Partly true....but who did the following have to support them when they were perennial wooden spooners

Robert Harvey
Robbin Flower
Gary Wilson
Lenny Hayes last year
Craig Bradley
Brett Ratten
List goes on.

Point is those 2 can do better as midfielders and leaders. Cut some slack for Gibbs as he seems to be carrying a shoulder injury from NAB comp. last year he was in and under and driving us forward.

Murphy is and has been predominantly a receiver and given that he should be doing better at breaking lines gaining yardage and leading us as captains do...have a look at Selwood last round...he had no one around him and moved hearts and minds of his team mates.

I like them both, but you'll find there's good reason why supporters are disappointed with Murphy as captain.

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Everyone looks good in Navy Blue

Trade I say.

As a matter of interest, here are some better valued 2006 draftees;

5: Travis Boak
7: Joel Selwood
13: Jack Reiwoldt
32: Kurt Tippett
53: Lindsay Thomas
55: Robbie Gray

Lindsay Thomas?

@#$%&! off....

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BLUES 2010: PAV AND JUDD = FLAGS. DOING IT FOR THE LOVE OF DICK PRATT.

HAVE YOU SIGNED UP FOR TALKINGCARLTON SUPERCOACH 2009 YET?

Up until last year he was more useful than Robbie Gray.

Selwood and Riewoldt are the only ones who can claim to have a better career record than Gibbs. Ben Reid is a very handy player, as have been Frawley, Jamison and Suckling.

Tippett only has 2x 40+ goal seasons in his career; only one 50+. Right now he's got an armchair ride of it in Sydney, and he can't get on the park.

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29 different attributes,
And only 7 that you like;
20 ways to see the world,
Or 20 ways to start a fight.

I haven't read any of the thread.
Trade him. We should get a top 15 pick for him.

And while we're at it, trade that thug, Yarran. Letting the team down like that is just unforgivable. Trade him for someone like.... Lucas.

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Let slip the Blues of war (with apologies to William Shakespeare) (and Sir Francis Bacon, just in case)

Depends what we get for him.

No point trading for the sake of trading, especially if this years draft is considered weak (I think i read that somewhere).

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"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit"
- Aristotle

I agree with this, Idle, good post.

Murphy is way down on form though and seems to have lost that toe that he relies on so much. Also the game seems to have moved away from him with big bodied midfielders etc. And the importance of precision kicking too, he's never been an A-grade kick and that's getting shown up more I think.

Anyway, to stay on topic, keep Gibbs, I'm a big fan even though he can be frustrating. It's definitely a head thing with him because when he's switched on he is hard at it and relishes the inside stuff. I could see him having a long career too, he could still be there in our next....successful period.....

Why trade anyone when our picks are so @#$%&! shit?

Straight swap for Lindsay Thomas

Gibbs has been our best player last year and this year.

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

gibbs is a good and at times great player. overall he's been one of my favourites ever since he got put in the middle.

but his (and murphy's) attitude and toughness is something which imo is turning cancerous to the rest of the playing list.

he squibs confrontation and the hard ball, and other players see this, and they start thinking, well if Gibbsy and his magnificent hair aren't getting down and dirty, i'm not either.

you only need one player to wind up the windows and tap the gas ... and before long everyone on the team starts doing it too.

murphy & gibbs need to go if we hope to turn around our on field culture and lack of toughness. we're the worst team in the afl in the physicality stakes and we've been that way for a long time – since we drafted gibbs & murhpy.

Why continue to exist when our recruiting is so @#$%&! sh*t?

People need to get their priorities right.

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Just because I'm offended, doesn't mean I'm wrong.

recruiting isn't the problem, development is.


good teams are polishing turds everywhere.

