Greg Swann was interviewed during Harf time today. Some comments that I can recall:

- spoke about how landscape has changed and these 5 year plans now more commonplace.
- quantified 5 year target of 60 to 65 K members.
- target of 2 flags in 5 year period covered by the blue print.
- vague goal of reducing debt
- we are now in top bracket for spending on footy dept. Currently around $17.5 mill, Probably $2.5 mill behind pies and eagles. Said club was happy with how money is being spent especially re IT, facilitates and fitness staff. Commitment is there to spend more if required.
- expectations are high and improvement is expected. While ratts contract talks deferred to end of season the expectation is a combination of improvement in ratts development, input from new coaches and natural improvement of young players such as yarran, garlett and hampson will see club attain goals.
- club felt 2010 assistants were too green and set about bringing coaches who had greater and more varied experiences. New assistants have been fantastic.
- something about ratts undertaking personal development.
- wants to ensure fans kept informed and that their experience when dealing with club is good. Club will roll out some new programs during the year, no details given.
- new "no passengers" slogan is aimed at off-field staff, fans and on-field. Recognition that too much was being left to too few and players have been told to step up. Fans need to as well, but no detail as to how is was to be achieved, other than quoting that we're 3K members up from this time last year.

That's all I can remember for now as I've been out drinking after hearing podcast before leaving work.

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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 ...

JUst got in...I've been drinking too.

Thanks for the in news...onya.

Positive...which is great...but same old same old

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Everyone looks good in Navy Blue

Thanks for the report

Cheers Maxy.

Well done Swanny, that's exactly what they needed to start spitting out after laying down an over-arching and over-simplified road map. Sometimes people just want to hear the wheels turning, not see how many wheels there are.

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29 different attributes,
And only 7 that you like;
20 ways to see the world,
Or 20 ways to start a fight.

I heard it. Swann was asked about how realistic the targets (i.e. 2 flags) were and the tone of the reply indicated to me that they were not "core" targets, i.e. more asperational. I have been one of those who were critical of the "blue print" presentation - as being too broad and fluffy. The interview confirmed my concerns.

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TC suffers from the social media illness - the death of respect and constructive discourse by keyboard.

Cheers for the update maxy.

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Thanks for the info Maxy. Be interesting to know why the club appointed inexperienced coaches in the first place, and then removed them several years later for being too inexperienced. Suggests problems with the way we go about making appointment decisions and reflects on admin and board. Its a question most of us asked at the time, and the club decided to ask after three years.

The simple reason is probably the true reason i.e. 3 years ago we had NO money. Experience cost Gerry. Even an inexperienced Caoch who went to an Interstate team a few years back, was offered twice what we could and our offer wasn't chicken feed.

Regards Cazzesman

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Ricky Gervais - “Everyone has the right to hold whatever beliefs they want. And everyone else has the right to find those beliefs f***ing ridiculous.”

.........and the quality may not have been available for assistants. The best coaching staff in the world would have struggled to get our list (such as it was) to achieve much more than it did.

Without judging Ratts abilities, it would be fair to say that if Roo's, Matthews or Malthouse had been available, he may not have got the gig.

There was not much else jumping out at us, our list was still diabolical, so the appointment of Ratts made sense.

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I hope Essendon* folds.