Um no, I know that the rebuilding at the clubs was a LONG process, I have no misconceptions over the ease which it would be to develop a new team with great structure and depth needed to secure a premiership. This is why I am not one of the people screaming out to recruit a Kerr, Brown (when he was unsigned) or O'Keefe. What I said was that a more hard-line approach which could secure another couple of early picks would do wonders for the side FROM 2011 AND ONWARDS (ala long term), but I think that the CFC is a little bit more "boys club" and protects their own.



I probably didn't make the point which I was trying to make here. What I was trying to, but never really did, get to was that this would take time as the group grows together and players learn their roles in the side. I think Ratts has done a great job, and I actually deleted a part of this section of my post pointing this up and over looked restating it. I know that the side will get there, but will take more than a quick recruiting of an older player to get their. Kids growing together as a team will help this process along.



And the Hawks midfield pressure, the Cluster which prevented the movement of the ball smoothly into the Cats forward line when coming out of defence, and the Hawks ability to rebound had NOTHING to do with game plans ??? Sure the Cats shot themselves in the foot with their poor disposal and conversion, but how much of that was due to the pressure applied by the Hawks ???



And the resigning of players such as Russel and Fisher before the end of the season leads me to think that the "hard decisions" wont be considered ................



Na, im too ugly for print ......................

well i think its more like the cats lost it rather than the hawks win it...hawks were more desperate and kept their wits. cats looked like they thought it will just happen if they relax.

we do need players like brad sewell, campbell brown, jordan lewis and luke hodge.

i agree that players like houlihan, carrazzo russell, fisher, stevens & scotland..are not in this league...

but, murphy, gibbs & judd are superior...the hawk boys personify desperado's... luke hodge is a bonafide gun...our boys have loads of class...which players like sewell, brown & lewis lack.

my obversations from the game that I think are applicable :
- Hawks although beaten in the clearances tackled and haressed hard and Geelong rarely ran straight towards goal. Lesson learnt is that you need to be fierce at the contest. Does not take a genious to figure out that this the most important part of winning consistently. Hadley seems to have been the forgotton man in our team but he is critical for us to succeed.
- While Roughhead and Buddy had little direct impact, they made Scarlett, and Mackie in particular accountable and Geelong lost some run as a result. Again call me captain obvious but we desperately need forwards that will force other defences to pay some respect to our forwards. At present we have 2 forwards Fev and Betts and the rest are just not good enough. We need to develop/recruit here.
- The hawks and geelong have both showed that zone defences are bloody hard to penetrate. This is something we need to develop and also learn how to overcome
- The hawks showed the capacity to change the tempo of the game. Their ability to be flexible held them in good stead at different times in the game
- Both teams showed how strong and tough they were and I thought both were even on this front - it was the pace of Bateman and Rioli that really stood out being a differentiator. We still have a lot of boys in the team that need to develop and we need use mR wALKER as our speed demon and we need to recuit at least one more

Final comment - as good as the hawks were Geelong must be disappointed to have lost a game they essentially controlled for long periods of the game. There is no doubt that they paniced somewhat and they chose the wrong option and became selfish under the pressure. The hawks need to be given credit here in this department and in particular Hodge they were awesome

_________________
The glass is neither half full nor half empty. Rather the glass is twice as big than required.

Imagine if the Bullies or someone else manage to win next year, we'll have to change the template for success again!

Lets hope we haven't taken on any of the Cats bad ways, we need to switch to the Hawks model pronto

_________________

Don't forget to incorporate a pinch of Collingwood's win over the Cats, coupled with a wee bit of the Doggies win over the Dawks, cobbled all together with the Dees come from behind win against the Lions and we will have ourselves a sensational team.

_________________
“It is a state of mind, a system of belief, a way of seeing the world, a deep faith that, because you are Carlton, you belong to something great.” - Mike Fitzpatrick articulating what Out of the Blue means.

Just a reminder...Hawthorn tried like hell to get Thornton into their rebuild.
I wonder what Pelchin and Clarkson would say about you wanting to trade him out of Carlton now?

_________________
Go BLues

So to win a premiership, we need to be skillful, hard running and consistent?

Thank you captain obvious

Hey pal - what can you offer? It may be obvious, but we lack all 3.

I'm just waiting to hear your thoughts - oh, you don't have any, then pick yourself up and find the hole you crawled out from and don't return until you have something constructive to say.

_________________
For some silly reason, you people want to assassinate him, and it's just rubbish. You people. All of you, ALL of you!

Take it easy people....take a deep breath before responding to each other

Good point.

They recruited players who can kick the dam thing.

