Can't believe I've logged on here for the first time in 3 days and there is no criticism of Denis Pagan. For those of you whose reponse is "well what's he supposed to do..." you've obviously never had anything to do with sport at a high level. He should have accepted some responsibility for the loss on Saturday. Now I'm not privy to the inner sanctity of the Carlton lockerrooms - and neither is anyone on this board - but for the last 3 weeks his coaching has been awful...

Why did he leave Heath Scotland on the ground? 6 clangers in the first 3 quarters!! The guy should have had a red nose on and big floppy shoes and he would have had a better game! There was obviously some confusion among the Carlton boys around the word 'Accountability' and what it means. Does Adrian DeLuca think he's small? because he plays like it...play tall archie because you are!! Pagan...you stink...you have one idea and it ain't working with this team.

And to the guy behind me who thought Fevola would have helped...rubbish...he would have been moved to the backline! And the bloke who thought Wells and Goddard would have helped! Forget about it! Wells is getting splinters in his arse at north and goddard is hardly setting the world on fire at the aints. Reality check....Denis - play the youngsters (and the Irish) ...see if the boys can play...Simmo showed plenty of heart and character...perhaps David Clarke will do the same on Friday night!

Dr Sherrin,

You need to see a doctor.

Ahh nothing like a deeply thoughtful critique.

Nothing Denis could have done today with a team that played without guts, endeavour and any semblance of skill.

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"Whoever said you can't buy happiness forgot about puppies." - Gene Hill

Was about to start a thread on our gameplan.

Agree with you to a point Dr. The thing is to me is that our gameplan has been well and truely worked out and yet we have done little to 'throw off' teams.

Everybody knows exactly what we are going to do and when.

Time for some changes I think.

Keep Waite at CHF he wants the responsibilty so give him a run, instead of having Lance tied down where the opposition can jump all over him and then thrown into defence when it is too late, cut him loose and make the opposition chase him. Lances ability to find space when played like this is second to none

I like Wallaces theory of having a marking player shoot at goal within the F50, we should do the same.

Also we do not switch play across the ground, we keep banging straight back up the line into congestion, so lets free it up a little and use the switch more.

Instead of continually trying to come up the corridor, lets go wide, particularly up the 'fat' side and allow Fev to lead into space, he is a brilliant kick on the angle so I cannot see the problem.

At the moment we are to predictable and staid, changes in approach should be considered.

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A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty" -Winston Churchill

L.M 35-06

in some respects he's been "outcoached" all year.

i get frustrated at the way in which the opposition has been allowed to set up easy counter-attacks with that loose man in defence. i've also been critical of the initial game structure. some of the rotations, or lack of, have been puzzling, but that's always gonna happen. i would also like to see him make a commitment to play guys like walker and simmo in a set role, rather than here, there & everywhere hole pluggers.

BUT, would you prefer denis to set up like the some of the others? play a loose man, then do that chip, chip, chip shit? it may give us a few soft victories now but it will be at the cost of over-estimating our list.

there's nowhere to hide under denis' gameplan ... and some guys are being shown to be wearing no clothes.

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... an eagle flew out of the night. he was something to observe, came in close i heard a voice, bending stretching every nerve, had to listen had no choice ...

Sorry to turn this into a Mr Left and a Mr Right.. with you always being left and me always being right Mark..
We dont have a Richo... thats the CHF some of us have been crying out for.. you know the one that takes contested marks?
Whitnall cant find room anymore..especially when Fev isnt there.

As for criticism on Denis by Sherrin.. well i dont think Denis is the best match day coach either.. he is more than a match day coach. What he does is instills a style of play into his team. Its a process that in due course theyre doing all the right things. Come batch day he tweaks on that. You cant go tweaking something thats disfunctional because noone (when i say noone i mean the leadership group) arent doing what theyre meant to be doing... like.... man on man football to point out an obvious Denis mantra... Show me where our leadership group have set the tone for man on man football...
Its not the game plan its the execution because some players arent doing what theyre meant to be doing.. which makes players like Walker , Wiggins , Sporn etc confused. Because your coach is telling you to do one thing and the leadership group is doing another...

Unless they fly the Pagan and Carlton flag all were doing is shuffling the chairs on the Titanic.

These blokes have singlehandedly demolished the confidence in the game plan we had worked for in the pre season by just getting complacent and comfy...

Id love to see one of them dropped this week.

