Big fish

[Col Davies]

At the time Anthony Rocca was a "big fish"


I like Clement and Medhurst as "reasonable fish"


I think its just unthinking supporters wanting EVERY 'big fish' which of course is just "fantasy land fish"

 

[rotten pie]

Sorry, i worded the part on Cousins incorectly, was more interested on peoples thoughts on Plugger. How did the club alow this noted champion to slip through to Sydney? Shear craziness!!!

 

[On the March]

I have to admit I'm a little dissapointed we didn't pick up BC. However I have this nagging feeling there is more to this than meets the eye.

All clubs would have considered recruiting him - he's a gun footballer. So why didn't they? And we know several clubs looked very very close and seemed very very keen but in the end wouldn't jump. Its not as if it was going to cost much.

Something just soesn't add up.

Time will tell I suppose.

In the end I am very happy with the recruiting the pies have done anyway.

Well done Hine.

 

[SteeleAt11]

We have one of the best young lists in the land

but lets keep focusing on a 30 year old Richmond player with shonky hammys and a drug addiction

 

[Kirby]

Sorry, i worded the part on Cousins incorectly, was more interested on peoples thoughts on Plugger. How did the club alow this noted champion to slip through to Sydney? Shear craziness!!!

The Plugger fantasy is very misleading. There is no indication that he would have flourished in the environment at Collingwood. He was a selfish trouble maker at the minnow land of the Saints where he couldn't deal with the pressure. Just how well do you think he would have gone with the scrutiny that the Pies get?

He needed the anonymity that he got living in Sydney and he improved as a player and a person as a result.

Does everyone also conveniently forget just how shit we were from the mid to late 90's? He wouldn't have made that much of a difference with the likes of Godden and Wild delivering the ball to him.

 

[tess]

I think we should get nasty and shifty, if the Player Managers wanna use us to bump the price up .... then lets play.

 

[Rohan Coventry]

I think we should get nasty and shifty, if the Player Managers wanna use us to bump the price up .... then lets play.

Ed wishes he could do that with the Beach.

Why don't we get some Pub Managers to talk up the Beach so we can bump it's price up?

 

[FIGJAM]

I was thinking flounder.

An ordinary cod perhaps??

 

[kevind]

Sorry, i worded the part on Cousins incorectly, was more interested on peoples thoughts on Plugger. How did the club alow this noted champion to slip through to Sydney? Shear craziness!!!

The Lockett story turned out to be a conflict of interest for then board member Wayne Richardson. His son was trying to establish himself as a key forward at the club and it was Wayne's vote that vetoed the recruitment of Lockett.

It was not the only time we had a chance to claim Lockett.

In about 1993,St Kilda desperately needed cash and arranged a meeting with then Collingwood president, Allan MacAllister, at his East Boundary Hotel. During the meeting, St Kilda offered to make sure Lockett and the brilliant Nicky Winmar would end up at Collingwood the next season for certain remuneration.

The story goes that MacAllister and the other Collingwood board members present began debating amongst themselves and by the end of the meeting , only Lockett was left on the table. St Kilda apparently left the meeting baffled at Collingwood's inability to reach any sort of agreement and the deal was totally abandoned within days.

Sure we haven't managed to recruit the 'big fish' over the years(with the exceptions of Buckley and Rocca) but I can't imagine Eddie McGuire's team letting the level of incompetence of the aborted Stkilda deal raise its ugly head again. Having said that, I still think the time has come for Eddie to answer some serious questions about the direction of the club over the next few years.

Landing 'big fish' can help you win premierships but they do not guarantee it. Raising your own big fish is always preferable as it is much cheaper and less likely to disturb team harmony. Our trouble IMO seems to be that we have such an easy draw each year that we finish much higher on the ladder than our true ability and therefore we never get a chance at the 'stars' in the draft. Hence we lack genuine stars who make the real difference between being a finalist and winning premierships.

 

[kevind]

An ordinary cod perhaps??

So could we put this to a vote 1 A halibut 2, A Flounder 3. A Cod

I would tend to vote with mdc on this one as it has a certain metaphorical truth as well as a symbolic prophecy.

