Scape Goat I've lost my faith in Ken Hinkley Part 3

[AwwThatsApples]

Can we all at least admit that Sam Gray was a justified addition to the team?

 

[El_Scorcho]

Can we all at least admit that Sam Gray was a justified addition to the team?

This week, sure. It took us 3 weeks to play him in his natural role.

When he was played as a permanent forward, no, it was a dumb selection that hurt the side.

Can you admit that playing him as a permanent forward was a dumb selection?

 

[AwwThatsApples]

This week, sure. It took us 3 weeks to play him in his natural role.

When he was played as a permanent forward, no, it was a dumb selection that hurt the side.

Can you admit that playing him as a permanent forward was a dumb selection?

Sure, but I still think he's a better forward option over Motlop, as he tends to be a stronger marker, and a slower runner, but i don't think Motlop would've added much to our gutsy game, if anything his agility in the wet conditions would've damaged us.

 

[Us against the rest]

Yes..has been a tough week for the old bloke I reckon

Yeah, he looked really drained.

 

[Us against the rest]

Can we all at least admit that Sam Gray was a justified addition to the team?

Well it worked, so I suppose we could say that. The conditions and the nice big oval suited him.

 

[Duck Farmer]

Can we all at least admit that Sam Gray was a justified addition to the team?

Played a great game and surprised me.

However dropping Marshall for him last week was a dumb arse move.

 

[Enviable Tradition]

I thought it was interesting when Graham Cornes this morning said something like “ the players got together during the week and brought a few things out into the open or had a few home truths” Can’t remember his exact wording

It would be ironic if it was the co-captains who finally got our structures right and led us to glory.

On SM-G960F using BigFooty.com mobile app

 

[dirty2]

It would be ironic if it was the co-captains who finally got our structures right and led us to glory.

On SM-G960F using BigFooty.com mobile app

Sack hinkley and jonas and wines can be co-capains and co-coaches..

 

[El Zorro]

It would be ironic if it was the co-captains who finally got our structures right and led us to glory.

On SM-G960F using BigFooty.com mobile app

This makes absolutely no sense. You can play Wines and Jonas with neither of them being captain. Still trying to justify the unjustifiable.

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

 

[Doctor Feel]

Regarding Ken's presser. I would say word would have come that he needs to choose his words more carefully. The feedback Richo got was no doubt discussed during the week.

 

[Kiss from a Rozee]

When Ken first came to the club it was clear he was twice the coach that Matthew Primus was, which massively shifted my views that Primus was a good coach.

I believe I’ve always been prone to overrating our gameplan, since it’s usually pretty clear what we are intending to do and at the same pretty clear when the players aren’t doing it.

Ken has since 2014 always had a clearly very clear strategy for how to win games IMO. You can easily see it when it works or when the players are in form. The way we demolished West Coast last night really wasn’t an unfamiliar sight for supporters who’ve been watching us the last 6 years. We’ve done the same thing to Hawthorn, Richmond, Sydney, Collingwood, and Melbourne as well as a host of garbage tier teams, particularly in 2017.

When I judge the gameplan, I judge it based on how it looks at it’s best. Is it good enough to beat the best? If it is then I usually don’t really care how we play most weeks, as I’ll be confident we can win in September. But we haven’t even been making finals, so what has been going wrong? Well it can’t be the gameplan because clearly it’s good enough when it’s working - I’m freely admitting that I overrate us in this aspect, I was a big fan of Primus at the time for example.

So for me I’ve never really had my faith shaken in Hinkley, as IMO our gameplan has actually improved every year bar 2017 in its ability to win the hardest games. I understand I should have been judging him more harshly, particularly in 2017 where we really took a step back and became far too dependent on Ryder playing well for us to win games, and we still couldn’t win the hard ones even if he was playing.

Last year though we had every chance to win the hardest games we played. We beat Sydney, Richmond and Melbourne in great contests in the first half of the year and really should have beaten Adelaide and West Coast later on. We were still desperately dependant on Ryder, but at least we were good enough with him available. I still think had we won those games we easily make a preliminary final and probably the grand final (assuming Ryder and Dixon don’t go down as well which was bad luck not bad coaching).

So where many on this board had already given up on Hinkley in 2017 (which was absolutely fair enough) through my ability to ignore problems I still rated him going into 2018, and so thought we were actually a well coached side last year.

The problem was, we weren’t actually that well coached. We had a great gameplan, but we couldn’t actually convince the players to keep playing at 100% week in week out. We by all measures should have been able to win the flag with all the elements we had, but it just didn’t come together often enough. Does that ultimately fall on Hinkley? Yes. However there are many other factors at play.

Firstly our line coaches clearly weren’t good enough. Bassett had our defence playing very well, but our midfield sucked way too often, and our forward line was a disaster. The players were mostly not playing well enough often enough, and we were very dependent on Ryder who got injured multiple times. Fix any one of these and we certainly play finals IMO.

I wanna about our forward line as I think we had a few major issues, and I think it’s clearly where Ken had made the biggest miscalculation when changing our gameplan over the course of 2017 and 2018. I think the most obvious issues where that we used our forwards to defend too much, we had unskilled players playing too deep, and we had difficulty creating space within the forward 50. I’ll try and explain what I mean, and this is mostly just my opinion.

Our gameplan in 2017 and 2018 was to use players that were better at running than their opponents to create options. Enter Travis Boak the forward and Sam Gray the permanent fixture. The idea was that these guys could beat their opponents into defence, and then beat them back into attack when there was a turnover. By beating their direct opponents back into defence it would make scoring against us incredibly hard, and if they were hard enough runners they would make it back into attack in time to score.

The first problem this created IMO was that the more attacking the opposition were the more defensive our forwards would have to be in their positioning, meaning when we got the ball we didn’t have any options going forward. We often got the balance completely wrong with most of our forwards playing as defensive midfielders, allowing the oppositions defence to play extremely high while still maintaining goal side on our forwards. This meant that while we were at times great defensively we were never a high scoring team, and we also still gave up high scores occasionally anyway since we were turning the ball over in very dangerous positions.

This only meant we doubled down harder on players that could still perform this defensive running, but actually run forward and beat their man into attack. Who did we have who was actually good at this? Boak, Westhoff, Sam Gray, and to an extent Charlie Dixon and SPP. When you are running that hard though your disposal and goal kicking is s**t, the players who were good at running were not the players who had elite disposal, and they also weren’t particularly good one-on-one. So we were left with s**t forwards who weren’t even in attacking positions most of the time.

