Coach Men's Senior Coach: Brad Scott

[Old Campaigner]

Sure, I agree. But are we really saying guys like Laverde / Kelly / Perkins etc etc have earnt games? It's not like we're a side firing on all cylinders.

The questions I have are who is pushing those guys out of the side? What metrics are the coaches using to judge players?

A hypothetical scenario could be a player who racks up a big disposal count. That looks great to us sitting on the sidelines but what if the coaches asked them to play a more accountable role and they failed. We wouldn’t know and would sit here wondering why they got dropped or weren’t given a senior game, but when all the facts are apparent the correct decision was made.

This is why I don’t think it’s worthwhile getting caught up in week to week decisions made by the coaches, we simply aren’t equipped with the facts needed to judge them properly. That’s not to suggest everything they’re doing is faultless, they are only human and they will make mistakes along the way. From the outside they can really only be judged on the body of work that takes shape over a number of years and we aren’t at that stage yet.

 

[boncer34]

The questions I have are who is pushing those guys out of the side? What metrics are the coaches using to judge players?

A hypothetical scenario could be a player who racks up a big disposal count. That looks great to us sitting on the sidelines but what if the coaches asked them to play a more accountable role and they failed. We wouldn’t know and would sit here wondering why they got dropped or weren’t given a senior game, but when all the facts are apparent the correct decision was made.

This is why I don’t think it’s worthwhile getting caught up in week to week decisions made by the coaches, we simply aren’t equipped with the facts needed to judge them properly. That’s not to suggest everything they’re doing is faultless, they are only human and they will make mistakes along the way. From the outside they can really only be judged on the body of work that takes shape over a number of years and we aren’t at that stage yet.

What is the number

 

[gillon]

Durham and Caldwell aside, I don’t feel like Scott has accomplished much at all this year. So I find it hard to disagree with those who think it’s a wasted year.

He needed a whole year to figure out Menzie is bad, still on the hook for another year though.

Spent half the season with Martin at half back when he’s much more damaging on the wing and forward of centre. Don’t mind trying it out, but way too long.

Laverde being gifted a game every week. He must not rate Hayes at all if he thinks Lav is currently better.

Goldstein earning half a season of games based off a good debut game. Playing him with Draper and Wright was disastrous and everyone could see it besides Scott.


It seems his mantra is ‘back in your guys no matter what’. Not sure it sets a good precedent when his guys are stinking it up every weekend.

 

[Beerfish]

He needed a whole year to figure out Menzie is bad, still on the hook for another year though.

Pretty sure that year was added not that long ago so he arguably still hasn't figured it out.

 

[Rick Ross]

Brad Scott had the final say on all of this stuff. If he chose not to exercise any common sense or judgment that is on him.
There are collective sign off requirements for long contracts.
If he was happy to go with the flow / group think his way to agreement then he's just another dud operator who blindly follows dogma, isn't he? Not the sort of persons who is capable of waking Essendon from its slumber.

Gotta agree with decisions are never one person & coach will have been involved. He has the responsibility to veto bad decisions.

I see it as a black mark on coach - likely a bad decision (likely because we need to understand pay against salary cap over term of contract + term to understand true value) but not sure it’s a sign of a terminal trait…

 

[Rick Ross]

Durham and Caldwell aside, I don’t feel like Scott has accomplished much at all this year. So I find it hard to disagree with those who think it’s a wasted year.

He needed a whole year to figure out Menzie is bad, still on the hook for another year though.

Spent half the season with Martin at half back when he’s much more damaging on the wing and forward of centre. Don’t mind trying it out, but way too long.

Laverde being gifted a game every week. He must not rate Hayes at all if he thinks Lav is currently better.

Goldstein earning half a season of games based off a good debut game. Playing him with Draper and Wright was disastrous and everyone could see it besides Scott.


It seems his mantra is ‘back in your guys no matter what’. Not sure it sets a good precedent when his guys are stinking it up every weekend.

Getting 2 players to stand up each year (like Durham and Cardwell this year) means we’ll have 16 pretty handy players at the end of the 8 year plan.
Sold!

 

[Zach Package]

Durham and Caldwell aside, I don’t feel like Scott has accomplished much at all this year. So I find it hard to disagree with those who think it’s a wasted year.

He needed a whole year to figure out Menzie is bad, still on the hook for another year though.

Spent half the season with Martin at half back when he’s much more damaging on the wing and forward of centre. Don’t mind trying it out, but way too long.

