Event Club Q&A - 17th June

[Dr Spaceman]

I thought fitness was an issue but not anymore. I think it's purely effort now.

This has been recognised internally and we can expect improvement following the coach’s attendance at a Motivational Seminar

 

[Mat Mann]

Mowman, I had things I needed to do when you responded. I also wanted to take the time to provide a level response around expectation and outcome.

The event was a discussion about the season with the 3 major leaders of the football department. This invite would have gone out to 50k members. Yet only 500ish questions got asked. Not sure if anyone else picked up on this but already you have an engagement issue - that’s a concern.

For an event the club organised, it started 15 minutes late and Lethers looked like he would rather be talking to the girls in membership. They then ran out of question slides for the already vetted stuff. Amateur.

Now was i expecting hard hitting questions that would have made the club look bad? No. But there should have been more depth to the answers to actual give some form of an explanation.

I’ll provide examples. Let’s take the question Rath took on fitness levels. He said based on data and their eyes. The boys looked fit and the issue was effort.

Okay… there are a lot of fans who believe we don’t look like a club who has done the work in the summer. So why couldn’t they share some of the OVERALL KPIs that gives them the belief the boys are fit. It could be something like; last year we averaged X amount of Ks per player and Y amount of sprints per quarter or high intensity running and this year the levels are similar across the board etc. all GPS data they already have. Share what they know to give some confidence back to the members and supporters.

Summarising the goal kicking issue questions that got asked about Max and the group. The answer was that they were working on it internally to minimise noise and that they were doing the work on the track. What work are they doing? Because we aren’t seeing an improvement. So talk through that.

Examples of good answers they gave.
- give Leo Connolly some games
- Matthew Allison answer - pretty much that he is young, a way off and he needs VFL games to form together aswell as physical development.
- Frawley and McKernan Answer.
- Bytel answer
- Only Lethers answer re Hanners. However there should be alarms sounding when Ratten is desperate to get him on the park and is hoping he can in the next 18 months of his contract.


Answers that made no sense.
- development focus for the rest of the year but we still want to win games and McKernan and Frawley will still play.
- the answer from Lethers on list management focus post season. We are going for youth but we also want a mix.


Then there was the cop outs.
- Injuries injuries injuries.
- We look slow because we don’t have our dynamic players in Jones and Gresham. - Missing these guys doesn’t effect how quick we chase or how fast we get back to chop out the back 6.
- literally using effort as an excuse for everything. When our skills look good it’s because we brought the effort.
When we are getting pumped. It’s because of the effort.


If your someone who is into fluff and being told things are happening and just having to accept that. You probably would have enjoyed it.

But that seemed amateur, that gave no insight and I have less belief that we are on the right track now more then ever if all they can identify is effort.

nice breakdown, as I discussed with my wife over dinner last night, the club was never going to release sensitive info, As George did here, imagine how many journos were logged in as anon waiting for something to slam the club over.

Of course, it was vague and wishy-washy, they answered a little more than I thought they would though
- development focus, well we can't write off the season and solely play the kids, we have so much to fix in all areas of the game, but you can develop structures and cohesion, we can continue to work hard on fixing what's gone wrong and still have the focus of winning games. I don't see wanting to win and group/individual development at the expense of the other. plus I don't actually think you would find anyone at a footy club not wanting to try to win games, at least not in the coaching/player domain.
- post season, both are possible, we can still have a strong focus on drafting and try and find a few 19/20yo's through the rookie/spp mechanisms. we could easily have 8-9 players leave if we so desired.
- injuries are a legitimate excuse, but not for the types and frequency of losses we've suffered.
- re Jones and Gresh, yeah this was just a s**t answer. 2 players cant account for the lack of speed at which we move the ball.
-effort. we see it, but it waxes and wanes for no apparent reason. and there are a heap of reasons why, not looking for the best options to just plain butchering the ball and wasting the opportunity that effort created

And it’s all fair.

But for me, Finnis is a much bigger concern compared to Lethers.

7 years in the gig. No reduction in debt. Even with record members.
Yes back to Moorabbin but on-field, 1 finals campaign.

More interested in failed prime time games then building a club of substance.

well, that's where the buck stops isn't it. Its been brought up many times that the Footy focus has been secondary to the other side of the business. Myself and many others have questioned this. Still don't think enough has been done to bolster the coaching division or the talent/drafting area. He's done alot right, but time is counting against him.

