About time MM got some praise.

[Hadders]

Sorry but I can’t agree. We have drafted better with early picks we “won” for being crap and our list has the same holes it has had for the entire time MM has been at the club. I saw mass hysteria at the second coming of Steve McKee after ANZAC Day! No but in the context of what we did about losing we failed dismally. OK but in 2005 Port were. Where were we? IMO that's a pretty good record to rebuild a list and have it challenging again 6 years after it was last pushing for a flag.

Perhaps if that is what happens. My concern is that history says we are asking a person who failed to succeed at the thing he already failed at and not for the first time. MM has failed 3 times to rebuild a premiership list. Once at Footscray, once at WCE and once at Collingwood.[/quote]

I know I've had similar discussions with you before Mark and I think that its always going to be one of those "agree to disagree" things.

Hopefully for eveyone's sake I'm right and we can snag a premiership sometime in the next 3-5 years, because if I'm wrong and you're right the 10 years of MM will have been a horrible opportunity wasted.

 

[toommy]

I know people will just accuse me of bias and negativity but IMO MM has drawn on desperation. It isn’t master stroke to play kids when you have little option and you are playing crap opposition. Credit for MM playing O’Brien on Lucas, regardless of whether it was his idea or not. It was still his call. It was the sort of thing a Sheedy may pull of and the sort of thing we seen exactly how many times in 7/8 years from MM?

If MM was a really great coach we’d be saying this was like the time…..

its that time of the month for markt he gets his rags then takes it out on malthouse

 

[PieLebo87]

MM has only brought another 5 years of rebuilding in the hope of future potential competitiveness IF New improve everything about our list management.

Im not entering this debate, and I love MM, so Im not arguing against him but this line by MarkT is the best line Ive read on this website in regards to Collingwood since Ive joined. Very good point.

 

[MarkT]

Pendlebury is looking so far as this years Rising Star. To put it in perspective he would have been taken much later had we not picked him up. It was seen as a gamble taking him at pick 5. A gamble which clearly is paying off by the good judgment of our recruiters. Whether we "won" those picks by losing games is irrelevant. What is relevant however is whether our recruiters have an eye for picking talent to increase the depth on our list.

Probably correct and credit to Hine although we don’t actually know at this point how good someone like Ellis will be. Very happy with Pendlebury though. Nevertheless you can’t hang your hat of getting quality at 2 & 5. That simply won’t build a list. Not having a go at Hine there but the jury must still be out. I don’t think any if it has anything to do with MM though. The recruiting has probably improved dramatically for a host of reasons. IMO none of them is MM suddenly have a clue about judging young footballers and development let alone established players.

 

[MarkT]

its that time of the month for markt he gets his rags then takes it out on malthouse

Hey, we had a win and someone posted a thread wanting to praise MM. You go right ahead and joint the cheer squad if you like. I’ll kiss his arse and yours at the premiership celebration.

 

[MarkT]

You could have had Jock Mchale and Norm Smith both coaching Collingwood on GF day in 03 and they still would have lost. No Rocca, and the forward line might has well have stayed on the bench, I mean come on, we were relying on Tarrant against Brisbane's monster backs and deadly midfield. Hardly the coaches fault that his key player was rubbed out.

Really? If we had either we’d have probably had a ruckman, probably not have had Woewodin and God knows what other list changes would have been made. OK we had the list ewe had. TD wouldn’t have selected the team MM did. Hence the aftermath. OK the team that took the field was the team we took the field with. Cloke, Kinnear and Walker. Can’t believe we couldn’t kick a winning score. Not 1 thing changed about the way the game was played from the first to he last bounce. Christ, even Hafey would have tried SOMETHING.

Look my issue with 2003 and MM is that he performed badly from go to woe. Maybe it is all academic because we just weren’t good enough. I don’t think we should buy that. Imagine if LM had coached us. Would Lappin have walked off the ground with his cracked ribs? My bigger issue though is why we had the squad we had after being rucked out if a flag 12 months before and then why we still don’t have a quality ruckman. The midfield is another issue…

What I will concede is that the duds from West Coast have not helped his cause, although how about credit where due in that Caracella looked good last year until injured, Medhurst has been serviceable so far and even Woewodin gave 2 decent years of footy. If we accept that duds like Morrison and Cummings are MMs fault, we should also accept that he has some input into the better players recruited.

Clutching at straws. 1 great get with Clement and Holland has been good. They cost us Williams. He’s the best player we’ve had on our list apart from Buckley outside of a few of the 1990 squad. Michael out was also a big misjudgement and Sav for no return is laughable. Woewodin played some decent footy for us but the he didn’t offer what we needed only what we already had. Caracella he was a bit stiff with but in reality he didn’t do much while he was there anyway.

 

[lenny20]

You can blame MM for list management only insofar as identifying weaknesses and attempting to remedy them. You can't blame him for the quality of players drafted (that's the recruitment staff's job) only the type being considered.

So what have we needed then? Obviously Mark is begging for a ruck, and i seem to recall some fuss about needing quality mids. Backline solid, forward line pretty solid.

