phoenix johnson wrote:
Captain Dan wrote:
McKernan may have been a hack when we got him, but he won the B&F for us one year so he was better than most in the team at the time!!!
So he's gone from having an ordinary year in 01 to a full blown hack only to be saved by a B+F in an era where Carlton played some of its worst football ever?
Let's not forget that a B+F back then was pretty easy to come by. The club even awarded one to Lance Whitnall.
McKernan's best football was well past him by then. The fact we traded away our first round pick AND Porter in the so called Super Draft, shows how much we thought of him at the time. You wouldn't have traded a bag of shit for him back then.
McKernan is on a long list of has beens that past Carlton football departments have had raging hard ons for.
PJ, at the time it was felt McKernan wasn't playing his best football under Pagan and he could do better elsewhere.
In a time before playing 2 ruckman was in vogue we tried playing Porter and Allan and it didn't work. We struggled up forward and were crying out for some help up there. Trading for a forward-ruckman rather than having 2 ruckman was the right idea. Allans best football was superiour to Porters and Allan had told us his foot was good so Porter was the ligical one to go.
McKernan did a pretty good job taking centre bounces and then going forward to be our only option, while Hotton and Merrington rucked around the ground.
It was the right idea and probably the right player. Other circumstances prevented it really working.