Please read the article before attacking my comments Dan Richardson was saying in 2009 they believed it would take 8 years to rebuild through the draft to make a finals not win a GF then said best case was 6.
I think we have showed that you can rebuild successfully in a shorter time and Melbourne pretty much restarted its rebuild a couple years ago it just shows a really poor mentality to aim to make finals not to win a GF.
No sympathy the amount of tiger supporters i have known who have gone on about how the Saints will never win one and how good the tigers will be next year every year.
I have read the article, but I'm interested in your assertion that we've taken a lot less than 6 years, talking as if we're the finished article, when we all know that's not the case.
Im not going to go on one of those P66 contrarian style arguments with you, I'm pretty sure we agree, it just read like you feel that we've completed our rebuild in your post and it raised my eyebrow.
Nothing wrong with feeling bullish, but I'd hate anyone to delude themselves into thinking we're just a gun midfielder away from dominating the comp.
Here's what we know:
Most of our players haven't been tested in finals conditions, neither has our head coach by the way.
A lot of our "players for the future" still have question marks over their futures with us, not necessarily that they aren't good, but it's just too early to tell. Everyone will have different opinions but for me the only really sure bets so far are Hickey, Steven, Ross, Billings, Newnes, Armo and Bruce. (Obviously, there are a lot more that I'm very confident about but will need to see performing consistently - or just need to see more of - before I'm satisfied that we've made it.)
Our game plan hasn't succeeded at the highest level yet. It hasn't been tried in one final yet. We've no idea if our style is even possible to sustain over a full season plus finals. Last year we seemed to run out of steam well before the end of H&A. Our young guys will build their tanks, but will that be enough?
Of course I'm just dealing with internal factors to do with our rebuild here, not external factors and luck (is: rule/style changes, injuries, other clubs dominance, etc)
I'm pretty sure we're well on our way, but I think we're too far off it to start crowing about how quickly we've rebuilt.