dadadadada wrote:
You also need to look at the maturity of the players. Many of the Collingwood 50 to 100 gamers started their playing alongside mature leaders in Buckley, Burns and Clements. I was at a recent Australian Football Coaches Association dinner and guest speaker was Paul Hudson (assistant coach of Collingwood). He said the acquisition of Jolley and Ball was a tremendous boost to them not only from a playing sense but also from what they bought to the playing group with their maturity as men. Sydney likewise have some great leaders and it helps to tie the group together.
We on the other hand have the likes of Houlihan who wants to fight in his jocks in a hotel hallway. Our 50 to 100 gamers started with the likes of Lance and Fev. Get my point.
I would rather we bide our time, grow as a group and head to a new era.
Agree. But is leadership, born or taught? Bit of both perhaps. Wouldn't hurt to have a few more 'leaders' around the place taking our young guys through. Dr Sherrin, I think mentioned that part of the obsession with Pavlich was his leadership qualities that he'll be able to pass on.
Excellent point about who our young players have played under. Been a problem all through the last decade, once Ratten, Sexton, Dean McKay, SOS, Hicky etc all disappered. Allan, Campo, Murphy.J, Beaumont, Stevens, Fev, Lance became our leaders.
So many of our young players look promising early, but never really took that next step. Who knows how good Houlihan could have been with more intensity and desire, why did Hawthorn offer 2 second round draft picks for a defender we are about to delist? Why does AW look no more comftable on a football field than he did 100 games ago?
Even looking at the senior guys now we have Scotland has been in plenty of trouble of the years, and listening to Waite playing up the role of the junk food eating, Playstation playing sloth on the radio podcasts questions whether or not he is a true leader. All outside perspective of course. Maybe I'm getting old?.....
Regardless of the statistics we are still a young side, as much as everyone hates Ratten trotting it out as an excuse.
Clearly the least experienced side in the finals, and comparable in many weeks during the year with the likes of Richmond, Melbourne and Fremantle.
Average age will probably reduce as well due to the fact that Tiller would be our only youngster delisted (O'Keefe and Austin perhaps, but I'd like them to get another year). Wiggins is gone and guys such as Hadley, Johnson, Thornton, O'hAilpin, Fisher, and Walker (all 24-28) are probable outs.
Despite this my gut feel from those with a short attention span in the greater football world, ie the SEN's, BigFooty's, Herald Sun's perspective this off-season will be that our time has run out and we'll be overtaken by the likes of Melbourne, Richmond, and even Nth Melbourne.
Adelaide will ride the Tippett, Dangerfield, young player ticket. Port won 5 of their last 7, and if Essendon* can get Hird or Williams as coach the Herald Sun will produce a special commerative edition purely dedicated to their resurgence.
Top 4 all still made the top 4, Sydney never bottom out, Fremantle are on the way up, and the Hawks with 2008 as their fallback will never be written off. Only Brisbane and WC will probably be perceived as worse off.
It's a big season for our off-field team to first recover the lost members from last season, and secondly to sell 2011 despite slightly slipping backwards onfield this year.
We all know the scope for improvement, we all know that the core of most great sides are aged between 24-28, we all know what an uninteruptd presason will do for the likes of Henderson, Yarran and co. but it will take more than a corny slogan to sell that to the 'whose going to kick the goals now' brigade who believe everything they read and hear.
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but it does show why they have been able to inject some youth and climb back into finals quickly. 
