News Are We Really Improving?

[GH213]

What idiot would even suggest that???

Off field i agree we are better off thanks to the members,but have the Gale/DH combo really improved us on the field?
I thought winning premierships was the name of this caper.

 

[TigerImposter]

Agree. Are we anywhere near this ? Are we making up ground or are others going passed us?are the heavyweights still above us? This is where I base my OP . Remember a lot of teams have also gone through rebuilds during this age of two new teams .

 

[Juke]

Agree ,but as usual you missed the pining of the OP like many others
Are we improving at a greater rate than our competitors?

I responded to your question as to whether DH/Gale have improved us. I then said that you might not think the improvement is enough to compete for flags, which I agree with. You didn't qualify the question with a comparison to the rest of the competition.

 

[captain blood 17]

Agree ,but as usual you missed the pining of the OP like many others
Are we improving at a greater rate than our competitors?

Simply put - yes. Take the Cola off the swans, where will they be in 5 years? The core of our list won't peak for another 2-3 years. Port is the only team that leap frogged us on the field.


Sent from my iPad using righteous man power.

 

[TigerImposter]

I responded to your question as to whether DH/Gale have improved us. I then said that you might not think the improvement is enough to compete for flags, which I agree with. You didn't qualify the question with a comparison to the rest of the competition.

Agree again , but I'm looking at it in terms of us against the rate of others
It's no point improving by 5% if the others improve at a Higher rate

 

[Barry_Badrinath]

No one has demonstrated a want to make us great. A whole lot of talking but no action.

Yes, that's what we need: more want. Our want levels have been seriously lacking since Dimma took over.

 

[Ned_Flanders]

What idiot would even suggest that???

I suggest that may be a dig at you given your expectations to match clarksons time to win a flag

 

[TigerImposter]

I suggest that may be a dig at you given your expectations to match clarksons time to win a flag

Wouldn't expect anything of great depth if this is the basis of his argument. Through to the keeper buddy

 

[The Rusty Trombone]

My concern is we are not improving quick enough on the field. I'm very happy with what's been achieved off the field and the fact we've played two finals in a row but it's how we went in those finals that concerns me the most and what happened at the start of the year.

Hardwicks like a straight A student that continually comes home serving up C+'s and B's on his reports . The only trouble is Mum and Dad are happy to put up with it at the moment . Our on field results are not matching what Benny and his crew have done off the field as yet. Hopefully they realign this year but in all seriousness I'd shit a chicken if that was the case this year. There's too much back slapping going on at our club at the moment and it needs to stop.

 

[Tigerbob]

I don't think the club is Jesus incarnate, but I honestly do not comprehend your posts about Richmond being content with the current position, or idle, or all talk. Please explain why you think this? It just doesn't make sense.

My reasoning is very simple. Any idiot should comprehend. Almost any idiot.

Despite the $6 million given to the club by us, despite record memberships and sponsorships where has the money gone to make us great?

We went from being truly bad to on a level with every other AFL club in terms of facilities, but even those campaigners North have these nice things now.

We failed to get better in football department to make us great. Being the tenth most invested in the football club doesn't make sense when you have 3rd highest memberships and no debt. North missed the finals last year, went out got an exceptional assistant coach, invested in a couple more fitness staff and did what they could to get better. They played in a Prelim. We make finals lose our best coach and fail to replace him. We cheap out.

This is about being great. Not about being cushy and improving from where we were. Where we were was well below most clubs. It was a disgrace and mismanagement. Now that we have caught up in that respect, we have drowned in mediocrity.

We have lost our two best assistant coaches in fact probably our two best coaches, and replaced them with Rutten. This off season. We have put recently retired players in as development coaches. Things done on the cheap. When we needed to get better help as we were making finals.

Our fitness department is a joke. Yep we made a play For the best but FAILED. Then when we failed we cheaped out.

You become great by investing in our football department. You give the club every chance to succeed by investing in the football department.

I don't see this.

If our existence is about being great, enough talk. Do something.

It's like the talk of improving our list and then recruiting Taylor Hunt. Then saying we achieved our objectives.

The club treats you and I like chumps.

 

[TigerImposter]

Looks good while they are winning, as soon as they slide, this spend will kill their club. Our domestic comp is not big enough to sustain that type of spend. Not even Collingwood could do it.


Sent from my iPad using righteous man power.

