Sharp Axes

[Nuggety Back Pocket]

Re: Sharp Axes

Moving Naughton to CHB will surely come into considerations this pre-season. With Jamarra coming along nicely, Lobb starting to show some form and Darcy not far off, it makes a lot more sense than it did this time last year, and it certainly doesn't make sense in-season.

Personally I think he's probably a better forward than defender but can see the merit in the shift given our personnel woes down back.

His ground level pressure and assists up forward are hugely underrated, he does more in this regard than most other key forwards. Having said that, I'll admit that his conversion is a big concern. Might be going at reasonable raw accuracy but he gets much better looks than most. Champion Data have highlighted him multiple times over the last couple of years as the worst shot on goal in the league based on expectation.

More broadly I'm a bit concerned about key position bloat on the list. Bruce, Gardner, Keath and O'Brien are all guys that wouldn't be getting a game elsewhere. Up forward we have a log jam with Darcy and Khamis not getting games, and Croft about to arrive. It might mean some tough decisions but we need to cut the fat and opt for quality over quantity. That we're talking about shifting Naughton back while we already have 7 key defenders on the list says it all really.

With the taller players we are recruiting you have to wonder whether our recruitment has the right balance.
There is a distinct lack of quality quick small players. The exceptions being Treloar, Richards and Dale which simply isn’t enough.
With the more recent recruitment of Darcy, Ugle Hagen Lobb and soon Croft, you do have to believe that players like Keath Gardner Oliver and Bruce will become surplus to our future needs, given the requirement of the urgent need of more quicker classy smaller players.

[The Bulldogs Bite]

Re: Sharp Axes

I didn't listen to the hot take on twitter, just read the following - David King is struggling to work out what the problem at the Western Bulldogs is given their list talent.

It's a narrative that he's been pushing and if he seriously can't understand it then he's not as clever as he thinks he is because there's inadequacies/ imbalances across all of the lines that are evident with a rudimentary level of scrutiny. Now it's either incompetence or a ploy, possibly both.

I actually tend to agree with you on the list, which is why I really want to blow it up, but if you're going after David King then surely you need to place the same level of anger and frustration with Bevo and the decision makers at the club? They're the ones who recruited two 30-year olds because they thought we had a list to contend and said as much at the beginning of the year.

I think many of the posts in this thread over the last day or so are very accurate. Blame is almost equally shared by coaches, administrators and players and it's why we're in no mans land / such a difficult decision.

I fear if we aren't decisive and keep trying to have our cake and eat it too by 'topping up' with bit part players and never addressing the real issues which may simply be unsolvable, then we're condemning ourselves to years of middling performances.

Sacking Bevo alone won't help, doing nothing won't help. It needs to be significant IMO.

[jeemak]

Re: Sharp Axes

I actually tend to agree with you on the list, which is why I really want to blow it up, but if you're going after David King then surely you need to place the same level of anger and frustration with Bevo and the decision makers at the club? They're the ones who recruited two 30-year olds because they thought we had a list to contend and said as much at the beginning of the year.

I think many of the posts in this thread over the last day or so are very accurate. Blame is almost equally shared by coaches, administrators and players and it's why we're in no mans land / such a difficult decision.

I fear if we aren't decisive and keep trying to have our cake and eat it too by 'topping up' with bit part players and never addressing the real issues which may simply be unsolvable, then we're condemning ourselves to years of middling performances.

Sacking Bevo alone won't help, doing nothing won't help. It needs to be significant IMO.

What would the world look like if we didn't recruit Jones and kept playing mids as second rucks? The age of these guys is irrelevant if they were the only better options than the ones we had.

I am angry at Bevo, and I am angry at Grant, Power and anyone else at the club that has allowed us to find ourselves in this state of affairs. But that shouldn't be conflated with being angry at ignorant megaphone wielding dickheads who sprout shit at an audience for cheap clicks. People who do or at least should know better but pretend they don't and operate in the media deserve derision. They're literally the ones dumbing down society and ruining any chance of balanced discourse - in fact I could go on for days about how much I hate their cheap seat bullshit.

