MontyMensch
Senior List
I'm ready for everyone who will shoot me down, but in a thread like this the 2 greatest negatives about the cultural history of the GFC, Geelong Fans and City of Geelong have to be mentioned before Geelong coaches can be judged.
They both have to do with the word "Glorification".
1. Geelong people have a massive tendency to treat their players like champions in the street despite what the individual or the side’s performance on the field has been like at the time. This unearned Glorification has on many occasions occurred to the point that players can often tend to rest on their laurels from past efforts and not try as hard as they could in games.
2. This opinion of “That the players at The Cattery can do no long” has then often been the backbone to the policy of who is been selected as coach of the GFC. Geelong has gone through coach after coach of skilled footballers in ex-Cats stars whose skills are purely on field when it comes to football. It was like this until Ex-Tiger Tommy Hafey was appointed coach for years. The club literally thought they would eventually find another Reg Hickey on each appointment. After Tom Hafey they went back to this “Inside-Finding-Reg-Hickey-Thinking-Again”.
Therefore as a consequence people tend to have made a number of presumptions, such as:
1. When finally an outside head in Blight turned a team making up the numbers in the comp into a finals winner, they have pumped his tyres into being the Perfect Coach. In reality he was not, he was certainty a very good coach but a whole group of Ex-Cats as coaches throughout the 70’s and 80’s had been masking that GFC always had reasonable recruiting and players in this time. Tommy Hafey also showed this in the club’s forward movement in his short tenure at the club. Not only this Devine had recruited an unbelievable line up before Blight had come, but was such a buffoon he did a even more unbelievable job of hiding such a fact.
2. I am not an Ayres fan. I will lay it out that I am Port Melbourne fan as well as a Cat (I never asked for the AFL Reserves to end). I think the reality is however that Ayres is much better suited to the suburban recruitment and raw pure coaching of VFA than the sports science complicated list management in the AFL. He’s the type that could have coached a VFL flag in the 70’s, he has done incredibly well in motivating the unaligned Port side into playing some football many considered well beyond their station.
However I agree his managing side of thing were not that great at Geelong, Jason Mooney? Brett Spinks? Not my favourite Full Forwards of all time.
I have to agree with what someone said previous through, and that was that a most of these blokes the champions they were- still may have needed to go.
The time was 1996-7 and if you look at the season after season these guys had already played and most professional footballers now days don’t get anywhere near that. Professional football had just arrived and the Geelong side of 1997 without these veterans showed that football was/had changed dramatically when you compare the significant style and personal difference in this side (Which easily could have won a flag) to the 1995 GF side. At this time a lot club’s were edging their late 80’s stars into retirement. At cats fans unfortunately these stars were by far the biggest some of (one was) the biggest stars we had seen.
Therefore considering the players Devine had in 1988, I would say he would have to be the worst. It is true he recruited well, but Geelong never recruited that badly in pre-draft days, Geelong always had some very good players in these periods, it was more club culture and structure that let them down.
If Devine had had to of gone through the national draft to recruit, the fact that he could hid the talents of that 1988 side so well in his inept coaching I think it would have been him hiding the talents of the 18 Stephen Hooper like individuals he had selected who were on the field and things would have been a lot worse. Certainly a lot worse than Ayres 1997 side that could won a flag and 1995 that will undoubtedly the 2nd best side out of 16.
They both have to do with the word "Glorification".
1. Geelong people have a massive tendency to treat their players like champions in the street despite what the individual or the side’s performance on the field has been like at the time. This unearned Glorification has on many occasions occurred to the point that players can often tend to rest on their laurels from past efforts and not try as hard as they could in games.
2. This opinion of “That the players at The Cattery can do no long” has then often been the backbone to the policy of who is been selected as coach of the GFC. Geelong has gone through coach after coach of skilled footballers in ex-Cats stars whose skills are purely on field when it comes to football. It was like this until Ex-Tiger Tommy Hafey was appointed coach for years. The club literally thought they would eventually find another Reg Hickey on each appointment. After Tom Hafey they went back to this “Inside-Finding-Reg-Hickey-Thinking-Again”.
Therefore as a consequence people tend to have made a number of presumptions, such as:
1. When finally an outside head in Blight turned a team making up the numbers in the comp into a finals winner, they have pumped his tyres into being the Perfect Coach. In reality he was not, he was certainty a very good coach but a whole group of Ex-Cats as coaches throughout the 70’s and 80’s had been masking that GFC always had reasonable recruiting and players in this time. Tommy Hafey also showed this in the club’s forward movement in his short tenure at the club. Not only this Devine had recruited an unbelievable line up before Blight had come, but was such a buffoon he did a even more unbelievable job of hiding such a fact.
2. I am not an Ayres fan. I will lay it out that I am Port Melbourne fan as well as a Cat (I never asked for the AFL Reserves to end). I think the reality is however that Ayres is much better suited to the suburban recruitment and raw pure coaching of VFA than the sports science complicated list management in the AFL. He’s the type that could have coached a VFL flag in the 70’s, he has done incredibly well in motivating the unaligned Port side into playing some football many considered well beyond their station.
However I agree his managing side of thing were not that great at Geelong, Jason Mooney? Brett Spinks? Not my favourite Full Forwards of all time.
I have to agree with what someone said previous through, and that was that a most of these blokes the champions they were- still may have needed to go.
The time was 1996-7 and if you look at the season after season these guys had already played and most professional footballers now days don’t get anywhere near that. Professional football had just arrived and the Geelong side of 1997 without these veterans showed that football was/had changed dramatically when you compare the significant style and personal difference in this side (Which easily could have won a flag) to the 1995 GF side. At this time a lot club’s were edging their late 80’s stars into retirement. At cats fans unfortunately these stars were by far the biggest some of (one was) the biggest stars we had seen.
Therefore considering the players Devine had in 1988, I would say he would have to be the worst. It is true he recruited well, but Geelong never recruited that badly in pre-draft days, Geelong always had some very good players in these periods, it was more club culture and structure that let them down.
If Devine had had to of gone through the national draft to recruit, the fact that he could hid the talents of that 1988 side so well in his inept coaching I think it would have been him hiding the talents of the 18 Stephen Hooper like individuals he had selected who were on the field and things would have been a lot worse. Certainly a lot worse than Ayres 1997 side that could won a flag and 1995 that will undoubtedly the 2nd best side out of 16.