I'd prepare to take a hit for a few years if we could jag three flags in seven seasons
You have to consider some of us have only been waiting for 34years and Hawthorn have averaged a flag every four years since 1982
They're the measuring stick and I want us to be better than them . Do we have the tools or staff capable of achieving this???

 

[SpudsLoveChild]

Agree ,but as usual you missed the point of the OP like many others
Are we improving at a greater rate than our competitors?

Bit harsh bagging someone for missing the point of the OP.
I know there's an idea in there somewhere, but to me it's just a confused jumble of words.

 

[TigerImposter]

Bit harsh bagging someone for missing the point of the OP.
I know there's an idea in there somewhere, but to me it's just a confused jumble of words.

I don't bag people. I was just clearing up the confusion in the air
Winning and striving to win is a bit nostalgic for some around here

 

[SpudsLoveChild]

I don't bag people. I was just clearing up the confusion in the air
Winning and striving to win is a bit nostalgic for some around here

We're all desperate for the Tigers to win a flag, mate. We all kick-in each year, buy our scarves and turn up even when the odds are against us. We all love the club. Some of us show it by talking the club up. Others show it by tearing it down.

 

[TigerImposter]

We're all desperate for the Tigers to win a flag, mate. We all kick-in each year, buy our scarves and turn up when when the odds are against us. We all love the club. Some of us show it by talking the club up. Others show it by tearing it down.

This is bull dust SLC as there are more positive comments on this forum than negatives about the club. Is asking a simple question like the Thread title really a negative??
C'mon man lets be realistic here and get out of your comfort zone
Even if you're at the top you still need the geniuses and best resources to keep you there
This is what the Hawks are trying to establish and my question was are we improving enough to overtake them.
Where is the negativity ? It's positivity as I see it
Hiding from reality will not get it done IMO
Tigerbob last post just about says it all

 

[The Rusty Trombone]

My reasoning is very simple. Any idiot should comprehend. Almost any idiot.

Despite the $6 million given to the club by us, despite record memberships and sponsorships where has the money gone to make us great?

We went from being truly bad to on a level with every other AFL club in terms of facilities, but even those campaigners North have these nice things now.

We failed to get better in football department to make us great. Being the tenth most invested in the football club doesn't make sense when you have 3rd highest memberships and no debt. North missed the finals last year, went out got an exceptional assistant coach, invested in a couple more fitness staff and did what they could to get better. They played in a Prelim. We make finals lose our best coach and fail to replace him. We cheap out.

This is about being great. Not about being cushy and improving from where we were. Where we were was well below most clubs. It was a disgrace and mismanagement. Now that we have caught up in that respect, we have drowned in mediocrity.

We have lost our two best assistant coaches in fact probably our two best coaches, and replaced them with Rutten. This off season. We have put recently retired players in as development coaches. Things done on the cheap. When we needed to get better help as we were making finals.

Our fitness department is a joke. Yep we made a play For the best but FAILED. Then when we failed we cheaped out.

You become great by investing in our football department. You give the club every chance to succeed by investing in the football department.

I don't see this.

If our existence is about being great, enough talk. Do something.

It's like the talk of improving our list and then recruiting Taylor Hunt. Then saying we achieved our objectives.

The club treats you and I like chumps.

This is it in a nutshell , all the people that think like this will still buy their memberships , buy club merch, try and brain wash all our nieces and nephews and kids into supporting the Tiges , get to as many games as we can just like the people that want to pat the club on the back for doing a reasonable job but at the end of the day we are under achieving and you can sit back and let it happen or voice an opinion that demands the club pulls its finger out and gets in front of the other 17 clubs. This year we butchered the best draw the clubs got in ten years and everyone wants to blow smoke out their arse and latch onto feeble excuses great clubs don't entertain.

 

[ReaperX]

I actually agree with the "negative" posters on here about the fact that the club needs to be improving at a rate that is higher than teams around us, or above us. You guys are right, the club does need to do everything it can to become a "great" club, not just competitive.

The reason this kind of talk shits people off though, is that for some of you, NOTHING that the club does (or doesn't) do will be good enough to satisfy you, and no results will ever keep you happy.

For example, if everything that has been spoken about in this thread so far in regards to replacing coaches and bringing in high quality players from other clubs had happened, you wouldn't give Gale/Dimma/etc credit for those things, you would find different issues to harp about instead.