I mean **** them. They get up in the morning and heap shit on people knowing full well they're publicly only telling a part of a story just so they can generate pressure on people to help drive a commercial outcome. Imagine your job was to be a **** every day? You'd be able to justify it as entertainment I guess, if that made you feel better whilst people worry about losing their jobs.

[FrediKanoute]

Re: Sharp Axes

How was Freo?

Where did you go? Sure was a beautiful day!!

Was a lovely Winters day! Went to the Freo prison, wandered past the Freo Oval and peered in - Sth Freo v West Perth. Wandered through the markets, had lunch and visited the Maritime Museum. All in all a full day. Sunshine was fabulous.

[EasternWest]

Re: Sharp Axes

But that shouldn't be conflated with being angry at ignorant megaphone wielding dickheads who sprout shit at an audience for cheap clicks. People who do or at least should know better but pretend they don't and operate in the media deserve derision. They're literally the ones dumbing down society and ruining any chance of balanced discourse - in fact I could go on for days about how much I hate their cheap seat bullshit.

I mean **** them. They get up in the morning and heap shit on people knowing full well they're publicly only telling a part of a story just so they can generate pressure on people to help drive a commercial outcome. Imagine your job was to be a **** every day? You'd be able to justify it as entertainment I guess, if that made you feel better whilst people worry about losing their jobs.

Testify.

At some point this stopped being about footy, and I don't want to sidetrack any more than I'm already starting to but, let's warm up the guillotine comrades.

[GVGjr]

Re: Sharp Axes

When it is 10 minutes into the 3rd quarter, no player is thinking about the story the coach told them before the game about eskimos and seals (sic). What they are doing is:

1/. Supporting their team-mates and helping make them better.
2/. Representing themselves with pride/fear of failure.

You don't coach effort. You coach skills, gameplan and provide the group with a unified purpose. Effort comes from within. If you think otherwise you're kidding yourself.

But can coaches accept less than ideal levels of effort and in a way endorse it?

[anfo27]

Re: Sharp Axes

What was hard to accept yesterday was being bullied by a team sitting in the bottom 3. A younger team who had nothing to play for were physically harder at the contest than a team playing for a finals spot. Yeah we were up at quarter time but only because the hawks fumbled their way to a quarter time deficit.

It feels like I've ben watching this garbage for years. Yeah, we look good when we get the game on our terms but as soon as we don't we go to water. Other than libba & bont we are terrible at tackling. We are just not physically tough. We are too easy to play against.

I'm sick of hearing we don't have the talent or we're over rated. Teams don't win flags because they have the most talent, otherwise GWS would have 4 or 5 by now. Flags are won by which coaching group can get the best out of the lists they have. For the last 2 years the bulldogs coaching group would get an F & detention. Attitude reflects leadership. I'm not in the club, so i have no idea but I can see what they produce on the field. I see players who don't play for each other, they DO NOT buy in to whatever the style we are wanting to play.
Look at the blues. Looked hopeless against us. Now they have buy in & they look completely different from the team we beat. If we had buy in from our group & still had issues, then you can say the list is over rated or not good enough or whatever.

Happy to see a structure where Bevo is out of the coaches box & we actually get ACs that can complement Luke cause at the moment Lukes weaknesses as a coach have been laying bear for the football world to see for the last 2 years & its been a shit show!
He has given us all what we never thought we'd ever experience & this is how the club supports him? Disgraceful!

[The Bulldogs Bite]

Re: Sharp Axes

What would the world look like if we didn't recruit Jones and kept playing mids as second rucks? The age of these guys is irrelevant if they were the only better options than the ones we had.

I am angry at Bevo, and I am angry at Grant, Power and anyone else at the club that has allowed us to find ourselves in this state of affairs. But that shouldn't be conflated with being angry at ignorant megaphone wielding dickheads who sprout shit at an audience for cheap clicks. People who do or at least should know better but pretend they don't and operate in the media deserve derision. They're literally the ones dumbing down society and ruining any chance of balanced discourse - in fact I could go on for days about how much I hate their cheap seat bullshit.

I mean **** them. They get up in the morning and heap shit on people knowing full well they're publicly only telling a part of a story just so they can generate pressure on people to help drive a commercial outcome. Imagine your job was to be a **** every day? You'd be able to justify it as entertainment I guess, if that made you feel better whilst people worry about losing their jobs.

