I hope you’re right CK but 25 years without real success has really impacted my faith in this club.

Agree with a few on here saying this feels like a critical juncture for this group.

The way I see it we are improving the tangibles (talent on the list, game plan, coaching, skills, goalkicking etc). The talent on the list has steadily improved as we have developed our draftees. Our game plan has improved drastically from Bolton to Teague. The skills, although still not great, are slowly coming along - I haven’t seen a Carlton team look as crisp as the Geelong game since probably 2013. We certainly need to continue to improve these areas but comparative to the rest of the competition I think we rate ok. We’ve also got significant upside in this area with a young list, young coach and salary cap space.

However, where the big issue lies for me is the intangibles. The will to win, the win at all costs mentality, the mental preparedness / toughness, the belief etc. Over the past 20 years, us and Melbourne rank about equal last in the competition on this measure. Everyone other club has had more than fleeting moments where the intangibles of their group have been at least solid. The best we had for this was around 2009-2011 and it wasn’t sustainable. This issue is why we didn’t show up for 1.5 quarters in 3 out of 5 games, which we unsurprisingly lost. If we had showed up, we would have beaten Melbourne and who knows in the other two games.

We need to find a way to rectify this ASAP. Otherwise it threatens to derail an up and coming talented list. A group of players, coaches and key off field personnel (head of footy, list manager, head of conditioning) need to lead this. Stop talking about standards and start enforcing them. Set the standard that every player that pulls on the jumper plays with the right attitude and does the hard things (tackle, chase, pressure, smother etc) and, if they don’t, then they can’t play. The time for pats on the back are over and the time for key personnel in the club to look their mates in the eye and demand more is now. If we can’t get this right, I fear we are just bringing through another generation of players that are destined to not fulfil their potential.

Yep ! thats the way CK.........after all,we seem to avoid those floggings these days.We manage to keep ourselves in games even when we are playing shit,so yeah Ck,i'll take your take on it.

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All my dangerous friends

The other thing is, thanks to terrible injuries over the last coupole of years, we still have a lot of gelling to do. How many game have Jones & Weitering played together? How many under Teague?

Things will fall into place. Carlton by 176 points

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#DonTheStash

I don't think our problem is personnel as such - I'm of the belief that sos did a pretty good job in this area.

No, I think our major issue is much more concerning than that - our lack of desire and hunger for the contest seems to wax and wain not just from match to match or quarter to quarter but minute to minute. Until this team plays as a unit and becomes uncompromising in their attitude to win every contest we will continue to promise much and deliver little.

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Go Baggers...

Things can change very quickly these days.
Confidence and momentum.
Quarter to quarter, let alone week to week or season to season.

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Just throwing it out there.

Agree the personnel (from a skillset) might be there but did SOS recruit enough psychotic/white line fevered c...ts
Maybe he went too far with the civics and global citizenship and not far enough with the aforementioned attributes
Dunno???

And that's why I bang on about getting some successful, hard edged talent in our coaching brigade...someone mentioned Selwood...Would move heaven and earth to get him to Carlton

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

Agreed, there is a lot to be said for keeping a regular 22-25 on the park week in, week out.

p.s. LJ & JW in the same team 43 times, 10 times under Teague.

Wow, that is an incredible stat. I wonder how many similar there are across other lines... particularly our forwards.

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Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano. Fortem posce animum mortis terrore carentem, qui spatium vitae extremum inter munera ponat naturae, qui ferre queat quoscumque labores.

Good post. By no means trying to pot shot the captain but it is a shame Cripps' form is a bit off. I think if we were getting his great leadership now, it could really flow on the rest of the playing group. It is all about momentum. The captain isn;'t in great form, especially early in games he is not getting much of it.

I think you have agreed with my second point, but in regards to my first point, can I ask, you don't think maybe we are missing a notable support for Cripps inside?

I have not looked up the stats but I believe I read recently in 2019 under DT we weer around 50% win/loss, and this year we are similar, actually below that after R5, so, based off that, have we really improved in 2020?

Just an update, I saw some stats on Setterfield, how it appears he is starting to play onball more now he is more physically ready for it. Knew this but was good to read it. He and Cuningham both have the ability to play onball. But both have few games under their belts, so will both need another 1-2 years to get to the level consistently. Hopefully Cripps' shoulders are still in working condition by then.

I was very surprised to read that Setterfield has played fewer games than Walsh. Needs time.

Walsh's form this year has been nothing compared to last year, too.

We need time, and hopefully a few more wins to grow the belief. We looked awesome against Geelong. The way we moved the ball at Kardinia Park looked at times like Hawk$ in their prime several years ago...

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Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano. Fortem posce animum mortis terrore carentem, qui spatium vitae extremum inter munera ponat naturae, qui ferre queat quoscumque labores.

I agree

& flower it seemed weird

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#DonTheStash

We don't have one player in the team who would punch an opposition player in the head to protect his mates. Our melees are like barn dances where players swap partners for the next song. Opposition teams know that. They mocked Weitering for two seasons for being soft. It happened to him again the other night when he was out marked by King.

Our boys are mostly all skinny runners with no mongrel.

Levi is a monster but wouldn't hurt a fly.

Cripps gets held and blocked every week. Diesel said on 'Open Mike' he didn't mind being beaten but if players held him he would warn them once (in their careers) and then belt them. It's a lot harder to get away with these days and he got rubbed out a few times for his actions but players stopped holding him. Steele bat Cripps last weekend but he held him and blocked him at every stoppage. Cripps just puts up with it. The umpires give him one or two frees a game. It's worth holding him for that number of penalties. A punch in the guts gets a fine or one week. Maybe nothing.

McKay is another monster. if he runs at the footy from the square and hits the pack he is going to split it open. Same with Levi ( who does do it from time to time). He has no presence. He's bigger than Jonathan Brown but has a hart the size of a pea by comparison. Nobody stood in Brown's way when he was on a lead because it meant a trip to hospital for one of them and Brown didn't much care if it was him or his opponent.

We did have a tough nut or two. Fev didn't mind running through a player in the contest and Mitch Robinson would run through a brick wall to get the footy. Of course they didn't fit the image we were trying to portray at the time.

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Let slip the Blues of war (with apologies to William Shakespeare) (and Sir Francis Bacon, just in case)

Someone mentioned Selwood, I’d also Heath Shaw what he’s doing. I’d even recruit him to play for a year. Might free Doc up to play further upfield without the leadership void in the back half

That made me laugh a lot more than was probably intended.