If Richmond win the flag in 2015, I absolutely guarantee that the majority of the people sticking the boot in to the club at the moment, would respond with something along the lines of "well we've won a premiership, but Gale and Dimma haven't set us up for premierships in 2016 and 2017, THEY'VE GONE CHEAP FOR JUST THE ONE FLAG THE BASTARDS!!!! D:<"

And it's THIS kind of attitude that absolutely shits me to tears about some of the supporters on here.

Let me make it clear; being critical about the club's decision and direction is sometimes a very good thing, because in order to improve constantly, you need to be looking for holes in the system that can be fixed. But at the same time, the club has also done MANY things right, and unfortunately considering where we were at 5 years ago, we needed to go through stages of development to get to the point where we ultimately want to go.

We are still on a journey, and we started far further back than any other club in recent memory. Were you guys just expecting us to go from 2010 basket-case, Fitzroy-like losers, to 2015 all time grand champions who are absolutely elite at every single thing in the competition?

Hawthorn were in some deep trouble in the mid to late 90's, much like we were around that 2009-2010 period. If you drew a parallel and said that Hawthorn's 1996 was like our 2010, then basically it took the Hawks 12 years from that point to get their club right.

In the same vein, Collingwood was on its' knees in 1999 when Eddie took over, and it took them 11 years of hard work to get them to a premiership in 2010. Granted, they did play in a couple of GF's in that time, however that was probably moreso on the immense talent of Mick Malthouse getting the best out of an ordinary squad, as an established premiership coach at the peak of his powers.

The point is, where we were at in 2010 was arguably the worst we've ever been, and although 5 years sounds like a long time, the truth is that due to the competitiveness and evenness of the competition these days, it could realistically take us 10-15 years to win a premiership from where we were.

What Gale (and to a lesser extent Dimma) has done in this initial period, is build the foundation of this club back up from scratch, and restored some pride back into this footy club.

What people have got to understand, is that whilst Gale pitched a 5 year plan, in reality it's really a 20 year plan, that will hopefully set us up to win 8-10 premierships in the next 50-70 years.

The awesome work that they have been able to do in this 5 year period, has the potential to set this club up to be a powerhouse for 20-30+ years, but we've gotta stick fat and just enjoy the journey.

Think about it like this: the decisions made in the late 70's and early 80's set us back for 30 years. The decisions and plans made in the early to mid 10's, will hopefully reverse that effect, and set us up for greatness in the next 30 years.

But none of it happens overnight.

 

[The Rusty Trombone]

I actually agree with the "negative" posters on here about the fact that the club needs to be improving at a rate that is higher than teams around us, or above us. You guys are right, the club does need to do everything it can to become a "great" club, not just competitive.

The reason this kind of talk shits people off though, is that for some of you, NOTHING that the club does (or doesn't) do will be good enough to satisfy you, and no results will ever keep you happy.

For example, if everything that has been spoken about in this thread so far in regards to replacing coaches and bringing in high quality players from other clubs had happened, you wouldn't give Gale/Dimma/etc credit for those things, you would find different issues to harp about instead.

If Richmond win the flag in 2015, I absolutely guarantee that the majority of the people sticking the boot in to the club at the moment, would respond with something along the lines of "well we've won a premiership, but Gale and Dimma haven't set us up for premierships in 2016 and 2017, THEY'VE GONE CHEAP FOR JUST THE ONE FLAG THE BASTARDS!!!! D:<"

And it's THIS kind of attitude that absolutely shits me to tears about some of the supporters on here.

Let me make it clear; being critical about the club's decision and direction is sometimes a very good thing, because in order to improve constantly, you need to be looking for holes in the system that can be fixed. But at the same time, the club has also done MANY things right, and unfortunately considering where we were at 5 years ago, we needed to go through stages of development to get to the point where we ultimately want to go.

We are still on a journey, and we started far further back than any other club in recent memory. Were you guys just expecting us to go from 2010 basket-case, Fitzroy-like losers, to 2015 all time grand champions who are absolutely elite at every single thing in the competition?

Hawthorn were in some deep trouble in the mid to late 90's, much like we were around that 2009-2010 period. If you drew a parallel and said that Hawthorn's 1996 was like our 2010, then basically it took the Hawks 12 years from that point to get their club right.

In the same vein, Collingwood was on its' knees in 1999 when Eddie took over, and it took them 11 years of hard work to get them to a premiership in 2010. Granted, they did play in a couple of GF's in that time, however that was probably moreso on the immense talent of Mick Malthouse getting the best out of an ordinary squad, as an established premiership coach at the peak of his powers.

