So given 5 years of neglect, how much impact do you think you can make in this area in 10 months, considering all the deficiencies which need to be addressed across the spectrum?

Not while you bite at every opportunity.

I thought it was a valid point - both thread don't deserve much in the way of response and I was just stating as such. You disagree?

To move the ball out of the back pocket you mean?????

We need years and years to drill in some kind of plan?????

Then more time to get it from half back to the centre... and then another hiow long to get it to Fev????

babysteps.....

Look thats basic shit!!!!!

Cos its all setups from kickouts.... its done in your terms... about like serving in tennis... you start with a dead ball situation....

We get stuck at the kick out even....

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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 am sooooooooo tired of the "its always the coaches fault".

Yes lets sack Ratten and hire Worsfold he is doing such a great job with West Coast which have 16 premiership players on the list. Ooops no is sheit now too. I thought he was sooo much better then Ratts a few months ago we were told so by the usual posters?

OK, then lets get Mark Williams, he won a premiership. Oh no, he managed to let a grand final team slip to the bottom 4 and a future looking bleak....


Why do all these naive people talk up every coach that has a winning team and want every coach that hasn't sacked because he now is no good?

Does it not fit into peoples thick heads that winning games and premiership is not just about the coach. The coach is only one of many factors and coaches can not make pigs fly.

great to have you back Synbad! Where the hell were you last week?

I don't like to post negativity, but there were some blatant mistakes made in the coach's box today.

Armfield should have been moved off Harvey at quarter time, if not then, then after North had kicked the first 2 of the second quarter. He was left on Harvey until half time, and the game was as good as gone.

Similarly Saddington in the backline.

And probably the biggest mistake, allowing North to play a loose man in defence. That tactic alone killed us all day, their loose man continually played 3rd up in the contest, and sat in front of Fev. Yes, Fev kicked 6, but we went to him 18 times. That loose man killed us. As for our loose man in defence...well, 141 point against tells us how effective that was.

There are other concers, kicking in from a behind,and dealing with the rolling flood...we have struggled against these all year, but others have discussed these already.

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Mens sana in corpore sano.

Bring back the laurel wreath logo!!!

We won by 11 goals....

Verbs,are you dumb,or a slow learner ?.................i'll repeat,everyone knows how to knock us off.The mob you mentioned come the same caper,its just that they couldnt quite apply themselves as good as the others..................suggest you also get with the program.

P.S. you dont become a millionaire by imparting knowledge that every man and his dog knows...........now come up with something ORIGINAL.............knowing you Verbs,its gonna take a long,long time.

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All my dangerous friends

Where it's lost on you is those teams were not good enough to beat us. They tried and they failed...miserably.

Sucks doesn't it? If only they had used your method. WE WOULD"VE BEEN SMASHED!!!

Got your log in sorted out?

Arr the vitriol of the uninitiated!
Always at your best after the Sunday session
Verbs = Little John

Vitriol? How do you mean?

{edited by mods}

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hands up if you're a sycophant!

One thread was locked already, he was showing where to go for a similar thread. What is with the holier that thou attitude?

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dane's trolling again

Ratts is a first year coach FFS!!!!!! )last year dont count seeing the mess he had to clean up.)

he has been in the job a year to the day since it was announced. He has huge responsibilities, considering what we all expect from our club and its history.

Yeah, he got out-coached, but it happens to the best of them. does anyone remember when Terry wallace, then only a couple of years into his coaching carer outcoached comprehensively kevin Sheedy to cost the dons their only loss in 2000? at that stage Sheedy had been coaching since the dawn of time!!!!!!!

Coaches get outcoached all of the time!!! its gonna happen, he'll learn from it!! at least he is not blaming the cattle, a la Mick Malthouse

i, for mine, think that the positives he has shown, the passion, the bringing together of the team he has done this season has been fantastic. he may not be going as well as we'd like, but name me 1 rookie coach in the modern game that has won a flag in their first year??

Give Ratts a break, and look at the positives. he will improve.

or do we want Pagan back???

i like Ratts

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my last one was rubbish

HA Ha i knew this would happen,blame Pagan now it will be Ratten. We still away from being a great side,look at the list and who played in the seniors from the young recruits. The ones who make it you see it early or some early signs. The problem is we have 1/3 of the plan,the midfield. The forward line is pretty poor as we always look for Fevola .Betts and Fisher are really the only other 2 who kick goals in most games.

The Defense is getting there add Bower and Austin but i feel we might lose Bower if Kerr comes to the club it's a mistake to lose him.

The Ruck we just learning with Kreuser and Hampson and that takes time.

We should be trying to get as much tall forwards and maybe a defender in the draft and a small forward,maybe a Ruckman with experience who not old and under 200cm. I still would get Ben Cousins for nothing if we still after another midfielder but we have enough of midfielders,just need more games in Gibbs,Grigg,Murphy.

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Bang Bang.

On average we our players were 2 years younger than norths and we were giving up 42 games of experience

we had 10 players with less than 50 games experience, north had 6
we had 6 players with more than 100 games experience, north had 11

As I stated earlier in the year post the geelong match, until we can build up our younger players we will continue to be smashed by the bigger bodied/more experienced sides

Yes - both threads are similar in that they have something in common = both are pointless and stupid. Much like 80% of my posts...

I was just pointing out this fact, and figured that the other one was closed because it was a thread that was destined to go nowhere - and I thought this should be closed as well.

Yet here it is, 3 pages later.


As for the 'holier than thou' attitude, I'd say that with be first and foremost reserved for those that dismiss others opinions as stupid simply because they don't agree with them...


...and aside from other examples, there are quite a few good ones in this thread right here.



Might not be such a bad thread after all.

Anyone who was at the Gabba last year would know how far we've come.

You have to remember that Pagan left a train wreck behind. A midfield that couldn't win the ball. No winning ruckman. A defence that leaked like a sieve. A forward line that was overly reliant on Fev. Yeah, we still don't have a winning ruckman, and we still go to Fev... but the main advance this year was to instill some spirit and belief into the side and that has clearly happened. The side goes out onto the field prepared to have a red hot go, and knowing that it can win... that's a mega improvement on where we have been.

What we came up against yesterday was a well drilled side that had been under the same coach for many years. Those guys know how to eat and breathe footy the way that Laidley sees it. Our guys will get there with Ratten, but they need more than the one off-season.

To me, the proof in the pudding is that you can only point to 3 games in which our midfield has been smashed. Yet, we've done that without having a centre clearance ruckman. That shows acute tactical nous to be able to get the level of clearances we have without a dominant big man.

We've also improved the defence. At the moment we have no answer to the resting ruckman... but at the start of the season we knew we wouldn't. The good news is that with natural strength improvement in Matty Kreuzer and Shaun Hampson we'll soon be in the position to cause other teams the same headaches in their own defence. A team like North won't then have the luxury of being able to send a guy like Hale forward because they'll need him down back to clog up our forward options. Guys like Hale and Moran are basiclaly kicking sucker goals against us because we don't currently have the big man strength down the other end to force the opposition to think in a more accountable way against us.

My guess is that last off season we spent much time trying to devise a winning midfield. We've achieved that. We also spent much time building a coherent defence, and more often than not we are seeing a good deal of fluidity to the way that the back 6 works together - particularly given absences at various stages of the season of first choice defenders. My guess would be that we spent less time on the forward line because we felt we needed to stop getting smashed, and therefore the midfield and defence were key. I expect that will be rectified this off season.

So anyway, onto 2009. I expect Ratts to make the finals, and if not, I think he'll be gone. But onwards and upwards my friends... if you thought 2008 was exciting, then just wait for 2009!