 

[Pie eyed]

So could we put this to a vote 1 A halibut 2, A Flounder 3. A Cod

I would tend to vote with mdc on this one as it has a certain metaphorical truth as well as a symbolic prophecy.

Orange Roughy....plays for Hawthorn I think.

 

[rotten pie]

I do remember hearing something about the Lockett-Winmar deal now that you mention it Kevind. It just goes to show how inept and pigheaded the board was at the time. Mark Richardson was never going to be in the class of a Lockett or a Winmar, no matter what his old man may have thought, and was lucky to get the 142 games he got. What a wasted chance to get some class players to brighten the early years of Bucks life with the Pies.

 

[Godfrey Jones]

biggest myth in football.

here are the facts:
1 - nearly every big star is linked to collingwood even if we are not interested
2 - without free trade its hard to get the big name you want without giving up even bigger name. think of what we would have given up to get judd, it may or may not be worth it. would you rather nick stevens or didak? i know which i would have prefered
3 - other teams miss out on just as many big names as we do but we are collingwood and we sell papers
4 - we do occasionally make big trades that never get attention, picking up woewodin for example, a brownlow medallist midfielder. and look how it didnt work out well. you guys think its always the answer.
5 - finally, you act like big names are changing teams every year, they are really not. its not that easy

 

[Godfrey Jones]

with that said yes there are some bad decisions too, like every other team, whether trading or drafting

missing out on pavlich for example
not getting plugger

and who knows how this cousins thing will play out

 

[Godfrey Jones]

The Lockett story turned out to be a conflict of interest for then board member Wayne Richardson. His son was trying to establish himself as a key forward at the club and it was Wayne's vote that vetoed the recruitment of Lockett.

It was not the only time we had a chance to claim Lockett.

In about 1993,St Kilda desperately needed cash and arranged a meeting with then Collingwood president, Allan MacAllister, at his East Boundary Hotel. During the meeting, St Kilda offered to make sure Lockett and the brilliant Nicky Winmar would end up at Collingwood the next season for certain remuneration.

The story goes that MacAllister and the other Collingwood board members present began debating amongst themselves and by the end of the meeting , only Lockett was left on the table. St Kilda apparently left the meeting baffled at Collingwood's inability to reach any sort of agreement and the deal was totally abandoned within days.

Sure we haven't managed to recruit the 'big fish' over the years(with the exceptions of Buckley and Rocca) but I can't imagine Eddie McGuire's team letting the level of incompetence of the aborted Stkilda deal raise its ugly head again. Having said that, I still think the time has come for Eddie to answer some serious questions about the direction of the club over the next few years.

Landing 'big fish' can help you win premierships but they do not guarantee it. Raising your own big fish is always preferable as it is much cheaper and less likely to disturb team harmony. Our trouble IMO seems to be that we have such an easy draw each year that we finish much higher on the ladder than our true ability and therefore we never get a chance at the 'stars' in the draft. Hence we lack genuine stars who make the real difference between being a finalist and winning premierships.

what a tragedy...

 

[Kirby]

what a tragedy...

Don't believe everything that's posted on these boards Godfrey.

The truth is that Lockett was not recruited as he was seen as trouble and a likely destablizing influence at the club. People forget just how much of a clueless arseh*le Lockett was at the time and what he did to the Saints.

That was the reason he was not recruited and I know that for a fact.

Just because Mark was at the club and his father, Wayne, was one of the Board members who voted not to recruit Lockett (amongst others) people who are pissed at the club like to come up with a conspiracy theory and to have someone to whinge about.

I wish people would stop perpetuating this myth.

By the way, if there was any player at the club at the time who they thought would be a champion full forward (thus not desperately needing Lockett) was a young man named Saverio Rocca.

 

[Godfrey Jones]

^now thats the reason ive always heard and assumed was true. first time i hear kevind's story

 

[Kirby]

^now thats the reason ive always heard and assumed was true. first time i hear kevind's story

The other thing to bear in mind is that most supporters at the time didn't want him either. There was no great revolt when he wasn't recruited.

 

[iGNITER]

Collingwood will never land a big fish.

Yes they overrate their players and they have to understand that to get good players you cant just give up list fillers or depth players.