 

[austinnn]

Because the football department went down the player empowerment path.

It's good for us if it means the players actually do become empowered and decisive capable of elite decision making on field, but it's a really hard road so it would have been good for the club to to detail some of the green shoots of that process to give us some hope.

I guess they partially did with demonstrating of Sinclair's developing leadership in that video. I like Sincs despite his lame showpony mullet and polite demeanor, and the last two years him cementing his position has been great. I'd like to see him & Byrnes in the leadership group.

 

[Munga]

Let’s take the question Rath took on fitness levels. He said based on data and their eyes. The boys looked fit and the issue was effort.
Okay… there are a lot of fans who believe we don’t look like a club who has done the work in the summer. So why couldn’t they share some of the OVERALL KPIs that gives them the belief the boys are fit. It could be something like; last year we averaged X amount of Ks per player and Y amount of sprints per quarter or high intensity running and this year the levels are similar across the board etc. all GPS data they already have. Share what they know to give some confidence back to the members and supporters.

Answers that made no sense.
- development focus for the rest of the year but we still want to win games and McKernan and Frawley will still play.

Then there was the cop outs.
- We look slow because we don’t have our dynamic players in Jones and Gresham. - Missing these guys doesn’t effect how quick we chase or how fast we get back to chop out the back 6.
- literally using effort as an excuse for everything. When our skills look good it’s because we brought the effort. When we are getting pumped. It’s because of the effort.

But that seemed amateur, that gave no insight and I have less belief that we are on the right track now more then ever if all they can identify is effort.

Many thanks for the summary, stavro#4 . I've quoted a few lines there.

So Rath said based on data and their eyes the boys looked fit... great point about KPIs, I'd love to see the metrics. Notice Rath didn't say that we came back FITTER, just that we looked fit... ffs. It was obvious from our pre-season matches onwards that we were blowing up on field and some looked a little tubby, and even half way through the season we can't run out matches. We can't continue with this "look fit" philosophy , we need METRICS with IMPROVEMENT in being FITTER than previously, conditioning. This daft pre-season is up there with some of the Crows camps. Maybe I'm making too much from the words "looked fit", but our fitness has been a major concern for many supporters this year and this response hasn't evoked any confidence.

Next point. Development focus with McKernan and Frawley playing is like saying you want to build a strong house with play-do. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Development focus and McKernan and Frawley playing are mutually exclusive. Not only would they be taking games away from the future of the club, but the kids just perform better than them anyway!! So stupid.

Next. We look slow because Jones and Gresham are missing.... uh... no. Jones and Gresham were both playing against Melbourne and Essendon when we got reamed.
And effort. It's hard to give effort when you're running out of steam. If I hear this "four quarter effort" excuse again I'm switching them off. Get them fitter than the opposition and watch the difference and skills improve.

Maybe with the cap cuts they don't want to bad mouth the fitness staff and can't afford moving them on. Or maybe they have their heads in the sand. But hey, at least they "look fit"... I look great playing the air guitar in the mirror, so I'm sure I'll be fine on stage with a Fender.

 

[Munga]

Ratten saying player availability has effected them dropping players and leaving them in the 2s to learn lessons etc.

That's BS, not earlier in the season... A few guys at Sandy were ready to go and have been some of our better players since Ratts has been forced to play them.

 

[Munga]

Ratten's answer to Battle playing out of position was infuriating, even after all this time he still thinks wing is where he would like to play him.

Oh Ratts... still can't work out the square peg round hole thingy. Are you really the coach to take us forward? So many easy fixes ignored, but he's still loveable. I wouldn't be surprised if he uses paper towels as toilet paper because they're wider... but they're rougher and non-flushable...

 

[Munga]

Look at the Telstra tracker for repeat sprints and total distance covered. For christ's sake, we run more km's than the opposition most weeks and that's ready and available for any fan to check.

Fitness is very unlikely to be an issue at this point in a season, maybe early on it can be but regardless all AFL teams are at a very high and very similar level of aerobic fitness.

That's interesting and I agree to a point. I still look at the Demons who have the best fitness guru in the business, he took them to hell and back and now they are flying over everyone else. And the Lions dynasty used to flog their players in pre-season camp style sessions a month before finals to get an edge, and then they too would fly over everyone else during September.

