Braithy wrote:
voss wasn't hard done by, imo.
when he took the job we were all expecting to challenge for a flag. brownlow medalist, two coleman winning forwards, an AA calibre Fullback .we had walsh in his prime pre back injury. voss wanted big strong bodies and runners who could run all day. and he got everything he wanted.
he wanted to bludgeon other teams at the coalface for 4qtrs, game in, game out for a 25 game season and finals.
apart from one maigical little run delivered to us by the Gods themselves in 2023 - his gamestyle was flawed and unsustainable. the afl changed the rules midseason, and we were toast.
from there we too stubborn, too stupid to alter our list at the end of 2024 when we should have traded harry for a small forward and picks to modernise our list, and then use the reaminder of harry's cap to trade for houston.
all of this was voss' doing, and when things happened out of our control, the club, voss whoever - were to slow to tweak the list. GW came in, saw the same things, and has gone about revamping us off and on the field. so far, so good.
Firstly I'm not running a pity party for Voss, just stating how I see the situation.
I would've liked to see until at least mid-year if the playing group could get their s#$t together, but now we will never know.
The pressure is off and everything has changed.
Who were the big bodied runners aside from Acres?
In 2022 we got Acres but lost a solid B grader big bodied runners in Newnes and lost Setterfield also.
In 2023 we added no big bodies players instead we added Elijah and Fantasia and lost another solid B grade big bodied runner in Curnow.
In 2024 we only added Haynes and mostly kids but lost a heap of injured experienced players and traded on another B grade big body runner in Kennedy. And before you say we lost out trading him on, we are seriously questioning the set up with Cerra, Cripps and Hewett at the moment and Kennedy was just another slow mid in our rotation that also had kicking issues (but still better than some).
In 2025 is the only year you could say we added big bodied runners to compete with the current game style, but it was too little too late and none were mids.
The fact about our recruiting is we failed to adapt to the changes in the game quick enough but we also had little capital in all those drafts to do so (aside from 2024 to get Jagga).
At the end of 2023 would've you been happy to lose one of our A graders for better B graders or a round 1 pick to compete with the game changes?
Even McKay who both of us said should've been traded in 2024 we would've kept in 2023.
I agree in 2024 we should've added more depth and Voss tried, he attracted Houston to our club.
Houston trade was out of his hands he wanted him we all know this so lumping this in with his doing is not correct.
The rest I agree on.
Everyone has a hand in this, the unfortunate part is we now look like a s$%t show of a club again.