Club History is there any getting over the saga?

[Vander18]

Interesting and thought provoking post Howard Moon. The analogy to Norm Smith is intriguing.

Personally I think the saga was actually the culmination of a malaise that crept in sometime after the 2001 GF. The club lost something soon after (not sure how soon after) that has prevented it from functioning as it should ever since. No idea what that was though.

Remember the mid-2000’s? Sheedy’s descent into madness, refusal to spend our pots of money on footy....something changed in our DNA around that time and we never recovered. We’ve been playing catch-up ever since - never at the cutting edge of how the game is played, always delivering a pale imitation of whatever successful footy likes like at a particular time. We used to do things our way...other clubs followed us.

Hird tried to get our mojo back but may have, I think we can say in hindsight, “over-corrected.”

 

[windyhill]

It will always be with us. The fine didn't worry me, being booted out of the finals didn't worry me ( although embarrassing, we were zero chance of beating Richmond, no finals win since '04 teaches you this)
What worried me, and still does, was missing draft picks and directly losing players to other clubs because of it.
That was the kicker, and we can see the mess it's created. People will always bring it up. Very different to w.coast, they were " boys being boys" A completely different situation to EFC. Hird and the gang " went there" we had skinny little boys not suited to afl football. We have gone full circle, we've recruited players who are the incorrect body shape to play this game as its currently played.
Until Ryder, Piggy, carlisle etc retire, I will still be reminded of hird and the gang, bloody hell, even Melk is playing brilliantly.

 

[pepsi]

I dunno why, but when I think of our senior players I think of cliques, instagram, then the clique within the clique that endured the year off

Looking from the outside in and is certainly the feeling I get. Those players who went through the saga are bound together by some intrinsic bond (inc. Zaharakis). The development and team culture issues have been around for 10 years now though.

 

[vast]

I dont buy this curse thing for melbourne or for us. Not being a successful footy club now has nothing to do with what happened 50 years ago, nor does it have anything to do with what even happened 5 years ago.

Hurley Merrett Daniher all australian last year, we had flaws but we also played great attacking football last year, thats all gone.

Whatever is happening now has nothing to do with the saga. While I have no doubt it may affect some players in their quieter moments like any human we put regrets and things like that aside in the course of our daily lives, I imagine its not different for the players. Sorry I just dont buy into this theory at all.

 

[kelvin_sheedy]

What a load of horseshit and just another round of excuses. If I had a dollar for every time someone made an excuse in relation to EFC over the last 10 years I could do Joe Gutnick and take over the joint.

All you need is to employ the right people in a few key areas and the rest should take care of itself.

 

[adsla69k]

We never owned the drug saga. Look what Crunella have done since!

 

[Vander18]

What a load of horseshit and just another round of excuses. If I had a dollar for every time someone made an excuse in relation to EFC over the last 10 years I could do Joe Gutnick and take over the joint.

All you need is to employ the right people in a few key areas and the rest should take care of itself.

So why hasn’t that happened?

We’ve been irrelevant for 15 years....why? Surely it’s not as simple as hiring the wrong people.

I think the saga was a symptom of whatever is wrong, not the cause....but something is wrong and has been for a long time.

 

[vast]

So why hasn’t that happened?

We’ve been irrelevant for 15 years....why? Surely it’s not as simple as hiring the wrong people.

I think the saga was a symptom of whatever is wrong, not the cause....but something is wrong and has been for a long time.

Its not that easy to find the right people and having the ultimate success even harder. How did the bulldogs finally break the drought and richmond too?
A big part of that was bringing in the right people either as head coach (Beveridge) or guys like Balme and Caracella. Picking the right players also helps.
You cant just blame some intangible thing, is you are referring to the culture than the best way to change that is to remove the people that are the doing the same old things and from experience people do not easily change the way they do things, and you will often find people that refuse to change full stop.

 

[Its Manbearpig]

Time for a bit more a respectful responce here I feel.

While I can see the line you've drawn between the culture killing Norm Smith episode to our episode, the effects being missed draft picks, later draft picks and obviously not being a "destination club". All will have some impact, hard to judge the extent of which but worth throwing up the thoughts for discussion. What else would a forum be for?
Is it directly contributing to our current performance, again without being in the players heads or on the inner sanctum we really dont know. However, last years results did show the players werent at that stage affected. Therefore I'd lean to assume no harm currently being done.
I've previously posted I think our current issues are due to a rift between coaches + coaches, coaches + players & players + players.
Where exactly is anyones guess. On top of that scrambled gameplan or lack thereof is clearly hurting us too.

However I for one welcome the out-of-the box thinking, despite seeing it shot down a bit. Really, what else is this forum for. I dont think the discussion hurts anybody, if anyone is offended I'd suggest click the "back" button and move on with your life.

 

[Doss]

So why hasn’t that happened?

We’ve been irrelevant for 15 years....why? Surely it’s not as simple as hiring the wrong people.

I think the saga was a symptom of whatever is wrong, not the cause....but something is wrong and has been for a long time.

I think the reality is that we actually started to go off the rails as far back as 1998-99; look at the drafting around that time for example, or the salary cap breaches. The strength of the side onfield masked the stuff that was starting to slip behind the scenes.

But then 2000 happened. We'd just had the strongest and most dominant season of all time; we were confirming Peter Jackson's 'every 5-7 years' rule, we were unstoppable, we had the largest membership, we were stupidly rich and getting richer. But the side effect was that, I believe, the club started to get complacent. They chose to go to Docklands when premierships were never going to be won there, which in spite of the financial buffer it gave us, I believe was a huge mistake.