If we ARE fitter than the rest then we still shouldn't be blowing up before the opposition. In which case we are playing a greatly inefficient gamestyle which for years has been based only on "effort" and bombing "long to King", as many players and staff have been quoted/admitting How about playing smarter? Higher performance for less energy expended? Stop blaming the players and give them the best tools to enable them to perform at their highest!

 

[Munga]

Because the football department went down the player empowerment path.

Which works for smart players, some rare players don't need coaching. Most do need coaching, especially footballers! Player empowerment outside of matchday is great. Empowering 22 introverted footballers to work it out for themselves during a match sounds neglegent hahaha, but probably explains a bit.

 

[jwikked]

Because the football department went down the player empowerment path.

The opposite of Richo's style, which we all hated. Wanted players to have a bit more freedom, but clearly there needs to be a line drawn.

 

[Saintbloke]

A question that needs answering is how, regardless of injuries to a few players, why our overall team stats have gone from very good in last season, to being just about as bad as possible this season, with no in-between... rather than dropping off, it has been a collapse Pretty obvious looking at many games this season that players, with a couple of exceptions are not hitting the contest as hard this season, nor doing second-effort stuff. Seems to be a lot of talk not followed up with action this year.

 

[gringo2011]

Many thanks for the summary, stavro#4 . I've quoted a few lines there.

So Rath said based on data and their eyes the boys looked fit... great point about KPIs, I'd love to see the metrics. Notice Rath didn't say that we came back FITTER, just that we looked fit... ffs. It was obvious from our pre-season matches onwards that we were blowing up on field and some looked a little tubby, and even half way through the season we can't run out matches. We can't continue with this "look fit" philosophy , we need METRICS with IMPROVEMENT in being FITTER than previously, conditioning. This daft pre-season is up there with some of the Crows camps. Maybe I'm making too much from the words "looked fit", but our fitness has been a major concern for many supporters this year and this response hasn't evoked any confidence.

Next point. Development focus with McKernan and Frawley playing is like saying you want to build a strong house with play-do. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Development focus and McKernan and Frawley playing are mutually exclusive. Not only would they be taking games away from the future of the club, but the kids just perform better than them anyway!! So stupid.

Next. We look slow because Jones and Gresham are missing.... uh... no. Jones and Gresham were both playing against Melbourne and Essendon when we got reamed.
And effort. It's hard to give effort when you're running out of steam. If I hear this "four quarter effort" excuse again I'm switching them off. Get them fitter than the opposition and watch the difference and skills improve.

Maybe with the cap cuts they don't want to bad mouth the fitness staff and can't afford moving them on. Or maybe they have their heads in the sand. But hey, at least they "look fit"... I look great playing the air guitar in the mirror, so I'm sure I'll be fine on stage with a Fender.

They mentioned Ben Robbins a lot. I still see our mental state as a real worry. We looked like we rolled over against Adelaide. As soon as they got a run on the Saints looked like they knew the inevitable was coming rather than digging deeper. They seem mentally resigned to failure at the moment. I started to think DMac had become a gun player after his few good games, but it was more that he stood out above nearly every other player for his application and effort. He set the tempo for the whole side against WCE and the others seemed to eventually get on board with him.

There is something wrong with both our motivation and our resilience. If your psyches can't get that going the they should surely be looked at too. This side definitely have some unfortunate characteristics, they seem like they fold easily, they pick and choose when to bring effort, they look like some games are so un-motivating they don't show up at all etc. Nearly all psych stuff.

 

[stavro#4]

nice breakdown, as I discussed with my wife over dinner last night, the club was never going to release sensitive info, As George did here, imagine how many journos were logged in as anon waiting for something to slam the club over.

