Chicken Little 2018 style

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The Old Dark Navy's said:
I'm back bitches!!

Is the season over? Are we getting worse? Has the rebuild failed? Should heads roll?

Then this is the thread for you. A BigFooty Blues staple, this is a slightly tongue in cheek, slightly rant filled thread to be filled up with mirth and vitriol in equal doses. A year long rant thread if you will.

Have at it you negative nellies, doomsayers, or just the disillusioned (said with love).

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At least our play takes the focus off our shorts
 

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Hand the keys back.Break the nexus between us and vested interests that have brought us here under the guise of patronage. The AFL will install a professional admin they will feel duty bound to support in ways like giving us a priority picks and pay down some debt or give us cash and other goodies.

Or they'll ship us off to Tassie :D


.
 
There was just some talk about last night's game on 3AW. Some talk about trading Murphy and supporters calling up saying that they're finished with the club, bagging Bolton and even SOSOS.

It's hard to listen to. I know our supporters are hurting, but no mention of how we had 10 players under 21 and they had 3. Not much emphasis on our injury list either. So many chicken littles running around today.
 
I don't know which category I fall into. What I know is this.

Going to the draft means a huge reliability in our player development ability. However the following players have played under Bolts and failed to either improve or be turned into senior role players: Gorringe, Sumner, Gallucci, Korcheck, Smedts, Palmer, Boekhorst, Buckley, DVR, Jaksch, Tutt, Whiley, Smith, Foster, Dick, Gowers, Kerridge, Lamb, Phillips, JGM, LeBois, Keridge, Byrne, Graham.

Our successes so far are: Wright, Plowman, ASOS, Marchbank, Pickett, Jones?

To me that doesn't provide great reassurance, especially given three of those positives were top 6 picks.

We're currently relying on Kennedy, Lang, Mullet, O'Shea and Lobbe to balance the ledger. Again, the two most likely were former first round selections.

I'm happy with our draft selections. I think we have made astute trades. What I am concerned about is that lack of being able to develop more role players.

We can't rely solely on the draft - its taken GWS a decade and we don't have access to their level of picks.

We can't bank of FA - players will turn their backs on us like Rocky if we're not finals bound, and North showed money alone isn't enough.

Kids and time alone isn't enough, see GCS, yet that's the great white hope we're being sold.

What do we have that other teams don't. What will drive our success when so many others have failed. That's the questions we need to be asking. I don't know the answer, I just hope the club does.
 
Having spent a period of time in a state of meditation, as I’m sure most Carlton fans have found themselves in the previous twelve hours, I have reflected upon the Carlton Football Club and my relationship with it. I have found myself returning to the same three factors, as if I were lost in the woods, continuing to stumble across three large sentinels. Stumbling is the appropriate word for these circumstances as there is undoubtedly the sense as if this is beyond my control, an unavoidable reaction to an incessant desire to push forward, to emerge from the woods. The three factors I have mentally wrestled with are Faith, Messiahs and Bearings.

Faith

Born in 1992, I began actively supporting the Carlton Football Club as I began to actively follow football in approximately 1999/2000. I have memories of watching Anthony Koutafides, Scott Camporeale, Murphy, Houlihan and many others in the navy blue through the haze of childhood recollection. A sandgroper by birth, a variety of factors lead me to support the Blues. As those factors fell away throughout my adolescence they were replaced by a singular, all consuming passion for the Carlton Football Club which is not mirrored in any other passion, not the Australian Cricket Team, nor any other sport or hobby. It is as if divine providence has led me to support Carlton, a sense of unavoidable destiny and deservedness. In truth, Carlton has not deserved my faith, exhibiting almost two decades of mediocrity broken by brief peaks and flashes of hope. I was sitting in twenty-third row behind the western goals at Subiaco in 2011 as we came within an Andrew Walker holding call of reaching the preliminary final. I can recall sitting at home glued to Fox Footy’s ‘trade whisper’ page when Chris Judd announced he had elected Carlton as his preferred trade destination. There have been periods of hope, periods of success, yet these have pierced the malaise far too infrequently. I am too deep at this point. I often snorkel on the weekends, free diving through swim throughs and through coral reefs on the west coast. My support of Carlton, my faith in Carlton is at a point where I’m half-way through a jagged tunnel beneath the waves. The water is choppy, my peripherals are dark, I would turn back if I could, but I can’t. There really is only one way to go, I may not like it, it may be uncomfortable, but there is only forward. There is only faith that this too will pass, that there will be an end, that we will emerge and I will emerge from this place.

