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[B][COLOR="#0000CD"]Our club was born in blood and boots, not in AFL focus groups.[/COLOR][/B] -
Re: Game Day 2012 - R14 Western Bulldogs vs Essendon
Boy, am I glad I didn't stay up/get up to watch that. The match started at 4.40AM here so I decided that if I got up in the middle of the night, checked my computer and saw that the scores were close, I'd stay up and watch the rest of the match online. However, I woke up at the end of the first quarter, saw that we were more than six goals behind and went back to bed. Smart move? At least we didn't lose by 100.47 year Doggie member
I'm home...Comment
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Re: Game Day 2012 - R14 Western Bulldogs vs Essendon
I don't mind the losses (I hate to lose, but I expect we will lose to the better teams). What I do mind is being blown off the park. Our last three losses have been by an average of 78 points. There is no way that Essendon, Brisbane, and Sydney are (on average) 13 goals better than us. We are not showing anything on field ... We are showing less in the coaches box.
What is our strategy ?? What are we teaching our young pups ?? We all keep saying the future is bright with our young brigade. Bright for what ? They're showing glimpses of pure skill, but it is being beaten out of them, 13 goals at a time.
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Re: Game Day 2012 - R14 Western Bulldogs vs Essendon
I was a quarter way through writing up a detailed post, but I stopped and deleted it. I don't have the energy for it, but I'll sum up my concerns:
1) The playing list is in a bad shape. Older players are either finished or close to it and we have few consistent young players. Libba, Wallis, Dahlhaus and Roughead have been solid whilst Cordy/Jones show signs at times. Howard and Tutt have been massive disappointments whilst Grant, Sherman and Veszpremi aren't living up to their potential. We have little to no pace on our list. We have quite a few talls, but none look like a certainty to make it.
2) Recruiting department. See above. Howard/Tutt selections look worse by the day. List management could be thrown into this section too. Addison getting a two year contract is ridiculous.
3) Coaching staff - not sure what they are trying to implement. We all charge in for the football like an Under 9's side, and leave nobody on the outside for the spread. Teams like Essendon slaughter us through this, it's just so painful to watch. There seems to be no structure other than to 'crack in'. I like McCartney but some of the selections have been bizarre too, including match-ups. We rarely spot up targets -- we constantly bomb long and blindly to nobody. Senior players are doing this (Griffen included) so it cannot be blamed on the inexperience of our side.
4) Off-field matters. Membership and game attendance is a serious concern, particularly for future years. It just feels like we are in another dark period, but at least in 03/04 we had a great senior core (Grant, Darcy, Johnson, West, Smith) and a talented 'younger' group (Murphy, Gia, Hargrave, Hahn, Lake) and then later Cooney/Griffen. Right now, I don't see how we are going to improve with our current list. Griffen and Murphy are our only top graders, whilst we have an abundance of older/injured players who are cooked. There's no genuine match winning young talent coming through either. I like Libba/Wallis etc. but they are no genuine 'stars'.
Perhaps it's a bad night and it's a lot easier to be pessimistic, but I am concerned about our future on and off the field because I see very few positives in both areas.
My only solace is in a team like West Coast who turned the corner in 2-3 years, but I fear we could be going down the Melbourne/Port Adelaide path where it's 5+ years to rebuild.W00F!Comment
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Re: Game Day 2012 - R14 Western Bulldogs vs Essendon
Why is that though?
The ELC is on a par with other clubs, the Whitten Oval is a good training facility and we have a good relationship with Williamstown where players are given a great chance to develop into AFL players.
I think we are now paying a high price for a few reasons mainly around list management decisions.
Maintaining players on the list for to long when we were having supposedly having a crack for a flag. Hahn, Eagleton and Akermanis were all poor decisions for the club then and especially now.
We promoted Mulligan to the senior list and gave him a another few years when we had the option of maintaining him as a rookie for another year. We might have done the same with Panos. We couldn't make the hard call on Hahn and gave him another year as a rookie. Hooper was promoted prematurely as well.
In my opinion, we can develop players but obviously not ones without a real future. We just have a few too many of them.Western Bulldogs Football Club "Where it's cool to drool"Comment
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Re: Game Day 2012 - R14 Western Bulldogs vs Essendon
Think it might have been Ryan Lester that Brisbane picked with that on-traded Harbrow compensation selection we gave to them for Sherman. And yes, it is way too early to speculate on him being a wasted pick.
After last night's ineffectual display, and knowing that the coach doesn't rate him much at all, Sheman is already looking an awful lot like a wasted trade. Sydney were dead keen on him at the time and offered up a better draft pick than we did - I can see Sydney offerring up a pissy 4th round selection to get him at the end of the season, and have a better chance of making him another one of their Moneyball success stories."Look at me mate. Look at me. I'm flyin'"Comment
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Re: Game Day 2012 - R14 Western Bulldogs vs Essendon
still had a decent crack though.
correct, but I'd almost say the seniors are the worst. Someone like Libba likes the long kicks but atleast they are somewhat educated.
Do you honestly believe this or is it an emotion statement? Throw in Dauhlhus and maybe one or to more break throughs and the future list will build.
I think this is where the whole "refresh not rebuild" came from. West coast did it so why can't we attitude. I think it is showing it isn't going to work.
Can't agree with you here. U9 have a zonal field to prevent them converging on the ball. Maybe Macca can put some cones out on Etihad for the next game?Comment
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Re: Game Day 2012 - R14 Western Bulldogs vs Essendon
I've mentioned this elsewhere but if there was a standard between VFL and AFL we would be premiers almost every year. We have so many players on our list, both drafted in and traded for, that are inconsistent/non-contributors at the highest level but dominate the next level down. We have precious few genuine impact players at AFL level and a plethora of foot-soldier types who can occasionally play a role but regularly are found wanting against the better teams in the competition. Apart from Hudson and Akermanis (and Hall for a shorter time), the players we've traded in pretty much since the Wallace era have not had any sustained impact nor have they improved problem areas on our list. We invariably select fringe types from other clubs for low output that end up being list cloggers and never actually improve our list, and on the one occasion we went high profile, it was a disaster with Rawlings (because it was extremely poorly researched).
Our list required major surgery in so many areas. Jason McCartney has a mountain of work in front of him."Look at me mate. Look at me. I'm flyin'"Comment
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