The senior coach takes full responsibility and rightfully so. It is his role to extract the best out of his people. Richardson and co. have been offered positions because they are highly skilled individuals who can accelerate the development of the list and complement Ratten.
Ratten needs to view it in that context. If he views their appointment as a threat or as an opportunity for the club to undermine him, he may as well give it away now.

From what I'm hearing, the club are not entirely happy with how the coaching department has functioned. Richardson, Brown and the others have come in to help strip things back and help Ratts steer our program in a different direction. Hopefully Ratten sees this as an opportunity, which IMO it is.
Having the best people around you gives you a great opportunity to succeed and that should be how it is viewed.


As for Greg Swann. I'm rapt to have an administrator who doesnt accept mediocrity. That's why is up near the top of the tree of AFL administrators. As I said earlier in the year, Ratten has shown a ruthless approach with the players. It would be a bit weak and hypocritical of him to expect less for himself.

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

BondiBlue's summary is pretty well spot on.

However, it's interesting to speculate about the possibility of not only getting to top four but also going on to the Grand Final ......... and losing. The repercussions of that would be enormous, and not just for the coach.

Port = Primus.

Great post...there's reality for you.

One premiership coach in 2010, the rest are duds....in a way.

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Everyone looks good in Navy Blue

If I was in charge I would throw everything at getting Ross Lyon over to Carlton.

In my opinion the best coach in the AFL by far. What he has manage to accomplish with an average at best
list (take out hayes/goddard/riewoldt & Fisher and what do you have left) and facilities & resources that are by
far the worse in the AFL is amazing.

Don't be fooled into the hype surrounding Malthouse. He was afforded every resource available along with a 10 year
tenure to win this premiership.

He's taken full responsibility by recommending the appointments of Richardson and co. Board approved but not board decreed.

It always seemed a motley crew under Ratten last year and IMO he did well with the "interesting" assistant coaches under him. Always had a question mark over Lappin et al.

Good on Ratts for finding people he thinks will improve the club, even if it's viewed by some as bringing on board "coaches in waiting".

Then there is the possibility of the politics between the assistant coaches if Ratts should get fired. Richardson and Brown would have competing claims over the senior coaching gig and if one of them were to leave, the other would go, a year into this position (unless there was a hierarchy of assistant coaches that we don't know about).

The coaching team looks a lot stronger, appears to "fit" better and I believe, has more chances of success than the team that was in place in 2010.

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"A good composer does not initiate. He steals."

- Igor Stravinsky

It's a mystery to me why a rookie coach (Ratts) was given three assistant coaches with zero coaching experience. That's history now.
Looking forward to a quantum leap in coaching.

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Bawditawaba

The evidence based on VCE results is that the poorest peformed schools are from low socio economic areas such as Corio in Geelong
Highest unemployment rates
highest incidence of domestic violence
Highest crime rate
Highest use of Centerlink benefits
Poorest attendance of parents in school based activities

Your argument suggests that the teachers in these schools are shit therefore the students results are poor
Many teachers in these schools are just as good if not better than those at Scotch College.

I know this is getting off-topic, but I agree with keogh. My mum is a teacher in a selective school in a dodgy area, and there are kids that want to be there and get really good results, and kids that don't give a shit. The kids that care are usually the ones that tested to get in and hence are out of area, and the ones that don't care are mostly from around the area.

Brown and Barker, yes. Richardson was a Swann idea.
Ratts didn't want a "senior assistant" and wasn't keen on a highly credentialled appointment like Richardson. How smooth the relationship plays out is yet to be determined. I'd suggest Richardson is just feeling his way and taking a low profile at the moment.
At some stage he'll flex his muscles and it will be intriguing to see how it plays out. Personally, I hope they're both mature enough to make it a strong and formidable relationship.



Unfair to the assistants IMO. For starters, Riley has been a senior AFL coach and is very highly regarded. Montgomery has an excellent reputation and was quickly snapped up. He also had AFL coaching experience. In fact, they were probably more experienced than Ratten.

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

I am not a fan of Ratts as a coach and don't think he is quite up to it and think we shouldn't have appointed a coach with such minimal experience and we should have looked much harder at other contenders.

