First Premier since '09 to miss finals and looked miles off it all season.
Reports of major disharmony behind the scenes, players coaches all the way up to the board.
A favourite son stepping away and a few Premiership participants to be traded no doubt.
Got to wonder what the future holds for the Dogs.
Are they returning from whence they came after the briefest moment in the sun? How hard will they fall? There's potential for a major and sustained crash here I feel, "Footscray has gone dark" style.
I wonder will the AFL need to step in and assist as they have with this club in the past and are currently with the GCS?
Absolutely clueless. We have one of the youngest cores(our best players) in the competition, yet you're asking how hard we will 'fall'?
Our top 10 rated players this year by Champ Data are:
1
Marcus Bontempelli (21 yrs old)
2
Jackson Macrae (23 yrs old)
3
Luke Dahlhaus (24 yrs old)
4
Mitchell Wallis (24 yrs old)
5
Toby McLean (21 yrs old)
6
Jason Johannisen (24 yrs old)
7
Lachlan Hunter (22 yrs old)
8
Shane Biggs (25 yrs old)
9
Caleb Daniel (21 yrs old)
10
Marcus Adams (24 yrs old)
Our 3 best players in our Premiership win last year were Johannisen (23 at the time), Tom Boyd (21 at the time) and Bontempelli (20 at the time).
We've also got a 23yr old All-Australian Jake Stringer who is currently injured (As well as off field issues having just divorced after having 2 kids at such a young age).
We were simply a very young team that won a flag way ahead of schedule, then got ahead of themselves and celebrated too hard in the off season (as seen on almost all their instagrams).
To think that a team with this talented young core will "fall" and "crash" to the point where the "AFL will need to step in and assist" is probably the dumbest thing I've ever read of Bigfooty.
Even if Bevo is the worst coach in the AFL (which he isn't), natural improvement from age/experience of our young core would be enough to keep us competitive in the future.