Preach brother.

It's why I don't actually watch any footy related shows or even listen to any footy related radio anymore.

Having two kids also has something to do with it

[Sedat]

Re: Sharp Axes

King is way worse as he actually thinks he knows what he is talking about, whereas Kane is very aware of his method of attention seeking.

It's easy to attack the scribes who are over-rating our list, but our club has put it on record that we are very much in the premiership window and have been for a few seasons. If we are going to hold King and Cornes accountable, then we have to do the same internally.

[Sedat]

Re: Sharp Axes

This is the part that frustrates me. The easy observation is to blame the list when we lose but it's a lot more complex than that.

We rebuilt and refreshed the list after our poor 2017, and our trajectory was steadily climbing and going to script from 2018 to 2021. Honestly, I believe our total capitulation in the last 40 minutes of the 2021 GF has psychologically destroyed the core senior list and possibly even the coaching group. We have only tinkered with the list since 2020 and recruited for the now, and our list management has been conservative since then because internally we believed we had everything in place to contend for a number of years.

[jeemak]

Re: Sharp Axes

We rebuilt and refreshed the list after our poor 2017, and our trajectory was steadily climbing and going to script from 2018 to 2021. Honestly, I believe our total capitulation in the last 40 minutes of the 2021 GF has psychologically destroyed the core senior list and possibly even the coaching group. We have only tinkered with the list since 2020 and recruited for the now, and our list management has been conservative since then because internally we believed we had everything in place to contend for a number of years.

There was also a balance of who we had to pay today to keep things together, whilst also being really careful about who we could pay to come and play for us.

We haven't seen it this year however, I think Lobb and Jones will be seen as the right calls. Second rucks are expensive and intercepting defenders are even more so in today's game. Where we've failed with our list management has been done to death, but identifying role players who are solid or better than solid has been an issue for us.

The draft for tomorrow situation hasn't helped us. Aza never mentions it but we've really starved the development of the list due to landing what are supposed to be generational talls. If that doesn't pay off we're truly screwed.

You might be right that psychologically the 2021 GF did us over, however, it's not like that was the day we started getting scored against in succession or out the back or dropping games we should have won. This playing and coaching group have had that in them for years.

[1eyedog]

Re: Sharp Axes

We rebuilt and refreshed the list after our poor 2017, and our trajectory was steadily climbing and going to script from 2018 to 2021. Honestly, I believe our total capitulation in the last 40 minutes of the 2021 GF has psychologically destroyed the core senior list and possibly even the coaching group. We have only tinkered with the list since 2020 and recruited for the now, and our list management has been conservative since then because internally we believed we had everything in place to contend for a number of years.

To be fair though we had to make sacifices to secure Jamarra and Darcy during this time.

Still, we haven't cut deep enough re. our outgoings which has been a long-term trend of ours.

[azabob]

Re: Sharp Axes

There was also a balance of who we had to pay today to keep things together, whilst also being really careful about who we could pay to come and play for us.

We haven't seen it this year however, I think Lobb and Jones will be seen as the right calls. Second rucks are expensive and intercepting defenders are even more so in today's game. Where we've failed with our list management has been done to death, but identifying role players who are solid or better than solid has been an issue for us.

The draft for tomorrow situation hasn't helped us. Aza never mentions it but we've really starved the development of the list due to landing what are supposed to be generational talls. If that doesn't pay off we're truly screwed.

You might be right that psychologically the 2021 GF did us over, however, it's not like that was the day we started getting scored against in succession or out the back or dropping games we should have won. This playing and coaching group have had that in them for years.

Here I was thinking I was on everyone's mute list.

[Grantysghost]

Re: Sharp Axes

It's easy to attack the scribes who are over-rating our list, but our club has put it on record that we are very much in the premiership window and have been for a few seasons. If we are going to hold King and Cornes accountable, then we have to do the same internally.

Theyre all click bait sound bite generation machines.

The ABC has some decent analysts who research, commercial stations are about headline creating tweet generation that do exactly what they're doing in here...
Stirring the pot with no substance.

As for the club if we don't make finals I'll be very disappointed.

[MrMahatma]

Re: Sharp Axes

Here I was thinking I was on everyone's mute list.

There's a mute option!?!