gerry atric wrote:
GWS wrote:
Problem is premierships are won by your weakest 10 players more often than your best 10.
Not sure about that GWS. Just look at what has happened to WCE when they lost their two best. In any premiership side there are ordinary players, and as WCE have proved this year, great players make ordinary players look good.
I think we are all getting way ahead of ourselves if we think Setanta is expendable. When we have another 200cm defender who is better, okay. But if he has plateaued that is as much to do with the MC not settling in a position for the last 18months and in our continuing poor development set up.
Waite is no good at minding a man. Austin has played two games. The forwards that have killed us when we have lost have not been Setanta's man. He has a way to go and partly his success will reflect on the capacity of the coaches. We are a dominant ruckman and another dominant forward away from being a finals side. I can't believe the amount of attention Setanta gets compared to other moderately performed players whose opponents are less credentialled than Setanta.
If both o'H's have issues with coaches, they need to perform really well, put the coaches under pressure and outlast them. Ratts has done okay this year, but he is on a two year contract and has to prove he is a potential premiership coach. Part of that judgemnt will be based on who he gathers as assistants and how capable he is of getting the best from every player, of building every players confidence of dealing with different personalities. The notable thing in his dealing with the o'Hs is that he can't find anything positive to say. At the start of the season he didn't even seem to know Aisake's name when publicly presenting the players. The next year is as much a test of Ratten as any player on the list. Firstly he needs to develop what he has rather than expect Swan to deliver a Juddesque recruiting coup every year.
He hasn't proved himself a better coach than Knights as yet, and most thought Knights a dud with a dud list, so Ratt's isn't a certified genius yet, and I hope our judgements on him are as clear eyed as those we pass on the o'Hs.
I think you may have misunderstood what I was saying Gerry.
No-one's suggesting that you don't need at least half a dozen serious topliners to win a flag. That's a given. However what Synbad and I were alluding to was the fact that if you don't develop guys like Setanta into "good" footballers you can have your topliners (Judd, Murph, Gibbs, Kreuzer, Fevola etc) but you won't go all the way. The teams that win flags have solid lists of 25 good players. There are always be some who'll be lucky to be premiership players (Bortolotto twice) but I'll take 6 guns plus 16 "good" players over 6 guns alone anyday.
I think Setanta's done easily enough to be on our list next year and I'd like to see him back in the side now. Considering he's played most of his career in a leaking backline with little support how much better might he be if he gets to settle in next to a much improved group of Bower, Jamison, Thornton, Armfield and Browne (I'd play Waite on a wing).
If they're insistent on leaving Waite down back then I wouldn't mind seeing him given another crack at CHF.
'Tis the season to try a few things and see what happens.
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FAQ
In all his time, Setanta has hardly put a foot wrong- played with heart, tenacity and determination. That determination which has him quoted, "I'm here to restore Carlton to it's position as the premier sporting club in the country" (or something similar).
