Ditto.

When I see a team having the privilege of playing AFL footy for the Navy Blues, and playing like they don't give a shit, that makes me so angry.

_________________
And so while others miserably pledge themselves to the pursuit of ambition and brief power, I will be stretched out in the shade, singing.

OK, Now did the business you run have endemic problems and a poor collection of staff to start with?

Have you ever had an employee who just isn't up to the job? What did you do in this scenario?

I'm guessing you shunted them out or on to lesser duties until you could find somebody who could do the job to your satisfaction.

Now let me suggest to you that you are not allowed to hire somebody who can do the job for two years. What do you do? You stagger along while your business suffers.

Did Pagan have a choice when he picked McGrath, Mott and Angwin? I'd suggest we had no other choice. We had to gamble. Chambers and Longmuir didn't work out but I would have thought were acceptable gambles. Saddington didn't work out but we didn't give up much for him and our defence is a shambles. Worth a punt as well I think.

You can only bluff so much with the cards you've been dealt but eventually somebody will call your bluff. Our list is still littered with duds and the only way out is to wait while it gets pumped up with high draft picks.

_________________
If you'd given me the choice of going out and beating four men and smashing a goal in from thirty yards against Liverpool
or going to bed with Miss World, it would have been a difficult choice. Luckily, I had both. - George Best

Only the elite students get to become lawyers?

At any one point in time there are only about 600 elite AFL players in the world. There's probably twice that many doctors and lawyers in Melbourne alone.

It's a unique job which would put employees in the top half a percent in the world at their chosen career.

Also, there are only 16 elite coaches in the world at any point in time.

If we as a club want to get better as a club, we have to continue to improve in all areas. Lots of work to be done. Singling out one person as a scapegoat allows others to escape thier share of responsibility. Less fingerpointing and blameshifting and more, much more work is in order.

_________________
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty" -Winston Churchill

L.M 35-06

Every player on our list has been re-signed under Pagans reign or bought to the club under his reign.

Sorry Keyser, the "no option" excuse falls down immediately.
There were options, we just took the easy one.

_________________
Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

Where does the buck stop though? And after how long?

Cant stand all the Wiggo slanging out there - sure others from that draft look gone but I doubt he wont be on an AFL list next year. The bloke looked washed up in the beginning of the season given he wasnt getting selected. Thrown a lifeline and he took his chance and has been one of our better players this year.
We bemoan the fact we are soft yet heres a bloke that bangs his head fractures and eye socket yet finishes the game. He may never be a star but from what Ive seen this year he will be a bit better than average.

The club (off field) reminds me of a mouse running on a wheel in a mouse cage. Lot's of effort, but getting nowhere.

The need to start with a PLAN. Stick to cummunicating the message that comes from the plan. This needs to be communicated to the media, the members, the staff, the public. No one should be authorised to go off message. No one looks backward, or even at the present, only to were the plan is taking us.

This will build belief that the club has a future, and hopefully attract lapsed members back, vibrant people to work at the club, and also new sponsorship.

We need to work smarter, not harder. If the AFL seriously wants Carlton to get better then we need leadership at the CEO level, especially since it seems to be lacking at board level. I just hope that this is why the AFL has Watts working with the club, with an eye to re-invigorating the club from the top as required.

I agree with you about our list but you seem to be, whether it is intentional or not, perpetuating a bit of a myth that was going around at the time. The common rhetoric was that we “had no choiceâ€

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

Sorry Keyser, I misread ‘fact’ three. I will keep my post ‘as is’ however, because I like the analogy.

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

Paf,

I guess I AM saying we didn't have any other choice. We were hamstrung by the draft penalties on top of the fact we were crap when they were imposed.

The Johnsons, Harfords and Motts of our recent history were picked up purely because of the draft penalties. We DID have one arm tied behind our backs. I can remember reading a quote at the time from another club saying that we were going to be stuffed for ten years and it now seems pretty close to the mark.

Wouldn't it have been nice to have a choice between picking up recycled rejects from other clubs or picking high draft talent.

The rebuilding started last year. It didn't start when Pagan arrived.

_________________
If you'd given me the choice of going out and beating four men and smashing a goal in from thirty yards against Liverpool
or going to bed with Miss World, it would have been a difficult choice. Luckily, I had both. - George Best

Would agree, the selection of rejects ( of which Heath Scotland is one) that everyone is critical of was a situation that was forced upon us due to our drafts penalties. Dennis has stated that he would have much prefered draft picks than having to recycle players.

_________________
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty" -Winston Churchill

L.M 35-06

You also have to throw in that we couldn't trade into those rounds of the draft from which we were docked, and you're ignoring that we would have had pick 5 in 2003.

Scotland for our third rounder? Pretty fair.

Beaumont for Harford and Johnson? We were held to ransom.

McKernan for Digby and Teague? WE WERE HELD TO RANSOM.

The Murphy and Allen trades were probably fair.

