Opinion How did you rate Hurn's first year as captain?

[WCEswift]

He is a Glass type captain... Says what needs to be said to the inside group **** the outsiders

 

[LongoDongo]

Darren Glass is a gun....multiple AA....AAcaptain...multiple club champion awards....and critically never faltered ..always delivered.
How can anyone say Hurn is like Glass. Get ****** real. That is Horse****. Bunghole Hurn is a spud compared to Glass. Hurn is a good AFL player, but nothing more. Glass was a star.

 

[LongoDongo]

Glass always put his head over the ball. Hurn doesnt.

 

[boondy]

Glass always put his head over the ball. Hurn doesnt.

Bit harsh . For a 1st year he was good I think Glass 1st year we spooned . This thread is about his 1st year .Glass was better but Hurn still has time and considering the small defense he may well be better than we realise. Glass leaving Waters Leaving . Brown and Emac gawn for the year . He must have been doing something right to get where we did

 

[LongoDongo]

Bit harsh . For a 1st year he was good I think Glass 1st year we spooned . This thread is about his 1st year .Glass was better but Hurn still has time and considering the small defense he may well be better than we realise. Glass leaving Waters Leaving . Brown and Emac gawn for the year . He must have been doing something right to get where we did

...yeah...fair call. But Hurn needs to lift, more as a player maybe than as a captain. His post GF loss speach was shit.

 

[eagles rule]

His speech/actions was disgraceful and belonged in a country league .

 

[The Don't Argue]

"Meh" sums up his captaincy for me.

 

[flamingEMBERS]

I think he did pretty well. Once the two key back went down I believe he put it on himself to sacrifice his game a little more for the betterment of the team. Even though Shep played on talls, him and Wellingham wouldn't have had a season nearly as good if Hurn didn't sacrifice his game. When it was his time to go, he would and he would win a lot of one on ones. His kicking and rebounding was down but we had Shep and Wellingham doing that. Other than his one moment to really kick a captains goal in the GF i think he stood up when needed to most times.

 

[Dark Sharks]

It wasn't just the GF, his year on a whole was unspectacular.

But like everyone has said already, he apparently played a 'sacrificial role' and it's too early to judge. But yeah, didn't rate his season.

Hopefully he's freed up a bit more in 2016 and can stamp himself more on games.

 

[LongoDongo]

.....agghhh....we all know it....Hurn was a soft spud in 2015

 

[LongoDongo]

..but hopefully we can get more out of him in 16. Captains should be able to lift a team ....Hurn cant do that yet

 

[SpaceClef]

His speech/actions was disgraceful and belonged in a country league .

What happened exactly? I'm too afraid to watch a replay for my own emotional wellbeing. How did his defeat speech compare to others'?

 

[The Don't Argue]

What happened exactly? I'm too afraid to watch a replay for my own emotional wellbeing. How did his defeat speech compare to others'?

It wasn't in the same league as Cousins 2005, put it that way.

It's a massive shame that Beau Waters' body gave up on him as the gig was his if he were able to get on the field.

 

[WCErevival]

Honestly does anyone even care what was said after a game like that?

 

[flamingEMBERS]

Honestly does anyone even care what was said after a game like that?

Yeh, it was shithouse still.

 

[ep2018]

It wasn't in the same league as Cousins 2005, put it that way.

It's a massive shame that Beau Waters' body gave up on him as the gig was his if he were able to get on the field.

I knew deep down we would come close to winning it in 2006 after Cousins' post GF speech.

After hearing Hurn I dont get the same feeling for the coming year.

I know it's just a speech but still, that's how both rubbed off on me.

 

[Carbine Chaos]

Yeah, I bet if we get knocked out next year we'll look back on Hurn's speech from this year and know that was where we lost it...

 

[Dark Sharks]

What did he even say? I dived for the remote and turned that shit off literally as soon as the siren sounded.

Never to be seen by my eyes. The game was bad enough, i don't need to watch Hawthorn campaigners celebrate.

 

[iLikeIt]

So needed to procrastinate so had a quick look back at Hurn's performance over the past year both as a player and a captain. It's a long analysis sorry...

Given his fairly horrible speech after the GF loss I was under the assumption he just wasn't good in front of the media. But had a look back at a few press conferences and he seems relatively competent to me (like http://www.westcoasteagles.com.au/news/2015-10-02/gf-media-hurn). I don't think he is going to have a career in the media but the way he talks, and with his football brain, I can definitely imagine him as a future coach or similar. It is obvious he (and the rest of the players) were absolutely devastated at the way they performed on GF day (we were! imagine what it was like for them) - I expect if he had his time over that would have played out much differently.

As a captain... sure his public persona isn't a stereotypical one but on the field he seemed solid throughout the year to me (excepting the GF). In fact I would suggest that if we finished say 3rd or 4th on the ladder and never made the GF, we'd all be singing Hurn's and the whole team's praises. "Wow we went from 9th to 3rd with some key injuries, that's amazing! Bring on next year and we'll go even further". And that was about the same attitude just prior to the GF. But the GF comes and our team does what Hawthorn did 3 weeks earlier and crumbles. So the frustrated fan needs someone to blame, and the captain understandably wears it. But the reality is our personnel didn't suddenly get better between 2014 and 2015 (in many ways it got worse through injury), so why did we perform so much better? Because quite simply our team worked seamlessly as a team on field with a great defensive pressure strategy. And in any team sport that is always led by one person on the team - almost always the captain. The coach might come up with the strategy, but the captain is responsible for executing it.

As a player... he was statistically down a bit on previous years but he was playing a very different role. He was still our best rebounding defender. And you may have noticed he almost exclusively kicked out from the goal square this year and there were very few occasions that I could find where that didn't relieve pressure due to his long and accurate kicking. I think our fans underestimate how much value that alone brings to our team.