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Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas, and oil....... the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Not Pagans fault...we have too many pawns and not enough quality chess pieces for Pagan to move around the board.....not enough talls and not enough strong bodied players......same story as for the past 3-5 years...

Pagan encourages running with the ball, he encourages switching play and running to create.
Players cease doing those things when they are under pressure.
Especially our players who have an established lack of belief from sustained failure.
They lose confidence and refuse to take risks for fear of failure.

Those aspects cant be completely eradicated by one Wizard Cup win.

It takes time.
We have too many confidence players on our list who can be good AFL players when at their best and very poor when they lose confidence.
10 of our players on Saturday have played VFL football this year.
Then we have players like McGrath, Morrell, Clarke etc running around there this week.
Our midrange is too erratic and we will continue to get results like these until our youngsters gain more gametime.

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

Went back though your predictions Synbad, seems you got last years draft completly wrong, you were tipping lots and lots of trades, humble me said we would go to the draft as we wouldn't catch the other clubs asleep again. And going to the draft is the way to go atm unless something really good comes up, otherwise you are just topping up.

Anyways, a good coach not only implements a game plan, but implements one that takes advantage of your players strenghts, it is fine to bang on endlessly about who we need and in time we might get them and that can be addressed at seasons end. but as the Taoists say, we need to deal with the now (Bruce Lee was big on this as well). And right now our gameplan has been worked right out so making changes that takes advantage of strength and minimise weakness (as Sun Tzu said) makes a lot of sense.

As for Whitnall not being able to break free, gee what were you doing during the last quarters against Essendon* and Hawthorn? When Lance is freed up he is damaging when he is tied down he gets jumped all over by multiple oppoents. Make the oppoent react to you (Sun Tzu again).

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A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty" -Winston Churchill

L.M 35-06

I agree entirely BV.
Another thing i look at is positive effect on team mates.
How many of our players have a positive effect on their team mates out on the field...
We dont have enough players that can enthuse, add passion , do the inspirational out there.
we look tired and wanting... and yet we have the youngest list in the AFL.

I always harp back to 'SETTING THE TONE' we dont have enough players who set a positive tone...

Imagine if Kouta had run through that player at CHF who was trying to pick up the ball when Kouta just pulled up....??
When is the last time we really had a big man like Lance or Kouta really give it to the opposition players?

Sometimes your blokes.. Barney included.. though we wouldnt want Barney at the tribunal would we??? wed miss out on making the 8 then...) they just have to run through a player when he is there to be hit.
see a 50/50???? Smash the guy and look around and say to your man.. wait till youre lined up...!!!!

We dont have anything like that.. ou dont have to be the toughest biggest guy to do it either.. you just need the balls.

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Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas, and oil....... the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Agreed.

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A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty" -Winston Churchill

L.M 35-06

As much as I think Pagan is the man, I agree with that he is being outcoached right now. His refusal to man up on the extra man in our forward line is killing us and too keep harping on a Wayne Carey type of CHF is what is needed is quite embarrasing. As an AFL coach you should be able to work with what you have and not pretend you have others.

Sun Tzu played badmington for China...
Make the opponment react to you... you mean like how Lance makes the opponment react to him???
Or Campo..????

Mate theyre drilled.. they know what they should be doing.. this isnt rocket science.. you dont call the air force in!! you dont have the cavalry coming from behind the hill where they were hiding..
youre playing footy against 22 other guys.
you chase .. run with the ball..contest and kick the ball through the big sticks..

Sun Tzu??? WTF??????
How many goals did he kick?
What position did he play????
Does he know how to bounce a football???
Can he kick on either foot??
Take a contested mark?
Does he know what an inside fifty is?

When is the last time he won a premiership ???


Why dont you bring in a John Kennedy Senior or a Yabby Jeans analogy.. something thats relevant to a football game played on a football field between two sides with an odd shaped ball???

They taught what Denis teaches... the game may have changed in skills but the object will always be get the ball in long to the top of the square cos thats where youre going to be most dangerous.

`How you do it is semantics.. one thing is for sure Denis has been very succesful doing just that till he came to us. even with a shithouse North Melb side with ageing oplayers and without Carey they did it 3 years ago...

why????Cos the players knew what was expected and they just did it!!!

Hard is it???

Whats Sun Tzu got to do with the Carlton Football club??
Oh i know we can have Buddhist monks protecting Optus oval from the enemy invaders ...North from Arden Street land...???

