A simple question.........

[Franc de Borges]

If we beat the Saints we'll finish with 13 wins, just one less than last season. Given our injuries that's a very good effort.

On the other hand there were some very distrubing things that took place in the losses to Essendon, St.Kilda, Adelaide and Port that really put a dent in my confidence in this group.

Put it this way, I think we'll be a significantly better team in 2013 than we were in 2011, so the disaster that is 2012 may serve a purpose.

 

[mediumsizered]

Are you talking about when questioned publicly?

I have never heard of any player in any team not 100% backing their coach publicly under any circumstances.

Even Melbourne's leadership group were 100% behind Dean Bailey until the day he was gone.

I'm not saying that there is any private disloyalty from our group, but I wouldn't take 'public support' as being evidence of anything in particular...

On the whole, I think the facts are:

- Ratts has stepped up significantly in the last month.

- A rational assessment of our list and our 2012 season is that when virtually all the cattle are on the field we are top 6 material, when they are not, our coaching dept do not have the structures in place to keep create top 10 performances.

Hawthorn and Collingwood are teams that have structures that transcend medium sized injury lists. The last month has showed some evidence that that Carlton may be getting closer to this too.

It's not just the public statements of support from the players on which such an assessment is being made, but the content of those statements.

We have all heard the cliched statements of support from players for their under siege coaches in the past, but the statements that are being made by our players are very strong in support of Ratts. You can very much sense the message being sent to the club decision makers by the players. It has very much been a case of "leave the coach alone, we (the players) have let the club down at times this season." This message has particularly been emphasised by Judd on a number of occasions.