Watch the game again!!

Young's kicking was appalling. Disposal efficiency of 47%. He(and Ellis) kept trying to centre the ball from wing/HBF and got it cut off.

_________________
"You can't polish a James Hird"

Super Recruiting & i am not even talking about the High Draft Picks they got ( Hodge & Franklin etc...).


Their rookie List produced players who were More than just Good. They were Damn Great, and it won them a Flag. Mitchell & Sewell come to mind

Why don't we just trade our complete squad minus Gibbs,Judd,Kreuser,Murphy or any number 1 pick because the rest are crap.lol as they were not a top 5 pick.

It takes time to get like Geelong and Hawthorn we still haven't got a CHF and Real Ruckman yet. Kreuser will be great but not sure where he will play most of his football Ruck,CHF or somewhere in the forward line who Rucks as well.

Getting rid of players that you have that might not be scoring like 50 goals because we haven't set up our forward yet is stupid,guy like Fisher can kick another 30 goals and Houilhan but can't really play CHF.

I think the most obvious is this:

Take your chances.

_________________
"Two roads diverged in a wood,
and I,
I took the one less travelled by,
and that has made all the difference."

Robert Frost

Young spudded a few kicks on his right foot and made a terrible clanger in the second term but overall his run and carry hurt the Cats big time.

The only player i'd trade a draft pick for is Daniel Kerr. You can never have enough midfielders and to hear people say they Daniel is not what we need i remind you at the start of this year and year before plenty of people were rating him above Judd.

Having a Daniel Kerr in the middle along side Judd free's up a Bryce Gibbs to play more off half back as the general and not so desperately needed in the middle

Saying that....

I see our position very similar to the Saints. They had a number of high draft picks and from that came this expectation of guaranteed success. The Saints failed putting together a solid second tier brigade and missed there opportunity.

It's about the second tier players. If you get that mix right you will go a long way. Getting it wrong and you might turn out like the Saints

what to do???

So the Cats won a flag in their 6th season of rebuilding and the Hawks won their flag earleir than expected, in their 4th season (of a 6 season plan).

So just to get this straight, what year are we into our rebuilding plan?

Our draft penalty concluded at the end of 2004, when we picked up our first first rounder in the draft in a long time at pick 9; Russell and 2nd rounder Hartlett and Bower (IIRC).

Whilst we were serving the draft penalties we were able to add Walker, Simpson, Fisher, Scotland and Stevens to our list.

Would I be correct that 2005 was the start of our rebuilding? And, we are into our 3rd year of rebuilding? At the conclusion of 2008, that's 4 years?

If so, last year was only the first year of AFL for Kreuzer, Browne and Hadley; Judd was added but as a ready made star (replacing our pick 4 Kennedy) and Hadley, as a hard bodied premiership player albeit only 24 yo.

The year's prior, 2006 and 2007, we picked up early round picks with Murphy, Gibbs, Hampson and Grigg.

We now boast a very competitive midfield, and yes as Melvey suggests we can do with another class act in the midfield like Kerr (every team can; he's an AA), but we still lack depth in the ruck, and have not secured our CHB or CHF for development imo; that's yet to come.

I will add this, at this stage (although I still hold hope), that Hartlett has been a failure thus far, even with Kennedy making way for him to take CHF, we still have holes to plug and players to develop.

Can we do that in this year's draft, and how much upside is there with our peripheral (depth) players on our list? I don'y know; the jusry is still out.

I think we're close, but I didn't see us setting the world on fire as Hawthorn has in it's 4th year. I'd suggest we 3-4 years behind Hawthorn in that case, but we're heading on a similar path, without having the blessings of no draft penalties, Norths gifted 2 first rounders and Freo's Croad-Hodge gifts.

I'm aligned with budzy's philosophy that we need hard nuts and 22 physical players on the field with the same level commitment at the contest, a CHF target to give us structure and multiple avenues forward.

Is there a Matt Clape or a Pearce out there for us to snag in this year's draft/ trade? What about a Harry Madden? Warnock? We've already added our Diesel (judd) and our Bradley (Murphy) and Ratten (Gibbs).

Not far to go, but not in our 5th year of rebuilding.

Oh yeah....anything can happen in football.

_________________
Everyone looks good in Navy Blue

What lesson can we learn

That you hope and pray Terry calls out Tambling and not Franklin


Wait a minute he did


Love to see where the Hawks would be with out him I reckon they would be struggling at the bottom of the eight

Well said. The point being, there's a lot of luck involved in the draft. But with trades, you make your luck happen.

_________________
Everyone looks good in Navy Blue