Of course, it was vague and wishy-washy, they answered a little more than I thought they would though
- development focus, well we can't write off the season and solely play the kids, we have so much to fix in all areas of the game, but you can develop structures and cohesion, we can continue to work hard on fixing what's gone wrong and still have the focus of winning games. I don't see wanting to win and group/individual development at the expense of the other. plus I don't actually think you would find anyone at a footy club not wanting to try to win games, at least not in the coaching/player domain.
- post season, both are possible, we can still have a strong focus on drafting and try and find a few 19/20yo's through the rookie/spp mechanisms. we could easily have 8-9 players leave if we so desired.
- injuries are a legitimate excuse, but not for the types and frequency of losses we've suffered.
- re Jones and Gresh, yeah this was just a sh*t answer. 2 players cant account for the lack of speed at which we move the ball.
-effort. we see it, but it waxes and wanes for no apparent reason. and there are a heap of reasons why, not looking for the best options to just plain butchering the ball and wasting the opportunity that effort created



well, that's where the buck stops isn't it. Its been brought up many times that the Footy focus has been secondary to the other side of the business. Myself and many others have questioned this. Still don't think enough has been done to bolster the coaching division or the talent/drafting area. He's done alot right, but time is counting against him.

Thing is, you don’t need to release sensitive information.

You just need to give insight and direction. We are a flaming dumpster fire right now. So be clear with objectives for the rest of the year. On the stream Lethers said focus was on development then Ratten jumps in and says and to win games. It’s almost like they aren’t clear amongst themselves. A club that isn’t feeling the pinch answers with,
“we want to keep getting games into our list from a development point of view but we will still be pushing the boys to lift their standards and outputs until it meets the expectations we are trying to set”

It doesn’t need to be about winning games. We could not win a game until Carlton. Can you imagine the heat? It’s like they can’t help themselves with getting stuck in stupid corners they then need to explain.

Your point about drafting. Whether they are 18,19 or 20 they are kids. But they can’t be clear with their objectives 5 months before the draft to us. Taking one of everything with limited draft capital is why we lack teenagers and we have alot of the Kent’s and lonies. It also makes it pretty hard to start identifying who the real talent is at the top end and the hidden gems if we are still looking at everything else and any other age group in between. Again just be clear in what you want to achieve and outline that to us.

Lastly, journos weren’t sat their waiting for a scoop. They sat their hoping for an epic meltdown. You don’t think Cherny knew Hanners broke down before it came out in the media? The news was on big footy before it came out anywhere else. You don’t think that article that came out last night about the pre planned move of Lethers into finnis role getting put on hold was already old info to journalists?

The obligation of these football clubs is to be clear, accountable and honest with its members. We are no different to Collingwood. It’s just that when their fans rise the club shits itself and acts. Ours has a history of engaging when the tin cans need rattling. Lack of engagement until then. Lack of transparency and most definitely a lack of accountability. The fact we are like seals over wishy washy engagement shows what we have become accustomed too.


The best thing that will ever happen, if we want change. Is for someone with no ties being appointed by the AFL in our key roles and in 5 years we would act like a professional multi million dollar club. We are a dumpster fire and it’s almost hilarious watching the coach explain just how badly he wants Hanners on the park after 13 games in 2 1/2 seasons.

We are a poor draft and trade period away from blowing it all up and hitting the rebuild button. The inside of the club is laughable at the minute. This isn’t a reaction to the QnA. This is me talking to people at Moorabbin.

 

[stavro#4]

The opposite of Richo's style, which we all hated. Wanted players to have a bit more freedom, but clearly there needs to be a line drawn.

Is it hard to set an expectation and empower the players to meet it?

I’ll give you an example. Under Lyon they had a minimum expectation for skin folds. If they failed to meet that expectation they ran. Unavailable for training until then and isolated from the group.
The amount of “extras” the boys would do to ensure they met these expectations was next level. 7am you would see Gwilt running up and down Nepean highway for example. Kosi used to do running sessions after training etc.

One group nearly went back to back. One is aiming for top 4 but closer to the bottom 4.

 

[stavro#4]

They mentioned Ben Robbins a lot. I still see our mental state as a real worry. We looked like we rolled over against Adelaide. As soon as they got a run on the Saints looked like they knew the inevitable was coming rather than digging deeper. They seem mentally resigned to failure at the moment. I started to think DMac had become a gun player after his few good games, but it was more that he stood out above nearly every other player for his application and effort. He set the tempo for the whole side against WCE and the others seemed to eventually get on board with him.

There is something wrong with both our motivation and our resilience. If your psyches can't get that going the they should surely be looked at too. This side definitely have some unfortunate characteristics, they seem like they fold easily, they pick and choose when to bring effort, they look like some games are so un-motivating they don't show up at all etc. Nearly all psych stuff.