This is IMO why we had absolutely no space up forward, why Wingard and Robbie hated playing up forward, and why we persisted with Sam Gray and Boak in positions they clearly weren’t suited to. When we got the balance right it had clearly worked but we still weren’t scoring enough to make finals and the balance was completely off a bunch of the time.

Not to scapegoat Wingard too much, but I believe his story illustrates well what was wrong. In this defensive forward line structure Chad couldn’t excel, it wasn’t what he was suited to and hence it was extremely obvious he wanted to play through the midfield instead. I think it’s pretty understandable, but it still isn’t good enough and it’s too selfish. He probably would have excelled this year playing forward for us, but the bridge had already been burned for whatever reason so we traded him rather than giving him another chance. Had Wingard just trusted the coaches and played up forward to his best, then we would have struggled a lot less last year. That’s a big copout for the gameplan, but not a big copout for the coaches who shouldn’t have chosen a gameplan that our players wouldn’t be motivated to play, or should have been better able to keep them motivated and engaged.

There were scores of other players who weren’t good enough, but our forward line was definitely where the worst of it occurred.

I’ll reiterate that going into 2018 I had much more faith in the coaches than most did - incorrectly, but I think it meant I saw things differently - which meant that overall I think we had a very strong strategy for winning games and should have been able to make a grand final, however we couldn’t get the playing group in line through the weakness of our line coaches, the weakness of our playing group, and ultimately the weakness of Hinkley as head coach who had completely sacrificed our forward line and ability to score for said gameplan. This cost us both the opportunity to play finals, and one of our most talented players in Chad Wingard who clearly didn’t believe in Hinkley anymore.

Still though, Hinkley had his most important player getting injured constantly, had his second most talented player refusing to play his role, and had a forward coach and midfield coach who just couldn’t cut it. He could have potentially avoided these problems, but that doesn’t really excuse those individuals meaning that 2018 IMO wasn’t a failure that can be pointed squarely at Hinkley, 2016 and 2017 were much worse looking back and he almost certainly shouldn’t have been re signed long term, but I think he showed enough in 2018 to give him another crack in 2019.

So this leaves me personally feeling pretty bleak at the start of this year. Hinkley was better in 18 than 17, but by now it’s hit me that there is definitely a huge chance he isn’t good enough - I think Macca and Janus were similar to me in that regard, though maybe it happened a bit earlier for them.

The difference between me and them is I still think we should have been good enough last year, and had we beaten Adelaide and West Coast and avoided losing Ryder and Dixon we probably make the grand final. Do we beat Collingwood? Probably not, but we were the second best side provided our players gave a s**t so we should have been difficult to beat come September.

This just means that I didn’t give up after last week. I still thought we’d be pumped by West Coast but I never really doubted that we were clearly in the top 10 sides.

I’m not trying to say I’ve been proven right or anything, I might still be wrong and re-signing Hinkley might hurt us for another 5 years. I just want to share my perspective on what has changed in 2019 that means my trust in both Hinkley and our playing group has been restored. And again I only waned in that faith at the end of last year, which wasn’t anything to do with football smarts or anything, just blind optimism for the future.

So at the back end of 2018 we trade out Wingard, Hombsch, Pittard and Jared Polec. All players that have been good for us at some point in the past, two of whom were amongst our best in 2018 in terms of individual performance (Why do I emphasise individual performance? I’ll explain soon). To replace these players we bring in Zac Butters, Xavier Duursma, Connor Rozee, Sam Mayes and Ryan Burton while bringing in the second ruckman we’ve been crying out for since 2016 in Scott Lycett.

We clear out Lade and Nicks while moving Basset into the role of forward coach and bring in the highly lauded Schofield as midfield coach, a new defensive coach in Montgomery, and a new ruck coach in Dean Brogan.

The final change we make is to throw out the defensive, consistent, reactive gameplan of 2017 and 2018 to bring in a vastly more aggressive gameplan backed up by rule changes.

This improves us in a myriad of ways. Our personnel are better suited to their roles, our players play with real aggression, and our tactical options improve drastically with a refreshed proactive mindset.

Between round 22 last year and round one this year our forward line went from a destitute wasteland to probably the most exciting part of the ground with the highly skilled first year players Butters and Rozee replacing the fumbly Boak and Sam Gray, Westhoff suiting up to replace Dixon with 5 goals, and Ebert looking like a footballer again. Yes we had Marshall in terrible form get dropped and the reappearance of Sam Gray as a forward, but it has still been vastly better than last year. And the release of Boak to the midfield has been so much more impactful than anyone would have imagined. For the first time in years we have natural forwards kicking goals instead of running back into defence, and our love boat running around winning clearances like a king again.

It’s obvious that this kind of aggression is what our players were built for, playing on at all costs, getting in the face of the opposition and playing right on the edge. In particular Lycett, Butters, and Burton all thrive under these dirtier tactics and we dismantle Melbourne, Carlton and now West Coast with a ruthless edge we haven’t seen for a while.

We also see how proactive our tactics are in the coaching box, as now we are trying to break through the oppositions defence instead of worrying so much about how to stop them scoring. We clearly adjusted massively after quarter time in the Melbourne and Carlton games, as well as throughout every our two losses despite a lack of success. And after clearly putting two years into beating West Coast we are finally able to take their gameplan, tear it up and piss all over it in front of them and their shitty supporters.

So we now IMO have a gameplan that suits our players, suits our line coaches and suits our head coach while being much more enjoyable to watch. We have better players playing in positions they thrive in, we have become much less dependent on Ryder, we have completely rejuvenated our disastrous forward line, we’ve easily covered for the loss of Polec, and between Rozee and Butters perhaps for the loss of Wingard as well.

There are still huge question marks over our senior players, the loss to Richmond still raises a huge red flag that we won’t beat good sides that we haven’t spent literal years dissecting their gameplan (West Coast), and we still don’t have enough good key forwards particularly with Dixon injured but overall there is plenty to be positive about.

My faith in Hinkley should have wavered a lot more than it did in 2017, but between the way we restructured to win finals last year despite it not coming off, and the way we’re attacking 2019 with reckless abandon I think it’s fair to say my faith has been restored again. I understand why people are much more reluctant than I am, and those who said last week proved Hinkley will never be good enough could be completely right. One win against West Coast no matter how excellent doesn’t change much, but nor did the loss against Richmond no matter how bad change my mind.