Laverde being gifted a game every week. He must not rate Hayes at all if he thinks Lav is currently better.

Goldstein earning half a season of games based off a good debut game. Playing him with Draper and Wright was disastrous and everyone could see it besides Scott.


It seems his mantra is ‘back in your guys no matter what’. Not sure it sets a good precedent when his guys are stinking it up every weekend.

He's had a stinker of a year, and unpopular as it might be, I'm not even willing to give him full marks on Caldwell either.

Bit like Mitch Marsh in the test side, it's a red flag for your depth if he's at 3 or 4 but if he's at 6 or 7 he can run riot and make hay. He could be the best 6th midfielder in the AFL, as a number 2 I'm not so sure.

The two supersized wingers is crap and does nothing for either of them, the use of the rucks and key forwards has been a mess and he still doesn't know what he wants out of it or how many he wants, and god knows what he was thinking with the protracted banishment of Shiel as the AFL midfield died in the arse. Durham into the middle has worked really well but I'd still like to see him out on that wing for bits and pieces, he's brilliant there so it becomes a bit of robbing Peter to pay Paul at times.

With the benefit of hindsight, what he should have done after the port game is banished Heppell. I can only assume he was trying to make some kind of point with Shiel and after seeing how the rest of the playing group talk about and revere Heppell (fairly I might add), unceremoniously killing Bambi might have been the rocket the entire group needed to keep going.

If you contrast Sam Mitchell as an example, he's nothing special tactically, but they are playing with an absurd amount of confidence it has just snowballed into a self fulfilling prophecy despite the fact they have more than a few holes. They think they can do anything.

If Brad is not going to be a good motivator, or a particularly good tactician, he needs to find something to hang his hat on quick sticks.

 

[dank420_]

If you contrast Sam Mitchell as an example, he's nothing special tactically, but they are playing with an absurd amount of confidence it has just snowballed into a self fulfilling prophecy despite the fact they have more than a few holes. They think they can do anything.

I feel like Rutten was trying to do something similar to Mitchell, as in let the players play with their own character and flair. I think a problem for us in that regard is that we have a lot of dweebs on the list. It's like the parent watching from the side of the sand pit while his kid is getting his face rubbed in it.

 

[Godzke]

Yea but D’Ambrosio does not fix speed . He only fixes creativity / skill which we do need for sure. But in reality he becomes a short term fix for us if we look to find blokes who have more strings to their bows .
It is really an argument over fixing the bathroom or the kitchen first
. Both need doing but you can only do one each year.

People were saying why keep Heppell. Well he is gone. Kelly will not be in the long term plans.
My preference for our wings would be Duursma / Martin / Roberts / El-Hawi anyway.

Yeah I would prioritse the forward line. Whilst our quality of entries need improvement, we need a forward line that has speed, skill and chemistry to finish and win forward half turnovers. We would've finished top 6 this year if we had a Top 8 forward line.

 

[Zach Package]

I feel like Rutten was trying to do something similar to Mitchell, as in let the players play with their own character and flair. I think a problem for us in that regard is that we have a lot of dweebs on the list. It's like the parent watching from the side of the sand pit while his kid is getting his face rubbed in it.

Fair few dweebs at Hawthorn as well to be fair. Cam McKenzie was 1000% nicknamed ‘Pepe Le Pew’ in high school.

I can’t pin down exactly why but Scott is awful at empowering the group. Rutten I would say was markedly better than Scott at that one thing, the catch was that the cattle he had was a fair bit worse.

Next 12 months make or break him, even if I don’t see the results, I want to see a better foundation than this.

 

[dank420_]

Fair few dweebs at Hawthorn as well to be fair. Cam McKenzie was 1000% nicknamed ‘Pepe Le Pew’ in high school.

I can’t pin down exactly why but Scott is awful at empowering the group. Rutten I would say was markedly better than Scott at that one thing, the catch was that the cattle he had was a fair bit worse.

Next 12 months make or break him, even if I don’t see the results, I want to see a better foundation than this.

Bro even this dude is swaggin up the joint

 

[Zach Package]

Bro even this dude is swaggin up the joint

View attachment 2088760

Massive ‘pre teen Swedish boy’ vibes

 

[blitzer]

Personally I didn't mind what Scott did with all our best players (I still reckon Martin will have learned a heap playing in defense which will round him out as a player in future years which seems a worthwhile investment to me and he still played pretty good). He was unlucky with Parish and Ridley who lost a huge number of games to injury, really wrecking their seasons. Definitely Caldwell and especially Durham were significant wins.

