the spread needs all people running hard offensively and defensively.

yes we have the leadership to play that

its one of our strong points.

running to create opportunity for others and present... yes... if there is one thing we can do we work hard

your tackle count will be a good indicator of work rate

were out possessed so look at the tackle count as a pointer to work rate...
if u dont have the ball one of the few ways ull get it back is tackle

remember the swans game??? 39 tackles in a game.. thats roughly less than half of whats required in modern afl

then look at our skill set

we havent developed anyone
we havent even made our early picks count

were a mess.. u can rationalise all you want... but it wont change a thing getting any coach in.

we need to start again....

with a plan

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Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas, and oil....... the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off. We apologize for the inconvenience.

This is spot on!

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It is not as bad as you are lead to believe.......it is %$#^& worse!!!

you need to understand the future of the game... and draft for that...
was the future ever going to be hbfer types??
why draft over 20 and turn other non hbfer types into them as well?
thyre usually one dimensional types.. u get little flexibility and theyre not often the most skilled.You end up pot bound

Look i get people asking me every day... "What can we do?"
we cant do anything about the board .. the oligarchs

and we cant do anything about our current list
Docherty will help
Thomas will help
Everitt will help

but we are missing so many players on our list who should make a difference
there is no silver magical bullet to fix this....
We can pretend and hope.. ultimately it will take 5 years to fix our list assuming we move on from our current love affair with slow insider types we will turf out soon. because they cant all make either.. there simply there is not enough room on the ground for all of them to be team mates.

we dont plan

its all knee jerk
spend 3 early picks on rucks..and have 4 in a furry

3 talls in one draft because theres nothing... (theres still nothing )

hbfers galore
slow inside mids galore

thats not a recipe for a flag....

i know that....

so stop worrying about playing like the hawks.. its not going to happen.... because were not capable.
has nothing to do with anything except what we have on our list to work with

the rest is just hoping hopelessly

i know im short with people.. but it has more to do with the fact people dont get it.. and i hear ot every day
about on and off

were stuffed!!!

no coach can fix that now......

we need good recruiting
great development

Capuano and Barker? Why???
this club has been spending bugger all in its future
recruitment and development

even then its been wasting the money

this club stinks!!!

dont ever tell me to do something then synbad.. talk is cheap.........!!!.. blah blah blah... again... !!!
anyone....!!!

we just need to plan now to savage the future
the present is gone

bye bye

id tell bryce to leave.. and anybody else

at least we can get the picks and start again... hopefully we think its not a walk up start to our next flag.. and its all about hard work and thought

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Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas, and oil....... the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Have a poor list doesn't preclude having a poor gameplan and vice versa.

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"One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds." - Frank Zappa

actually it does
because to open the game up in the way modern sides get sliced open through the middle youre staring down the eyes of 150 point defeats

you try messing around with the ball across half back with lazy unskilled footballers and youre dead set smashed

if more than half your side is lazy or and unskilled u cant play that game.. u need to hug the boundary
as boring as that is and sounds... it minimises total damage inflicted upon u

youre basically locking it down to clearances ...the problem is with all our inside mids... concentrated in there.. when u get it what do you do next?
but... you might have a think about what were hiding away in the ressies.. if we have too many one paced inside mids..

we have

judd
holman
graham
cripps
cachia
brock

to go with the ones who are playing

thats from a list of 42 odd...

u might think thats incredible......that its amazing... that its unbelievable....

but its true..

thats what we are currently busy accumulating for our next trick

oh by the way... scotland is a huge loss....
his courage.. his brains and his DISPOSAL is a massive loss to this footy club

its left to even less now...

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Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas, and oil....... the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Didn't I read somewhere that the Club was aware of its deficiencies in Recruiting and was in the process of restructuring this area ? Wasn't part of this the reason why Hughes was finally given the a*se!!!

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James Hird and Essendon* FC - #FOREVERDRUGCHEATS

You can't train and develop donkeys to win a Melbourne Cup.

If most of the team cannot perform the basic skills required at AFL level i.e. use the ball effectively, then it is very difficult to have a game plan like the best teams do.

Due to our poor skill our game plan is to move it quickly and move it long (get the ball out of the danger zone). This is the only effective game plan for a side that lacks basic skill. Essendon*'s game plan was controlling the ball and keeping possession. We could not hit the targets Essendon* were hitting. Their passes were cm perfect.

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It is not as bad as you are lead to believe.......it is %$#^& worse!!!

hughes didnt have to get the ass.
but like the aztecs someone had to get hauled off to the top of the pyramid thinggy and have his head chopped off and heart pulled out so people believe the sun will come out tomorrow.
great theatre

he was a dismal failure as a recruiter....no doubt about it...
but in the end he was a spotter... spotters are made up of all kinds of people... theyre not the head honcho.. they dont make final decisions
he hasnt been replaced

the network is smaller
less eyes on the ground

if u rated him for 7 years.. as the club did... and those same people now had him executed
u can only think its because they want to sacrifice someone to make it look like theyre doing something.

but they dont look at themselves and each other..... they rated him and had him making final decisions for 7 odd years

says more about them than the execution me thinks

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Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas, and oil....... the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off. We apologize for the inconvenience.