Messiahs

I was not at the game last night, in fact I was not watching the game live at all. I was at the West Coast Eagles game against Gold Coast. Sitting with friends on the members wing. The Eagles won comfortably, the crowd was initiating Mexican waves seventeen minutes into the final quarter. I looked around as the final siren went and thought to myself, how must it be to be these people. TO be happy, to be content with the state of my team and my teams performance. Not a single person in that crowd is thinking about the 2018 draft class, and here I am, reading big footy on my phone and youtubing Jack Lukoscious highlights, in round 4. This moment took me back to late 2015. I was attending a West Coast match with a friend. West Coast had won, the bus-load of supporters were happy, my mate was giving me a hard time about the Blues and I retorted “but do you have Jacob Weitering though?”. My point was essentially, what does current success mean in the face of future success? My friend, a West Coast supporter accustomed to success could only laugh, unaware of what it was like to live in constant hope for the future, for the success felt by those supporters around me. When will that success come? Jacob Weitering, while far too early yet to judge, has not been a messiah for this club. And while I found myself returning the same point last night, “But do you have Jack Lukoscious though?”, I have realised that this cannot be the way forward. Lukosious cannot be our saviour, there is no guarantee that future success will occur. While he, or another draft pick will help us the club requires overarching development, in all facets of the list, club and personnel. We may need a messiah, but there are no messiahs in this game. Chris Judd was not our messiah, Jacob Weitering is not our messiah and neither will an athletic key position player from Adelaide. What we need are apostles, hard working footballers and coaches who can instil change and development from the rookie list to the captain.

Bearings

Carlton undoubtedly reached a nadir last night. Losing to North Melbourne, by eighty points is something that I could not previously comprehend. However, we cannot sink any lower than this. The fact is we’ve reached the bottom. While there is no guarantee we will rise there is nothing further. Where are we as a club? 48 games into a 66 game rebuild. While undoubtedly we have made some progress, we are going backwards in terms of on field performance and it is effecting our youth. There are only three players that I can say with certainty are elite footballers, Patrick Cripps, Sam Docherty and Charlie Curnow. I have faith in Caleb Marchbank, Zac Fisher and a handful of others but I can no longer say I see a premiership team in the list at the moment. We need to start winning games, our youth will not develop in this state. Unfortunately, I haven’t got the answers, I don’t know what we can do. I’m terrified that we will go the rest of the season win-less, getting flogged by jokes like North. I’m unable to find out bearings, hopefully we find our feet somewhere.

There needs to be change, not only at the club but within myself as a supporter. I have faith in the club, albeit faith that is seemingly beyond my control. The list will continue to develop, we will bring in more elite talent. The question is, can we develop it, and will it turn into wins? I'll be here to see. I just hope one day I can be standing in the crowd after a big win with a finals campaign on the horizon.
 
FlowersByIrene said:
Having spent a period of time in a state of meditation, as I’m sure most Carlton fans have found themselves in the previous twelve hours, I have reflected upon the Carlton Football Club and my relationship with it. I have found myself returning to the same three factors, as if I were lost in the woods, continuing to stumble across three large sentinels. Stumbling is the appropriate word for these circumstances as there is undoubtedly the sense as if this is beyond my control, an unavoidable reaction to an incessant desire to push forward, to emerge from the woods. The three factors I have mentally wrestled with are Faith, Messiahs and Bearings.

Faith

Born in 1992, I began actively supporting the Carlton Football Club as I began to actively follow football in approximately 1999/2000. I have memories of watching Anthony Koutafides, Scott Camporeale, Murphy, Houlihan and many others in the navy blue through the haze of childhood recollection. A sandgroper by birth, a variety of factors lead me to support the Blues. As those factors fell away throughout my adolescence they were replaced by a singular, all consuming passion for the Carlton Football Club which is not mirrored in any other passion, not the Australian Cricket Team, nor any other sport or hobby. It is as if divine providence has led me to support Carlton, a sense of unavoidable destiny and deservedness. In truth, Carlton has not deserved my faith, exhibiting almost two decades of mediocrity broken by brief peaks and flashes of hope. I was sitting in twenty-third row behind the western goals at Subiaco in 2011 as we came within an Andrew Walker holding call of reaching the preliminary final. I can recall sitting at home glued to Fox Footy’s ‘trade whisper’ page when Chris Judd announced he had elected Carlton as his preferred trade destination. There have been periods of hope, periods of success, yet these have pierced the malaise far too infrequently. I am too deep at this point. I often snorkel on the weekends, free diving through swim throughs and through coral reefs on the west coast. My support of Carlton, my faith in Carlton is at a point where I’m half-way through a jagged tunnel beneath the waves. The water is choppy, my peripherals are dark, I would turn back if I could, but I can’t. There really is only one way to go, I may not like it, it may be uncomfortable, but there is only forward. There is only faith that this too will pass, that there will be an end, that we will emerge and I will emerge from this place.