We managed our salary cap poorly and as a direct result of that, we lost talisman like Bewick (forced to retire a year earlier than he wanted to), Hardwick and then with the Hird/Lloyd website fiasco in 2002, we lost Caracella, Heffernan and Blumfield too. About the same time, we started to recruit has beens from other clubs, Sheeds started to lose the plot, and meanwhile we continued to lose other important players like Alessio and Barnard in 2003, and then finally Wellman, Mercuri and Misiti in 2004. We also completely forgot the concept of continuous investment and improvement; no, Jackson instead sat there with his thumb up his arse chanting 'every seven years', while Windy Hill both figuratively and even literally rotted and crumbled around us.

The thing here is that this didn't all unfold overnight; it was a gradual creep. We'd won a flag in 2000, played a grand final the following season, and still superficially been a competitive enough side from 2002-04 too. Meanwhile we had Peter Jackson's 'every seven years' ringing in our heads and, foolishly, many of us probably believed it was just going to happen. Just because well, as the chant says, we are Essendon and that's the way it was supposed to be.

The reality is that the roots of this go back 20 years now, and we've not come even close to fixing it. Had the saga not happened we might have; who knows. It's a useless hypothetical because it did happen and we can't change it.

 

[Vander18]

I don’t regard Bulldogs or Richmond as benchmarks....successful to me is Hawthorn, Sydney and Geelong. Sustained performance over long periods.

That is about more than having the right person at the right time...there is more to it than that. I don’t claim to know what the key to it is...that doesn’t make it intangible. It means I don’t know what it is.

 

[Darealrath]

I think people have generally underestimated the long-term cost of the saga. Getting kicked out of the finals and losing draft picks hurt, a lot, but were nothing we couldn't get over in a few years. But the way it played out in the media and players getting suspended has done irreparable harm to the club which will probably take decades to recover from.

Some have touched on the impact it's had on kids, not to mention adults, who no longer support the club, or don't support the club as strongly as they did (which will have a compounding effect with their kids...). Mates I talk to at the footy talk about how they still go but don't quite have the same passion since the saga - and this was even when we were winning last year. One of the guys I go with was staring at his phone during the comeback against the Crows in round 1 FFS and he used to be as passionate as they come. I can't begin to imagine the impact it's had on the players involved, as well as past players whose sense of pride in being an Essendon person must have taken a hit (how many turned up to the '93 reunion again?!). Without wanting to sound melodramatic an intangible that was part of the reason we fell in love with this Club has been shattered. It might be something only time can heal, or for all the players involved to have retired, or we get lucky and a modern day Sheedy comes in and lifts the whole club up to a higher standard. Who knows.

To be clear I don't actually blame this season's form on the saga. That's some combination of a football/football admin issue that can be solved if the problems are identified and the right solutions applied.

 

[eth-dog]

I haven't been this disillusioned with the club ever before.

I honestly told my dad that I might not rock up this week. Unless I have personal sporting/other commitments I don't miss games (for example I had a midday game of footy last Saturday on the other side of the city and couldn't have gotten to the game before HT) but no such thing this week. Call me fair weather but it's just not there for me anymore.

 

[TDay]

I am suspicious that the business unit has been trying to set up fairytale stories to sell memberships for the last couple of decades, rather than pushing for appointments and list decisions geared to building success (as opposed to trying to shortcut to it). How many former players have been called in for coaching positions? Remember sheeds chasing all those other club rejects/retirees?Then there are the friends of friends getting appointments aka the sports science crooks.

In my opinion too many decisions have been 'who you know', or 'how many headlines will it get', rather than 'who will do the honest work and deserves it'.
Attitude is a trait far too undervalued at essendon.

(And yes i consider Stringer to be another of these decisions)

 

[Howard Moon]

Bump.

Just reading an old thread from 3 years ago, despite a tumultuous comments section, wondering with 3 years more of a sample section does it hold more water yet?

Or still just ess were broken , had saga, still are broken?

 

[CBombers17]

Long time broken model that could only succeed in a less professional era. Has fallen over at every turn since and will continue to do so until those in power realise they are the problem. May never happen.

 

[ant555]

Bump.

Just reading an old thread from 3 years ago, despite a tumultuous comments section, wondering with 3 years more of a sample section does it hold more water yet?

Or still just ess were broken , had saga, still are broken?

One issue is we have not moved on player wise. Still holding the dream as the last of them gets old and grey. There has really been no new era. Even though Woosha has been here 5 years there has always been some of the baggage in the corner so to speak. they thought they could build something out of the ashes but it has come up short.
Hindsight is a great thing and I was not in this camp but we may have been better if a few more blokes did leave and we got decent picks for them. Easy to say now I suppose.

 

[Jesse Custer]

Long time broken model that could only succeed in a less professional era. Has fallen over at every turn since and will continue to do so until those in power realise they are the problem. May never happen.

It will happen there is no doubt about that. We've seen that with the Bulldogs and Richmond. I know it hasn't happened for St Kilda and Melbourne as yet but it will. However who cares about them but when it will happen no body knows. From board level down it has to be done right. For all we know it is happening finally but it may take a while to filter down. Bringing Caracella to the club was a great move.

 

[Squeaky]

Hindsight is a great thing and I was not in this camp but we may have been better if a few more blokes did leave and we got decent picks for them. Easy to say now I suppose.

I'm thinking this too - how different would we look if we did the really hard yards back then?

 

[Seagrave_Holmes]

Until the club wins premiership number 17, this type question will always get airtime. The next premiership will define the next era of the club's history. Right now this is just the 'post saga' era which currently equates to nothing of note.