External perception... We all know midfielders get all the credit (unless they are Priddas), as do forwards that kick lots of goals (eg Kennedy), and occasionally some key defenders (eg Glass) that stop a key forward from kicking their usual bundle. General defenders must surely have the hardest job in the game to prove themselves to supporters? I mean how many current defenders do fans go crazy about? You might hear about Rance, Taylor, Hurley or even McGovern but are there any small/medium defenders that get put on a pedestal? It's far more likely the only time their names show up is when they give away a free kick in front of goal, or get beaten in a one-on-one by a clever forward.

I personally don't think there are currently any better options than Hurn as our captain. He strikes me as the sort of person that continuously thinks about how the whole team works together and getting the most out of our entire playing group. I think our performance next year rests a lot on his shoulders, as if our team doesn't execute the anticipated adaptions to the strategy that worked so well for us in 2015 we could easily slide back down the ladder imo. I think there are some amazing prospective leaders coming through but for the foreseeable future I think Hurn is clearly the man for the job and our supporter base should get behind him. So my ratings for Hurn in 2015...

Captain 4.5/5 - executing a team strategy that took us to an unexpected GF deserves nothing less (irrespective of the bad performances on that ONE day - none of the other prospective captains stepped up either!)
Player 3/5 - he'll be a big winner from EMac being back in the side and I expect will have a cracker in 2016

 

[Here2tellyouwhy]

Hurn stood up early when the game was there to be won against the Hawks in the first final, was one of our best.
Unfortunately he and everyone around him were average on GF day but he will learn from it, as will the whole group.

 

[kane249]

What were people expecting of him exactly once EMac and Brown went down? He was always going to sacrifice his game for the betterment of the team and he had to play taller.

If you want to use the same logic than Schofield also had a crap year as his numbers were down and he offered little in rebound coming out of defence

 

[CursoryMercenary]

Thought he had a poor year in terms of output, a decent captain in terms of leading the team but overall not too impressed with his year as a whole.

 

[javaguice]

So needed to procrastinate so had a quick look back at Hurn's performance over the past year both as a player and a captain. It's a long analysis sorry...

Given his fairly horrible speech after the GF loss I was under the assumption he just wasn't good in front of the media. But had a look back at a few press conferences and he seems relatively competent to me (like http://www.westcoasteagles.com.au/news/2015-10-02/gf-media-hurn). I don't think he is going to have a career in the media but the way he talks, and with his football brain, I can definitely imagine him as a future coach or similar. It is obvious he (and the rest of the players) were absolutely devastated at the way they performed on GF day (we were! imagine what it was like for them) - I expect if he had his time over that would have played out much differently.

As a captain... sure his public persona isn't a stereotypical one but on the field he seemed solid throughout the year to me (excepting the GF). In fact I would suggest that if we finished say 3rd or 4th on the ladder and never made the GF, we'd all be singing Hurn's and the whole team's praises. "Wow we went from 9th to 3rd with some key injuries, that's amazing! Bring on next year and we'll go even further". And that was about the same attitude just prior to the GF. But the GF comes and our team does what Hawthorn did 3 weeks earlier and crumbles. So the frustrated fan needs someone to blame, and the captain understandably wears it. But the reality is our personnel didn't suddenly get better between 2014 and 2015 (in many ways it got worse through injury), so why did we perform so much better? Because quite simply our team worked seamlessly as a team on field with a great defensive pressure strategy. And in any team sport that is always led by one person on the team - almost always the captain. The coach might come up with the strategy, but the captain is responsible for executing it.

As a player... he was statistically down a bit on previous years but he was playing a very different role. He was still our best rebounding defender. And you may have noticed he almost exclusively kicked out from the goal square this year and there were very few occasions that I could find where that didn't relieve pressure due to his long and accurate kicking. I think our fans underestimate how much value that alone brings to our team.

External perception... We all know midfielders get all the credit (unless they are Priddas), as do forwards that kick lots of goals (eg Kennedy), and occasionally some key defenders (eg Glass) that stop a key forward from kicking their usual bundle. General defenders must surely have the hardest job in the game to prove themselves to supporters? I mean how many current defenders do fans go crazy about? You might hear about Rance, Taylor, Hurley or even McGovern but are there any small/medium defenders that get put on a pedestal? It's far more likely the only time their names show up is when they give away a free kick in front of goal, or get beaten in a one-on-one by a clever forward.

I personally don't think there are currently any better options than Hurn as our captain. He strikes me as the sort of person that continuously thinks about how the whole team works together and getting the most out of our entire playing group. I think our performance next year rests a lot on his shoulders, as if our team doesn't execute the anticipated adaptions to the strategy that worked so well for us in 2015 we could easily slide back down the ladder imo. I think there are some amazing prospective leaders coming through but for the foreseeable future I think Hurn is clearly the man for the job and our supporter base should get behind him. So my ratings for Hurn in 2015...

Captain 4.5/5 - executing a team strategy that took us to an unexpected GF deserves nothing less (irrespective of the bad performances on that ONE day - none of the other prospective captains stepped up either!)
Player 3/5 - he'll be a big winner from EMac being back in the side and I expect will have a cracker in 2016

TL;DR

Nah, good summary. He reminds me a bit of Woosh in pressers - doesnt give anything away.

Good point about defenders. I remember Bluey would get heaps of praise for his play - but always credits Woosha for taking 2 blokes while he would run off.

Its easy to miss a lot of the good stuff defenders do. Mistakes are pretty easy to highlight.

 

[2006_Eagles]

Using the mystical power of analytical thought

 

[eagles rule]

Nice interview from Hurn after the dust had settled ,he appears to have grown as a captain from that GF loss .