Quote Originally Posted by mighty_west View Post
I guess when you've been a passionate supporter for so long like all of us here, you build up hope and expectations because of the talk from other supporters, from media, from the club, the more passionate about the you are the more it hurts i guess, we see other clubs have sustained success like Geelong and Sydney, Collingwood never stay down too long so why not us? with us thankfully we all witnessed the ultimate success after the heartbreak of many Prelim losses ('85 and '97 burnt for many years) and reaching another GF, but 100 years and two flags to show for it is, you know, crap!

For once i'd love our club to be the best in the comp, we have never been the best, yeah 2 flags and that's great but never finished on top, and we don't have to dominate every club and every game (would be nice to) but we get good, but we also drop just as fast.

Funny thing is, in Bevo's time, its our most sustained successful time in the competition yet look how much he cops, which i understand because we just have to be better than what we are.
Counting backwards we've made finals in 2022, 2021 (GF), 2020, 2019, 2016 (GF/Premiership) and 2015 under Bevo's reign. During that time we've rebuilt once, and in our most recent iteration are clearly trying to build again.

Prior to that we made preliminary finals in 2008, 2009 and 2010, plus finals in 2006 and probably should have done a bit more in 2009. Under Wallace we made prelims in 1997 and 1998, and finals in 1999 and 2000.

Like anyone I'd have loved to have made more of our finals appearances and season finishing opportunities under all of our coaches, but it's a tough competition and we have a lot of structural issues holding us back that we have to fight against at a competition level. We share a home ground that every team plays at all the time, we rarely play at the G in massive matches. We struggle to attract big names, we have no real advocacy in the media landscape (even our veteran players are media apologists when you think about it).

While I'm not suggesting we should be comfortable or happy with our lot, and our results, I'm of the view we're at different times an easy punching bag for the media (particularly with an intellectual as a coach who doesn't kiss arse to the media cabal) and supporters of the major clubs. And we buy into the narrative, notwithstanding we've never had it so good as supporters.

So it's great that we have high expectations and strive for more as supporters. But getting involved in the media bullshit and being miserable about it when things aren't going exactly to plan (we were one game and four per cent out of fifth last year - but apparently we're in crisis) is pretty much like jumping into a sandpit without any pants on and being upset because you got sand in your vagina. Just don't do it in the first place.

I'm just saying life is better if you ignore the noise. The noise can't help you control anything, and just makes you angry. You can also think more clearly if it's out of your mind.