With all the constant bagging of the -playing list after todays debacle, I am reminded of a statement I made long ago.
While watching the last quarter of a reserves game in 1969, I turned to my mate and said ''Who's that Dowell bloke ( Bruce Doull) HE CAN'T PLAY). Surely the most short sighted if not bone headed statements ever uttered within the confines of Princes Park.
My point is while the playing list needs some changes made it is basically sound, and will improve markedly . Maybe not as quickly as we all would like but improve it will.


IF YOU CAN KEEP YOUR HEAD WHEN ALL THOSE AROUND YOU ARE LOSING THEIRS, THEN YOU WILL BE A MAN MY SON.

RUDYARD KIPLING.

Can only keep it if I get it first.

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THEY LIKE TO SEND UP!!!!!!!!

Until each team plays each other the same number of times, the AFL, as a fair dinkum competition, cannot be taken seriously.

He (Mr Swann) said the honour and pride associated with the club's traditional navy blue jumper was priceless.

I'm having too much trouble keeping down my stomach contents down to worry about my head!!!

I hear you MC ... but I can't understand what's happened within a couple of weeks.


Jesus ..... do I feel crook!!!

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Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth. ~Ludwig Börne

We are going through the last of a series of very unpleasant sagas since 2002.

Once this coach has gone - things will start to improve significantly.

Pagan has his faults, but he will have a legacy.

His player communication and managament style has issues, and this will ultimately cost him his job, but he will have put in place the basis of a very sound team - which will be inherited by the new young coach.

The better communication and management style of this person will reap the benefits of the structure that Denis put in place, but couldnt get the best out of.

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My Blue Heaven

i love blueman

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*(grow - fun - gah)

Yeah but whatabout your whataboutism.

hey blueman, you may have let us in before, but just for those who are a little slow.






whoisournextcoach?

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"The ability to speak doesn't make you intelligent." Qui-Gon Jinn 15-05-2005

"there’s more chance of me becoming the full forward for the [Western Bulldogs] than there is of any change in the Labor Party." Julia Gillard 18-05-2010

Spot on Blueman. Bring on the applicants Voss, Rats, McKenna and co.

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WE ARE CARLTON, WE ARE ARROGANT AND WE LOVE IT!

I'd love to think we had another Dowell in the side somewhere. But I don't think so.

...and can he start next week?

There is abit of a story going round about Denis getting absolutely stuck into a young player after the Adelaide game.. to the point that everybody who was present.. (players and officials were sickened)
I know we had a false dawn after that when we beat 2 goodish teams...but we beat them with a gameplan that could easily be unravelled.. and it has.. and since then no counter .

The bloke really needs to go now.

Its way too long.

101 games.
26 games by more than 10 goal losses.. 2 wooden spoons.. and a team of players sick to the gut of him.

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Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas, and oil....... the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Which is the preferred option:

Pagan stays, we continue to struggle onfield and score two top 5 picks.

Pagan goes now, and Ratts lifts us to a couple of extra wins.

Personally, I'd prefer Pagan getting the boot now and Ratts lifting us to a succession of 'heartbreaking' narrow losses, narrowly avoiding the spoon to Richmond and scoring pick 1 and 3.

'That would be the ideal scenario.

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Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas, and oil....... the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off. We apologize for the inconvenience.

I can't see the problem in Pagan being immediately shown the door & one of the assistants standing in for rest of the year under the instruction to put more of an emphasis on youth development/performance at AFL level.
If the kids respond and perform we know they're good enough, if they don't we'll collect another PP at draft time. Win Win in my book.

One thing 's for sure. We aren't going anywhere with the likes of Lance Saddo Kouta etc. continually running around.

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There's so much I could say...

Maybe the players are fearful of winning more games which could result in Pagan staying on for 2008. As Synbad said the players loathe him and they also know he is in the firing gun thus why bust their gut. They don't want him around. The fact that Pagan berates players in public to the point of humiliation is very well known. Even Caro has brought it up many times on air.
I believe a new coach will bring out enthusiasm and commitment in the playing group. People will then realise that our list was not as shite as first thought. A new coach will also weed out the remaining dead wood and make some hard decisions on some of our more senior players.

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WE ARE CARLTON, WE ARE ARROGANT AND WE LOVE IT!

Great post agree 100%

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"Go blues"

Feel my love...............

