Never saw Fev as undisciplined and selfish (acknowledge I may be alone here).

Never saw Fev as undisciplined and selfish (acknowledge I may be alone here).

Agree for the most part, and this is the reason why getting Judd was imperative. In pretty quick time all our champs were retiring, then right when it was time to bring forth the new breed, the salary cap hammer comes down (not to mention Hamill), forcing us to fill the gaps with also-rans from other clubs to get some semblance of a team on the park. Smorgon and Malouf are much-maligned here, but I cannot imagine how hard it must've been to juggle our off-field financial dramas with trying to actually put a football team together. No way can you breed a decent culture there, and no doubt Fev (as our only shining light) felt that from that point on, he was the man. Had Fev been part of a stronger club things may have been different. Angwin had to be dealt with and there was nothing that could be done, but as for Norman (and to a lesser extent Houlihan, Walker and Betts) we didn't have the infrastructure nor the courage to nip those problems in the butt because these guys were considered too important to risk disenchanting. A stronger club financially would've made things a lot easier in the culture stakes.

As for player development, it's no surprise that rookies here took longer to develop than those at clubs like Collingwood, Sydney or Adelaide, where players come in and seem ready-made for the grade. These clubs were all strong financially while we still had coaches sitting in dilapidated offices on different sides of the oval, and invested in player development. This is an area we're only now paying any attention to, but we still have some catching up to do (Yarran is a good example).

Yes, Fev should've been bitch-slapped far earlier and our leadership for most of his tenure here was sub-par to say the least (an always injured and at-times seemingly disinterested Kouta, and then Whitnall as captain FFS). Having said that, you can't say Fev didnt contribute to our woes in a MASSIVE way. Yes, we had leadership problems, but Fev saw himself as a leader too and I wouldn't be surprised if missing out on (vice) captaincy pissed him off in a big way. As the big-dick on campus for so long it was hard for most people and events at the the club NOT to revolve around him, which is as big an indictment on the club as it is Fev himself. But I see it as a combination of negligence in the past, as well as simply not having the resources to keep it all together.