According to that logic, in his list management, MM should be pushing for a ruckman and a quality midfield. So what have we done with our draft picks and trades in the MM era?

1999 - Fraser (ruck), R Shaw, B Johnson (quick mids) and traded for McKee (ruck)
2000 - Didak and Lonie (very classy mids), Richards (ruck) and O'Bree in pre-season draft (inside mid)
2001 - Swan, Cole, McGough (mids), Walker (ruck)
2002 - C Cloke (ruck) and traded for Woewodin (brownlow winning mid)
2003 - H Shaw (future captain, mid), Brent Hall (ruck)
2005 - Thomas and Pendlebury (already gun mids)
2006 - host of possible mids, and traded for Bryan (ruck)

MM is obviously aware of the deficiencies, to the extent that he has drafted or traded seven ruckmen over seven years to try to find a solution. That's a high turnover. Can't be said we haven't thrown our resources at big men, including a no 1 draft pick and several trades. MM surely has fulfilled his role in recognising the problem, but so far has been let down by his recruiters. Not really his fault.

And as for the poor midfield argument (which i incidentally disagree with) almost all of our top draft picks have been aimed at achieving this end, with varied success. Anyway midfield has only been a problem of last three years (nobody was arguing with Bucks Burns Licuria Obree at their height), and we seem to be doing ok now with Heater, Dane, Daisy and Pendles.

So I'm not really blaming Mick for poor list management so much as the recruiting staff who haven't yet hit a true quality big man. Although Bryan might be a goer just for smashing scotty lucas.

 

[Frederlick]

Proven players recruited/drafted under MM:
O'Bree, Lica, Lockyer, Didak, Lonie, Clement, Wakelin, Holland, Johnson, Fraser.
Out of current players with a reasonable amount of games I have generously not included Thomas, Pendlebury, Swan, Maxwell, Medhurst, Cloke, H Shaw, R Shaw or Davis whose services are still being defined or are debateable.
Gone are Mal Micheal, Nick Davis and Tarrant, all of whom exhibited varying degrees of commitment and whom (2 of which at least)then decided to committ at other clubs.
Whilst Mick might not be the greatest recruiter in history he hasn't done so bad, that is if you accept the fact that ultimately he is wholly responsible for the team that runs on (which I don't). Given that the majority of recruiting is done during the playing season surely it must be accepted that he would have minimal time to actually go and watch draftees play. If every draft pick played to potential through his entire career then there wouldn't be a trade market required. Conjecture in the realm of hypotheticals means we can disagree forever. Also it has only been in the last 2 years that they have been able to exploit the Lexus Centre, and look what that has done for players like Swan, Johnson and Didak. Admittedly with Buckley out our depth will be tested but is that a bad thing given the stage of his career? It appears some of these mid fielders are firing now they aren't playing second fiddle to the maestro. Lockyer springs to mind.

 

[prO]

Probably correct and credit to Hine although we don’t actually know at this point how good someone like Ellis will be. Very happy with Pendlebury though. Nevertheless you can’t hang your hat of getting quality at 2 & 5. That simply won’t build a list. Not having a go at Hine there but the jury must still be out. I don’t think any if it has anything to do with MM though. The recruiting has probably improved dramatically for a host of reasons. IMO none of them is MM suddenly have a clue about judging young footballers and development let alone established players.

Im pretty sure it was you who stated in another thread that MM is involved in recruiting / trading and list management. And we dont know how great Ellis will be - afterall hes currently a stick figure. However as far as we have seen with Pendlebury - he is one of the standouts in that draft and given he has heaps of upside about him.... Ellis has heaps of catching up to do. The credit probably goes more to Hine than MM, absolutely yet no one can exactly say that our football club aren't being proactive in rectifying our list.

Youre right you cannot hang your hat on picking quality on picks 2 & 5. What they can hang their hat on is picking Pendlebury when no one else rated him as high.

 

[MarkT]

You can't blame him for the quality of players drafted (that's the recruitment staff's job) only the type being considered.

Perhaps. I tend to agree. That isn’t a get out of jail though. The types we took were proven not to be in tune with the modern game. That is a big minus against the coach. Balme said numerous times that MM would take the fat arsed mid (that’s paraphrasing).

[/B]MM is obviously aware of the deficiencies, to the extent that he has drafted or traded seven ruckmen over seven years to try to find a solution. That's a high turnover. Can't be said we haven't thrown our resources at big men, including a no 1 draft pick and several trades. MM surely has fulfilled his role in recognising the problem, but so far has been let down by his recruiters. Not really his fault.

NO NO NO NO!!!!

Take a look at exactly WHAT he has taken as a ruckman. Not one has real ruck capabilities. We have taken talls NOT ruckmen. Fraser I can accept because anyone would have taken him at 1 regardless of the fact that hindsight says he wasn’t 1 or a ruckman. Richards was acceptable. You won’t get them all right and he theoretically could have developed. The rest are not ruckman’s bum holes. They just didn’t have the tools. Too much emphasis on other than tap capabilities IMO.