But given that he is the coach he needs to be supported by the club until such time as he is no longer coach. The remarks of Swann as reported don't do him much credit. The CEO needs to be running the business of the club. Swann seems to want to be directing the footy and his remarks don't help anyone they just create a sense of instability. Everyone knows without saying that if we go bad Ratts will go, but if we lose a few games to top sides by small margins, don't get wallopped and have a bad run with injury then how do we judge the coach. Goals should publicly be general and based on improvement which is not always measured by ladder position until you are a genuine flag contender. Pribately they can be more specific and relate to more than just win/loss but development / improvement of players etc.

Swann needs to button his lip more and say a lot less on footy matters - not many CEOs comment as much on the footy side of things. Added to this were Kerna's stupid remarks about getting rid of one of our ruckmen when the coach didn't want to. Even if we wanted to get a trade for Big sauce, don't tell everyone!

Again, I would prefer a different coach to Ratts, but while he is there he needs to be solely in charge of footy matters without Swann or Kerna putting their bibs in. If he fails this year then get another coach and look a bit harder this time.

AND if he does go lets hope someone on the committee makes those who appointed Ratts and were in charge of the selection process take some responsibility and aren't let loose on the decision making again. How many dud appointments has Kerna been involved in? And I am not as convinced as many others that Swann is the messiah. A strong Pres would tell him to keep his head down and talk less about footy matters. There seems to be a lot of people pulling all different ways where footy is concerned. You need to do everything to get the coaching appointment right and then provide as much support as possible. Kernahan and Swann haven't done either!

Montgomery had no coaching experience when he came to Carlton.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Montgomery

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Mens sana in corpore sano.

Bring back the laurel wreath logo!!!

IIRC Lappin, Harvey and Teague had zero coaching experience.

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Bawditawaba

True. The question is, did the club initiate the appointments our did Ratts request them?
Either way, we have plenty of knowledge and experience now so there's no excuses.
Let's hope it results in further improvement and good times ahead.

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

Swans remarks in the media the other day where a disgrace and embarrassing to the club and Ratten. They where totally inappropriate and un-called for and probably highlighted that he and Ratten are not on the same page.

swans comments were right on the money. its called life. if i dont perform i am put on a performance management program at work. ratten needs to know just because he was a past captain and champ of the club he is not given a free ticket to coach.

my opinion is ratten has done well considering retirements and the fevola issue last year. we were able to move forward even though we lost a guy who kicked 100 goals per season.

i dont want to be the next st kilda. they took too long to decide to sack thomas and now i think there premiership window is shut.

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Alexander the Great was born in Greece!

I read the Herald Sun article several times and then I isolated the actual quotes attributed to Swan and this is what I got........

"I have spoken to Ratts about that already. There are eight or nine coaches that come out next year, so it's going to be a bit of a feast, depending on how you start," Swann said.

"But I think our position is pretty clear - we will let the season run whether we are 0-10 or 10-0, and have a look at it at the end of the year."

Asked specifically on 3AW what Ratten had to do to avoid the chop, he set lofty goals.

"We have a whole lot of criteria there ... it's fair to say we have to keep improving and maybe to a significant degree."

"That speculation is there. I am pretty sure he's going to stay where he is and he signed a contract," he said.

Call me dumb but what is the problem with any of that. Swann and the club and the supporters expect further improvement (tick) There are Coaches coming out of contract and the media will beat that up accordingly (tick) Speculation will be rife (tick)

The writer of the article wove the normal stuff around the quotes to give it some spice. What's new with that?

What am I missing here.

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.”

The word 'significant'.

All things being equal and baring injuries we should improve significantly with what has and is happening in pre-season.

We have rarely had our best 22 on the park for any length of time due to injuries. Special K will be back. A full pre-season under the belts of Warnock and Henderson plus Waite in his 2nd year from the reco will also give us some improvement .

You would hope that the addition of Richardson and Brown can also bring improvement across the board. A full pre-season in the the new building will also give us a few % improvement.

Swann is right that the improvement should be significant. Top 4 is the goal and from there who knows.

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.”

The coaches goal is to win a home final. We could win a home final and finish 6th.
Which one is it?

Semantics. If we finish top 4 we are guaranteed a Home final.

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.”