I’m not confident we will win the flag this year or anything silly like that, we still don’t look particularly consistent and we are desperate for Dixon to return. However I do feel very confident that Hinkley is a great head coach in 2019, and despite my fears that Schofield could end up being better I don’t think we’d be in a better place today had we gone with Stewart Dew in 2018.

Just my opinion, but I still have faith in this club.

 

[Janus]

When Ken first came to the club it was clear he was twice the coach that Matthew Primus was, which massively shifted my views that Primus was a good coach.

I believe I’ve always been prone to overrating our gameplan, since it’s usually pretty clear what we are intending to do and at the same pretty clear when the players aren’t doing it.

Ken has since 2014 always had a clearly very clear strategy for how to win games IMO. You can easily see it when it works or when the players are in form. The way we demolished West Coast last night really wasn’t an unfamiliar sight for supporters who’ve been watching us the last 6 years. We’ve done the same thing to Hawthorn, Richmond, Sydney, Collingwood, and Melbourne as well as a host of garbage tier teams, particularly in 2017.

When I judge the gameplan, I judge it based on how it looks at it’s best. Is it good enough to beat the best? If it is then I usually don’t really care how we play most weeks, as I’ll be confident we can win in September. But we haven’t even been making finals, so what has been going wrong? Well it can’t be the gameplan because clearly it’s good enough when it’s working - I’m freely admitting that I overrate us in this aspect, I was a big fan of Primus at the time for example.

So for me I’ve never really had my faith shaken in Hinkley, as IMO our gameplan has actually improved every year bar 2017 in its ability to win the hardest games. I understand I should have been judging him more harshly, particularly in 2017 where we really took a step back and became far too dependent on Ryder playing well for us to win games, and we still couldn’t win the hard ones even if he was playing.

Last year though we had every chance to win the hardest games we played. We beat Sydney, Richmond and Melbourne in great contests in the first half of the year and really should have beaten Adelaide and West Coast later on. We were still desperately dependant on Ryder, but at least we were good enough with him available. I still think had we won those games we easily make a preliminary final and probably the grand final (assuming Ryder and Dixon don’t go down as well which was bad luck not bad coaching).

So where many on this board had already given up on Hinkley in 2017 (which was absolutely fair enough) through my ability to ignore problems I still rated him going into 2018, and so thought we were actually a well coached side last year.

The problem was, we weren’t actually that well coached. We had a great gameplan, but we couldn’t actually convince the players to keep playing at 100% week in week out. We by all measures should have been able to win the flag with all the elements we had, but it just didn’t come together often enough. Does that ultimately fall on Hinkley? Yes. However there are many other factors at play.

Firstly our line coaches clearly weren’t good enough. Bassett had our defence playing very well, but our midfield sucked way too often, and our forward line was a disaster. The players were mostly not playing well enough often enough, and we were very dependent on Ryder who got injured multiple times. Fix any one of these and we certainly play finals IMO.

I wanna about our forward line as I think we had a few major issues, and I think it’s clearly where Ken had made the biggest miscalculation when changing our gameplan over the course of 2017 and 2018. I think the most obvious issues where that we used our forwards to defend too much, we had unskilled players playing too deep, and we had difficulty creating space within the forward 50. I’ll try and explain what I mean, and this is mostly just my opinion.

Our gameplan in 2017 and 2018 was to use players that were better at running than their opponents to create options. Enter Travis Boak the forward and Sam Gray the permanent fixture. The idea was that these guys could beat their opponents into defence, and then beat them back into attack when there was a turnover. By beating their direct opponents back into defence it would make scoring against us incredibly hard, and if they were hard enough runners they would make it back into attack in time to score.

The first problem this created IMO was that the more attacking the opposition were the more defensive our forwards would have to be in their positioning, meaning when we got the ball we didn’t have any options going forward. We often got the balance completely wrong with most of our forwards playing as defensive midfielders, allowing the oppositions defence to play extremely high while still maintaining goal side on our forwards. This meant that while we were at times great defensively we were never a high scoring team, and we also still gave up high scores occasionally anyway since we were turning the ball over in very dangerous positions.

This only meant we doubled down harder on players that could still perform this defensive running, but actually run forward and beat their man into attack. Who did we have who was actually good at this? Boak, Westhoff, Sam Gray, and to an extent Charlie Dixon and SPP. When you are running that hard though your disposal and goal kicking is s**t, the players who were good at running were not the players who had elite disposal, and they also weren’t particularly good one-on-one. So we were left with s**t forwards who weren’t even in attacking positions most of the time.

This is IMO why we had absolutely no space up forward, why Wingard and Robbie hated playing up forward, and why we persisted with Sam Gray and Boak in positions they clearly weren’t suited to. When we got the balance right it had clearly worked but we still weren’t scoring enough to make finals and the balance was completely off a bunch of the time.

Not to scapegoat Wingard too much, but I believe his story illustrates well what was wrong. In this defensive forward line structure Chad couldn’t excel, it wasn’t what he was suited to and hence it was extremely obvious he wanted to play through the midfield instead. I think it’s pretty understandable, but it still isn’t good enough and it’s too selfish. He probably would have excelled this year playing forward for us, but the bridge had already been burned for whatever reason so we traded him rather than giving him another chance. Had Wingard just trusted the coaches and played up forward to his best, then we would have struggled a lot less last year. That’s a big copout for the gameplan, but not a big copout for the coaches who shouldn’t have chosen a gameplan that our players wouldn’t be motivated to play, or should have been better able to keep them motivated and engaged.

There were scores of other players who weren’t good enough, but our forward line was definitely where the worst of it occurred.

I’ll reiterate that going into 2018 I had much more faith in the coaches than most did - incorrectly, but I think it meant I saw things differently - which meant that overall I think we had a very strong strategy for winning games and should have been able to make a grand final, however we couldn’t get the playing group in line through the weakness of our line coaches, the weakness of our playing group, and ultimately the weakness of Hinkley as head coach who had completely sacrificed our forward line and ability to score for said gameplan. This cost us both the opportunity to play finals, and one of our most talented players in Chad Wingard who clearly didn’t believe in Hinkley anymore.