If you get too technical with players that cant even do the basics youre going backwards.. do the basics , get the guts of the team playing a particular style that works and then you tweak the players in and out of the list...

Not that hard on the surface but it does require effort and sacrifices to be made..but then thats whyn they get paid the bucks!! they dont get paid the bucks to play at the park and do what they want to do...when they feel like doing it.

Oh and Mark?Denis will trade what he can trade again... cos as you can see its not working!!!.. not that the game plan isnt working cos they have to play to the game plan to judge that...

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Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas, and oil....... the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off. We apologize for the inconvenience.

One aspect that we got wrong was the starting group in the centre square. Why don't we play Kouta there. Isn't he leading center clearances. We had Prender in there which often led to him and Barnaby attacking the ball in the air and then being left one short on the ground. Though it looked like Richmond had 3 or 4 more at gtound level they were so dominant.


Barnaby had to rove his own hit outs half the time. For a big bloke he does OK at ground level.

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“Before you criticise someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticise them, you're a mile a way and you have their shoes."

French had the opportunity to run through someone on Saturday and pulled up like a gentleman. That's not the way to play.

We need some toughness. Waite tries to contribute in that area, and McGrath tends to be a little that way as well, as does Carrazzo.

We fail in the strength and toughness area, we can't get a tackle to stick with the opposition constantly getting away from us.

Fix that, and we'll go a long way to winning a hell of a lot more games.

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NOW YOU'RE JUST SOME CLUB THAT I USED TO KNOW.

Denis has always been one dimensional- even at North. But what he had at North we dont have- a Huge centre half forward.
Its not a matter of the coaches suddenly "working us out" they all know how the Pagan game plan works- they have been watching it for 10 years.

Do you honestly believe that Coaches hadnt worked North out in the 90's? Of course they had, its just that North were able to play their game plan better than anyone else could play theirs. A simple game plan can have that effect - if it is simple then you can do it in your sleep- you become such a well oiled machine that you dont have to worry about the other teams game plan- just make sure you execute yours. BUT you have to have the right KPP in place- We dont -simple as that.
Fevola is not a Carey. Where are our other big strong bodies in the forward line? Deluca?- Pigs arse. Waite- is a few years away.

We need some refining in the KPP department and another top line Midfielder. Then We will be able to put Pagans game plan into action- week in week out

They need to be led dont they MArk????
There are other young kisaround the other clubs that are developing faster cos they have someone out there to learn from....
Riewoldt and Kosi have been around for as long as Wiggins and Sporn.. not saying Wiggo and Sporn should be as good as those 2 cos theyre blue chip..but shouldnt they be getting confident and less confused by now?
Shouldnt there be someone out there to give them a hand and teach them the caper on the job out where its played in the middle??
what can Kouta or Campo teach Wiggins about professionalism and team work..when their man is cutting through the midfield like a hit knife through butter cos they dont man up???

Hard for the kids isnt it??? Youd think it would be easier for them if they had a Kouta , Lance or Whitnall around them..

True we dont have many older types.. so its left to a half a dozen and we do have more kids in the side at the one time than we would like.. Thats only because out older players 2 years ago had the same mentality as the older ones today but they didnt have contracts as long and as heavy...

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Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas, and oil....... the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off. We apologize for the inconvenience.

SunTzu is considered to have been one of the greatest strategists of all time. Many of the geat Military leaders have studied him and so have many of the most successful coaches, Sheedy, Malthouse and Parkin all spring to mind for an AFL context. Sun Tzu was a Taoist, not a Buddhist, while both thought sytems do share some similarities, particularly around the origins of the universe, they are different in most respects. Buddhists have monks Taoism does not, is a key difference. Sit down and read Sun Tzu for lateral thinking and then read Lao Tzu on how to be humble.

As for being drilled, well every great team has always had the ability to adapt thier game when needed. It is called Plan B

PS I am going to start a count everytime you mention contracts.

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A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty" -Winston Churchill

L.M 35-06

and there in lies the problem

we have no plan b

its eithe plan a works or we play like crap and either get flogged or scrap wins togather.

Plan A can work - thats for sure, see Wizzer Cup

but Plan A hasnt worked in the proper season, and we certainly havent tried anything else so we mustnt have a plan b

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Got to love the stare Down by Setanta on Llyod

Sort of agree George but the way the tribunal is at the moment he might have got rubbed out and imagine where we would be without Barney.

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"Whoever said you can't buy happiness forgot about puppies." - Gene Hill