Spoke a lot about Ben. Pity he wasn’t the Psych the players spoke ALOT about.

 

[gringo2011]

Thing is, you don’t need to release sensitive information.

You just need to give insight and direction. We are a flaming dumpster fire right now. So be clear with objectives for the rest of the year. On the stream Lethers said focus was on development then Ratten jumps in and says and to win games. It’s almost like they aren’t clear amongst themselves. A club that isn’t feeling the pinch answers with,
“we want to keep getting games into our list from a development point of view but we will still be pushing the boys to lift their standards and outputs until it meets the expectations we are trying to set”

It doesn’t need to be about winning games. We could not win a game until Carlton. Can you imagine the heat? It’s like they can’t help themselves with getting stuck in stupid corners they then need to explain.

Your point about drafting. Whether they are 18,19 or 20 they are kids. But they can’t be clear with their objectives 5 months before the draft to us. Taking one of everything with limited draft capital is why we lack teenagers and we have alot of the Kent’s and lonies. It also makes it pretty hard to start identifying who the real talent is at the top end and the hidden gems if we are still looking at everything else and any other age group in between. Again just be clear in what you want to achieve and outline that to us.

Lastly, journos weren’t sat their waiting for a scoop. They sat their hoping for an epic meltdown. You don’t think Cherny knew Hanners broke down before it came out in the media? The news was on big footy before it came out anywhere else. You don’t think that article that came out last night about the pre planned move of Lethers into finnis role getting put on hold was already old info to journalists?

The obligation of these football clubs is to be clear, accountable and honest with its members. We are no different to Collingwood. It’s just that when their fans rise the club shits itself and acts. Ours has a history of engaging when the tin cans need rattling. Lack of engagement until then. Lack of transparency and most definitely a lack of accountability. The fact we are like seals over wishy washy engagement shows what we have become accustomed too.


The best thing that will ever happen, if we want change. Is for someone with no ties being appointed by the AFL in our key roles and in 5 years we would act like a professional multi million dollar club. We are a dumpster fire and it’s almost hilarious watching the coach explain just how badly he wants Hanners on the park after 13 games in 2 1/2 seasons.

We are a poor draft and trade period away from blowing it all up and hitting the rebuild button. The inside of the club is laughable at the minute. This isn’t a reaction to the QnA. This is me talking to people at Moorabbin.

In my letter the one thing I said to Bassat was get the best people available into drafting and list management and have a solid plan that is stuck too rigidly with very few exceptions and execute it properly. Then make sure everyone in the club is working in one direction. It is the most simple and basic of functions as a club. It's not tricky and doesn't take any special talent even. You can see Melbourne got to that point and took a few years but it worked. You can see Gold Coast has naturally come to that point and is finally all going in the right direction even though performance isn't there yet. They will jump us at some point because they aren't taking dumb shortcuts. Carlton and St Kilda are clubs that don't get the basic right and are hoping for miracles to do the work for them.

 

[pebblesofsand]

Didn't watch it but here's my take on our situation a brief read through the comments.

We need leadership, but please please please don't go out and

A recruit older players with said value

B empower existing players to enhance their leadership development

C desperately want one of the few genuine leaders at the club to get on the park.

Our staff lie about our fitness levels.

Losing our outside runners shouldn't affect our speed.

Injuries have no impact.

 

[lewdogs]

A few other takeaways after watching the whole thing.

There will definitely be more changes in the coaching panel. It's no co-incidence that they had Ratten, Rath and Lethlean up there, I think they're still trying to look at how they turn the culture into a winning culture and guys like Hamill and Skrobolak are going to be in trouble. I think they're trying to work out how you get across that you have to go further and harder than other sides to be better.

I thought Rath had good insights, he seems to be very much data driven. His point about the pressure that missed goals puts on others was interesting, saying that you can have collective pressure build up, so when one player misses it puts pressure on the next guy. Ratten made a good point that last year we were often able to get goals against the flow and put scoreboard pressure on our opposition, which was an excellent point. The opposite is true this year.

I think they are clearly focused on being better and how we get to be the best. If the issues are mainly around our effort, our goalkicking (aka our mental fragility) and our injuries then that is actually a good thing, because it means we can focus on a few things for the rest of the year and next year in order to improve. Having said that it's obviously not easy and these things aren't something you can just flick on with a switch.