Im dissapointed that we did not give Ben Cousins a chance and i have a feeling this will come back to bite.

I think we are building a nice crop of young players for the future but in the near future i dont see premiership success - could a quality midfielder like Cousins helped us? i think yes

But then again every big name player that comes out of contract is immediately linked to the pies and when we dont get them people say "collingwood missed out again" its utter bullshit half these players we may not even be interested in.

 

[tess]

Don't believe everything that's posted on these boards Godfrey.

WHAT!!!

The truth is that Lockett was not recruited as he was seen as trouble and a likely destablizing influence at the club. People forget just how much of a clueless arseh*le Lockett was at the time and what he did to the Saints.

That was the reason he was not recruited and I know that for a fact.

Just because Mark was at the club and his father, Wayne, was one of the Board members who voted not to recruit Lockett (amongst others) people who are pissed at the club like to come up with a conspiracy theory and to have someone to whinge about.

I wish people would stop perpetuating this myth.

By the way, if there was any player at the club at the time who they thought would be a champion full forward (thus not desperately needing Lockett) was a young man named Saverio Rocca.

I know for a fact that if Mark reads that blurb he would be shaking his head and embarrassed, Mark may not have been our Lockett but he is a great bloke. Oh dear maybe the good bloke policy started way back then!!! jk peoples put your guns away.

 

[Vinnie Vegas]

Plugger(stk), Nick Stevens(port), Scotty West(wb), Chris Judd(wce), Nathan Brown(wb), Kain Johnson(ade), Stevie J(cats), Wane Carey(nth), Brad Green(melb) etc.....

That list is a joke - We never really went for Scott West, Kane Johnson, Wayne Carey or Brad Green. Plugger fits in here too, because although misguidedly, we decided before the process not to pursue him, for the reasons outlined above.

The point is, we didn't "fail to land" any of these players - We never actually pursued them.

We could have had Steve Johnson or Nick Stevens, but decided we didn't want to pay the price that was placed on them. We should have paid the price for Johnson, but we were quite right in not giving up what they asked for in return for Stevens - They wanted Presti or Didak and our top pick, and that would have been a bad trade if we'd made it.

Judd and Brown are two that we went after and failed to get, and I'm not even sure how committed we were to getting Judd.

If you want to make an argument that we should commit more fully to getting big name players when they hit the market, then fine, but to say that we can't land them isn't quite accurate.

 

[GreekLunatic]

The one that really irks me that we missed out on was Plugger. In that year we wanted Plugger we would have won i reckon another flag. He wanted to come to Collingwood and Wayne Richardson said no so his dud of a son Mark could get a game.

 

[shawthing09]

It all comes down to my favourite term. List management. How many sides in the last 15 years have recruited a known gun and won a premiership? The two most influential traded players in premierships over that time off the top of my head would be Barry Hall and Ottens. The key to both those trades was that the players values at the time of the trades where at all time lows. Hall with his behavioural issues and form was not the player he was when Sydney won the flag, Ottens had career threatening back injuries and was after a big pay cheque.

The key is in both those trades the clubs took a risk to aquire a flawed or questioned gun player at below market cost with the risk that they were buying a pop gun, similar to the Cous incident.

In all the other possible trades namely Judd etc the trades would not have been overly benificial for us. The cost too need was either at around and even or in the recievers favour, when you weigh that up along with the fact that you would have been trading away players already in the list I can't see the great value.

The Lockett deal really needs to be put into the history books. For whatever reason it was not done and as Kirby points out it wasn't till a year or so after that the fan uproar started (namely after plugger turned it around) it's great to have hindsight when making hypothetical choices.

 

[Optimax]

The one that really irks me that we missed out on was Plugger. In that year we wanted Plugger we would have won i reckon another flag. He wanted to come to Collingwood and Wayne Richardson said no so his dud of a son Mark could get a game.

Mark wasnt a dud and played alot as a CHB and Ruckman.

Wayne said no as Plugger was a loose cannon and he didnt feel that we needed that. Stupid decision but mark never came into it

 

[Stripes_13]

I also take offence that Chad Morrison wasn't named in this thread. Biggest fish ever recruited, he could also ride a Vespa!

Haha what about Shane Woewodin??