Blue Vain wrote:
There's 18 lead coaching jobs in the AFL and they're scarce to come by.
Any young quality coach would kill for the opportunity. Let's not allow adverse opinion to get wrapped up as fact. It's a plum job IMHO and any quality young coaches will be all over the opportunity.
Yes our midfield needs boosting but the narrative about the midfield being a huge issue and Teagues downfall is misleading and simplistic at best.
I watched Chris Scotts press conference last night and he confirmed what we've been telling the Teague supporters but they fail to accept. "The 3 phases of the game have to fit together and if one's off, it effects the others". Defence needs to be a starting pillar of your game style and implementation. Walsh' narrative about going fast, learning offence and trying to teach defence some time down the track is why Teague lost his job and a premiership coach spelt it out as well as anyone.
We had an unsustainable and ignorant game style under Teague. We disregarded defence, we played without gears or changes of tempo and we were too easy to play against. Teague persisted with his theory of getting the ball inside 50 and pinning it in there but we didn't have the structure or tactical nous to succeed. The optics and the stats clearly tell us that we couldn't win the required forward 50 contests to make it a sustainable option. We were the worst team in the AFL for forward 50 contest wins yet we kept smashing our heads against the same wall.
I feel sorry for Teague but he had 2+ seasons in charge of this team and we failed to adapt. We just turned up every week trying to succeed at the same game plan that was statistically failing us on a weekly basis.
So let's move on from what's occurred with Teague and hope the process in place can secure the best available option. I hear the chatter about McRae but I'm not as impressed. I like his CV but he doesn't fill me with any confidence listening to him talk. There's plenty of options out there just as good if not better IMHO. Let's hope we can secure the right one.
I think where the Teague supporters get a bit frustrated is a rather simplistic summation is that our biggest issue was being scored against on the turnover (self inflicted most of the time).
The gap between our good and bad was too large which I thought was a symptom of a side that lacked cohesion.
Let's review briefly why this might be the case, massive list turnover year after year for the last 6 seasons now, new additions that played in our best 22 every week (Stocker, saad and williams, docherty back from a really long layoff and not playing his best), covid striking for most of his tenure rendering the reserves comp a nob factor most weeks leaving young players almost nowhere to cut their teeth but the best 22, new injuries every other week, a guy like Fogarty joins the mix for much of the year and can't seem to kick further than 35 metres and a ruck division which looked D grade vs any real opposition for most of the year paired with the 6-6-6 rules and decreasing rotations to what is generally a young and developing team.
I appreciate why we elected to move on from Teague, but IMHO it was less about coaching and more about overall landscape.
Teagues 3 year term was up next year and I think this move became one of we need to show him support and back him in or go in a different direction. New president. Looks to be a new ceo, the footy manager under pressure, the best coach in the league on offer, 7 coaches were tipped to be coming out of contract at end of next year making the competition for a job quite ruthless AND Teague I think is looked internally to be the initial ending of the Brendan Bolton plan that was short circuited early because he had lost the dressing room.
I look at Teague's tenure and being honest I think its hard to know whether or not he could make a senior coach. I know people like to point to game plan but his early work had us down early and turning it around and being on top for large periods of games.
Its really hard to get a form line, but the one thing I can state quite reasonably is that we wash things away, and now the next period will be the Sayers period and all his leadership which means if we find ourselves here again in 4 or so years he has nowhere to hide.