or we can be like the bulldogs and link up nicely and all but have no one up there. u need both if u want to win premierships. geelong have both. hawthorn have both. st kilda have both.

Juddy be kicking himself that the hawks were not one of the clubs he interviewed.... They going to be unstoppable over the next few years

Following Carlton was much simpler last year. It was easy to pinpoint the problem and attribute all the blame to the Coach Pagan. Get rid of him and everything would take care of itself. Well quite an oversimplistic assessment from most supporters. The maliaae at the club runs deeper than Pagan's coaching limitations and it will take longer to get ourselves out of this malaise in player development. Don't judge the team on the basis of this performance or you will look as foolish ad the Cats supporters calling for Bomber Thompson's head after the cats were beaten by the dogs in round one last year. The game aganst the Sainters will give us a beter indication of the size of the gap between a top 4 team and us. We still have 21 rounds to go to achieve our benchmark of 8 games.

Now on a separate matter, anyone got Ratten's contact details? Need to remind him that Ellard would be perfect for us in the middle.


Cheers
Conundrum

Jeez Melvey, you are taking the Dune philosophy of 'bend like a reed in the wind' a bit too far.

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But Danny, you cant dismiss my Essendon* argument because "Essendon* are a different model" and simply use Hawthorn as an example to suit yours.
The facts are the YOUNG Essendon* players I saw today played with more run, daring and accountability then our higher rated youngsters. Hell, the Essendon* side not only came back from 5 goals down, but even put the foot down and won a game by close to 10 goals! And I know you can highlight a few of the experienced players and jump up and down and say "look look it was led by the older guys" but it wasnt.
Houli, Dempsey, Lonergan ran their collective guts out. All Im asking is WHY we dont DEMAND similar committment from our players, and more worryingly why are so many on here so quick to dismiss this concern and claim it takes time?

maybe...i can go along with your argument IF..... if we didnt have the best fullfoward in the league....

Look ... have u been drinking????

stkilda and hawthorn havent won anything... swans and wc have....

i dont see wc with the best ff in the league... or the swans ... being chca block with unbelievable key position talent...

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don't dismiss it, just don't think after one game you can say one weay or the other.

The Carlton side of last year Ist game would have beaten us on Thursday - are we going backlwards? No. But if you carry 3 not quite ready blokes into today's game you'll probably lose - but in the long run (over 22 rounds) those 3 blokes will make a huge difference.

Plus


I want Tex in that side - when fit

I want Benjamin in that side - when fit.

I want Joey in the side - when fit

I want Aisake in the side - when fit
Hampson
Kruiser
AB

I like what i saw of Ellard and Armfield - both run, both chase etc...

and I'd like A few non chasers gotten rid of - and I am hoping by the end of this year thats where we will be.

But Essendon*'s kids have never been on the rasor's edge - gone or not gone..who is going to go...etc.

Ours have been living that way for 5 years - They need to develop belief and that will not happen overnight.

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This type of slight is alien in the more cultured part of the world - Walsh. Its up there with mad dogs, Englishmen and the midday sun!

More and more like Richmond every day. The day i judge my club based on what Matthew Knights and the Bombers are doing is the day i give it away.

How is it that after so much pain many still haven't learned to be patient? Did people get too caught up in the Judd to Carlton hype? Did people really expect Ratten to turn around 5 years of the Pagan gameplan in a preseason? Did people expect as new coach to simply erase all the horrible thrashings from the players memory?

I agree with a lot of what you say here.

We need at least two goal kickers (other than Fev) who can kick at least 30 goals a season.

Fisher should be that second option and hopefully someone else??? who i do not know.

Experiment with the forward line - take Fev off for ten and try Kreuzer at full-forward.


Motivational videos.....It would be great if they played a motivational video of boxing?/great Carlton moments ? with music to fire them up prior to the match. Do they still use motivational videos? they should after last week's performance.

We won't move forward until the midfielders work out that kicking the ball to Fev when he is double-teamed is NOT an option.

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“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
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I don't think you can judge a new game plan on one week's showing, particularly where we were light on for our big men, were beaten in the ruck, radio said we didn't have anyone in the last quarter to come on and in my view we panicked going forward in the second half.