Messiahs

I was not at the game last night, in fact I was not watching the game live at all. I was at the West Coast Eagles game against Gold Coast. Sitting with friends on the members wing. The Eagles won comfortably, the crowd was initiating Mexican waves seventeen minutes into the final quarter. I looked around as the final siren went and thought to myself, how must it be to be these people. TO be happy, to be content with the state of my team and my teams performance. Not a single person in that crowd is thinking about the 2018 draft class, and here I am, reading big footy on my phone and youtubing Jack Lukoscious highlights, in round 4. This moment took me back to late 2015. I was attending a West Coast match with a friend. West Coast had won, the bus-load of supporters were happy, my mate was giving me a hard time about the Blues and I retorted “but do you have Jacob Weitering though?”. My point was essentially, what does current success mean in the face of future success? My friend, a West Coast supporter accustomed to success could only laugh, unaware of what it was like to live in constant hope for the future, for the success felt by those supporters around me. When will that success come? Jacob Weitering, while far too early yet to judge, has not been a messiah for this club. And while I found myself returning the same point last night, “But do you have Jack Lukoscious though?”, I have realised that this cannot be the way forward. Lukosious cannot be our saviour, there is no guarantee that future success will occur. While he, or another draft pick will help us the club requires overarching development, in all facets of the list, club and personnel. We may need a messiah, but there are no messiahs in this game. Chris Judd was not our messiah, Jacob Weitering is not our messiah and neither will an athletic key position player from Adelaide. What we need are apostles, hard working footballers and coaches who can instil change and development from the rookie list to the captain.

Bearings

Carlton undoubtedly reached a nadir last night. Losing to North Melbourne, by eighty points is something that I could not previously comprehend. However, we cannot sink any lower than this. The fact is we’ve reached the bottom. While there is no guarantee we will rise there is nothing further. Where are we as a club? 48 games into a 66 game rebuild. While undoubtedly we have made some progress, we are going backwards in terms of on field performance and it is effecting our youth. There are only three players that I can say with certainty are elite footballers, Patrick Cripps, Sam Docherty and Charlie Curnow. I have faith in Caleb Marchbank, Zac Fisher and a handful of others but I can no longer say I see a premiership team in the list at the moment. We need to start winning games, our youth will not develop in this state. Unfortunately, I haven’t got the answers, I don’t know what we can do. I’m terrified that we will go the rest of the season win-less, getting flogged by jokes like North. I’m unable to find out bearings, hopefully we find our feet somewhere.

There needs to be change, not only at the club but within myself as a supporter. I have faith in the club, albeit faith that is seemingly beyond my control. The list will continue to develop, we will bring in more elite talent. The question is, can we develop it, and will it turn into wins? I'll be here to see. I just hope one day I can be standing in the crowd after a big win with a finals campaign on the horizon.
Click to expand...
Bloody hell, FBI. For a guy that runs a thread on the youth in the club during the rebuild, that is a very bleak outlook.

Hope we get a few wins to cheer you up, the things that look bad now will look a whole lot better.
 
FlowersByIrene said:
Having spent a period of time in a state of meditation, as I’m sure most Carlton fans have found themselves in the previous twelve hours, I have reflected upon the Carlton Football Club and my relationship with it. I have found myself returning to the same three factors, as if I were lost in the woods, continuing to stumble across three large sentinels. Stumbling is the appropriate word for these circumstances as there is undoubtedly the sense as if this is beyond my control, an unavoidable reaction to an incessant desire to push forward, to emerge from the woods. The three factors I have mentally wrestled with are Faith, Messiahs and Bearings.