Michael Rischitelli, Shane Tuck and Andrew Raines were speculative picks, we opted for mature bodies and attempts to inject our side with cover for our most lacking areas, pace and ruck.

I dare say we wouldn't have even picked up Raines even if we scored ourselves a time machine.

I don't see much wrong with 2004, missed out on Egan (Geelong from their VFL side) and Moran (debuted round 21, about as speculative as Setanta).

2005 saw another 'safe' trade made for Saddington, and we haven't see anyone arise from that to indicate it's a mistake yet (please don't say Bartram, I'm not convinced). Sydney pays a good chunk of his salary, he's been unlucky with his knee.

Perhaps in hindsight we could have snared Jackson and scored another rookie pick, but who's to say we would have still got Flint, or that Jacko deserved to be on the senior list at the start of the year. Massive speculation.

So despite all these so called drafting tragedies that have occurred in this time, Denis has played a role in trade talks, and rough directives to WH for the drafts.

We've played it safe, and chipped away where possible - without any perceived currency at our end - and we had to give players who were probably on the bottom third of another clubs list a crack with us if we've wanted mature bodies.

Now for a quick run over of coaching style.

2003 - Slash and burn year, tried a few things and experimented with the list to see what he had to work with, probably paying very little attention to a system of play, rather simple positioning of players. A sink or swim sort of approach.

2004 - Threw out the worst of the duds, traded away those with value who were disenchanted with the idea of working harder to push for better results. Noted a huge lack of leg speed so sought about playing contested footy. Game plan for the players - better results came - at the expense of nice draft choices in our first year without restrictions.

2005 - First true transitional year, with teething problems, to put it nicely. A man known for his firm belief in the value of contested football was wearing down an ever-growing band of younger players by employing a game plan built off it. Attempted to build a free running aspect into the game plan to counteract the growing number of contests created in an attempt to protect younger players. Hardened bodies in the clearances used as sacrificial lambs.

Worked nicely in the Wizard cup but gave clubs an extra 4 weeks to check out what Denis was doing with his fairly bare cupboard, again. All the running seemed to be taking a toll on young (lack of pre-seasons in the legs) and old (carrying injuries), no real talent in the tier between to hold it all together.

2006 - Youngsters beginning to look like men, but Denis and/or the Board were not convinced in the game plan in regards to score margins and skil level of individuals, built off many players with question marks over their heads.

Ergo, chip, chip and flood to bring a more defensive mindset into the team as shootouts weren't working. Continued to protect younger players as much as possible. Unfortunately couldn't continue to hedge his bets, with protection of younger players through the bench impacting those out on the field who wound up doing as much running as the year before, still due to skill errors. Slowly loosened the chains (admittedly under duress) with sporadic results. Strength and endurance training began to reap some rewards and allowed for some positional and role changes.

Decision making, overall kicking skill and agility still noted as an issue to be corrected as best as possible through coaching, but mainly through injection of new and better talent. Still searching through the list for key defensive post and at least one ruckman with some encouraging results late in the season.

To be continued?

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

Really?
Where did he say that?
Denis is on record as saying we needed big strong bodies to play "efficient, direct collision football".
No mention of draft picks.

_________________
Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

Really?
We got Harford and Johnson for Beaumont did we?

You've rewritten history beautifully in your post Jimbob.
Unfortunately, like much of your stuff, it's mostly fiction.

_________________
Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

My bad.

Harford and Johnson via pick 51, Beaumont for Clarke.

Held to ransom for the Beaumont trade though.

Interesting to see you're still digesting the rest.

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

Held to ransom in trades ... don't think so. Getting rid of them surely didn't hurt us and unfortunately every club needs their senior players to stand up and guide the youngsters through. We lost McKernan, Murphy, Allan and Beaumont in one hit when they should have been providing some form of leadership. On an individual level:

Beaumont ... was a cancer, did nothing at Hawthorn so I'm not sure how we did poorly out of that one.

McKernan ... was finished by the time we traded him so again, Morrell and Teague weren't bad pickups considering Corey was gone from North by the end of the next year anyway. The real mistake was made by Brittain in getting him from north in the first place.

Murphy and Allan ... same deal, not worth a sack of sh!t between them and performed accordingly at their new club.

_________________
In WADA we trust

Beaumont surely had a perceived value in terms of picks.

We had no real way of maximising that value (restrictions in place), so we were left with the old "take what you can get" type situation.

These are all just compounding factors in terms of the state of the list, I was just expanding on Keyser's points about draft restrictions and Pafl's narrowly-scoped response to them.

My main points are about what Denis has been doing, which is likely to have a decent level of logic behind it rather than "I did this at North and it worked so why not everywhere else."

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

It's not about who is at fault. It's about whether this is working or not and it clearly isn't. He should never have been re-signed for a 2nd term especially when he had a year to run. Hopefully we can find a way to cut our losses and move on.

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"We used to sit around and talk about how bad the game plan was." Anthony Koutoufides