The point is, where we were at in 2010 was arguably the worst we've ever been, and although 5 years sounds like a long time, the truth is that due to the competitiveness and evenness of the competition these days, it could realistically take us 10-15 years to win a premiership from where we were.

What Gale (and to a lesser extent Dimma) has done in this initial period, is build the foundation of this club back up from scratch, and restored some pride back into this footy club.

What people have got to understand, is that whilst Gale pitched a 5 year plan, in reality it's really a 20 year plan, that will hopefully set us up to win 8-10 premierships in the next 50-70 years.

The awesome work that they have been able to do in this 5 year period, has the potential to set this club up to be a powerhouse for 20-30+ years, but we've gotta stick fat and just enjoy the journey.

Think about it like this: the decisions made in the late 70's and early 80's set us back for 30 years. The decisions and plans made in the early to mid 10's, will hopefully reverse that effect, and set us up for greatness in the next 30 years.

But none of it happens overnight.

Yeah I can't cop that , we aren't that negative , far from it. If the Hawks were no good in the mid to late 90's what were we. We don't complain when posters want to pat the club on the back for doing good things in fact you'll see us join in most times. I was like you up until trade period 2013 when the rot set in . We didn't expect a flag this year or worshipped some Terry Wallace like 5 year plan that had to deliver one we are just sick of excuses and dumb decisions and there has been a few. You can create as many ball cupping circle jerking threads about how good we are and how far we have come from and you won't get a complaint from me. It's your point of view. I think the OP was asking are we improving but the real question is are we improving as much as the other teams and in reality there is a massive question mark on where we are headed on field at the moment time will tell and things will be discussed but please don't let posters like me spoil your day when I barely skim over yours because they are the same thing time and time again. Just enjoy your footy mate !

 

[TigerImposter]

I actually agree with the "negative" posters on here about the fact that the club needs to be improving at a rate that is higher than teams around us, or above us. You guys are right, the club does need to do everything it can to become a "great" club, not just competitive.

The reason this kind of talk shits people off though, is that for some of you, NOTHING that the club does (or doesn't) do will be good enough to satisfy you, and no results will ever keep you happy.

For example, if everything that has been spoken about in this thread so far in regards to replacing coaches and bringing in high quality players from other clubs had happened, you wouldn't give Gale/Dimma/etc credit for those things, you would find different issues to harp about instead.

If Richmond win the flag in 2015, I absolutely guarantee that the majority of the people sticking the boot in to the club at the moment, would respond with something along the lines of "well we've won a premiership, but Gale and Dimma haven't set us up for premierships in 2016 and 2017, THEY'VE GONE CHEAP FOR JUST THE ONE FLAG THE BASTARDS!!!! D:<"

And it's THIS kind of attitude that absolutely shits me to tears about some of the supporters on here.

Let me make it clear; being critical about the club's decision and direction is sometimes a very good thing, because in order to improve constantly, you need to be looking for holes in the system that can be fixed. But at the same time, the club has also done MANY things right, and unfortunately considering where we were at 5 years ago, we needed to go through stages of development to get to the point where we ultimately want to go.

We are still on a journey, and we started far further back than any other club in recent memory. Were you guys just expecting us to go from 2010 basket-case, Fitzroy-like losers, to 2015 all time grand champions who are absolutely elite at every single thing in the competition?

Hawthorn were in some deep trouble in the mid to late 90's, much like we were around that 2009-2010 period. If you drew a parallel and said that Hawthorn's 1996 was like our 2010, then basically it took the Hawks 12 years from that point to get their club right.

In the same vein, Collingwood was on its' knees in 1999 when Eddie took over, and it took them 11 years of hard work to get them to a premiership in 2010. Granted, they did play in a couple of GF's in that time, however that was probably moreso on the immense talent of Mick Malthouse getting the best out of an ordinary squad, as an established premiership coach at the peak of his powers.

The point is, where we were at in 2010 was arguably the worst we've ever been, and although 5 years sounds like a long time, the truth is that due to the competitiveness and evenness of the competition these days, it could realistically take us 10-15 years to win a premiership from where we were.

What Gale (and to a lesser extent Dimma) has done in this initial period, is build the foundation of this club back up from scratch, and restored some pride back into this footy club.

What people have got to understand, is that whilst Gale pitched a 5 year plan, in reality it's really a 20 year plan, that will hopefully set us up to win 8-10 premierships in the next 50-70 years.

