Taking into account my expectations coming into the season, I score Carlton's efforts in the season proper as:

8/10


I expected to just sneak into the 8 and we bettered that.
I expected us to win at least one of our games against the headless chickens so there's a mark off for that.
I expected us to beat all the bottom 4 teams every time we played them so we lose a mark for the Freo game.
I expected us to still struggle against some of our 'bogey' sides which we have done.


Next season I expect top 4 and to end a couple of our longer losing streaks.

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"One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds." - Frank Zappa

7/16 (where 1 is best).

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Formerly: Ackland the Wonderkid / Army the Wonderkid / quivering mess / molsey / Tony Lynn Fan Club

7/10 - Could have been top four but for 2 4pt losses where we should have won. But then again I thought we wouldn't make the 8 when Waite got injured.

Get a full season out of Jamo and Waite next season and we'll be top 4 easy.

6/10

Still crap at kickouts and too hesitant in moving the ball swiftly and cohesively up the field.
Still too reliant on Fevola and easily read and negated by the opposition.

Starting to address the poor professionalism of the playing group of past years is a big positive.

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There's so much I could say...

a) Season not finished (I know H&A but we must now think of a season as 26wks or we will play like we did on Sat)
b) Currently, we are just holding on to 'par' - 7/10
Par = Finishing 7th-9th.
c) If we win one final, we rise to just better than par, 8/10; win 2 finals & its 9/10 etc... (win 3 finals 10/10; win 4 11/10!!!)

As it stands, we have some good, clear things to work on for next year. The finals will determine priorities and if there are any more things.

Currently:
- Forward structure (and in particular, how we bring the ball into the forward line - which is just as much about midfield strategy)
- Kick-ins from behinds
- Working for each other
- Stoppages & clearances (I was amazed at how often we were smashed in clearances, even when we won
- Get the tentativeness out of our game, both with and without the ball. When we played with clear purpose & commitment, we played well. When we were tentative, we did not.

Indicators of progress next year would include no losses by more than 40 points.
No losses to bottom 6 teams.
Consistency of effort and performance levels.

Now, let's go ahead and beat the Lions for the 3rd time this year!

Individual players have come on in leaps and bounds. These guys improved as individual footballers, and we won more games because of it - (in number order):

Russ, Murph, Gibbs, Kreuz, Setanta, Bowser, Eddie, Austin, Hamma, Army, Waite, Thornton, Houla, Jammo, Joey.

Unfortunately the way the team links up and plays as a unit has seen virtually no improvement.
The set plays and structures are virtually still at "Ground Zero" almost 50 games into a new coaching set up. The icing on the cake was 7 goals conceded from kickouts on Saturday. It took until Round 19 to begin attempting play through the corridor rather than the wings.

My rating of the games

Rich - In hindsight, not too much to take from the game. We ruined their season

BL - Impressive win

Ess - Unmitigated disaster, conceded the corridor. I don't blame the coach too much for this one - the boys didn't turn up.

Syd - Football and coaching lesson from a structured outfit with less talent.

Foot - Great win against a team on which we match up well

Haw - a coaching disaster. Forget Fev, should've won by 5 goals. 31 inside 50's to 19 at half time and we trailed by 2 points. I'll never forget that stat. We did everything better than the Hawks that day but had no structure at all.

Freo - another disaster, we left their forward line way too open and battled around the boundary

Coll - beat their reserves

Adel - Fev at CHB, Ratts admits the errors - they make a mockery of us regardless.

WC - terrible football game against a team going through the motions

BL - Impressive win, Fev on fire, Judd seals it in a commanding performance

Stk - Down by 6 goals in 10 minutes then threw caution to the wind, playing our most exciting footy this year. This was the first we saw of the 'heart-in-mouth handball through the middle' that seemed to be our best footy.

Ess - Woe. The most damning performance. Same coaching errors as in Round 3.

Frem - Season appeared to be over. Coach's career was being questioned in the media at half time. Then a deity named Judd descended from heaven and took the 4 points with his own two hands in Carlton's best individual performance of season. Unimpressive win but Judd had changed the season.

Rich - The Fev show, but still lucky to win after Rich missed a lot of goals in Q3.

Syd - A poor first half that again exposed our structures. The coaches to their credit made wholesale changes at half time leading to an annihilation in the second half. Kreuuuuz emerges.

Coll - Exposed by a well drilled outfit. Again

NM - Sneak through in our luckiest win of the year, 0.9 from NM in Q4. Unfulfilling but 4 points

Geel - Just as we were losing all faith the "heart-in-mouth handball through the middle" returns and we look awesome. Rusty emerges. It all works. A rare moment where it all just clicked.

PA - Did what we needed to do against the flat track bullies. Responded when questioned. Marc Murphy supreme

Mel - training drill farce due to the priority pick. Just wanted no injuries - our best grunt midfielder broke his arm

Adel - Exposed by a well drilled outfit. Again. An astonishing seven 7-point plays conceded.