I thought the emergence of Caddy and Roberts really bodes well. Yes, people wanted them in earlier but they are first year players and when they have come in they looked AFL ready. I was also happy that Alwyn Davey got plenty of chances. He's not there yet but he's the exact type of player we need to emerge.

Scott did manage to get us playing a forward half game and we consistently won the inside 50s often by big margins towards the end of the season. Which brings us to the big negatives for mine. We weren't able to build an effective system for scoring that stood up to an entire AFL season (as defences become more solid and well drilled) this was despite basically having a good injury run for our forward line. The other aspect to this was he wasn't able to get the most out of role players. The guys like Hind, Guelfi, Laverde, Gresham, Menzies etc. When you get a brand of football really working well the role players tend to look better than they are and we didn't see that this year in my opinion.

We also saw a number of players that have been in our top 10 in recent years have significantly worse years in Redman and Wright, perhaps Langford too (though he was still good just not great like last year). I wasn't that happy with McGrath either (started well and finished really poorly).

 

[BrunoV]

Pretty sure that year was added not that long ago so he arguably still hasn't figured it out.

No doubt about it.

 

[JayJ20]

I haven't been too critical of Scott because he's nowhere near the cause of our current state, but one worry I have is the level of passion he brings to the game and in turn, to the playing group. Is he an inspirational coach? You look at what McRae has achieved at Collingwood, Sam Mitchell at Hawthorn, Fagan at Brisbane, Kingsley at GWS, and I haven't seen that from Scott yet. Even Voss too.

He used to coach with a lot of passion at North and inspired that group to play above their talent but at Essendon he's very corporate. He seems somewhat detached from the club and the playing group. This week's team selection is an example of that detachment I was talking about. Possibly because of all the intra-club politics he has to deal with.

Normally a coach would bring some excitement in a dead rubber by giving younger players like Tsatas, Saad or Hayes a run in preparation for 2025 but we're getting nothing from Scott.

If for some reason it doesn't work out with Scott, the number one candidate for me would be Luke Hodge should he do his time as an assistant coach. I really enjoy his commentary and think he has what it takes to make us a tough team.

 

[Phone]

it's really difficult for me to interpret that post as anything other than "getting good results = passion; inspiration". No different to how bad performances are "soft, no hard work" and good performances are "tough, hard-work"

are [PLAYERCARD]matthew nicks[/PLAYERCARD], adam yze or [PLAYERCARD]justin longmuir[/PLAYERCARD] showing passion? lyon or goodwin?

 

[Nifft]

What is the number

42

 

[hirdylloydy1]

you said similar about ambrosio and voss. both of whom are playing on in better sides than us.

fremantle reserves are better than us now? gees we are in a bad spot

 

[nipst@r]

Why does Scott let mcgrath kick in?
.

 

[faible]

Why does Scott let mcgrath kick in?
.

He’s a bad marking target for said kick ins?

 

[MarkJohnson#1]

Doesn’t have the cattle…

 

[BomberManU]

Over to you Brad, let's see what you can do over the off season. If anything.

 

[Agronomus]

Let the list declogging begin

 

[BrunoV]

Let the list declogging begin

Our out of contract players, brought to you by Brad Scott:

Baldwin, Kaine – 2024
Davey, Jayden – 2024
Goldstein, Todd – 2024
Guelfi, Matt – 2024
Hind, Nick – 2024
Jones, Harrison – 2024
Kelly, Jake - 2024
Setterfield, Will – 2024
Stringer, Jake – 2024
Weideman, Sam – 2024
Wanganeen, Tex - 2024

I can think of at least 2 trouble makers in that group who should become the next Massimo and Voss.

 

[Shanghaistu]

Our out of contract players, brought to you by Brad Scott:

Baldwin, Kaine – 2024
Davey, Jayden – 2024
Goldstein, Todd – 2024
Guelfi, Matt – 2024
Hind, Nick – 2024
Jones, Harrison – 2024
Kelly, Jake - 2024
Setterfield, Will – 2024
Stringer, Jake – 2024
Weideman, Sam – 2024
Wanganeen, Tex - 2024

I can think of at least 2 trouble makers in that group who should become the next Massimo and Voss.

Sign Jones. Thanks for your contributions everyone else