Analysis Clarko in 2019 “We’re a middle of the road team”

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Jun 11, 2013
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I think the folk are frustrated with the slow negative game style more than anything.

The first qtr yesterday was a disgrace and we were lucky to not be down 60 at qtr time.

It is obviously designed by the coaching group to try and avoid blow outs but I would like to see us more aggressive especially at the start of games.

I disagree, I thought our game plan has very clearly been more attacking minded than in previous years rounds 1-3. it's simply an inability to execute the necessary skills that makes us look slower

you're right that yesterday was a regression, but I'm lead to believe that after the first quarter embarrassment we went back into our shells and were afraid to take the game on. which actually got us back into the game, but ultimately didn't lead to a win and wasnt pretty to watch given our poor ball use

I'm hoping for more aggressive play, and naturally plenty of mistakes, come the game vs Melbourne. If we can set the tone early hopefully we will have the confidence to play like we did in the 2nd halves vs Geelong and Essendon
 

SA HAWK

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We are now paying the price for Clarko's refusal to rebuild 4-5 years ago when it was pretty clear the premiership era was over.

He thought he could pinch another flag after most of the key players from the 3 peat were either retired/traded or past their best.

We needed to bottom out for a couple of years and hit the draft to get some serious young talent into the side over a 2-3 year period.

Now we are paying the price for going the trade & top up route.
 

RoughysMullet

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We are now paying the price for Clarko's refusal to rebuild 4-5 years ago when it was pretty clear the premiership era was over.

He thought he could pinch another flag after most of the key players from the 3 peat were either retired/traded or past their best.

We needed to bottom out for a couple of years and hit the draft to get some serious young talent into the side over a 2-3 year period.

Now we are paying the price for going the trade & top up route.
Yep, you could see what he was trying to do but in hindsight it was a bad call by Clarko to chase another flag with the left over premiership players and some recruits from other clubs that haven’t really panned out..

Right now we’ve been forced into the bottom out phase for at least this year and next..

We need to get as much draft capital as possible in this period - it can change quickly if we draft well but we’re at least year or two behind other clubs that have already gone down that route and there’s gonna be some short term pain until we make it up...
 
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Aug 31, 2008
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[1] Out played them for 3 out of 4 quarters, it wasn't a lucky win don't rewrite history to match your opinion.

[2]The best side of the last 4 years, out classed a bottom 4 side, impressive observation mate.

[3]We were missing Gunston, Sicily, Day every bit equal to their 3 outs, as for Gutherie have you paid any attention to him over the last two years? Clearly you haven't and as for Ducan he's been elite for 5 years.

[4] The bold aren't best 22 or wouldn't be missed if they weren't playing, Mitchell, Omerea, Wingard, Impey and Frost will all still playing in 5 years( so very old).

[5] Why does it matter where they were taken in the draft???

Gunston, Sicily and Day are great players and will improve us greatly when they return. But only Hawks fans would say they are better than Jeremy Cameron, Dangerfield and Menegola (a distant third). Absolutely no neutrals would agree with you.

We may not feel those bolded players are best 22. But Clarko does. Especially with Burgoyne.
 
Aug 31, 2008
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7 years ago we just went b2b🤦‍♂️

No finals wins since. That's a significant amount of time.

Leigh Matthews was moved on in 2008, that's four years after his last Grand Final appearances.

All great coaches have a used-by date, otherwise Matthews, Sheedy, Malthouse, Parkin, etc would still be coaching. The end comes quick and right now it looks like the game has moved right past Clarko's gameplans. He needs to change things around.

I'm not saying he can't fix this, I think he can. But to try to instantly dismiss his post by actually making his point isn't right.
 
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Sep 28, 2019
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Frankly, I'm just not that convinced that the people who are cracking it over where we are right now would have been super on board with it happening three years earlier.
I think it’s very different if it’s a planned drop down the ladder having lost a heap of talent after just winning 3 flags. And trying to get a lot of draft picks through the door to fill the dearth of young talent we had back then.