That just about sums up the last 22 weeks of my life.

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They will know that they've been playing against the famous old dark blues

Are you rating the season of 2009 with regard to your pre-season expectations or are you rating the actual team itself?
Not rebutting your post, just trying to understand it better.

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"One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds." - Frank Zappa

Pretty much how i would've graded us except i expected us to beat the scum twice.

Oh how i loathe them.

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When you're a Jet you're a Jet all the way!

This time i am almost in total agreement with S.Verbeek.

We are patting ourselves on the back for taking the step we had to take - that is, make the finals. In that sense, I agree that we can't complain.

Maybe I am being greedy then, but I do think about the "what ifs" and also factor them into our performance for the year. What if Fev hadn't hit the post? What if we had got our sh!t together for the 1st bombers game and the 1st freo game? The season suddenly looks a lot better, and in truth why make excuses for what we did in those games (can't blame the poster in the hawks game, but it should have been over well before that kick).

Weighing the "should'ves" up, I reckon the H&A season has been a tad disappointing. We are moving in the right direction, but taking smaller steps than perhaps we should have. Hawthorn last year showed what happens when the collective takes 2 steps fwd rather than 1.

Anyway, let's start afresh for the finals - anything can happen from here - go blue bouzza!

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"You're my boy(s), Bluuuee(s)..."

7/10

At our best we can and have matched it with any side in the comp.
At our worst, we play like a bottom 4 side.

To me this is not a bad thing because we were always going to be inconsistent being such a young side. We know the sky is the limit and we know that on our day we can beat any side and as the team matures we are only going to get better and there is exciting times for the next few years.

We are developing some pretty good depth which again is only going to improve with the off season list turnover and drafting some new exciting talent to the club.

But the season isn't over yet and although it is extremely unlikely, I still hold hopes for some major success this year!

I'm thinking 6/10.

Making finals earns us a pass mark (5), making finals by 2.5 games gives us a 6 imho.

Plenty of improvement left in us, and if fewer injuries and a bit of luck, we could've made it into top 4.

Like to think our midfielders could work on their fitness more and use it defensively (the other way) for next year. Something we really lacked most of the year, but have won us enough games to get into the 8. Perhaps the difference in not making top 4.

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

10 out of 10

we aimed for finals, we are playing finals - perfect.

The rest is about desire

for fulling my desires 13 out of 22.

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This type of slight is alien in the more cultured part of the world - Walsh. Its up there with mad dogs, Englishmen and the midday sun!

I wish you were my HSC Chemistry teacher back in 1980

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If I want your opinion, I'll give it to you!

why, didn't you fulfill his desires?

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This type of slight is alien in the more cultured part of the world - Walsh. Its up there with mad dogs, Englishmen and the midday sun!

9/10 for mine

Goal was finals and we made the finals (as opposed to just sneaking in ie Essendon*)

We also made the finals whilst having to cope with some fairly significant injuries throughout the season. Below are some of the injury 'highlights' that I think have had a material impact on our performances this season (and in previous seasons the loss of these players would have been disastrous)

fev - ankle hampered him for a large part of the season
carazzo - missed 8 games due to injury
walker - missed 17 games due to injury
warnock - unsighted due to injury
waite - missed 13 games due to injury
wiggins - missed 10 games (large % due to injury)
jacobs - missed 10 or so games due to injury
scotland - injury interrupted preseason
jamison - missed 9 games due to injury

Other players with injury affected seasons include - bower, thornton, grigg, hadley, ohailpin, armfield, hampson, johnson

Personally I rate the H&A season as a 8/10 regardless of what we do in the finals.

We have seen a team passion and pride emerge throughout the season, with the boys responding when challenged (for the most part)

Skills have generally improved, but I believe that our injuries have been as bad as many other teams, yet for some reason it is not an excuse for us, although it is for every other team that we play. I would expect that having a fit back six play every week this year would have seen alot more consistancy than we have seen.

Next year I hope that Jamo, Waite, Bower, Thornton, Armfield and Joseph can play all year together to really start building a premiership backline.

I would expect to see a big improvement in stucture next year and see our boys run and spread alot more than we have seen. Particularly from kick ins where we simply don't create enough movement to give the backmen a clear option to kick to.

Anyway, Go Bluebaggers scare the crap out of everyone

yes I did, but that didn't hold any weight with the Board Of Education.

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If I want your opinion, I'll give it to you!

Ill give us a B, weve made the finals and played good and bad at times throughout the year.

yes but the board is working to a bell shaped curve

we're playing on an oval shaped ground.

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This type of slight is alien in the more cultured part of the world - Walsh. Its up there with mad dogs, Englishmen and the midday sun!

yeah but they both have ding a lings in them

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If I want your opinion, I'll give it to you!