Still though, Hinkley had his most important player getting injured constantly, had his second most talented player refusing to play his role, and had a forward coach and midfield coach who just couldn’t cut it. He could have potentially avoided these problems, but that doesn’t really excuse those individuals meaning that 2018 IMO wasn’t a failure that can be pointed squarely at Hinkley, 2016 and 2017 were much worse looking back and he almost certainly shouldn’t have been re signed long term, but I think he showed enough in 2018 to give him another crack in 2019.

So this leaves me personally feeling pretty bleak at the start of this year. Hinkley was better in 18 than 17, but by now it’s hit me that there is definitely a huge chance he isn’t good enough - I think Macca and Janus were similar to me in that regard, though maybe it happened a bit earlier for them.

The difference between me and them is I still think we should have been good enough last year, and had we beaten Adelaide and West Coast and avoided losing Ryder and Dixon we probably make the grand final. Do we beat Collingwood? Probably not, but we were the second best side provided our players gave a s**t so we should have been difficult to beat come September.

This just means that I didn’t give up after last week. I still thought we’d be pumped by West Coast but I never really doubted that we were clearly in the top 10 sides.

I’m not trying to say I’ve been proven right or anything, I might still be wrong and re-signing Hinkley might hurt us for another 5 years. I just want to share my perspective on what has changed in 2019 that means my trust in both Hinkley and our playing group has been restored. And again I only waned in that faith at the end of last year, which wasn’t anything to do with football smarts or anything, just blind optimism for the future.

So at the back end of 2018 we trade out Wingard, Hombsch, Pittard and Jared Polec. All players that have been good for us at some point in the past, two of whom were amongst our best in 2018 in terms of individual performance (Why do I emphasise individual performance? I’ll explain soon). To replace these players we bring in Zac Butters, Xavier Duursma, Connor Rozee, Sam Mayes and Ryan Burton while bringing in the second ruckman we’ve been crying out for since 2016 in Scott Lycett.

We clear out Lade and Nicks while moving Basset into the role of forward coach and bring in the highly lauded Schofield as midfield coach, a new defensive coach in Montgomery, and a new ruck coach in Dean Brogan.

The final change we make is to throw out the defensive, consistent, reactive gameplan of 2017 and 2018 to bring in a vastly more aggressive gameplan backed up by rule changes.

This improves us in a myriad of ways. Our personnel are better suited to their roles, our players play with real aggression, and our tactical options improve drastically with a refreshed proactive mindset.

Between round 22 last year and round one this year our forward line went from a destitute wasteland to probably the most exciting part of the ground with the highly skilled first year players Butters and Rozee replacing the fumbly Boak and Sam Gray, Westhoff suiting up to replace Dixon with 5 goals, and Ebert looking like a footballer again. Yes we had Marshall in terrible form get dropped and the reappearance of Sam Gray as a forward, but it has still been vastly better than last year. And the release of Boak to the midfield has been so much more impactful than anyone would have imagined. For the first time in years we have natural forwards kicking goals instead of running back into defence, and our love boat running around winning clearances like a king again.

It’s obvious that this kind of aggression is what our players were built for, playing on at all costs, getting in the face of the opposition and playing right on the edge. In particular Lycett, Butters, and Burton all thrive under these dirtier tactics and we dismantle Melbourne, Carlton and now West Coast with a ruthless edge we haven’t seen for a while.

We also see how proactive our tactics are in the coaching box, as now we are trying to break through the oppositions defence instead of worrying so much about how to stop them scoring. We clearly adjusted massively after quarter time in the Melbourne and Carlton games, as well as throughout every our two losses despite a lack of success. And after clearly putting two years into beating West Coast we are finally able to take their gameplan, tear it up and piss all over it in front of them and their shitty supporters.

So we now IMO have a gameplan that suits our players, suits our line coaches and suits our head coach while being much more enjoyable to watch. We have better players playing in positions they thrive in, we have become much less dependent on Ryder, we have completely rejuvenated our disastrous forward line, we’ve easily covered for the loss of Polec, and between Rozee and Butters perhaps for the loss of Wingard as well.

There are still huge question marks over our senior players, the loss to Richmond still raises a huge red flag that we won’t beat good sides that we haven’t spent literal years dissecting their gameplan (West Coast), and we still don’t have enough good key forwards particularly with Dixon injured but overall there is plenty to be positive about.

My faith in Hinkley should have wavered a lot more than it did in 2017, but between the way we restructured to win finals last year despite it not coming off, and the way we’re attacking 2019 with reckless abandon I think it’s fair to say my faith has been restored again. I understand why people are much more reluctant than I am, and those who said last week proved Hinkley will never be good enough could be completely right. One win against West Coast no matter how excellent doesn’t change much, but nor did the loss against Richmond no matter how bad change my mind.

I’m not confident we will win the flag this year or anything silly like that, we still don’t look particularly consistent and we are desperate for Dixon to return. However I do feel very confident that Hinkley is a great head coach in 2019, and despite my fears that Schofield could end up being better I don’t think we’d be in a better place today had we gone with Stewart Dew in 2018.

Just my opinion, but I still have faith in this club.

The only doubts I've ever had about Ken is his ability to motivate his players through selection pressure. I've said in the past that he might be like Moses - lead the team to the Promised Land, but not cross over and deliver them to a flag.

He's good enough if he reverts back to being the hard-arse he was in 2013/14 when the players respected him and knew they had to perform.

After the West Coast game, he should have taken a leaf out of Terry Wallace's book:

"We were rabble against Richmond! Absolutely bloody disgraceful! Yeah, against West Coast, we worked our asses off! We worked our backsides off to maintain a positive win-loss record. But the season is about wins and losses, and against Richmond we just pissed it down the drain! We absolutely pissed that game down the drain. Don't let anyone of you forget about it!

Take away one thing from the West Coast game: you have the ability to play in this competition and play very, very, very well. We cannot go from that which we displayed against West Coast back to that which we displayed against Richmond ever again.

Ever again."

 

[manureid]

That was a massive tl: dr

 

[Kiss from a Rozee]

That was a massive tl: dr

Bully

 

[manureid]

Bully

Better length of post

 

[AwwThatsApples]

Looking back at rounds 3 and 4 i think the biggest problem was our inability to stay committed to the gameplan we had in round 1 and 2. This kind of mirrors what Ken said, but ironically Marshall's absence had a lot to do with it and I feel like he only just realized this, at least he came back though.
I want us to continue to work with Todd in the absence of Dixon as he will need to train as a tall forward in preparation for his career.