I just don't get why we would trade Gibbs and Murphy. Firstly we badly need to develop a strong culture, so putting your captain and the reigning b and f winner who has just committed to the club for 5 years is a bad look. Secondly do we really think getting a pick in the next draft is a guarantee to get players as good as Murph and Gibbs. I get that in some ways they are disappointing and they will be very good 250 gamers but not great players, but they are almost certainly better than whoever we are likely to get at pick 3 or 6 or 9.

I also don't get the hysteria over rebuilding. Surely any year there are 3-4 sides or less who can realistically win the flag, every other team is building to get to that point, the only ones rebuilding are premiership teams trying to get back to the top. Rebuild suggests we actually had raised a premiership 'building' in the first place. We have been 'rebuilding' for 20 years in that case. If we can't win a flag (and we can't) then obviously we are looking to build a better team. We need a core of players to lead that. Players like Murphy. Gibbs, Yarran, Thomas, Hendo, Big K (injury permitting) need to be A graders and play like A graders. Docherty Cripps Tuohy I really like and they have leadership and can be A graders. So it leaves holes but a few really good drafts and things can change. Freeo had Mundy then got Fyffe, Barlow, Hill and Neale in a couple of drafts. We have a lot of holes, we need to not create more by delisting everyone. Hawthorn had Hodge and Mitchell then in one draft got Franklin Roughhead and Jordan Lewis, added Rioli and built a dynasty about them with solid late picks and free agents.

We need to draft really well and develop well and start to improve each year, not go backwards as we have since 2011. What we badly need is a player to lead us and build a side around. It was Judd, but we didn't have enough around him, we need the next Fyffe or Luke Parker. Someone with talent and great leadership. SOS better be a damn genius at recruiting. He won't have 15 of the first 10 picks in 3 drafts like he did with GWS

Going the other way though:

"you can't make a Chicken Salad out of Chicken Shit"

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"Who discovered we could get milk from cows, and what did he think he was doing at the time?" Billy Connolly

or does dropping two of your core players who don't like getting their hands dirty and are mice when it comes to on-field leadership ... does dropping them finally make a statement that as a club, 85% effort and commitment is no tolerated?


in two moves you could quite feasibly change the entire culture and direction of the club for the better ...






FWIW ... i think mick's real strong point is developing kids into footy players. mick would never settle for that kind of role though, the lights aren't bright enough.

Not that old chestnut again. Name the Carlton turds worthy of being polished that would put us into premiership contention? If recruiting isn't a problem then why do we need to be polishing this many turds in the first place?

By your theory there would probably only be three or four "good" clubs in the AFL and any player that came good elsewhere must simply be a fluke with no polishing required.

No, that's chicken versus egg stuff at best and while development has been an issue and we do have some talent on our list, there is quite obviously a list management issue with too much reliance on the wrong type of players and too many average players retained for too long on too much pay.

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Just because I'm offended, doesn't mean I'm wrong.

further to sydney blue's earlier comment of gibbs leading our tackle count.....he's also second in the league.

wait what?

with a bung shoulder too?

where's the 'captain' rate?

I don't think Bootsma got the polish he required.

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We are eternal, all this pain is an illusion.

no ... you're looking at this all wrong.

look at the other teams, geelong, hawthorn, swans, and recently port, the crows and freo ... look at their later round picks and how they're getting maximum return on those picks through their development.

meanwhile we had a litany of top ten picks that are plum average footballers. I have no doubt Gibbs at geelong, or murphy at sydney would be bonafide a-graders had they gone just about anywhere else other than carlton or richmond.

that's the tell-tale sign our development is falling down. even when we draft talented guys, we can't get them to take the next step.

obviously under ratten our recruiting was deplorable. under mick it's been better, but carlton as a club is so firmly entrenched in half-hearted on field mediocrity, i'm just waiting for those recently drafted guys with lots of promise to start sliding.

menzel and has already taken a big step backwards from his first 10 games. lets hope it doesn't follow suit to crisps, docherty and byrne etc ...


one thing i will say about mick is, he's much better at developing footballers & recruiting than he is at coaching.