I dont know exactly who the next coach is, but Id say it is out of Ratten or Voss.

I never know exactly what will happen, but what I do have feelings for 'probable worldlines'.

If you dont know what a worldline is - have a look at wikipedia.

Worldlines are controlled by the choices of people, either individually or as a group. People are emotional and fickle creatures - which means that predicting what might happen is tricky.

But the way I have seen things panning out is that Pagan is sacked and a caretaker coach is appointed.

The Caretaker Coach has moderate success in the last third of the season.

Now up to this point I feel confident, but where I have a problem is that Im not sure whether the new young coach we end up getting is the caretaker (probably Ratten) or someone else (possible Voss).

I have a bit of a feeling that there possibly be might be some kind of a hitch or a problem, which prevents the annointed outside coach (lets say Voss) from taking up his appointment - and the Caretaker ends up as our new coach - which means that Ratten coaches in 2008.

From where we all sit at this point in time however, there is an equal chance that there is no problem at all and the appointment goes smoothly - and therefore someone like Voss becomes senior Coach.

So this is why I openly discuss the possibilities, but I also have a bit of an open mind on the matter.

On Pagan, I believe that Denis is Old School - in that he operates by way of extreme control over his charges and also uses the 'break them down to build them up' approach.

This is very 1960's. and in organisations like the army, it works by totally destroying a sense of self worth and indeed concept of self in a person by totally breaking them. I dont think that Denis is as bad as this, but I do think he favours this methodology.

This would explain the story about the tirade by Denis after the Adelaide match against the un named young player that Synbad spoke of.

When after this breaking down process is complete, we are left with a shell of a person - that individual is programmed with the desires and wishes of the coach and 'built up' - to play as desired by him.

I dont need to tell you that this approach is not very popular these days
except in organisations such as the US marines. In places like army training camps - this is why we hear of things like bastardisation and bullying.

Now I dont think that Denis is a bully, but this appraoch does explain a lot of Denis's behaviour and also a lot of the soulless and passionless displays by our players. - If it was working - we would all be praising him as a super coach - but this outdated approach is clearly failing...

Be assured that this type of coaching/controlling will be gone once we get a new coach - I believe that this will be such a change that the players will respond by 'playing above themselves' - but this will only be a kind of a cathhartic reaction to the end of the Pagan years.

If you pen up a wild animal in a small area and treat it harshly, it suffers stress and has a very bad psychological time overall. If suddenly the animal is released, for a time, it kind of overcompensates and reacts to its previous treatment by going a bit crazy, madly leaping and bounding about in the open spaces again in a way that isnt normal - but is a kind of opposite reaction to having been mistreated.

I think that Carlton has a cathhartic season like this during the first year of the new young coach. - kind of like a 2004 season, but more pronounced.

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My Blue Heaven

Pagan needs to be sacked now and the reason is that Pratt has set him a task to win 8 - 10 to keep his job, and the best way to do that is to NOT blood the kids and keep the old timers in and sneak a few more wins.

This is not a good situation.

In the interests of the club Pagan needs to be let go OR the 8 - 10 games bench mark needs to be taken away and the likes of Lappin, Saddington, Bannister and other players who will not be part of our future sent to the Bullants and the kids given some game time.

My preference is to give Ratts the reigns and see what he can do with the MC totally committed to playing the kids. We need to reset the goals for the year and start working toward put some games into the kids.

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The glass is neither half full nor half empty. Rather the glass is twice as big than required.

Pagan is good at the breaking down but not so good in the building up part.

A coach that has a proven playing record, which isnt all that much in the past and therefore can be admired and respected as well as a someone who is able to relate better to the players themselves would be a very competant builder of positive attitudes.

If we want to get the most out of our players where they are right now a positive builder type of person is needed.

I suggest that either of Ratten or Voss would be the kind of people who would play this role very well.

I dont think that this pholosphy is necessarily a bad one, but has been applied badly, but if the appropriate people intervene soon, this imbalance can and should be addressed.

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My Blue Heaven

Structure? What structure?? You cant be serious in giving Dennis any credit with regards to what happens in the future??

The only way he will have helped us is by us losing so many games nd getting early draft picks.

Ditch the flower now I say.

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You want the flame? Give us the marbles!!

Can you give us any idea as to who the player might be so as to gauge whether this has gotten anything extra out of that youngster??

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You want the flame? Give us the marbles!!