The awesome work that they have been able to do in this 5 year period, has the potential to set this club up to be a powerhouse for 20-30+ years, but we've gotta stick fat and just enjoy the journey.

Think about it like this: the decisions made in the late 70's and early 80's set us back for 30 years. The decisions and plans made in the early to mid 10's, will hopefully reverse that effect, and set us up for greatness in the next 30 years.

But none of it happens overnight.

A 20 year plan. Lets sign Dimma up for 13 more years if we are guaranteed a flag
He will become our Jock McHale . Wow 8 flags in 30 years that's Hawthornesque .
Imagine Kochie telling their stakeholders we've got a 20 yr plan and Ken will stick around as its a given that this process will work. Illogical business plan and practice
You made my day ReaperX and I didn't have to dream

 

[ReaperX]

Yeah I can't cop that , we aren't that negative , far from it. If the Hawks were no good in the mid to late 90's what were we. We don't complain when posters want to pat the club on the back for doing good things in fact you'll see us join in most times. I was like you up until trade period 2013 when the rot set in . We didn't expect a flag this year or worshipped some Terry Wallace like 5 year plan that had to deliver one we are just sick of excuses and dumb decisions and there has been a few. You can create as many ball cupping circle jerking threads about how good we are and how far we have come from and you won't get a complaint from me. It's your point of view. I think the OP was asking are we improving but the real question is are we improving as much as the other teams and in reality there is a massive question mark on where we are headed on field at the moment time will tell and things will be discussed but please don't let posters like me spoil your day when I barely skim over yours because they are the same thing time and time again. Just enjoy your footy mate !

A 20 year plan. Lets sign Dimma up for 13 more years if we are guaranteed a flag
He will become our Jock McHale . Wow 8 flags in 30 years that's Hawthornesque .
You made my day ReaperX and I didn't have to dream

You missed my point when I talked about the 20 year thing.

When you set a target for something in a business, you generally aim for what is called a "stretch target", which simply means a goal that is going to take alot of hard work to achieve, and will be over and above what the realistic expectations are, but that is still plausible if everything went perfectly. Generally, if a stretch target is achieved, the company would have had an amazing effort to get there.

Our stretch targets were set at the beginning of 2010, to be met by the end of 2014. They were:

3 finals series, with 1 finals victory.
$0 debt.
75,000 members.

Now, bear in mind, these targets are "stretch targets" as I said before. A stretch target for a club such as Hawthorn, that has been rebuilding itself since the late 90's, is going to probably be 2 or 3 premierships in 6 years. But we just aren't on that level yet, and we won't be for another 5-10 years. That's just the way it is mate, being shit for 30 years and only coming to your senses in 2010 will do that.

Anyway, regarding OUR stretch targets, we achieved the following:

2 finals series, 0 finals victories.
$0 debt.
66,000 members.

So we fell 1 finals series, a finals win, and 9,000 members short, of "stretch targets" that we were ridiculed for in 2010.

Keep in mind that after 2009, we had just sacked our coach, finished 15th of 16 clubs with 5 wins for the year, had about 8-10 million dollars in debt, had played in 2 finals series since 1983, lost about 800-900 games of experience through retirement (including Matthew Richardson, Joel Bowden, Kane Johnson, Nathan Brown, and Mark Coughlan), and only had about 30k or so members, less than clubs like the Western Bulldogs and St. Kilda. We also started the 2010 season with a 0-9 record to boot.

The fact is, had you told the supporters of 2009/2010 the results we were going to have (both on and off field) in the next 5 years, you'd have been told you're kidding yourself and that it was not possible for us to play consecutive finals series, have zero debt, and the 2nd highest membership in the league.

You would be absolutely laughed out of the building, actually.

I would say that internally, when the club sat down at the end of 2009/early 2010, and said "Okay, what are we going to do to get this club back into premiership contention?", they would realistically have realized that it was going to take hard work across the board, and a fair bit longer than 5 years, to get us back to where we needed to go.

However, going to the public with a 20, 15 or even 10 year plan would seem ridiculous. And yet they clearly realized that a premiership just wasn't going to happen within 4-5 years, so they set some goals that would put us on the right path.

It's like losing weight bro. You don't do 1 or 2 exercise sessions, and drop 30kg's. It's a process that takes years, and then once you're there, needs to be maintained for life. But it's pointless to move to the "maintaining" stage before you've even lost the weight...