Rath made the point that good teams often have a down year, and we need to make sure we learn from this and make sure it helps us to get where we need to go. Again I think that's a good point. I felt like they're taking this slump seriously and not just papering over it.

Of course at the end of the day it's all words but I think it was a great move to have the session and put their hands up and show that we are taking it seriously.

 

[Joffaboy]

So settled down to read this thread from the start to hopefully get some analysis and decent reaction.

How disappointed could I get, I bailed after 4 and a half pages, all I read for the first three pages was people melting like a gameday thread then whinging they didn't answer anything.

WTF do you people expect from these things? That three middle ages fat blokes on a stage will suddenly make us play better by answering a few questions.

I say after R3 all this club does it talk, they have no action, hard talks, deep discussion, resolutions to blah blah blah. Now you expect answers to this useless season?

Even the answers they gave was not excepted. Injuries and effort. Yes this is it in a nutshell, but people want to basically call Rath a liar when he says their data suggests they are fit.

All the horrible losses were effort pure and simple. Losses like against Geelong who never get accused of not being fit we outplayed then the whole night, games like v WCE where we came back to win from 5 goals down, we suddenly got fit?

it is all above the head and the effort v Essendon, Port, Richmond, Bulldogs had zero to do with fitness, it is effort pure and simple. If we had lost every game like we did v Geelong, i would be frustrated but not disgusted.

These Q&A's are useless, they achieve nothing, except for one thing, Josh Battle is being forced to look around for a different club, how in hell can Ratten say he is still best on the wing FMD, he is struggling big time there.

Will just be another good kid we let go. What a rabble of a club.

 

[lewdogs]

So settled down to read this thread from the start to hopefully get some analysis and decent reaction.

How disappointed could I get, I bailed after 4 and a half pages, all I read for the first three pages was people melting like a gameday thread then whinging they didn't answer anything.

WTF do you people expect from these things? That three middle ages fat blokes on a stage will suddenly make us play better by answering a few questions.

I say after R3 all this club does it talk, they have no action, hard talks, deep discussion, resolutions to blah blah blah. Now you expect answers to this useless season?

Even the answers they gave was not excepted. Injuries and effort. Yes this is it in a nutshell, but people want to basically call Rath a liar when he says their data suggests they are fit.

All the horrible losses were effort pure and simple. Losses like against Geelong who never get accused of not being fit we outplayed then the whole night, games like v WCE where we came back to win from 5 goals down, we suddenly got fit?

it is all above the head and the effort v Essendon, Port, Richmond, Bulldogs had zero to do with fitness, it is effort pure and simple. If we had lost every game like we did v Geelong, i would be frustrated but not disgusted.

These Q&A's are useless, they achieve nothing, except for one thing, Josh Battle is being forced to look around for a different club, how in hell can Ratten say he is still best on the wing FMD, he is struggling big time there.

Will just be another good kid we let go. What a rabble of a club.

What Josh Battle needs is a run in the reserves. He is terribly out of form and it doesn't matter where he plays he can barely get near it at the moment.

Let's be honest on him for a second, he has been at the club five years and he has had one good season. Forget his best position, he actually still has to establish himself as an AFL level player. He's really only in the team right now because of injuries.

For some reason everyone has latched onto him as some example of how bad the coaching is, but maybe it shows that we have players that don't seem to understand what it takes to be an AFL level player. At the end of the day it is up to him to impact games. He must have stuffed up about 4 times in that Adelaide game, are we really going to say "oh yeah it's because he's not playing in the right position". It doesn't matter what position you're in, you need to be at least halving one-on-one contests and providing pressure which he just isn't doing.

 

[gringo2011]

So settled down to read this thread from the start to hopefully get some analysis and decent reaction.

How disappointed could I get, I bailed after 4 and a half pages, all I read for the first three pages was people melting like a gameday thread then whinging they didn't answer anything.

WTF do you people expect from these things? That three middle ages fat blokes on a stage will suddenly make us play better by answering a few questions.

I say after R3 all this club does it talk, they have no action, hard talks, deep discussion, resolutions to blah blah blah. Now you expect answers to this useless season?

