The squeaky wheel gets the oil

[Desipura]

Re: The squeaky wheel gets the oil

We are the nice guys, not wanting to rock the boat. We are not one of the powerful clubs and rely on good will from other clubs in regards to poaching our players.
We want go aggressively after a big named player that a club does not want to lose and "please if you can do the same by us?"
Nice guys come last......... Unfortunately.

[LostDoggy]

Re: The squeaky wheel gets the oil

You know and we will get no where by rolling over and coping it up the proverbial, just like the past 100 years.

Lets continue as we are and don't complain, and get raped and pillaged, lose good players very little compensation and shit stadium deals, no blockbusters and little Free to air and go along our merry way. Let the bigger clubs get the best deals and build their membership base from 30k, 40k, 60k, 70k and eventually hit 10ok and we can be happy we reached 32k at some stage.

Maybe Eddie is a bogan but he stands up for his club and doesn't want to get pushed around.

For once I would like to see some passion from the club leaders and fight for something.

OK, say they did, and the AFL withdraws the special funding. Goodbye Bulldogs.

I don't know how many threads we're going to start about this sort of thing, but my answer is always the same - until supporters get behind the club, it's all a pipe-dream to think we'll get stadium deals, blockbusters, etc. You've got to do the work before you earn the rewards.

[Sedat]

Re: The squeaky wheel gets the oil

Maybe they should complained more than once and not 2 seconds before the compensation announcement was made.

Exactly. Venom Denham was telling all and sundry that Ward had signed on before the start of the season, likewise Scully - maybe we took no notice of Denham's story because he normally has a 10% strike rate with the truth. Anyway Melbourne went on the offensive from the get-go, arranging a Scully press conference before the start of the season so as to make any future departure by him seem like a massive story and ensuring that Melbourne would be given prime consideration when being compensated. Ward by contrast, who is (today) a vastly better player on every conceivable level than Scully and is only a year or so older, barely raised a couple of lines in the media all season and was therefore never considered a big story or a prize catch. Personally I would have liked our club to make as big a song and dance about Ward all season as what Melbourne did with Scully. We were every bit as passive with Harbrow 12 months earlier - the definition of insanity is to do exactly the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.

Melbourne rely on AFL special assistance almost as much as we do, but they were well and truly prepared to make Scully a big news story all season and therefore paint the AFL into a tight corner when it came to evaluating compensation in the event that he would leave. We very easily could have done the same, and we should have. No other club apart from the Dogs have lost two starting 18 players who are U-23 and likely 200+ gamers to the expansion clubs - we can dress it up any way we like, that is a very poor result by those in charge of list management and contract negotiations.

[LostDoggy]

Re: The squeaky wheel gets the oil

I kicked and screamed on WOOF (and elsewhere) more than the club did all year.. yet club apologists kept telling me that I was:

a. mistaken (ie. Ward was staying or hadn't made up his mind yet), and
b. annoying and should go away (just like the club did, unlike what Geelong and Melbourne and Collingwood do).

It's no fun watching your club get screwed in real-time while everyone sticks their heads in the sand and pretends it's not happening. And worse, even AFTER it's happened, many people would rather pretend that it didn't really happen the way it did and we couldn't really have done anything about it. It's almost like some people NEED to believe everything people in power tell them so they can tell themselves that she'll be 'right and everything is rosy and pretend that the world works they way they want it to, rather than maybe having to grow up and face reality and realise that they are lied to on a daily basis.

[Maddog37]

Re: The squeaky wheel gets the oil

I agree with your sentiment although previously I would maybe not have. But tell me how did your kicking and screaming benefit you Lantern?

[Bornadog]

Re: The squeaky wheel gets the oil

OK, say they did, and the AFL withdraws the special funding. Goodbye Bulldogs.

I don't know how many threads we're going to start about this sort of thing, but my answer is always the same - until supporters get behind the club, it's all a pipe-dream to think we'll get stadium deals, blockbusters, etc. You've got to do the work before you earn the rewards.

Why can't we at least speak up when we get screwed, like the Ward deal?

[LostDoggy]

Re: The squeaky wheel gets the oil

OK, say they did, and the AFL withdraws the special funding. Goodbye Bulldogs.

I don't know how many threads we're going to start about this sort of thing, but my answer is always the same - until supporters get behind the club, it's all a pipe-dream to think we'll get stadium deals, blockbusters, etc. You've got to do the work before you earn the rewards.

The cure are the exact problems you are talking. To get more members you need more exposure. From memory we have a pretty good supporter to member ratio anyway.

Not sure what why we can't complain when there are is an obvious injustice.
Rather we smile as we are copping it?

[LostDoggy]

Re: The squeaky wheel gets the oil

I agree with your sentiment although previously I would maybe not have. But tell me how did your kicking and screaming benefit you Lantern?

Haha -- I was saying that if the club did the equivalent of my kicking and screaming they may have gotten a better outcome.

Conversely, even if they didn't, supporters like a club that stands up for itself, because it's an extension of themselves, and no one wants to feel like a coward. If a club rolls over and is too scared to speak up because it's the lapdog of the AFL, no supporter wants to feel like that represents them, because it just shows a great lack of self-respect. The whole dying on feet rather than living on knees principle.

If we don't stand for anything, how can we be surprised when we can't attract new supporters? If you were looking for a club to follow, would you be attracted to a club that is proud and strong and knew what it stood for, or a cowering club with its cap in hand too scared to squeak?

I certainly felt embarrassed by how easily we just took the injustice of GC and GWS's poaching -- in this case there was no contradiction between knowing that they help the competition exist (and by extension help the Dogs exist), yet not wanting to be the club that is the most screwed. The distinction is that as a collective, all the clubs agreed that the new teams and TV rights were good for the comp, but then when it came to player poaching, the system was set up to be a direct competition between 16 other clubs to see who would have their players poached. Our job then was to either NOT have our players poached, or get good compensation if we did (there is no contradiction between this, and still being a good citizen of the AFL). The reality is other clubs managed to hang on to their players better than we did, and/or managed to get compensated better than we did -- this is not an issue of being ungrateful to the AFL, it's a matter of competing with 16 other clubs so that we come out relatively ahead of the others (as is the definition of a competition). As it stands, from a 'GWS/GC poaching' perspective, we were the wooden spooners, both in fair compensation and quality of players lost. Nothing to be proud of there.

To say that we shouldn't have competed as hard as we could from a GC/GWS poaching perspective because we rely on the AFL for our existence is the equivalent of saying that we should go out there and lose games or not win too much or not go too hard for a flag so as not to piss off the AFL. Completely different issues -- one is making responsible decisions as part of a collective (supporting the existence of GWS and GC), the other is competing as hard as we can as a competitor in a cut-throat competition so we don't end up the worst off of all the clubs (and further than ever from a flag).

---

To answer your question from a personal perspective however, all my kicking and screaming has given me the satisfaction of being proven right, and of being able to say "I told you so". It's not much, but it's surprisingly satisfying. Maybe as Dogs fans we just take whatever small wins we can get.

[LostDoggy]

Re: The squeaky wheel gets the oil

North this pre-season will report when someone at the club farts. They are bordering on any publicity is good publicity. Funny how they have more members than us yet have a smaller geographic area and similar prospects.

[JohnGentStand]

Re: The squeaky wheel gets the oil

I have to agree with your sentiment Lantern. We should never fear standing up and being counted. Apathy is as good as surrender. Maybe as supporters it is our duty to ensure the club realizes how we should be represented and how important it is to us that losses hurt. The battle is important, not just the result.