If you are judging Gale and co on their success in terms of premierships and Top 4 finishes in the first 5 years, then they are a complete failure and should be sacked on sight. However, if you have any common sense, and judge them on their ability to set up the foundation for future success for the next 10-30 years down the road, well the 5 years they have had so far has been a resounding success for the most part.

Anybody that was expecting premierships, back-to-backs, brownlow medals, 6+ AA players, and whatever else, in the 2010-2014 period, was absolutely kidding themselves to start with. And the ONLY reason anybody in the general public would be judging them so harshly, is if their expectations were unrealistic to begin with.

 

[caroma]

**** me. Did we play finals 3 yrs ago? No. Did we this year? Yes. That's improvement in any sense. You sound like a kid who wanted ice cream and got it. But it's vanilla and you wanted chocolate. Waaaah waaaah.

We're coming back from 30 yrs of absolute shit. Hawks have played pretty consistent finals footy since 1960. The improvement has finally, slowly started for us. You can't be strong on field until you're strong off field. Now the off has been sorted out, we can focus on the on. It takes time. **** you've waited this long, what's a little while more?


Sent from my Tee-pee using smoke signals.

 

[TigerImposter]

You missed my point when I talked about the 20 year thing.

When you set a target for something in a business, you generally aim for what is called a "stretch target", which simply means a goal that is going to take alot of hard work to achieve, and will be over and above what the realistic expectations are, but that is still plausible if everything went perfectly. Generally, if a stretch target is achieved, the company would have had an amazing effort to get there.

Our stretch targets were set at the beginning of 2010, to be met by the end of 2014. They were:

3 finals series, with 1 finals victory.
$0 debt.
75,000 members.

Now, bear in mind, these targets are "stretch targets" as I said before. A stretch target for a club such as Hawthorn, that has been rebuilding itself since the late 90's, is going to probably be 2 or 3 premierships in 6 years. But we just aren't on that level yet, and we won't be for another 5-10 years. That's just the way it is mate, being shit for 30 years and only coming to your senses in 2010 will do that.

Anyway, regarding OUR stretch targets, we achieved the following:

2 finals series, 0 finals victories.
$0 debt.
66,000 members.

So we fell 1 finals series, a finals win, and 9,000 members short, of "stretch targets" that we were ridiculed for in 2010.

Keep in mind that after 2009, we had just sacked our coach, finished 15th of 16 clubs with 5 wins for the year, had about 8-10 million dollars in debt, had played in 2 finals series since 1983, lost about 800-900 games of experience through retirement (including Matthew Richardson, Joel Bowden, Kane Johnson, Nathan Brown, and Mark Coughlan), and only had about 30k or so members, less than clubs like the Western Bulldogs and St. Kilda. We also started the 2010 season with a 0-9 record to boot.

The fact is, had you told the supporters of 2009/2010 the results we were going to have (both on and off field) in the next 5 years, you'd have been told you're kidding yourself and that it was not possible for us to play consecutive finals series, have zero debt, and the 2nd highest membership in the league.

You would be absolutely laughed out of the building, actually.

I would say that internally, when the club sat down at the end of 2009/early 2010, and said "Okay, what are we going to do to get this club back into premiership contention?", they would realistically have realized that it was going to take hard work across the board, and a fair bit longer than 5 years, to get us back to where we needed to go.

However, going to the public with a 20, 15 or even 10 year plan would seem ridiculous. And yet they clearly realized that a premiership just wasn't going to happen within 4-5 years, so they set some goals that would put us on the right path.

It's like losing weight bro. You don't do 1 or 2 exercise sessions, and drop 30kg's. It's a process that takes years, and then once you're there, needs to be maintained for life. But it's pointless to move to the "maintaining" stage before you've even lost the weight...

If you are judging Gale and co on their success in terms of premierships and Top 4 finishes in the first 5 years, then they are a complete failure and should be sacked on sight. However, if you have any common sense, and judge them on their ability to set up the foundation for future success for the next 10-30 years down the road, well the 5 years they have had so far has been a resounding success for the most part.

Anybody that was expecting premierships, back-to-backs, brownlow medals, 6+ AA players, and whatever else, in the 2010-2014 period, was absolutely kidding themselves to start with. And the ONLY reason anybody in the general public would be judging them so harshly, is if their expectations were unrealistic to begin with.

