Braithy wrote:
Developing, is the least of our worries, tbh. Tom Hawkins has been on the geelong list for 6 years and couldn't kick until recently -- ie 3 weeks ago!. We, as fans, need patience with the developing.
I really wish people would stop using Geelong as some kind of predictor as to our future.
"Geelong stuck by Thompson... we should stick by Ratten" "Tom Hawkins took a few years to come on, so will Levi"
Seriously, we're nowhere near Geelong. Nowhere near them.
It's not just going to click over summer, and we'll wake up one day and win our 2 flags in 3 years as per Sticks' mandate.
We haven't won more than 3 games in a row since my teenage kids were infants. We have guys on the list for 3 years who don't get good enough to warrant a senior AFL game. Our president is hapless. His vice-president is the wife of a guy who was once a great businessman but who is now dead, and her thing is being an arts patron. Our coach is dead in the water. We sacked our head recruiter but for some bizarre reason, kept him at the club as second in charge of recruiting.
The club isn't the next Geelong. We're a bees-dick away from being the next Richmond (at least Richmond as they were 1980-2010... thirty years of middling performances, poor club culture, infighting, politics, and frustrated fans remembering the good old days and trying to figure out how it all went so horribly wrong).
Sticks, though. HE thinks we're the next Geelong, and it'll just happen. No sane President would publicly announce 2 flags in 4 years (just like Geelong) if he didn't think so. Our senior coach was even in on the act: "We'll follow the 'Geelong model' and rest up players for finals".
To paraphrase a certain MLB manager:
There's Geelong
Then there's Hawthorn and Collingwood and West Coast and Sydney
Then there's 50 feet of shit
Then there's us.
Our development is rubbish, and it's never clearer to see than when we get a guy into the system from a good club like Geelong. Day 1 of Jeremy Laidler... he's been at Carlton for 5 minutes (and couldn't even get a game at Geelong) and he already looks like he knows how to play the game... and guys who've been in OUR system still look like Auskickers in comparison.
My kids won't see a Carlton premiership unless this club has a very bloody serious and very hard look at itself. Which, by definition, ISN'T a suburban financial planner by the name of Adrian Gleeson giving the football operations his annual once-over.
Carlton is run like a suburban club with a lot of money. Season 2012 was just another reminder of that.
Geelong weren't "Geelong" prior to 2007 and looked miles off too just like we do now. In hindsight they ended up a super side but they were as frustrating and as disappointing as us prior to that with much of the same problems. After Round 5 in 2007, with 2006 in mind, at 2-3 there was no way they were getting close to a flag. We know how that turned out. As for the next Richmond, they've made 2 finals series in 30 years, we've just come off 3 in a row.
What Geelong did, and this is where many of your points are correct, they got the right people in to sort the club out to take them where they are today.
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