Rather trying to fight it for years and then finally ending up at the bottom anyway but without the draft picks we could had to speed up a rebuild as well as starting at a much later point.

What frustrates me the most is that we don’t seem to want to rebuild. Turn over players yes, but not really rebuild. Since 2016 we’ve had two first round draft picks. No wonder we lack talent. I’m glad we are taking draft picks now. But that’s why we don’t have the quality of youth other teams do.

I can accept losing if there’s a plan to get out the other side. Currently the club is wallowing in mediocrity. The club is looking stale and stagnant. Poor list management has lead to poor performance on field.

Now fixing will take time, I just want to see effort applied by the club. That includes playing more younger players for the rest of this year then drafting hard. And repeat for a year or two at least before reassessing.
 
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burner1

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In 3 years time how much output will we get from Breust, Gunston, Mitchell, JOM, shiels, wingard etc? All a bit banged up. Also need to replace BB (reeves) and Hartigan (?) and hope some of key forwards come on.

So that’s possibly an almost full midfield rebuild (of which have reeves, Finn, downie and worpel as pieces) and some top end talent up forward and some kpps.

We may need to suffer a few years in the bottom 6 as no point rebounding in say 2022/23 to mid table then falling off a cliff again as senior players decline. Major issue is we’ve missed the window of trading anyone out so draft and trade currency is the issue.
 
Frankly, I'm just not that convinced that the people who are cracking it over where we are right now would have been super on board with it happening three years earlier.
oh, you and I both know how that would’ve gone. 😂
 

Easy Slips Catch

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Why is anyone getting caught up in what Kane Cornes says?

He gets paid to throw things out and get reactions.

Who cares!!!
Sums up much of the internet. Forget the topic just hang s**t on the person.

It's a good discussion point. Seven of our starting 18 are 30 or near to it. So in the next three years, we have to get in 7 players to remain at our current level. We're already a bottom 6 team. Gunna take some magic to change things up.
 
Yep, you could see what he was trying to do but in hindsight it was a bad call by Clarko to chase another flag
It is never a bad call to chase another flag. Never.

People need to stop losing the context of our list at that point in time. We had ample reason to chase another flag.
 

big_rig

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We appear to be in pretty bad strife. Our captain is looking cooked like the last one.

Our only midfielder who doesn't burn the ball is Morrison. We should feed him the ball.

I'd say our premiership window (lol) with this group is three years. Would make Mitchell and Wingard 31, Jaegar 30, Frost 30 - Gunston, Breust and Shiels likely gone.

Can we get enough pieces within that time to put together a winning group? It seems unlikely given that we appear to be bottoming out.
 

Lickmesocks

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Sums up much of the internet. Forget the topic just hang sh*t on the person.

It's a good discussion point. Seven of our starting 18 are 30 or near to it. So in the next three years, we have to get in 7 players to remain at our current level. We're already a bottom 6 team. Gunna take some magic to change things up.

Yep agree with your points but not sure why everyone gets so upset when people call it honestly.

we were always going to be a bottom 4 side this season so we need to hang on .

What is our direction as a club?

Does Zac Merett and Adam Cerra for example help us go to the next level or continue to delay the inevitable?

Scrim, Jiath, Denver, Day and Hardwick looks like a reasonable backline group for years to come.

How bold would we be chasing early picks? I know for fact the Blues were sniffing around Tom Mitchell-

Does Tom Mitchell to the Blues net two picks inside the top 10 for example or
close to it? Does a potential move like this hurt us further in the short term but assist us long term? How bold would we be?

Brockman looks like he could be Mark Shotgun Williams for us with his accurate kicking and leading patterns in the forward 50 and is very exciting.

Kosi Lewis and Moore are all wait and see projects in the forward 50.

McEvoy Breust Burgoyne Shiels Gunston Ceglar will all be retired or just about cooked in 2-3 years time .