Faith

Born in 1992, I began actively supporting the Carlton Football Club as I began to actively follow football in approximately 1999/2000. I have memories of watching Anthony Koutafides, Scott Camporeale, Murphy, Houlihan and many others in the navy blue through the haze of childhood recollection. A sandgroper by birth, a variety of factors lead me to support the Blues. As those factors fell away throughout my adolescence they were replaced by a singular, all consuming passion for the Carlton Football Club which is not mirrored in any other passion, not the Australian Cricket Team, nor any other sport or hobby. It is as if divine providence has led me to support Carlton, a sense of unavoidable destiny and deservedness. In truth, Carlton has not deserved my faith, exhibiting almost two decades of mediocrity broken by brief peaks and flashes of hope. I was sitting in twenty-third row behind the western goals at Subiaco in 2011 as we came within an Andrew Walker holding call of reaching the preliminary final. I can recall sitting at home glued to Fox Footy’s ‘trade whisper’ page when Chris Judd announced he had elected Carlton as his preferred trade destination. There have been periods of hope, periods of success, yet these have pierced the malaise far too infrequently. I am too deep at this point. I often snorkel on the weekends, free diving through swim throughs and through coral reefs on the west coast. My support of Carlton, my faith in Carlton is at a point where I’m half-way through a jagged tunnel beneath the waves. The water is choppy, my peripherals are dark, I would turn back if I could, but I can’t. There really is only one way to go, I may not like it, it may be uncomfortable, but there is only forward. There is only faith that this too will pass, that there will be an end, that we will emerge and I will emerge from this place.

Messiahs

I was not at the game last night, in fact I was not watching the game live at all. I was at the West Coast Eagles game against Gold Coast. Sitting with friends on the members wing. The Eagles won comfortably, the crowd was initiating Mexican waves seventeen minutes into the final quarter. I looked around as the final siren went and thought to myself, how must it be to be these people. TO be happy, to be content with the state of my team and my teams performance. Not a single person in that crowd is thinking about the 2018 draft class, and here I am, reading big footy on my phone and youtubing Jack Lukoscious highlights, in round 4. This moment took me back to late 2015. I was attending a West Coast match with a friend. West Coast had won, the bus-load of supporters were happy, my mate was giving me a hard time about the Blues and I retorted “but do you have Jacob Weitering though?”. My point was essentially, what does current success mean in the face of future success? My friend, a West Coast supporter accustomed to success could only laugh, unaware of what it was like to live in constant hope for the future, for the success felt by those supporters around me. When will that success come? Jacob Weitering, while far too early yet to judge, has not been a messiah for this club. And while I found myself returning the same point last night, “But do you have Jack Lukoscious though?”, I have realised that this cannot be the way forward. Lukosious cannot be our saviour, there is no guarantee that future success will occur. While he, or another draft pick will help us the club requires overarching development, in all facets of the list, club and personnel. We may need a messiah, but there are no messiahs in this game. Chris Judd was not our messiah, Jacob Weitering is not our messiah and neither will an athletic key position player from Adelaide. What we need are apostles, hard working footballers and coaches who can instil change and development from the rookie list to the captain.

Bearings

Carlton undoubtedly reached a nadir last night. Losing to North Melbourne, by eighty points is something that I could not previously comprehend. However, we cannot sink any lower than this. The fact is we’ve reached the bottom. While there is no guarantee we will rise there is nothing further. Where are we as a club? 48 games into a 66 game rebuild. While undoubtedly we have made some progress, we are going backwards in terms of on field performance and it is effecting our youth. There are only three players that I can say with certainty are elite footballers, Patrick Cripps, Sam Docherty and Charlie Curnow. I have faith in Caleb Marchbank, Zac Fisher and a handful of others but I can no longer say I see a premiership team in the list at the moment. We need to start winning games, our youth will not develop in this state. Unfortunately, I haven’t got the answers, I don’t know what we can do. I’m terrified that we will go the rest of the season win-less, getting flogged by jokes like North. I’m unable to find out bearings, hopefully we find our feet somewhere.

There needs to be change, not only at the club but within myself as a supporter. I have faith in the club, albeit faith that is seemingly beyond my control. The list will continue to develop, we will bring in more elite talent. The question is, can we develop it, and will it turn into wins? I'll be here to see. I just hope one day I can be standing in the crowd after a big win with a finals campaign on the horizon.
Click to expand...

Top post FBI.

It pains me to say this. But last night, I began to share your worry that I can no longer see the makings of an elite premiership-challenging list in our youth ranks.

Not the Chicken Little style of worry “such and such had a shocking game drop him to the 2s and sakc sakc sakc”

But genuinely, the last 4 weeks I’ve seen something I thought had been eradicated by Bolton - the closest way I can describe it is an apathy, a malaise that has set over the entire team. The look on Matthew Kreuzer’s face on the bench last night in the 4th sums it up best. JSOS asks him how he’s feeling, and Special K shrugs while his eyes scan the field futilely, saying “the injury is nothing, I’ll get over that - but what’s happening out there? I don’t even know where to start.”

