and do we know if this was or was not the corner stone of the Collo/Pagan deal?
It certainly helps to explain the 3 year extension. No coach would take on the task unless they had a minimum of 3 years to rebuild.
I do find it difficult to accept that Denis has gone from an excellent coach (and people who say he only won the flags because of Carey are twits - lots of great players did not win flags why?) who won two flags and kept Nth in the finals when they were broke as all @#$%&!, to a bloke who cannot see what everyone (even me) else can see.
This is not to say Denis does not have flaws, he does. But they are not new flaws. They have not sprung up overnight. Yet in the past those flaws did not get in the way of his successes. Why not? Why only now?
As for the development problems. Well there is a flaw in the arguments used against Denis. Most arguments go along one of 2 lines.
a) of assisting all players regardles of talent/skill etc. Lets call this the Sporn argument.
b) the play the kids more often - we'll call this the Blackers argument.
A: fails to consider this is not a school, not a workplace as such. This is an eite sport that will chew up and spit out a thousand Jessie Smiths for every Marc Murphy. It is not the Jessies that a club as screwed up as us are looking for (not yet), its the Simmos, the Setantas, players that can give us an edge along with the elite kids, the Murphys and the Kennedys.
Denis is not so much developing as he is searching. Take Jackson on the weekend. He came on and had immediate impact and he got a lot more game time because of it. I reckon Denis has given him a tick. Bower got a tick that first game. It is ruthless. So what. I want the best side not the hippiest! This is Blue power not flower power.
B: Now this I have trouble with too. Why not play the kids for more time? I can only think of two reasons. Perhaps Denis is like Parkin, and believes their young bodies (unless elite) must be protected while they develop the muscle, awareness, miles to take on this game (The Simmo school of development) and like Pagan he does prefer the older stronger bodies but our older stronger bodies are shit so he is caught between a rock and a hard place.
Whatever, I seriously have a hard time accepting lose of skill via age as an argument.
or that this game is radically different from 1999 - I do not think it is. It is evolving but not at such a rapid pace that someone who knows the game as well as Denis cannot keep up - otherwise how the @#$%&! does BV or me or anyone over the age of 25 keep up with it?
So for me, I look for the simplest solution.
which would be the cattle.
except I barrack for these cattle so
its the super tank which comes to fruition next year! whoop whoop whoop!
