Sorry, I cant cop that.
Everyone wants to develop a list with young kids. Everyone wants to build a team that can achieve sustainable success.
Yet no one wants to do the hard yards!

Would you rather we top up with has beens and try to be competitive but go nowhere in the process? I had enough of that with Pagan.
The team that ran out on Saturday had no Bowyers, no Motts, no David Clarkes etc etc.

It had plenty of young kids with huge futures ahead of them. Look at our list. Gibbs, Hampson, Murphy, Kruezer. They'll be elite players in the competition. 200 game players.
Others like Bower, Grigg, Browne were highly rated juniors with every chance to succeed.

Our team on Saturday was virtually 3 years younger than St Kildas and half as experienced.
Yet they played some good quality football at times. They just didnt take enough chances to apply scoreboard pressure.
Give me a team that gets it inside 50 on 54 occassions everytime over some of our insipid efforts in the past.

I find it amazing that some of the posters who bag the club for not focussing on youth are bagging the club for not having immediate success.

So do we just sit back and keep accepting the same crap that has been dished up to us over the past few years? Is it okay for players of this once great club to just treat us with contempt?

You don't need to play more games to try more!

Well said verbs. Maybe us Tasmanians have a greater patience level because things move slowly down south.

I thought Sexton had a ton of guts.

IF it is the case that the coaches have challenged Stevo regarding his current state of fitness then I'll be seriously disappointed if the MC don't act and omit him for lack of professionalism & leadership.
We cannot go through another 'Lance' type debacle, surely!!

The article in today's Age supports my initial post.
Why has he come back overweight, he has trained all summer?
Why is it only being addressed now?
Like Fev when they were serious about not drinking they performed well, yet they go back to their bad habits. That is a slap in the face to the club and their teammates.
I cannot believe that these guys were put in the leadership group with one being made VC.
Didn't we learn anything from last year with Whitnall?
Why is this tolerated? Why does Ratten play them?
What kind of example is this to our new kids?
Why is there not a minimum criteria regarding fitness levels?
Can you imagine Geelong allowing a player in that condition to play?

We have been run over badly in our first two games this year, it seems to be obvious why.

I find it ridiculous that in the era of professionalism that players can be allowed to play in that condition.

Ratten should of said you go back to the two's until you are fit enough for AFL football. Full stop. He has had a chance to stamp some authority on this club and has so far failed to do so.

I simply cannot understand this being allowed to happen.

There are so many good things going on at the club yet we allow this, until we address these issues we will not be a topline team again.

Sorry Guys,

But saw nothing last night to change my mind!!

Fev is a classic example. How good was he last night when focused and doing the right thing. Why has he not been focused previously?

Stevens again, left us one short in the last qtr when our qulaity players need to stand up. Showed what he can do in the first half!! Let us down in the second.

Ratten "not fussed" about losing a club record 14 in a row, I think it is embarrassing, questions need to be asked.

We have won 1 final qtr in the last two seasons!!!

We have conceded over 100pts in our last 24 games!!!

It is not good enough.

Lets face it we are a rabble!

Having been a loyal Carlton supporter through the 70's, 80's & 90's through to now I have never seen us so bad.

I admit that now the system is different and a bit harder to to get good players but I have never seen a Carlton side that accepts MEDIOCRITY as much as this one.

Reading through all the posts on this site we are looking for any little sign in a player that may give us hope.

How can we accept a 30 point loss to Richmond and a 40 point loss to St Kilda especially when we lead both sides by around twenty points. These are massive turnarounds against sides that are pretty average.

Here's some examples of our problems:

Stevens, Betts not fit enough.........................(Mediocrity) There is a rule at Brisbane that if a player does not meet very specific fitness standards they do not play, these palyers wouldn't come close to that.
Fevola's attitude, please explain to me why a player goes off the drink for a year and kicks 80 odd goals and then thinks its okay to start drinking again, to me it is selfish.......................(Mediocrity)
Fitness, We recruit a topline fitness person who comes to the club in November and states that only TWO players are fit enough for VFL standards............................................(Mediocrity)
We don't tackle (houlihan on the weekend a classic example).............................................(Mediocrity)
Discipline on and off the field.................(Mediocrity)
We selected a coach with virtually no experience without doing a proper selection process..................................(Mediocrity)
We had a chance to have our own reserves side and didn't do it and we appoint a playing coach with no experience..... (Mediocrity)
We recruit a 196cm ruckman who couldn't get a game at Collingwood, yet St Kilda can get King at pick 90?......................(Mediocrity)

We keep blaming losing our draft picks a few years ago, out of it we lost Wells and Goddard, would they have made a difference?

I was worried when after the weekends game when Ratten said we can look forward to Kruezer playing this week. Jeepers! The guy has missed three weeks with a hip injury and yet to make his debut and will be rushed into the side, if we were serious he should resume in the two's and earn his spot. Poor kid is on a hiding to nothing.

The best way to judge where we are is to honestly assess which of our players would get a game in the current Geelong side?

They have players that are fit, strong, can run and use the ball well and above all they play for each other, we don't. How many of our players seriously have the skills that are good enough?

Apart from Judd (and even he would struggle at the moment) I cannot think of any. We have so many very average players at this club.

Our attitude needs to change otherwise we will not improve. It is a time for tough decisions, we need not only good players but players that will bust a gut for the club. I can handle losing (sometimes) if we have a genuine go, but I have not seen it for years.

I remember the attitude used to be that we expect success, now we hope for it!......Mediocrity at its best.

The removal of Fevola and Stevens will make a huge difference to this club. It is not they they are bad people but to succeed as a team in this competition you need all players giving it their best both on and off the field. These two simply didnt and they havent been the only ones.

Maybe. But the cynical would say that we were forced to remove those two, and if off-field stuff didn't intervene we'd have kept them, and thus had the same problem.