phoenix johnson wrote:
Regardless of what people may think, the onfield penalties handed down to us were a good thing. It was the kick in the pants that we had needed for so long.
However, as I've been telling opposition supporters over the past month, whether we win or we lose, in the end we always win. If you go right back to the penalties in 02, it's fairly accurate.
We lost Goddard, Wells, Powell and Pick 18. However, we picked up Fisher and Simpson. Two kids who have extremely bright futures at the club. Especially Simmo.
In 03 we picked up Walker and Stevens. The AFL didn't penalise us out of a priority pick or a PSD that year and it worked out for us.
I guess not much happened in 04.
05 we're right back in the draft and take Marc Murphy from Brisbane's grasp
06 the F/S laws work in our favour and we draft Gibbs.
And this year we have finished 2nd last, recruited Judd and kept our #1 draft pick.
So while people piss and moan and still have a grudge against the AFL, I prefer to look at it from the other side and like to think we have picked up some extremely good talent since those penalties.
If someone had come to me the Saturday after the penalties were handed down and said "in the next 5 years you are going to pick up Andrew Walker, Stevens, Murphy, Gibbs and Chris Judd" I wouldn't have believed them
It was the bleakest period in our club's history, yet strangely I think it will produce the most fruitful period in our club's history. We were still operating like an old VFL club, even in the early 2000s. We hadn't adapted to the new ways of the AFL and long before the 2002-2003 draft pick-less period, we were giving away youth to get that little bit more out of our current crop.
But now we're smarter. We're a ****load smarter. We've had to dwell at the bottom for over 5-6 years. That bitter, everlasting taste of humiliation and failure won't allow us to ever be so reckless and neglectful again.
It will make us a modern day powerhouse. The buck had to stop. It has well and truly stopped now