Wingard O’meara and Mitchell our 3 A Graders will all be 30 in 3 years time.

Going to be interesting times ahead.
 
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We appear to be in pretty bad strife. Our captain is looking cooked like the last one.

Our only midfielder who doesn't burn the ball is Morrison. We should feed him the ball.

I'd say our premiership window (lol) with this group is three years. Would make Mitchell and Wingard 31, Jaegar 30, Frost 30 - Gunston, Breust and Shiels likely gone.

Can we get enough pieces within that time to put together a winning group? It seems unlikely given that we appear to be bottoming out.

No, it's why I was desperate for a trade or 2 at the end of last season to require more picks etc.

I'd be surprised if Gunston, Bruest and Shiels play in a finals winning team at hawthorn again let alone a Premiership.
 
Oct 2, 2014
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Yep agree with your points but not sure why everyone gets so upset when people call it honestly.

we were always going to be a bottom 4 side this season so we need to hang on .

What is our direction as a club?

Does Zac Merett and Adam Cerra for example help us go to the next level or continue to delay the inevitable?

Scrim, Jiath, Denver, Day and Hardwick looks like a reasonable backline group for years to come.

How bold would we be chasing early picks? I know for fact the Blues were sniffing around Tom Mitchell-

Does Tom Mitchell to the Blues net two picks inside the top 10 for example or
close to it? Does a potential move like this hurt us further in the short term but assist us long term? How bold would we be?

Brockman looks like he could be Mark Shotgun Williams for us with his accurate kicking and leading patterns in the forward 50 and is very exciting.

Kosi Lewis and Moore are all wait and see projects in the forward 50.

McEvoy Breust Burgoyne Shiels Gunston Ceglar will all be retired or just about cooked in 2-3 years time .

Wingard O’meara and Mitchell our 3 A Graders will all be 30 in 3 years time.

Going to be interesting times ahead.

I think we need to be very aggressive with the rebuild. We've had a lack of genuine talent for so long that we're lacking both elite talent and depth everywhere except the backline. The decision in 2016 to top-up for another flag tilt rather than bottom out has probably harmed us in the longer run but I cannot blame the club for that.

In 2010 we picked Smith at 19.
In 2015 we picked Burton at 19 and Lovell at 22.
In 2019 we picked Day with 13.
In 2020 we picked Grainger-Barass at 6.

In 10 years we've had a grand total of 5 first round picks - and only one of those was a top 10 pick. Of those 5 we traded out Burton and Lovell was a bust. When Clarkson came in during 2005 we already had a handful of elite younger players on the list from multiple drafts. From 2016 we tried to trade in elite talent to form that core but it hasn't worked as envisioned. So we're lacking those pieces now. We're desperately hoping later picks can develop and turn into gold - sometimes that works (possibly Jiath, Brockman) but usually it doesn't.

It is going to take 3-4 years minimum to get anywhere near the talent required to be competitive. And by then we'll lose important pieces (Gunston, Breust, Sheils, McEvoy) and our current group of A-grade talent (Mitchell, O'Meara, Wingard) will all be over 30. So that will take an additional few years to address unless we get very lucky and basically nail every pick in the next few drafts.

We're already in for some short-term pain. I think we should be looking to rip off the band-aid. And this doesn't mean suddenly going all North and trading out most of our senior and depth players to let the kids struggle - but some hard & risky calls do need to be made.
 
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Sep 28, 2019
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It is never a bad call to chase another flag. Never.

People need to stop losing the context of our list at that point in time. We had ample reason to chase another flag.
Every team is trying to chase a flag. That’s the goal of football. The difference is how each team goes about it.

The context of our list at the time was it wasn’t good enough. We ran out of puff in 2016, too many old elite players hitting a wall. Some very good players under them needing to step up. But an absolute lack of young talent ready to step up to the level.