This has now become marketing an salesmanship if you believe in a 20 plan term. The club will fold if they continue to spit out excuses. Look at the crowd drop offs during the first 13 weeks
We didn't hit our 3075 goal so why weren't people held accountable. ? Too easy going mate and as Rusty stated there is too much bum slapping and content with mediocrity . We need to be more professional in all departments and leave no stone unturned
After 2012 we became impatient or ago with our progress and started taking short cuts in band aid recruiting to get us a flag quicker and our youth development seemed to dropped off and with coaches leaving etc etc its now hit an iceberg
I believe most of your ideas but we have decelerated with our improvement in comparison to other clubs is my fear

 

[TigerImposter]

**** me. Did we play finals 3 yrs ago? No. Did we this year? Yes. That's improvement in any sense. You sound like a kid who wanted ice cream and got it. But it's vanilla and you wanted chocolate. Waaaah waaaah.

We're coming back from 30 yrs of absolute shit. Hawks have played pretty consistent finals footy since 1960. The improvement has finally, slowly started for us. You can't be strong on field until you're strong off field. Now the off has been sorted out, we can focus on the on. It takes time. **** you've waited this long, what's a little while more?


Sent from my Tee-pee using smoke signals.

Hawks were going to merge with Melbourne at one stage just like we almost folded
Port will make it 3 from 3 most likely next year with zero debt and a massive supporter base
Have they Improved ? Are they improving at a faster rate? Do they have better staff and resources? The answer to these some may be no ,but they are putting precautions in place and paying for the best to get the best achievable results. Off field they have improved greater than us. This is the key if you want your business to succeed , CEO wihich are happy with scraping in profits and targets are not administrators
Benny needs to be striving harder on filling the void with his staff with the one thing in mind
Being the best and continuing to be the best

 

[The Rusty Trombone]

You missed my point when I talked about the 20 year thing.

When you set a target for something in a business, you generally aim for what is called a "stretch target", which simply means a goal that is going to take alot of hard work to achieve, and will be over and above what the realistic expectations are, but that is still plausible if everything went perfectly. Generally, if a stretch target is achieved, the company would have had an amazing effort to get there.

Our stretch targets were set at the beginning of 2010, to be met by the end of 2014. They were:

3 finals series, with 1 finals victory.
$0 debt.
75,000 members.

Now, bear in mind, these targets are "stretch targets" as I said before. A stretch target for a club such as Hawthorn, that has been rebuilding itself since the late 90's, is going to probably be 2 or 3 premierships in 6 years. But we just aren't on that level yet, and we won't be for another 5-10 years. That's just the way it is mate, being shit for 30 years and only coming to your senses in 2010 will do that.

Anyway, regarding OUR stretch targets, we achieved the following:

2 finals series, 0 finals victories.
$0 debt.
66,000 members.

So we fell 1 finals series, a finals win, and 9,000 members short, of "stretch targets" that we were ridiculed for in 2010.

Keep in mind that after 2009, we had just sacked our coach, finished 15th of 16 clubs with 5 wins for the year, had about 8-10 million dollars in debt, had played in 2 finals series since 1983, lost about 800-900 games of experience through retirement (including Matthew Richardson, Joel Bowden, Kane Johnson, Nathan Brown, and Mark Coughlan), and only had about 30k or so members, less than clubs like the Western Bulldogs and St. Kilda. We also started the 2010 season with a 0-9 record to boot.

The fact is, had you told the supporters of 2009/2010 the results we were going to have (both on and off field) in the next 5 years, you'd have been told you're kidding yourself and that it was not possible for us to play consecutive finals series, have zero debt, and the 2nd highest membership in the league.

You would be absolutely laughed out of the building, actually.

I would say that internally, when the club sat down at the end of 2009/early 2010, and said "Okay, what are we going to do to get this club back into premiership contention?", they would realistically have realized that it was going to take hard work across the board, and a fair bit longer than 5 years, to get us back to where we needed to go.

However, going to the public with a 20, 15 or even 10 year plan would seem ridiculous. And yet they clearly realized that a premiership just wasn't going to happen within 4-5 years, so they set some goals that would put us on the right path.

It's like losing weight bro. You don't do 1 or 2 exercise sessions, and drop 30kg's. It's a process that takes years, and then once you're there, needs to be maintained for life. But it's pointless to move to the "maintaining" stage before you've even lost the weight...

If you are judging Gale and co on their success in terms of premierships and Top 4 finishes in the first 5 years, then they are a complete failure and should be sacked on sight. However, if you have any common sense, and judge them on their ability to set up the foundation for future success for the next 10-30 years down the road, well the 5 years they have had so far has been a resounding success for the most part.