If I'd said "having a poor list doesn't precipitate having a poor gameplan" then your rebuttals would be more accurate.

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"One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds." - Frank Zappa

I think our game plan suits the poor skills we have in the team.

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It is not as bad as you are lead to believe.......it is %$#^& worse!!!

cant have a ripper gameplan with poor skillset and work ethic now....

never ever seen an unskilled team with a gorgeous gameplan....

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Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas, and oil....... the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off. We apologize for the inconvenience.

..what we do, and what we are meant to do worlds apart.. ..I agree with braithy, we are not fit enough to carry out any real plan, but ours requires work rate to press up and pressure ball carrier, then to run and spread and switch.. ..we might want to play wide but we still want team mates in space and switch ball to attack, just play wide at same time.. ..yes mm plan might be a couple of years old, but look to last few years at pies for what he wants us to do, it is not what we currently do.. ..he does not want us to bomb long, that is us, we have been doing it for a decade now.. ..bomb down the line to a contest is the last resort, bail out kick.. ..its just with us, we always have to bail out cos we are weak and lazy.. ..but short sharp kicking wide of centre square is what mm wants, he wants us to pay conservative, bombing poorly to out numbered contests is not conservative, it is stupid,, like us..

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..if you can't be good, be good at it..

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"You are being watched. The government has a secret system. A machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know because I built it." - Finch

Perfect example is Barcelona (hawks) and westham (us)

Short game, long game. it really doesn't matter if you can't hit targets. Carlton ranks last for disposal efficiency, LAST. Has there ever been a more souless, more incompetent display by a Carlton side than the first quarter against Essendon*?

Our recruiting has been horrible. I and others have been questioning for years why we keep recruiting players who can't kick. Trying to impove the kicking skills of players is problematic, more often than not a player who is a bad kick will always be a bad kick.

I hate banging on about Hawthorn, but they specifically recruit players who are good users of the ball. They recruited Guerra because of his kicking skills, possibly wouldn't have won the '08 flag without him. Played him down back as a swing man who could kick long and hit targets on the way out. They had a plan and recruited accordingly.

..that 'face' cos you disagree with my idea we want to play short sharp kicks, or that we are stupid..?..

..cos I doubt anyone thinks we play smart footy, so it must be that you disagree with my opinion regarding short kicking game.. ..but it is true, think back to pies style top four years recently.. ..short kicks down the boundary, Then the long venturing kick deep to kpf, if no option kick to pocket.. ..if the outside wing is blocked, switch to opposite side.. ..but avoid long bombs, its just we can't cos bad habits in list and game day play are a decade old..

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..if you can't be good, be good at it..

Conservative is down the line.

It should be the last option.

Of course there are lots of average kicks on the list but there are many who are capable of kicking it at 45 degrees into the corridor to a free player.

The problem is Malthouse does nothing to free this player up in the corridor. His first option is down the line.

There should be times when they switch the play, when they kick it at 45 degrees and down the line when maybe you are trying to defend a lead or the opposition have crowded the corridor/switch.

Again, you do not have to be a brilliant kick to deliver the ball at 45 degrees into the corridor. It is a cop out.

The current approach is so predictable to the opposition that they outnumber us for the kick down the line.

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"You are being watched. The government has a secret system. A machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know because I built it." - Finch

if we open the game up with our skills and work rate were dead in the water

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Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas, and oil....... the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off. We apologize for the inconvenience.

You didn't offer that GET-OUT-JAIL-FREE card to poor old Ratten ? During the Ratten years, according to Mr S, we were blessed with the most talented list of players the Universe has ever seen. They were poor victims of the Ratten game plan, and his incompetence...

Yes ladies and gentlemen Mr S. has within 6 months of the Great Malthouse taking over shifted the blame from Ratten to the Players.... (and the Sticks led board with its Oligarchical families...and McKay)

Its very easy to shift ones goal posts to suit ones argument at the time and to cater for ones biases and hatreds...

Its far more difficult to be consistent in ones analysis isnt it Mr S.

You have a lot to answer for Mr S, becoming the public apologist for the great Pagan and now the magnificent Malthouse, whilst being Ratten's executioner...

We can only hope that it isnt too late and that Mick organises one of these very soon,

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Vice President, International Extreme Sarcasm Society (IESS)

So open it up. Show the list for what it is. We are dead in the water either way.

Minimising the damage is not the answer.

I think out gameplan is inefficient. We have too many players too close to one another so once the ball is moved from that area we cannot get the outnumber we want at the next contest. Infact teams better setup that are looking for the outnumber cant believe their luck when they out number us by two and we still invite such a contest.

Sort it out. Teams are doing what Ross Lyon was doing last year defensively. They don't over commit players to a contest or to a tackle at the expense of having all areas of the ground covered. This helps them get the outnumber.

You watch us and there is no shape or system to us at all. That is without the ball. Something you could imagine our players being capable of as it doesn't involve kicking.