 

[EskimoPAFC]

Did someone just post a book here?

 

[dirty2]

Did someone just post a book here?

1000 word essay

 

[Tredrea_Wanganeen_Gray]

2 hours later and I'm still reading

 

[PowerBaz]

Yeah, he looked really drained.

Well he should stop reading Big Footy for starters...

 

[Kiss from a Rozee]

2 hours later and I'm still reading

I was too lazy to scroll up on my phone and check, now I have I see that post was at least three times longer than I thought

 

[RossFC]

When Ken first came to the club it was clear he was twice the coach that Matthew Primus was, which massively shifted my views that Primus was a good coach.

I believe I’ve always been prone to overrating our gameplan, since it’s usually pretty clear what we are intending to do and at the same pretty clear when the players aren’t doing it.

Ken has since 2014 always had a clearly very clear strategy for how to win games IMO. You can easily see it when it works or when the players are in form. The way we demolished West Coast last night really wasn’t an unfamiliar sight for supporters who’ve been watching us the last 6 years. We’ve done the same thing to Hawthorn, Richmond, Sydney, Collingwood, and Melbourne as well as a host of garbage tier teams, particularly in 2017.

When I judge the gameplan, I judge it based on how it looks at it’s best. Is it good enough to beat the best? If it is then I usually don’t really care how we play most weeks, as I’ll be confident we can win in September. But we haven’t even been making finals, so what has been going wrong? Well it can’t be the gameplan because clearly it’s good enough when it’s working - I’m freely admitting that I overrate us in this aspect, I was a big fan of Primus at the time for example.

So for me I’ve never really had my faith shaken in Hinkley, as IMO our gameplan has actually improved every year bar 2017 in its ability to win the hardest games. I understand I should have been judging him more harshly, particularly in 2017 where we really took a step back and became far too dependent on Ryder playing well for us to win games, and we still couldn’t win the hard ones even if he was playing.

Last year though we had every chance to win the hardest games we played. We beat Sydney, Richmond and Melbourne in great contests in the first half of the year and really should have beaten Adelaide and West Coast later on. We were still desperately dependant on Ryder, but at least we were good enough with him available. I still think had we won those games we easily make a preliminary final and probably the grand final (assuming Ryder and Dixon don’t go down as well which was bad luck not bad coaching).

So where many on this board had already given up on Hinkley in 2017 (which was absolutely fair enough) through my ability to ignore problems I still rated him going into 2018, and so thought we were actually a well coached side last year.

The problem was, we weren’t actually that well coached. We had a great gameplan, but we couldn’t actually convince the players to keep playing at 100% week in week out. We by all measures should have been able to win the flag with all the elements we had, but it just didn’t come together often enough. Does that ultimately fall on Hinkley? Yes. However there are many other factors at play.

Firstly our line coaches clearly weren’t good enough. Bassett had our defence playing very well, but our midfield sucked way too often, and our forward line was a disaster. The players were mostly not playing well enough often enough, and we were very dependent on Ryder who got injured multiple times. Fix any one of these and we certainly play finals IMO.

I wanna about our forward line as I think we had a few major issues, and I think it’s clearly where Ken had made the biggest miscalculation when changing our gameplan over the course of 2017 and 2018. I think the most obvious issues where that we used our forwards to defend too much, we had unskilled players playing too deep, and we had difficulty creating space within the forward 50. I’ll try and explain what I mean, and this is mostly just my opinion.

Our gameplan in 2017 and 2018 was to use players that were better at running than their opponents to create options. Enter Travis Boak the forward and Sam Gray the permanent fixture. The idea was that these guys could beat their opponents into defence, and then beat them back into attack when there was a turnover. By beating their direct opponents back into defence it would make scoring against us incredibly hard, and if they were hard enough runners they would make it back into attack in time to score.

The first problem this created IMO was that the more attacking the opposition were the more defensive our forwards would have to be in their positioning, meaning when we got the ball we didn’t have any options going forward. We often got the balance completely wrong with most of our forwards playing as defensive midfielders, allowing the oppositions defence to play extremely high while still maintaining goal side on our forwards. This meant that while we were at times great defensively we were never a high scoring team, and we also still gave up high scores occasionally anyway since we were turning the ball over in very dangerous positions.

This only meant we doubled down harder on players that could still perform this defensive running, but actually run forward and beat their man into attack. Who did we have who was actually good at this? Boak, Westhoff, Sam Gray, and to an extent Charlie Dixon and SPP. When you are running that hard though your disposal and goal kicking is s**t, the players who were good at running were not the players who had elite disposal, and they also weren’t particularly good one-on-one. So we were left with s**t forwards who weren’t even in attacking positions most of the time.

This is IMO why we had absolutely no space up forward, why Wingard and Robbie hated playing up forward, and why we persisted with Sam Gray and Boak in positions they clearly weren’t suited to. When we got the balance right it had clearly worked but we still weren’t scoring enough to make finals and the balance was completely off a bunch of the time.

Not to scapegoat Wingard too much, but I believe his story illustrates well what was wrong. In this defensive forward line structure Chad couldn’t excel, it wasn’t what he was suited to and hence it was extremely obvious he wanted to play through the midfield instead. I think it’s pretty understandable, but it still isn’t good enough and it’s too selfish. He probably would have excelled this year playing forward for us, but the bridge had already been burned for whatever reason so we traded him rather than giving him another chance. Had Wingard just trusted the coaches and played up forward to his best, then we would have struggled a lot less last year. That’s a big copout for the gameplan, but not a big copout for the coaches who shouldn’t have chosen a gameplan that our players wouldn’t be motivated to play, or should have been better able to keep them motivated and engaged.

There were scores of other players who weren’t good enough, but our forward line was definitely where the worst of it occurred.

I’ll reiterate that going into 2018 I had much more faith in the coaches than most did - incorrectly, but I think it meant I saw things differently - which meant that overall I think we had a very strong strategy for winning games and should have been able to make a grand final, however we couldn’t get the playing group in line through the weakness of our line coaches, the weakness of our playing group, and ultimately the weakness of Hinkley as head coach who had completely sacrificed our forward line and ability to score for said gameplan. This cost us both the opportunity to play finals, and one of our most talented players in Chad Wingard who clearly didn’t believe in Hinkley anymore.

