moshe25 wrote:
Kouta was a great player, but no leader - just scammed the club for as much as he could get.
Bradley was a great player, but no leader - trained on his own till he got what he wanted.
Ratts - great inspirational player, but can't imagine him as a leader; we never heard from him in public.
Campo - phht!
Lappin - set good examples off field......
Lance - surely you jest.
Allen - phht!
Wanna see good leaders? They're good leaders ON and OFF field. They're not necessarily champion players, but they represent the club and you get what the club stands for the second they open their mouths. See Nick Maxwell, Tom Harley, Joel Selwood, Cameron Ling, Luke Hodge, Jared McVeigh.
None of our above named players hold a candle to any of these when it comes to leadership. And none of the present crop do either.
Oh for a Big John or a Mike Fitzpatrick, easily our two best captains of the past 50 years.
...agree with most of that moshe (25)
The point I wanted to raise was that those B level leaders were still better than anything we have now...and that includes Judd who is on a par with a Dean Rice or an Earl Spaulding of the 1995 group...
(bit hard on Kouta I think, he would have given more to the club on and off the field than his all contracts were worth. I spoke to a Board member (you know him as an ex player) a long time ago when Kouta was at his peak, and he told me that he has never seen such a huge fan response to any player at Carlton in his time - and he played in the 70 premiership)
I have been harping on about leadership continuity since SOS and bradley left and Pagan arrived. You could see the writing on the wall, there were just a few seeds of leadership left to use for the next crop of leaders. Pagan severed the seedlings (I have my theories as to why this happened) and then Ratten and the club couldnt or wouldnt do anything about this critical area of the club and team.
A strong player leadership group can patch over other weakneses at the club - sometimes even snatch a flag.
This area is one Parkins 8 critical areas which he outlined to me and some other Carlton tragics one night at training.
The senior coaching role was not on the list. You can actually not quite get the coach right, and still succeed.
The 2 critical areas he listed at the top were "recruitment" and then "development"
The skipper was the most important individual at the club (more so than presidents, board memebrs, benefactors, past players, coaches etc)
(Lance Whitnall out on the Field was a first rate leader for the Kids - knew how to play the game with the big boys at the age of 16. I remember watching him carve up Deal Wallace at the MCG in his first game (?) as an 18 year old. Crafty Sheedy thought he could intimidate Lance with Dean Wallace, but had to take Wallace off the ground. We know about Lances off field issues. Once saw him being asked to leave the gaming room at Princes Park after training - he wasnt 18 and was playing the pokies. Big R had to ask him to leave)
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