It feels like Groundhog Day. It feels like “it” is happening again. And I am desperate for it not to be so. I hope with every fibre of my being it is not so.

I am hurting so badly. Not because O’Shea can’t hit the backside of a barn by hand or by foot. Not because Dow was quiet. Not because SPS had a down game. These things I expect. The kids need time and games. The mature but barely capable crew need our talented kids to forcibly take their spots away.

But we, as a unit, just seem so far away being capable of delivering. Give me a glimmer of something! I think Q1 against the Pies is as good as it has been all season so far, but we still lost on the scoreboard.

I’ve accepted a bottom 3 finish - so give me some green shoots at least, FFS. We don’t even have that right now, aside from one or two per game. It’s not enough! We need a few youngsters putting their hand up each game saying “here’s what I’ll be able to do reliably for this club in a couple more seasons”. That’s all I’m after, honestly. But across every line, we seem to have gone backwards at an alarming rate. The glimpses of talent and potential have all but disappeared.

Someone made a good point - last year, our 6 core elder statesmen carried this club. Murph, Doc, Cripps, Kreuzer, Simmo and Gibbs. They played out of their skins and carried us to some victories we should never have achieved.

This year, Gibbs and Doc are gone, Murph is now out, and Kreuz has been on one leg since the first game. 2 warriors would struggle to inspire their 22 teammates to use the bathroom, let alone will them to victory against another team of 22 proud AFL athletes sensing blood in the water.

I have resisted the calls so far, as “play the kids” is what we are doing, with 10 aged under 21 last night. It shouldn’t really matter who is out there, as we appear to be playing our best (theoretical) talent whenever they are deemed ready. All we really need is a system that holds up under pressure, and unquestionable and unconditional effort across the team, young and old. Right now, we have neither. And it scares the s**t out of me.

Hoping against all hope that it clicks for the boys, in order to save the face of this club - a club I love so much for reasons I am yet to fathom.

Deflated, 33, Melbourne.
 

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Azzurro said:
Top post FBI.

It pains me to say this. But last night, I began to share your worry that I can no longer see the makings of an elite premiership-challenging list in our youth ranks.

Not the Chicken Little style of worry “such and such had a shocking game drop him to the 2s and sakc sakc sakc”

But genuinely, the last 4 weeks I’ve seen something I thought had been eradicated by Bolton - the closest way I can describe it is an apathy, a malaise that has set over the entire team. The look on Matthew Kreuzer’s face on the bench last night in the 4th sums it up best. JSOS asks him how he’s feeling, and Special K shrugs while his eyes scan the field futilely, saying “the injury is nothing, I’ll get over that - but what’s happening out there? I don’t even know where to start.”

It feels like Groundhog Day. It feels like “it” is happening again. And I am desperate for it not to be so. I hope with every fibre of my being it is not so.

I am hurting so badly. Not because O’Shea can’t hit the backside of a barn by hand or by foot. Not because Dow was quiet. Not because SPS had a down game. These things I expect. The kids need time and games. The mature but barely capable crew need our talented kids to forcibly take their spots away.

But we, as a unit, just seem so far away being capable of delivering. Give me a glimmer of something! I think Q1 against the Pies is as good as it has been all season so far, but we still lost on the scoreboard.

I’ve accepted a bottom 3 finish - so give me some green shoots at least, FFS. We don’t even have that right now, aside from one or two per game. It’s not enough! We need a few youngsters putting their hand up each game saying “here’s what I’ll be able to do reliably for this club in a couple more seasons”. That’s all I’m after, honestly. But across every line, we seem to have gone backwards at an alarming rate. The glimpses of talent and potential have all but disappeared.

Someone made a good point - last year, our 6 core elder statesmen carried this club. Murph, Doc, Cripps, Kreuzer, Simmo and Gibbs. They played out of their skins and carried us to some victories we should never have achieved.

This year, Gibbs and Doc are gone, Murph is now out, and Kreuz has been on one leg since the first game. 2 warriors would struggle to inspire their 22 teammates to use the bathroom, let alone will them to victory against another team of 22 proud AFL athletes sensing blood in the water.

I have resisted the calls so far, as “play the kids” is what we are doing, with 10 aged under 21 last night. It shouldn’t really matter who is out there, as we appear to be playing our best (theoretical) talent whenever they are deemed ready. All we really need is a system that holds up under pressure, and unquestionable and unconditional effort across the team, young and old. Right now, we have neither. And it scares the s**t out of me.