Still though, Hinkley had his most important player getting injured constantly, had his second most talented player refusing to play his role, and had a forward coach and midfield coach who just couldn’t cut it. He could have potentially avoided these problems, but that doesn’t really excuse those individuals meaning that 2018 IMO wasn’t a failure that can be pointed squarely at Hinkley, 2016 and 2017 were much worse looking back and he almost certainly shouldn’t have been re signed long term, but I think he showed enough in 2018 to give him another crack in 2019.

So this leaves me personally feeling pretty bleak at the start of this year. Hinkley was better in 18 than 17, but by now it’s hit me that there is definitely a huge chance he isn’t good enough - I think Macca and Janus were similar to me in that regard, though maybe it happened a bit earlier for them.

The difference between me and them is I still think we should have been good enough last year, and had we beaten Adelaide and West Coast and avoided losing Ryder and Dixon we probably make the grand final. Do we beat Collingwood? Probably not, but we were the second best side provided our players gave a s**t so we should have been difficult to beat come September.

This just means that I didn’t give up after last week. I still thought we’d be pumped by West Coast but I never really doubted that we were clearly in the top 10 sides.

I’m not trying to say I’ve been proven right or anything, I might still be wrong and re-signing Hinkley might hurt us for another 5 years. I just want to share my perspective on what has changed in 2019 that means my trust in both Hinkley and our playing group has been restored. And again I only waned in that faith at the end of last year, which wasn’t anything to do with football smarts or anything, just blind optimism for the future.

So at the back end of 2018 we trade out Wingard, Hombsch, Pittard and Jared Polec. All players that have been good for us at some point in the past, two of whom were amongst our best in 2018 in terms of individual performance (Why do I emphasise individual performance? I’ll explain soon). To replace these players we bring in Zac Butters, Xavier Duursma, Connor Rozee, Sam Mayes and Ryan Burton while bringing in the second ruckman we’ve been crying out for since 2016 in Scott Lycett.

We clear out Lade and Nicks while moving Basset into the role of forward coach and bring in the highly lauded Schofield as midfield coach, a new defensive coach in Montgomery, and a new ruck coach in Dean Brogan.

The final change we make is to throw out the defensive, consistent, reactive gameplan of 2017 and 2018 to bring in a vastly more aggressive gameplan backed up by rule changes.

This improves us in a myriad of ways. Our personnel are better suited to their roles, our players play with real aggression, and our tactical options improve drastically with a refreshed proactive mindset.

Between round 22 last year and round one this year our forward line went from a destitute wasteland to probably the most exciting part of the ground with the highly skilled first year players Butters and Rozee replacing the fumbly Boak and Sam Gray, Westhoff suiting up to replace Dixon with 5 goals, and Ebert looking like a footballer again. Yes we had Marshall in terrible form get dropped and the reappearance of Sam Gray as a forward, but it has still been vastly better than last year. And the release of Boak to the midfield has been so much more impactful than anyone would have imagined. For the first time in years we have natural forwards kicking goals instead of running back into defence, and our love boat running around winning clearances like a king again.

It’s obvious that this kind of aggression is what our players were built for, playing on at all costs, getting in the face of the opposition and playing right on the edge. In particular Lycett, Butters, and Burton all thrive under these dirtier tactics and we dismantle Melbourne, Carlton and now West Coast with a ruthless edge we haven’t seen for a while.

We also see how proactive our tactics are in the coaching box, as now we are trying to break through the oppositions defence instead of worrying so much about how to stop them scoring. We clearly adjusted massively after quarter time in the Melbourne and Carlton games, as well as throughout every our two losses despite a lack of success. And after clearly putting two years into beating West Coast we are finally able to take their gameplan, tear it up and piss all over it in front of them and their shitty supporters.

So we now IMO have a gameplan that suits our players, suits our line coaches and suits our head coach while being much more enjoyable to watch. We have better players playing in positions they thrive in, we have become much less dependent on Ryder, we have completely rejuvenated our disastrous forward line, we’ve easily covered for the loss of Polec, and between Rozee and Butters perhaps for the loss of Wingard as well.

There are still huge question marks over our senior players, the loss to Richmond still raises a huge red flag that we won’t beat good sides that we haven’t spent literal years dissecting their gameplan (West Coast), and we still don’t have enough good key forwards particularly with Dixon injured but overall there is plenty to be positive about.

My faith in Hinkley should have wavered a lot more than it did in 2017, but between the way we restructured to win finals last year despite it not coming off, and the way we’re attacking 2019 with reckless abandon I think it’s fair to say my faith has been restored again. I understand why people are much more reluctant than I am, and those who said last week proved Hinkley will never be good enough could be completely right. One win against West Coast no matter how excellent doesn’t change much, but nor did the loss against Richmond no matter how bad change my mind.

I’m not confident we will win the flag this year or anything silly like that, we still don’t look particularly consistent and we are desperate for Dixon to return. However I do feel very confident that Hinkley is a great head coach in 2019, and despite my fears that Schofield could end up being better I don’t think we’d be in a better place today had we gone with Stewart Dew in 2018.

Just my opinion, but I still have faith in this club.

How many times do I have to tell you that Hartlett isn't playing AFL this week!

 

[TeeKray]

When Ken first came to the club it was clear he was twice the coach that Matthew Primus was, which massively shifted my views that Primus was a good coach.

I believe I’ve always been prone to overrating our gameplan, since it’s usually pretty clear what we are intending to do and at the same pretty clear when the players aren’t doing it.

Ken has since 2014 always had a clearly very clear strategy for how to win games IMO. You can easily see it when it works or when the players are in form. The way we demolished West Coast last night really wasn’t an unfamiliar sight for supporters who’ve been watching us the last 6 years. We’ve done the same thing to Hawthorn, Richmond, Sydney, Collingwood, and Melbourne as well as a host of garbage tier teams, particularly in 2017.

When I judge the gameplan, I judge it based on how it looks at it’s best. Is it good enough to beat the best? If it is then I usually don’t really care how we play most weeks, as I’ll be confident we can win in September. But we haven’t even been making finals, so what has been going wrong? Well it can’t be the gameplan because clearly it’s good enough when it’s working - I’m freely admitting that I overrate us in this aspect, I was a big fan of Primus at the time for example.

So for me I’ve never really had my faith shaken in Hinkley, as IMO our gameplan has actually improved every year bar 2017 in its ability to win the hardest games. I understand I should have been judging him more harshly, particularly in 2017 where we really took a step back and became far too dependent on Ryder playing well for us to win games, and we still couldn’t win the hard ones even if he was playing.