Likewise it is too early to say that the Bombers 4-6 smaller fast guys is any model of the future. Like North the year before, the Coach highlighted a lack of pace as a key missing link and adds Dempsey (who was injured), Jetta, Lonergan and others and it worked against a hard working but lowly skilled North team. Will it work against others? Who knows? Round 1 is too early to tell.

I thought on too many occasions on Thursday night we gave in to the early option - leads to 20% chances, or failing to raffle it in midfield amongst the options we had.

Think of it the other way - Wallace played his cards well. We were still going to be Fev conscious whilst a debutant and a 5th gamer were the other options. Without any of our resting ruckmen being fit enough to play up forward, it made sense to double team Fev. Plonk 2 more runners at half back and it looked like all those losses from last year.

I will reserve my judgement for a few weeks. Round 1 usually is no indicator for the season ahead.

The one thing I cannot understand is the fitness of Stevens. There is no way he is fit, he has had a full pre season and wanted to be captain. He is simply not professional enough.

Surely Judd would not be happy with him? With his ability he needs to be getting the ball more and the mistakes he made on the weekend seemed to be when he was getting tired.

CJ69, a fair assumption to make for Stevo is that he is recovering his confidence after being at risk of a potentially career-ending injury. Much like an ACL, it will take some time for Stevo to be cherry-ripe......

We had no ruckmen, three key midfielders clearly underdone and getting fitness by playing games, with the week from hell off the track leading in plus being the most hyped team over summer - while also being the youngest list.

I'm certainly not going to be ranting over running out of legs with the fitness queries over the team. If we had Geelong's depth, I doubt a few of those blokes would have been out there, however with no depth we don't have a choice.

When we had some legs (and an interchange bench) we looked good. When the bodies over time harden up and strengthen, we'll carry that play through a full game. Which might not be that far off, as we were running out games well in February when we were only playing fit players - no doubt the rotations were affected somewhat with Judd, Stevens and Hadley still not right.

This year was always going to be about getting games, education and development into the youngest list in the league. We'll have great weeks, some spankings and middling games, like Richmond.

Winning is a habit that takes some learning - I'm really surprised after the hidings we have copped the last 5-6 years people expect a winning culture is a tap just waiting to be turned on. Hawthorn started their recent rise when they won the last five games of the season (2006?) after being horrible with a young list for the first 17.

Give the kids a chance.

Hear, hear- and don't forget, we'll be in the reckoning for a flag soon enough, unlike the Tiges, or the Aints......

PD'sPC

I understand where you are coming from but to me that is not a reason to still be unfit. He has been able to run for the whole pre season and is still not fit enough.
Could you imagine Judd in that condition? To me it shows a complete lack of professionalism.
Guys like Walker, Carrazzo etc train their buts off and they are let down by people who don't make the effort. To me that is unforgiveable in professional team sport.

I disagree with Pd'pc, the point of Judd's article is that we should no longer accept mediocrity...or in our case, worse than mediocrity.

Rucking has been a weakness at Carlton for a long time now. No more quick fix, part time solutions eg Sentanta into the ruck. That is bollocks.

We put Cloke in there - if he isn't good enough then we give other ruckmen a go. Cloke is only 196cms. We need an alternative ruckman- surely Kreuzer, Jacobs or someone is worth a go. We can't be hamstrung by a lack of ruck options.

Hawks won 8 games in 2006. Interestingly, this is about the number of wins most carlton supporters would be happy with this year.

Here was their year:

W22
W32
W1
L22
L40
L75
L65
L21
L96
W41
L70
L10
L36
L10
L45
L53
W23
W18
W20
W51

A good start, followed by a horrible middle where they lost 12 of 13 games by an average of 45 points. Then came good at the end.

I'll bet there were a heap of Hawthorn people tearing their hair out during that huge losing streak... wondering if their misery would ever end... if they'd made the right choice in Clarkson...

Hmmm, 4 wins and 12 losses come round 16 hey.


I wonder.

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

Winston Churchill

Cheers JohnM... I think that's a useful model to look at when considering our side.

Guys, these kids are going to learn to win together over time. The light at the end of the tunnel hasn't gotten any dimmer for me after Thursday night.