...

Cousins seems to be lost, either that or has given up, which I wouldn't blame him if he had, especially with how crap the team is playing thus far this year. Hopefully he stays for another year as he is needed.

I think one of our problems as a team is, we rely on only a few players to get us out of a rut, while the others just sit back and play with themselves... I think the team relies too much on Deledio, Foley, Cousins and Newman, aswel as Morton and the over-rated Riewoldt*, and the team doesn't try hard enough because what I have seen is, that they are hoping these guys can get the job done.

*Riewoldt, reason I say he is over-rated is, by looking on a lot of forums, a lot of Richmond fans believe he is the next big star player of the AFL and for Richmond, I honestly can't see it happening, I think if he played elsewhere, maybe he would be, but as of what I can see, he only pulls one good game out of his ass when he has too, otherwise could care less. (Again just my opinion).

 

[CotchNCoke]

I hope that happens ata. despite the drugs, alcohol, contraversy, he's still the best gut runner going around these days.

 

[THE THIN MAN]

Time to move the Cousins media circus on.

Cousins does not seem to have the same drive as last year.

It would free up another spot on our list.

 

[Mario Speedwagon]

*Riewoldt, reason I say he is over-rated is, by looking on a lot of forums, a lot of Richmond fans believe he is the next big star player of the AFL and for Richmond, I honestly can't see it happening, I think if he played elsewhere, maybe he would be, but as of what I can see, he only pulls one good game out of his ass when he has too, otherwise could care less. (Again just my opinion).

Firstly...it's "arse" not "ass" - that is what one calls a donkey here in the English speaking world, secondly...it's "couldn't care less" not "could care less"...as that implies there is a less amount one could care and therefore does infact care somewhat. Seriously, what are you? A stupid seppo?

Thirdly, we're all so glad you could make us your "second" team, behind a bullshit franchise who's yet to kick a ball in anger in the AFL and who's very manufactured existance is most likely going to contribute to ****ing us up for years.... and finally...sod off.

 

[tigerdan]

Can't believe the negativity of these posts.

I used to be against playing kids for the sake of playing kids (used to always argue with Beaver about it). I was worried that we'd end up with a team of Nick Daffy's who thought they just had to turn up, and who learnt bad habits.

Now I can see that we are doing this from scratch. We are not attempting to limit the extent of losses by playing a better team on paper. We are pouring games into the kids to the detriment of our short term win/loss ratio. Big Deal.

This means only using the experienced players if we absolutely have to, and that mainly means protecting the kids from too much physical contact which could make them break down or mentally scar them ala Zac Dawson. Exhibit A is the use of Simmonds this year to protect Vickery. Exhibit B is bringing Tuck back into the team only to replace some of the senior players. Exhibit C is that we have not used McMahon or King yet. We are playing Cousins because he shows the kids what it takes to be the best player in the competition.

My concern about the kids just having to turn up to get a game is offset by the fact that we now have so many kids on our list. If kid A starts getting lazy then we have kid B to replace him. In the past if Kid A got lazy we'd only have some pleb like Paul Hudson to replace him.

We are not tanking per se. We are using this year to pump as much game time into our kids as we can. Like I said earlier, 2010 is a 22-week preseason for us. 2011 may also be dire but we will start to see improvement as the kids develop. We'll also get pick 4 top up our young stocks again with a potentially great kid.

It kills me that 5 years of Wallace and 5 years of Spud sees us in this predicament. It is 1987 all over again, but the difference is we are not broke and we have excellent facilities. With the concessions the way they are, there is no choice but to go down this path, and I believe it will lead to success.

Any of the teams who topped up recently had better get a flag in the next 3 years or they are going to be like we were when Spud drafted Sziller and Hudson and when Miller drafted Johnson and Brown - screwed for the best part of a generation.