I know, let's get rid of the team, and just keep Ratten.

Ridiculous comment on this forum as per usual. It's a team --> onfield leadership group, line coaches and head coach. Head coach formulates an overall startegy, line coaches communicate with players , onfield leadership group ensure structures are right and players execute. It's a team and they all must take responsibility. No problem if the head coach employs aggressive tactics to win games. SHould be encouraged - unfortunately he has no pure key forwards to work with. Being aggressive with intent to win games is correct.

Where was the contigency plan to compensate for our 'known' poor disposal and lack of forward line? Their wasn't one, it went straight back over our heads and the Hawks it in.

I was initially deluded and thought we had the talent but when I analysed it more closely clearly we don't.

Look at this list of regular/semi regular players and tell me if any of these players wold get a REGULAR game in a top 8 side:
Mclean, Joseph, Ellard, Armfield, Garlett, Jamo, Diugan, Hampson, Warnock, Kreuzer, Touhy, Collins, Lucas, Bower, Russell, Thornton
None of these guys would get a regular game at Eagles, Pies, Swans, Crows

Note I am not including first and second year players e.g.. Bootsma, Watson, Mitchell, McCarthy, Dale, Casboult etc....

The facts are that we have minimal depth and whilst we have a few A-list players we fall away very quickly.

Our player development over the past 5 yrs has been deplorable and hence we are in the position we are faced wit now

A caller on radio this morning brought up a really good point today when our depth was being discussed.
He mentioned that are so many players on our list that are yet to play a game and no one knows whether they can play or not.
Names mentioned were Buckley, Rowe, O'Keefe, McCarthy, Mitchell, Dale, Kerr, Casboult, McInnes, Bell ,Heyne,
Carter, Bray and Lodge.They also brought up Davies and White being injured all season. Thats 14 players on top of the other injuries we have had.

So add poor player development and poor medical management to our litany of woes.

we have the talent - it just hasn't been educated and developed to the required standard

We've got the talent.

Trouble is, Ratten's game plan is "get it to the champ" (Juddy).

Naive gameplan based on having better individual players than the opposition.

Works when our list is healthy.

But get a few injuries, and there's no gameplan of substance to fall back on.

Other teams, they lose a player, they can slot in another player to play that role. Maybe not as well, but well enough.

Why?

Because they have proper gameplans, and the players play a role within that plan.

Under Ratten, if Carrazzo goes down we can't replace him because Carazzo is Carrazzo... Not a bloke who's doing a job.

At Collingwood when Ball does his knee, they have Beams or someone else do that job. Players are interchangeable components in a machine.

At Carlton, the team falls apart when we lose a key player or two.

We fell apart when we got a few injuries because those injuries exposed our suburban-footy standard gameplan, from a suburban-footy standard coach.

Our players aren't stupid. They can see that they're not being given the best chance of success, and as a result they're playing like they know they can't win the flag. THAT'S why for the most part they look disinterested. They don't believe in their coach/coaches any more. It's blindingly obvious.

We're lacking a couple of mids, and obviously a key forward, for sure. But we're not helping ourselves either.

Ridiculous comment on this forum as per usual. It's a team --> onfield leadership group, line coaches and head coach. Head coach formulates an overall startegy, line coaches communicate with players , onfield leadership group ensure structures are right and players execute. It's a team and they all must take responsibility. No problem if the head coach employs aggressive tactics to win games. SHould be encouraged - unfortunately he has no pure key forwards to work with. Being aggressive with intent to win games is correct.

Ridiculous comment on this forum as per usual. It's a team --> onfield leadership group, line coaches and head coach. Head coach formulates an overall startegy, line coaches communicate with players , onfield leadership group ensure structures are right and players execute. It's a team and they all must take responsibility. No problem if the head coach employs aggressive tactics to win games. SHould be encouraged - unfortunately he has no pure key forwards to work with. Being aggressive with intent to win games is correct.

..give this man a cigar..

Nice work, you basically repeated what I said in your own weird pittiful words.I don't have a solution to the problem - but I tend to think an agrressive game plan in groups current predicament is the right approach.

So we are left with a list lacking talent. Plenty of potential to have a talented list but our list is poor.

Thornton, Bower, Mclean, Russell, Curnow, AJ, Lucas and Ellard all need to be 15% better players so our depth can be used effectively.
At the minute you bring them in but we get next to nothing out of them.
All the top teams have better depth players.

We don't have the talent. To say otherwise is one would be wearing rose coloured glasses and being totally unrealistic.