Last year though we had every chance to win the hardest games we played. We beat Sydney, Richmond and Melbourne in great contests in the first half of the year and really should have beaten Adelaide and West Coast later on. We were still desperately dependant on Ryder, but at least we were good enough with him available. I still think had we won those games we easily make a preliminary final and probably the grand final (assuming Ryder and Dixon don’t go down as well which was bad luck not bad coaching).

So where many on this board had already given up on Hinkley in 2017 (which was absolutely fair enough) through my ability to ignore problems I still rated him going into 2018, and so thought we were actually a well coached side last year.

The problem was, we weren’t actually that well coached. We had a great gameplan, but we couldn’t actually convince the players to keep playing at 100% week in week out. We by all measures should have been able to win the flag with all the elements we had, but it just didn’t come together often enough. Does that ultimately fall on Hinkley? Yes. However there are many other factors at play.

Firstly our line coaches clearly weren’t good enough. Bassett had our defence playing very well, but our midfield sucked way too often, and our forward line was a disaster. The players were mostly not playing well enough often enough, and we were very dependent on Ryder who got injured multiple times. Fix any one of these and we certainly play finals IMO.

I wanna about our forward line as I think we had a few major issues, and I think it’s clearly where Ken had made the biggest miscalculation when changing our gameplan over the course of 2017 and 2018. I think the most obvious issues where that we used our forwards to defend too much, we had unskilled players playing too deep, and we had difficulty creating space within the forward 50. I’ll try and explain what I mean, and this is mostly just my opinion.

Our gameplan in 2017 and 2018 was to use players that were better at running than their opponents to create options. Enter Travis Boak the forward and Sam Gray the permanent fixture. The idea was that these guys could beat their opponents into defence, and then beat them back into attack when there was a turnover. By beating their direct opponents back into defence it would make scoring against us incredibly hard, and if they were hard enough runners they would make it back into attack in time to score.

The first problem this created IMO was that the more attacking the opposition were the more defensive our forwards would have to be in their positioning, meaning when we got the ball we didn’t have any options going forward. We often got the balance completely wrong with most of our forwards playing as defensive midfielders, allowing the oppositions defence to play extremely high while still maintaining goal side on our forwards. This meant that while we were at times great defensively we were never a high scoring team, and we also still gave up high scores occasionally anyway since we were turning the ball over in very dangerous positions.

This only meant we doubled down harder on players that could still perform this defensive running, but actually run forward and beat their man into attack. Who did we have who was actually good at this? Boak, Westhoff, Sam Gray, and to an extent Charlie Dixon and SPP. When you are running that hard though your disposal and goal kicking is s**t, the players who were good at running were not the players who had elite disposal, and they also weren’t particularly good one-on-one. So we were left with s**t forwards who weren’t even in attacking positions most of the time.

This is IMO why we had absolutely no space up forward, why Wingard and Robbie hated playing up forward, and why we persisted with Sam Gray and Boak in positions they clearly weren’t suited to. When we got the balance right it had clearly worked but we still weren’t scoring enough to make finals and the balance was completely off a bunch of the time.

Not to scapegoat Wingard too much, but I believe his story illustrates well what was wrong. In this defensive forward line structure Chad couldn’t excel, it wasn’t what he was suited to and hence it was extremely obvious he wanted to play through the midfield instead. I think it’s pretty understandable, but it still isn’t good enough and it’s too selfish. He probably would have excelled this year playing forward for us, but the bridge had already been burned for whatever reason so we traded him rather than giving him another chance. Had Wingard just trusted the coaches and played up forward to his best, then we would have struggled a lot less last year. That’s a big copout for the gameplan, but not a big copout for the coaches who shouldn’t have chosen a gameplan that our players wouldn’t be motivated to play, or should have been better able to keep them motivated and engaged.

There were scores of other players who weren’t good enough, but our forward line was definitely where the worst of it occurred.

I’ll reiterate that going into 2018 I had much more faith in the coaches than most did - incorrectly, but I think it meant I saw things differently - which meant that overall I think we had a very strong strategy for winning games and should have been able to make a grand final, however we couldn’t get the playing group in line through the weakness of our line coaches, the weakness of our playing group, and ultimately the weakness of Hinkley as head coach who had completely sacrificed our forward line and ability to score for said gameplan. This cost us both the opportunity to play finals, and one of our most talented players in Chad Wingard who clearly didn’t believe in Hinkley anymore.

Still though, Hinkley had his most important player getting injured constantly, had his second most talented player refusing to play his role, and had a forward coach and midfield coach who just couldn’t cut it. He could have potentially avoided these problems, but that doesn’t really excuse those individuals meaning that 2018 IMO wasn’t a failure that can be pointed squarely at Hinkley, 2016 and 2017 were much worse looking back and he almost certainly shouldn’t have been re signed long term, but I think he showed enough in 2018 to give him another crack in 2019.

So this leaves me personally feeling pretty bleak at the start of this year. Hinkley was better in 18 than 17, but by now it’s hit me that there is definitely a huge chance he isn’t good enough - I think Macca and Janus were similar to me in that regard, though maybe it happened a bit earlier for them.

The difference between me and them is I still think we should have been good enough last year, and had we beaten Adelaide and West Coast and avoided losing Ryder and Dixon we probably make the grand final. Do we beat Collingwood? Probably not, but we were the second best side provided our players gave a s**t so we should have been difficult to beat come September.

This just means that I didn’t give up after last week. I still thought we’d be pumped by West Coast but I never really doubted that we were clearly in the top 10 sides.

I’m not trying to say I’ve been proven right or anything, I might still be wrong and re-signing Hinkley might hurt us for another 5 years. I just want to share my perspective on what has changed in 2019 that means my trust in both Hinkley and our playing group has been restored. And again I only waned in that faith at the end of last year, which wasn’t anything to do with football smarts or anything, just blind optimism for the future.

So at the back end of 2018 we trade out Wingard, Hombsch, Pittard and Jared Polec. All players that have been good for us at some point in the past, two of whom were amongst our best in 2018 in terms of individual performance (Why do I emphasise individual performance? I’ll explain soon). To replace these players we bring in Zac Butters, Xavier Duursma, Connor Rozee, Sam Mayes and Ryan Burton while bringing in the second ruckman we’ve been crying out for since 2016 in Scott Lycett.