Anybody that was expecting premierships, back-to-backs, brownlow medals, 6+ AA players, and whatever else, in the 2010-2014 period, was absolutely kidding themselves to start with. And the ONLY reason anybody in the general public would be judging them so harshly, is if their expectations were unrealistic to begin with.

I gotta be honest mate that went in one eye and out the other.

 

[Tigerbob]

I actually agree with the "negative" posters on here about the fact that the club needs to be improving at a rate that is higher than teams around us, or above us. You guys are right, the club does need to do everything it can to become a "great" club, not just competitive.

The reason this kind of talk shits people off though, is that for some of you, NOTHING that the club does (or doesn't) do will be good enough to satisfy you, and no results will ever keep you happy.

For example, if everything that has been spoken about in this thread so far in regards to replacing coaches and bringing in high quality players from other clubs had happened, you wouldn't give Gale/Dimma/etc credit for those things, you would find different issues to harp about instead.

If Richmond win the flag in 2015, I absolutely guarantee that the majority of the people sticking the boot in to the club at the moment, would respond with something along the lines of "well we've won a premiership, but Gale and Dimma haven't set us up for premierships in 2016 and 2017, THEY'VE GONE CHEAP FOR JUST THE ONE FLAG THE BASTARDS!!!! D:<"

And it's THIS kind of attitude that absolutely shits me to tears about some of the supporters on here.

Let me make it clear; being critical about the club's decision and direction is sometimes a very good thing, because in order to improve constantly, you need to be looking for holes in the system that can be fixed. But at the same time, the club has also done MANY things right, and unfortunately considering where we were at 5 years ago, we needed to go through stages of development to get to the point where we ultimately want to go.

We are still on a journey, and we started far further back than any other club in recent memory. Were you guys just expecting us to go from 2010 basket-case, Fitzroy-like losers, to 2015 all time grand champions who are absolutely elite at every single thing in the competition?

Hawthorn were in some deep trouble in the mid to late 90's, much like we were around that 2009-2010 period. If you drew a parallel and said that Hawthorn's 1996 was like our 2010, then basically it took the Hawks 12 years from that point to get their club right.

In the same vein, Collingwood was on its' knees in 1999 when Eddie took over, and it took them 11 years of hard work to get them to a premiership in 2010. Granted, they did play in a couple of GF's in that time, however that was probably moreso on the immense talent of Mick Malthouse getting the best out of an ordinary squad, as an established premiership coach at the peak of his powers.

The point is, where we were at in 2010 was arguably the worst we've ever been, and although 5 years sounds like a long time, the truth is that due to the competitiveness and evenness of the competition these days, it could realistically take us 10-15 years to win a premiership from where we were.

What Gale (and to a lesser extent Dimma) has done in this initial period, is build the foundation of this club back up from scratch, and restored some pride back into this footy club.

What people have got to understand, is that whilst Gale pitched a 5 year plan, in reality it's really a 20 year plan, that will hopefully set us up to win 8-10 premierships in the next 50-70 years.

The awesome work that they have been able to do in this 5 year period, has the potential to set this club up to be a powerhouse for 20-30+ years, but we've gotta stick fat and just enjoy the journey.

Think about it like this: the decisions made in the late 70's and early 80's set us back for 30 years. The decisions and plans made in the early to mid 10's, will hopefully reverse that effect, and set us up for greatness in the next 30 years.

But none of it happens overnight.

The same way you generalise the "negative" posters like that, I'll generalist the "positive" posters by saying you all are happy for anything the club does. You celebrate any decision and back the club.

The evidence over 30 years says the positive, sorry "positive" posters don't have a ****ing clue about football.

Also your assumption that I would bag the club after a Premiership is almost the most laughable concept I've read on Bigfooty.

That's all I want in my lifetime. A Richmond premiership. The notion of achieving this would have me ridicule the club is ****ing stupid.

It's why I care and why I'm perceived negative. I don't see the club doing enough to achieve this. You agreed to an extent of this.

How can you agree that you think the club needs to do more to win a flag, but back their decisions and fight for the people at the club no matter what?

Don't you care? You happy to never win a flag? You don't want to be successful?

I don't understand this hypocritical thinking. Where's your backbone? Where's your spirit?

Just backing the club no matter what is a pointless way of going through life. Demand excellence, demand success.

****ing campaigners everywhere.