This lack of young talent is understandable given we traded picks nonstop to gather our 3-peat team. But it put us in a position a rebuild was necessary. Instead we took a high risk strategy in that it had minimal chance of succeeding and would almost certainly put us in a big hole in a few years time, whether we won a flag or not.

It’s not like we were well poised for more success. Even at the time it wasn’t a great looking decision it seemed to be the hubris of winning 3 in a row more than sound list decision making.
 
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Stratton24

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Every team is trying to chase a flag. That’s the goal of football. The difference is how each team goes about it.

The context of our list at the time was it wasn’t good enough. We ran out of puff in 2016, too many old elite players hitting a wall. Some very good players under them needing to step up. But an absolute lack of young talent ready to step up to the level.

This lack of young talent is understandable given we traded picks nonstop to gather our 3-peat team. But it put us in a position a rebuild was necessary. Instead we took a high risk strategy in that it had minimal chance of succeeding and would almost certainly put us in a big hole in a few years time, whether we won a flag or not.
We didn't run out of puff. Smith missed a goal that would have put us into a Prelim. The umpires in every game the Dogs played in the 2016 gave them a massive advantage. I hate Sydney but they really got robbed in the GF as GWS did in the Prelim and us in the Semi.
 

Stratton24

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No finals wins since. That's a significant amount of time.

Leigh Matthews was moved on in 2008, that's four years after his last Grand Final appearances.

All great coaches have a used-by date, otherwise Matthews, Sheedy, Malthouse, Parkin, etc would still be coaching. The end comes quick and right now it looks like the game has moved right past Clarko's gameplans. He needs to change things around.

I'm not saying he can't fix this, I think he can. But to try to instantly dismiss his post by actually making his point isn't right.
??? Have you forgot the 3 peat? We had to win finals to achieve that.
 
Sep 28, 2019
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We didn't run out of puff. Smith missed a goal that would have put us into a Prelim. The umpires in every game the Dogs played in the 2016 gave them a massive advantage. I hate Sydney but they really got robbed in the GF as GWS did in the Prelim and us in the Semi.
Our form pre and post round 18 was like night and day. Even with the umpires dogs more than had our measure. GWS would have pumped us.

Our only hope was falling over the line against Sydney. Even the hawks/cats game wasn’t that good. If we were good we would have pumped them like Sydney did.

The players had given their all that year. Rough back and our players playing with more energy maybe. But that’s not how we finished that year
 
Nov 3, 2009
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Every team is trying to chase a flag. That’s the goal of football. The difference is how each team goes about it.

The context of our list at the time was it wasn’t good enough. We ran out of puff in 2016, too many old elite players hitting a wall. Some very good players under them needing to step up. But an absolute lack of young talent ready to step up to the level.

This lack of young talent is understandable given we traded picks nonstop to gather our 3-peat team. But it put us in a position a rebuild was necessary. Instead we took a high risk strategy in that it had minimal chance of succeeding and would almost certainly put us in a big hole in a few years time, whether we won a flag or not.

It’s not like we were well poised for more success. Even at the time it wasn’t a great looking decision it seemed to be the hubris of winning 3 in a row more than sound list decision making.

Finished 4th after H&A in 2018 and while it all went pear-shaped in September, it would still suggest they weren’t *that* far off the pace.
 
Sep 28, 2019
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Finished 4th after H&A in 2018 and while it all went pear-shaped in September, it would still suggest they weren’t *that* far off the pace.
I’d say we were comfortably the best team in it for the first 17 rounds. And if we had of been able to produce anything like 2015 form we’d have blown all teams away come finals.

EDIT- whoops I completely misread this, though it said 2016, my bad
 
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Stratton24

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I’d say we were comfortably the best team in it for the first 17 rounds. And if we had of been able to produce anything like 2015 form we’d have blown all teams away come finals.
Decimated by injuries to Sic, Big Boy, JOM, Mitchell, Burgoyne, Stratton killed us late in 2018
 
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