Just thought i would put a few thoughts on here.

Today while resting up for night shift i watched the 1995 grand final video, again. Every time i watch it i am amazewd at the efforts of Dean (should have won norm smith) Williams, Kernahan, Spalding, SoS, the whole team. However i think for the first time ever today, i realised how i felt about that premiership, i was stoked yeah, but i, like many supporters i think, took it for granted.

I am, in the scheme of things, a relatively new Carlton Football Club supporter. One of my earliest football memories is the 1987 grand final. Since then, i've been on the blue bandwagon, and while i may have had a late 80's/early 90's obsession with Warwick Capper (what kid didn't take a screamer in the backyard or on the bed and scream out CAPPER!!!) my loyalties have always been with the Blues.

Pretty much my whole life, i remember happy times and successful seasons in navy blue, apart from the odd year when we didnt make the eight, or six, or whatever it happened to be that year, i always knew that the very next year we would bounce back, as did the football world, and no matter where the mighty blues were on the ladder, we were feared.

I was thinking about this when watching the 95 granny and i realised that it is now over ten years since we tasted premiership glory. Ten years since we dominated the competition and did what no one else had done. And when i thought of this, it crossed my mind that it could be a long time before we do this again!

I never appreciated how hard it was to have a side win 20 out of 22 games then go on to win a flag by such a huge margain, i never realised the skill it took for players like diesel to gain 30+ possessions week in, week out. I never realised how important it was to have the fullback of the century. I had grown up with Carlton success, and to me, it was our right, our god given right, to be there in September.

I also got to thinking about our current situation. Never had i thought that the once mighty blues had become somewhat of the AFL's joke...a modern era fitzroy, clubs approaching a clash with the blues thinking "oh, week off this week." And if we like it or not, this has become the attitude towards our club.

HOWEVER, rather than get angry about this, rather than blame the AFL for taking our picks, rather than blaming our previous administration for getting us into this financial quandry, i thank them. Yep, you heard right, i THANK them.

I thank every single one of them--Thankyou Wayne Jackson, Adrian Anderson, Andrew Demetriou, John Elliot, thankyou everyone that either knowingly or accidently played a hand in reducing our club to where we are now.

The reason i thank them all??? because every single one of them has helped me realise how important to me, and how much it means, to follow a successful football club. Each one of them has helped me realise that premierships really do come few and far between and no success should be taken for granted.
I thank them all becuase when we pick ourselves up of the AFL emblazoned canvas, it will be SO SO sweet, i thank them because when we as a club are once again feared, when we as a club are once again the powerbrokers, the front runners, it will be the greatest feeling on earth.

I look at our team now, the youngsters, the team we are building the future of our club around, and i am proud, i am already proud of players who have yet to prove themselves, because i can see from watching them play, that they too know, that when we get there......oh how sweet it will be, and these guys, the benticks, the simpsons, the fevolas, the waites, the whitnalls, the blackwells, the russells, the walkers, they've all been there through the darkest days of the Carlton Football Club have a look in their eyes that screams success at all costs.

bring on 2006.....we might not make history but we are on our way.

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Back like a raging case of pubic lice

Great post!

I think to some extent that us Carlton supporters havn't really experienced the true rollercoaster that is AFL....untill now that is.

I always took us for granted...there was this quiet confidence that we would always win...cos we were Carlton. That is all gone now. It has been replaced with hope, enthusiasm and a new found passion that is so much stronger. May it be a sweet sweet time when we are back!!!!!

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The problem will be made. for the solution to be sold, to your face before your eyes, tolerance is now the new danger

There are a lot of things that these turds need but my thanks isn't one of them.

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

Winston Churchill

*claps*

Fantastic post bnz. Just brilliant. It will be so sweet when we stand on the dais again after Premiership 17, no doubt about it.

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Cer 'ch 'n alluog Blues

i love u bnz....awesome post






btw....who the hell screams out capper these days? its "WATERHOUSE....!!!!!

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R A D I C A L B R O T H E R S

Inspired by the One-Minute Sculptures of Erwin Wurm

"All in all is all we are..."

Jesus, BNZ. Im crying cuz lol.

Yes i remeber that year, was too good to be true, i was too young to appreciate it so im in the same boat, in fact, i was at Bathurst during that GF, i watched the first quarter of the game, then and quarter time went with mates and played RUGBY in the sandtrap. Im ashamed of myself.

Great post bnz. My only dissapointment is that I was 17 & not old enough to go out to celebrate. I just hope I'm not too old to celebrate the next one!!

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Witty signature required.

I vividly remember NOT taking that win for granted. I think I shed a tear as they completed their lap of honour.

I was p1ssed off in 86 and followed up with drunk and disorderly in 87, and emotional in 95. we tried and failed against those filthy scummers in 93 then went down to the pussies in the 94 finals so victory in the big one was never to be taken for granted.

10 years huh, well that's the biggest drought I've experienced in my 36 years.

Let it rain!!

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end of message

I wonder if it hadn't of happened whether the Blues would have finally kicked the 'recruiting elder player' strategy to death and not embraced the draft. That in some parallel history the Blues are out there recruiting Jonathan Hay, Jade Rawlings, Shane Woewodin. I wouldn't use the 'thank you' words bnz but can't help but think that this period 'had to happen'.

I recognise that this is fanciful thinking as failure did not need to happen, and its probably just a loser rationalising the pain he and his team have gone through. But I'll take that. This had to happen to us and now we've finally learned it's through young players comign through the ranks that we can rebuild the Blue name.