Even the answers they gave was not excepted. Injuries and effort. Yes this is it in a nutshell, but people want to basically call Rath a liar when he says their data suggests they are fit.

All the horrible losses were effort pure and simple. Losses like against Geelong who never get accused of not being fit we outplayed then the whole night, games like v WCE where we came back to win from 5 goals down, we suddenly got fit?

it is all above the head and the effort v Essendon, Port, Richmond, Bulldogs had zero to do with fitness, it is effort pure and simple. If we had lost every game like we did v Geelong, i would be frustrated but not disgusted.

These Q&A's are useless, they achieve nothing, except for one thing, Josh Battle is being forced to look around for a different club, how in hell can Ratten say he is still best on the wing FMD, he is struggling big time there.

Will just be another good kid we let go. What a rabble of a club.

I thought it did more harm than good. I didn't expect much but surely that's 20 minutes to cool the fans tempers and lay out their plan for the future by cherry picking questions that worked with their agenda. I just saw the footy department blaming the players for being lazy and unmotivated. They justified all their own work and heaped it all back on the playing group.

They couldn't even be consistent with what they said. They are going to play the kids and sort through the list but are still playing to get to finals.
Justified what a great leader Hanners is rather than take responsibility for some missteps, Said we will target the draft but not just that, well still bring in old guys, we're on track so just need to keep doing the hard work and everything will turn around but it's just the players letting us all down with their attitude but our sports psych is doing great work.

Rather than hose down my concerns it's created new ones and justified some of my negative attitudes towards them.

 

[Moorabbin Ghost]

A few balancing on the edge of the abyss at that club right now.
The coming weeks and months will tell me everything about our president. Does he have the balls to move on those that he now knows are no longer up to it or is he a typical St Kilda person and let’s past failures dictate current decisions? For too long we have kept the status quo because of fear to be seen as failing again.

 

[lewdogs]

I thought it did more harm than good. I didn't expect much but surely that's 20 minutes to cool the fans tempers and lay out their plan for the future by cherry picking questions that worked with their agenda. I just saw the footy department blaming the players for being lazy and unmotivated. They justified all their own work and heaped it all back on the playing group.

They couldn't even be consistent with what they said. They are going to play the kids and sort through the list but are still playing to get to finals.
Justified what a great leader Hanners is rather than take responsibility for some missteps, Said we will target the draft but not just that, well still bring in old guys, we're on track so just need to keep doing the hard work and everything will turn around but it's just the players letting us all down with their attitude but our sports psych is doing great work.

Rather than hose down my concerns it's created new ones and justified some of my negative attitudes towards them.

I just don't get what you wanted them to say. "Yeah we're not aiming for finals now, actually hoping to lose every game and get a top 3 pick." That would be absolutely ridiculous.

 

[gringo2011]

A few balancing on the edge of the abyss at that club right now.
The coming weeks and months will tell me everything about our president. Does he have the balls to move on those that he now knows are no longer up to it or is he a typical St Kilda person and let’s past failures dictate current decisions? For too long we have kept the status quo because of fear to be seen as failing again.

I actually reckon you've hit the nail on the head. We've made the safe choices so as to be seen as stable rather than make hard decisions about where we are heading. It's created a generally beige vibe around the whole place. We are wholesome and nice in every way. We don't have high standards and are happy to middle along so that we don't get our heads cut off.

 

[sammm]

Think you are spot on, but the one thing is important they read the questions from support base.

They would have pretty good idea in number of areas , they are not going to throw staff under bus
on a Q & A forum …but change will happen , hearing there could be a lot but let’s see

do you now if they are doing an internal review of everything Stewart66 ?

 

[gringo2011]

I just don't get what you wanted them to say. "Yeah we're not aiming for finals now, actually hoping to lose every game and get a top 3 pick." That would be absolutely ridiculous.

Just say something like "we have had this season ruined by injury and a whole lot of factors out of our control, we see the rest of this season as an opportunity that clubs don't often get. We will use the remaining games to try to develop a few of our younger players and sort the list out, realistically we'll get access to a great player in the draft, This might be the step back that allows us to take a huge leap forward in the future blah blah".

Just all three on the same page, same message. Sound solid and in control, take some responsibility for what they could do better. They blamed everything back on the players from leadership to effort to game plan. If I was the players I'd be in the shits.