who's gonna get the blame if we don't do well next year then?

Fantastic post Aggers - you're one of the a selected few posters who doesn't indulge in blatant revisionism to prove a point.

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Richard Pratt - A Carlton legend.

Brittain s problem was the opposite extreme of Pagans... He was in awe of the senior players to the point they self governed ( and I dont mean in terms of new age modern business practices) their ego s grew and their performances shrunk. At the same time (as was the opinion of many within the club) his ability to communicate with the younger players declined and he was considered as not being particularly good at player development.

Pagan as it turns out was the wrong choice as perhaps was the retention of a majority of the playing personnel he inherited( hindsight is a wonderful thing) but Brittain was never a long term prospect, he was nothing more than an assistant. His foray into coaching post Carlton is a testament to that.

Its easy with the luxury of hindsight to be critical of wrong choices ... so what -------- to have tried and failed deserves greater credit than settling for second best---Risk can bring failure or success --At the time Pagan was regarded as being the best of the best available. The club acquired him just as they have now acquired a player regarded as being the best.

Get over it ......... Its all part of the journey..

Houlihan

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"Whoever said you can't buy happiness forgot about puppies." - Gene Hill

Can't we all just move on?

Just to put things in a little bit of perspective the Pagan references make up just 2 pages out of a 232 page book, most of which is positive with things like the 1995 Grand Final - but also very touching stories such as him nursing his dying father in the three months leading up to the 1998 season; his care for a young girl who died of leukemia in her teenage years, the last game at Princes Park - on top of his early career in athletics, and his triumph on Dancing with The Stars.

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|♥♥♥♥♥♥| http://www.blueseum.org |♥♥♥♥♥♥|

I know what you are saying with respect to the wool being pulled over supporters eyes - few posters were prepared to speak up against pagan/collo for a few years on these boards. It was fairly obvious early on that they werent the right people for the job though (as my posts back on the TBV would attest - we, as a club embraced mediocraty and negativity. There past couple of months have seen a massive swing away from that and a push towards selling the club in a positive light (one of rattens greatest strengths - recall back to his initial interview upon getting caretakers- I'm hopeful that it will continue, particularly with our marketing campaign (the something blue campaign sucked).

If Pagan was on Dancing with the stars, I wonder who his partner should be?

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Love Cricket? Love me

The Bearcat.

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

marge simpson
or
amanda vandstone
or waynekingcarey

The correct answer is his sister.



Or is this a trick question.

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"Hence you will not say that Greeks fight like heroes but that heroes fight like Greeks"?

Winston Churchill

no... the correct answer was Barry Mitchell

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Love Cricket? Love me

where's his office?

the cubicle

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Love Cricket? Love me

There seems to be a suggestion in some of the posts in this thread that some people "got it right" and some "got it wrong" re Pagan's appointment. There's a middle position with all this that some took at the time and are taking again with Ratten. When Pagan was appointed I had no idea if it would work but I liked the idea of a coach taking on some of the senior playing group who'd grown lazy and believed they should set the agenda. Different coaches bring different ideas and techniques and there's more than one way of getting a side to a premiership however there are always going to be some players who prefer the old ways to the new. I didn't have a problem with Pagan getting up the nose of a guy like Simon Beaumont because Beaumont was a flower who preferred technical training regimens like lifting bricks anyway.

I don't go to training every time it's on and I'm not one of the players so from an outsiders perspective all I can do is give any new coach a fixed period of time to prove themselves. I said this about Pagan back then and I'm saying it about Ratten now. I don't really know exactly what sort of a coach Ratten's going to be but I like what I've seen so far. I liked what I saw from Pagan in his first couple of years too.

Hindsight's a wonderful thing but none of us have it at the start of a coach's tenure (as much as many would claim to). By halfway through the third year of Pagan's time it was clear there were massive problems that weren't fixable and at that time I decided I didn't want him as our coach. Unfortunately we'd just re-signed him.

I'll give Rat's the same sort of timespan to show he deserves another contract but he's certainly starting from a better place than Pagan ever was and for that he has the personnel changes (and subsequent culture change) of the last five years to thank. For all of Pagan's faults and inability to get the playing group to follow him if Ratten wins a flag with the bulk of this group then Pagan (along with a number of others) should get a little credit too.

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“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a king. The palace turns into a circus.”
Turkish Proverb

Which is near the box seat.

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“It is a state of mind, a system of belief, a way of seeing the world, a deep faith that, because you are Carlton, you belong to something great.” - Mike Fitzpatrick articulating what Out of the Blue means.

I've kept some good Press articles from 2003/04/05 that cover this era in depth and some detail.

I intend to put them up on the site in "Warby's Scrapbook" in the off season hopefully.

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No ones listening till you make a mistake.

some of u more seasoned posters would recall when i was the only advocate ridding the cancer in pagan and kouta

Half way through Pagans third year you were suggesting I was an idiot for saying that Pagan was the problem and not the draft - Selective memory seems to be a problem around here .

It such a pity that Ratten was forced into tanking the last 6 games because by now we would have realised what Kouta is talking about.

The unfortunate part of Kouta's comments were that he didn't make them 3-4 years ago. Now we will enter 2008 and all the credit for the rapid improvement we are about to see will be put squarely on the input of Chris Judd and the return of Stevens and once again people will be saying if only DP had Judd he would be acheiving the same result where I know and have been saying for some time that the results next year would have been mirroring all the other years if Pagan had been left to finish his contract .

I'm not prepared to give Ratten time because I know that the improvement will come and come at a rapid rate to the point where I believe we will make the 8 next year

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If you allow the Government to change the Laws in an emergency
They will create an Emergency to change the Laws

Selective memory indeed.

There were a whole stack of reasons I suggested you were an idiot.

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“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a king. The palace turns into a circus.”
Turkish Proverb