Hoping against all hope that it clicks for the boys, in order to save the face of this club - a club I love so much for reasons I am yet to fathom.

Deflated, 33, Melbourne.
Click to expand...
Great post Azzuro,

I'm a VERY positive person, I can find the greenshoots, but this season has felt hopeless, there is nothing to be gleaned from apathetic efforts.

On [device_name] using BigFooty.com mobile app
 
**** Chicken little or even little chickens. I just bought the biggest chicken in the supermarket and cooked the S@#t out of it on BBQ.
Didn't make me feel any better about last night so I ******* ate it.

Chicken little be Chicken dead soon to be Chicken S#*t.

WHERE'S MY TABLETS!!!!!!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
mrjones said:
****Chicken little or even little chickens. I just bought the biggest chicken in the supermarket and cooked the S@#t out of it on BBQ.
Didn't make me feel any better about last night so I ******* ate it.

Chicken little be Chicken dead soo to be Chicken S#*t.

WHERE'S MY TABLETS!!!!!!
Click to expand...
your zyprexa is ready sir
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I really don't think it's that bad. More than most teams (maybe all teams!), we have recently relied heavily on our seniormost 6-7 players (Simpson, Murphy, Gibbs, Kreuzer, Cripps, Docherty and, yes, Ed Curnow). When they were all up and about, we were very consistently competitive, and won quite often, often without even scoring 100 points, if you can believe that.

But injuries to Cripps and Curnow in the latter part of last season, coupled with Simpson's form tailing off pretty badly in the final 6-8 weeks of 2017, was enough to do for us, even as the other four continued to play well, week in, week out. Plenty of us knew this, and plenty of us prayed that the Gibbs trade somehow wouldn't happen, for pretty much this reason. Losing all of our All-Australians for the last six seasons to an ACL was just the icing on the cake.

Nevertheless, the reset button has been pressed. Easy for Bolton to stick with the kids now - he has absolutely no choice. Maybe he does open the cupboard occasionally, but when Kerridge is all he sees, he probably shuts it pretty quickly! The kids will be exposed again, but there will be other days when they fire, in patches or bunches, quarters or spells, and we'll remember why we are doing this, and that there are better days ahead.

Not to mention plenty of worse days in living memory. Days where a mature, 'full-strength' line-up copped these sorts of pastings on a weekly basis. Days when the senior coach and the reigning best-and-fairest were not on speaking terms. Days when North beat us by 20 goals, and bloody Laurence Angwin was our best player. In fact, they were all the same day, and that day was a lot worse than this day (not least because we had to carry it around with us for the whole of the 2004 pre-season). I'm just grateful there is still a next week. Bring on the Eagles, and let's do better.
 
Last edited:
Blues_1864 said:
I really don't think it's that bad. More than most teams (maybe all teams!), we have recently relied heavily on our seniormost 6-7 players (Simpson, Murphy, Gibbs, Kreuzer, Cripps, Docherty and, yes, Ed Curnow). When they were all up and about, we were very consistently competitive, and won quite often, often without even scoring 100 points, if you can believe that.

But injuries to Cripps and Curnow in the latter part of last season, coupled with Simpson's form tailing off pretty badly in the final 6-8 weeks of 2017, was enough to do for us, even as the other four continued to play well, week in, week out. Plenty of us knew this, and plenty of us prayed that the Gibbs trade somehow wouldn't happen, for pretty much this reason. Losing all of our All-Australians for the last six seasons to an ACL was just the icing on the cake.

Nevertheless, the reset button has been pressed. Easy for Bolton to stick with the kids now - he has absolutely no choice. Maybe he does open the cupboard occasionally, but when Kerridge is all he sees, he probably shuts it pretty quickly! The kids will be exposed again, but there will be other days when they fire, in patches or bunches, quarters or spells, and we'll remember why we are doing this, and that there are better days ahead.

Not to mention plenty of worse days in living memory. Days where a mature, 'full-strength' line-up copped these sorts of pastings on a weekly basis. Days when the senior coach and the reigning best-and-fairest were not on speaking terms. Days when North beat us by 20 goals, and bloody Laurence Angwin was our best player. In fact, they were all the same day, and that day was a lot worse than this day (not least because we had to carry it around with us for the whole of the 2004 pre-season). I'm just grateful there is still a next week. Bring on the Eagles, and let's do better.
Click to expand...

Great post! The last paragraph made me giggle. A lot!

Chins up, let’s crack in. A decent effort is all we can ask of the boys, so I hope to see it against West Coke.
 
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