What a great hour of David Parkin being interviewed by Daniel Harford and Jason Richardson this morning !

Parko gave the greatest insight into the workings of Brett Ratten, who he talks to at least once every week still.....how as a player; he was always the one tugging his sleeve at game breaks as he was leaving the ground ...with new or different ideas that they may be able to try.

How he was always knocking on his door with ideas for self or team improvement ideas.

How he was left out of the 15 "Team Leader" Group when he was a lowly back pocket; and how he complained to Parko that he knew "heaps more than some of those guys what has to be done; and I should be in that group"

Parko talked about the "self empowerment" adopted by the 1995 Premiership side during that year; and how they virtually "Won the Flag" without him.

He talked about the incredible leadership shown by Mike Fitzpatrick....especially in big games; and the same incredible leadership shown by Sticks.

He said the greatest Big Game player was the Dominator; and he cited a game between Carlton and Fitzroy when he and Wallsy swapped Clubs.

Dom completely ironed out a Fitzroy player early in the game; and Jimmy Wynd of Fitzroy and others got really stuck into Dom after that until......the Fitzroy runner said on the intercom that "Wayne Johnston's got a message for you".....and Parko said "what is it?".....he said that Dom said " Is that the best you've got?"

He talked at length about Wayne Brittain; and how he was under estimated; and how John Elliott "Appointed a Name Coach to save his arse"

It was an enthralling hour....unfortunately; I was in the car.....did anyone tape it for the Blueseum?....I loved it.

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No ones listening till you make a mistake.

Parko's a legend. Both of this club, and just in general.

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#GUILTY

A fantastic Hour of radio.

The last 2 features on John Kennedy and Jezza were also brilliant.

These boys do a good interview letting the guest do most of the talking.

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Stay tuned We're in for a BUMPY ride

It was great to hear Parko talk about the behind the scenes of coaching and its incredible all the people he has been a mentor too.

He also said it was time for Sticks to step back a bit and enjoy the fruits if his labour.

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Ich bein ein Carltonian

Did Parkin talk about how he completely got the art of recruitment all cocked up and that by ignoring Under 18 Junior TAC talent and trying to find "mature bodied senior players from the SANFL, WAFL" etc that he really flowered up the future of the club.

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"Hence you will not say that Greeks fight like heroes but that heroes fight like Greeks"?

Winston Churchill

Agro,

I think he come out publicly stating it was a major mistake, but had to follow JE's edict, there is no such thing as rebuilding. The board (JE) controlled a lot of which direction the recruiting went. The other thing was that they believed they had an opportunity for a final dig for a flag at the end of 2000/2001.

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Leaders do not care what other people say about them. When people start talking crap about you, thats when you know you've made it

He did actually recognise that he was to blame to some extent for the pathetic recruiting. He has been doing this a bit more often over the past few years and finally it is good to hear it come from his own mouth.

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Was it Pagan who wanted us to trade pick 2 (Walker) for Nathan Brown?

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"Dont count the games, make the games count"

Parkin was a great coach and will forever be thankful that he was our coach.

However in this matter he was clearly wrong - and I think JE was more reliant on Parkin's advice in this regard than the other way around.

Parkin had a theory - that it was wrong to draft 17/18 year olds straight out of the TAC system - and thought that drafting mature 21/22 year olds out of the SANFL and WAFL would give us a strategic advantage, Elliott bought this theory.

The only problem was that the TAC pathway by that time had syphoned all the precocious talent and there was precious little left going through to the SANFL and WAFL and to a lesser extent the Victorian Country Leagues.

We recruited a "plethora" of mature bodied "duds" in the 90s when we shoudl have been recruiting the talent from the TAC system.

This was Parkins theory and fault - and Elliott relied on Parkin's advice it was not necessarily an Elliott directive.

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"Hence you will not say that Greeks fight like heroes but that heroes fight like Greeks"?

Winston Churchill

things go round and round . . .

Maybe if he hadn't adopted that recruiting policy, we wouldn't have won the 95 flag based as it was on a few recycled players such as Clape, Spalding, Mitchell, Heaver and a few others.

We can't always have it both ways.

Yes it did us some damage and coupled with the draft pick penalties, we copped a double dose.

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Everything before the word "but" is horseshit - J Snow

It wasn't the recycled players I had a problem with.


It was the duds like:


- Stephen Edgar,
- Grant Povey

And others of that ilk to numerous to mention.

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"Hence you will not say that Greeks fight like heroes but that heroes fight like Greeks"?

Winston Churchill

I was in and out of the car too, so missed chunks of it, but there was a fair backhander to Pagan I thought.

Parkin said that he believed after the empowerment in 95, the players came to him with a different idea in 97, then he said it was appropriate to move to something else in 99. In other words be flexible, do what works best with the group of players.

He said the worst thing you could do was think the same method would work time and time again in different eras and with different players.

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Get comfortable being uncomfortable