We clear out Lade and Nicks while moving Basset into the role of forward coach and bring in the highly lauded Schofield as midfield coach, a new defensive coach in Montgomery, and a new ruck coach in Dean Brogan.

The final change we make is to throw out the defensive, consistent, reactive gameplan of 2017 and 2018 to bring in a vastly more aggressive gameplan backed up by rule changes.

This improves us in a myriad of ways. Our personnel are better suited to their roles, our players play with real aggression, and our tactical options improve drastically with a refreshed proactive mindset.

Between round 22 last year and round one this year our forward line went from a destitute wasteland to probably the most exciting part of the ground with the highly skilled first year players Butters and Rozee replacing the fumbly Boak and Sam Gray, Westhoff suiting up to replace Dixon with 5 goals, and Ebert looking like a footballer again. Yes we had Marshall in terrible form get dropped and the reappearance of Sam Gray as a forward, but it has still been vastly better than last year. And the release of Boak to the midfield has been so much more impactful than anyone would have imagined. For the first time in years we have natural forwards kicking goals instead of running back into defence, and our love boat running around winning clearances like a king again.

It’s obvious that this kind of aggression is what our players were built for, playing on at all costs, getting in the face of the opposition and playing right on the edge. In particular Lycett, Butters, and Burton all thrive under these dirtier tactics and we dismantle Melbourne, Carlton and now West Coast with a ruthless edge we haven’t seen for a while.

We also see how proactive our tactics are in the coaching box, as now we are trying to break through the oppositions defence instead of worrying so much about how to stop them scoring. We clearly adjusted massively after quarter time in the Melbourne and Carlton games, as well as throughout every our two losses despite a lack of success. And after clearly putting two years into beating West Coast we are finally able to take their gameplan, tear it up and piss all over it in front of them and their shitty supporters.

So we now IMO have a gameplan that suits our players, suits our line coaches and suits our head coach while being much more enjoyable to watch. We have better players playing in positions they thrive in, we have become much less dependent on Ryder, we have completely rejuvenated our disastrous forward line, we’ve easily covered for the loss of Polec, and between Rozee and Butters perhaps for the loss of Wingard as well.

There are still huge question marks over our senior players, the loss to Richmond still raises a huge red flag that we won’t beat good sides that we haven’t spent literal years dissecting their gameplan (West Coast), and we still don’t have enough good key forwards particularly with Dixon injured but overall there is plenty to be positive about.

My faith in Hinkley should have wavered a lot more than it did in 2017, but between the way we restructured to win finals last year despite it not coming off, and the way we’re attacking 2019 with reckless abandon I think it’s fair to say my faith has been restored again. I understand why people are much more reluctant than I am, and those who said last week proved Hinkley will never be good enough could be completely right. One win against West Coast no matter how excellent doesn’t change much, but nor did the loss against Richmond no matter how bad change my mind.

I’m not confident we will win the flag this year or anything silly like that, we still don’t look particularly consistent and we are desperate for Dixon to return. However I do feel very confident that Hinkley is a great head coach in 2019, and despite my fears that Schofield could end up being better I don’t think we’d be in a better place today had we gone with Stewart Dew in 2018.

Just my opinion, but I still have faith in this club.

I just gave you a like, not because I agree with or even read everything that you wrote, but because I feel like you deserve more than 1 like for going to the effort of putting together a 2600 word post.

 

[El_Scorcho]

snip.

You definitely make some good points, but I have a couple of issues. Firstly I don't think the gameplan has been consistent at all. I think general philosophies have stayed true, but we've changed around how we think we can best fulfill those philosophies, and usually those changes have been overcompensation.

Also I don't think we had the core gameplan to be successful in 2018. We totally disregarded scoring, we put it last on our list of priorities, and you can't win if you don't score. At least in 2017 it was all about getting the ball inside 50 again and again. In 2018 I have no idea how they thought that system would work.

In 2019, I absolutely believe we have the gameplan to be successful against anyone anywhere, we do seem to have struck a balance. Do I think that makes Ken Hinkley an excellent coach? Not at all. He's an average coach who might have finally cracked the gameplan code. Unfortunately it's now up to him to stay mostly out of his own way and not ruin the season with poor selections that will make it very difficult for us to be successful.

The only doubts I've ever had about Ken is his ability to motivate his players through selection pressure. I've said in the past that he might be like Moses - lead the team to the Promised Land, but not cross over and deliver them to a flag.

He's good enough if he reverts back to being the hard-arse he was in 2013/14 when the players respected him and knew they had to perform.

After the West Coast game, he should have taken a leaf out of Terry Wallace's book:

"We were rabble against Richmond! Absolutely bloody disgraceful! Yeah, against West Coast, we worked our asses off! We worked our backsides off to maintain a positive win-loss record. But the season is about wins and losses, and against Richmond we just pissed it down the drain! We absolutely pissed that game down the drain. Don't let anyone of you forget about it!

Take away one thing from the West Coast game: you have the ability to play in this competition and play very, very, very well. We cannot go from that which we displayed against West Coast back to that which we displayed against Richmond ever again.

Ever again."

And on selections, I totally agree with the above. The message he's sending via selections has been wildly inconsistent for his entire time at the club. I see the gold pass system and the inconsistent rewards and punishments at the selection table as a symptom of the same patented David Koch lack of accountability which sees us throw away close games late.

But selection issues go further than that.

I'm a big believer that players will attack the hardest when they are confident in themselves and confident in their gameplan.

I believe they'll be more confident in their gameplan if it's reliable and if they are well drilled enough in it to trust it instinctively.

I believe that you break that trust in the gameplan when you make changes that are at the complete opposite end of the scale to like-for-like. I've said enough about my belief in playing adequate tall forwards, but this goes further than that.

While "total football" is the dream, it's not a reality in Australian Rules Footy. Different players have different physical capabilites and skillsets, and we need to be working with that instead of against it. Nathan Bassett said it doesn't matter if a player is tall, it matters if he's good. Bullshit. Height makes a difference. But also, speed makes a difference. Weight makes a difference. Defensive acumen makes a difference. Forward craft makes a difference.

The balance of the side matters, and selecting players to replace others with vastly different skillsets and physical attributes hurts the balance of the side, changes how the side needs to play to be successful, and breaks trust in what we're doing.

Ken Hinkley has shown very little interest in the balance of the side. At different points during his tenure we've played too short up forward. Too small in the middle. Too slow on the outside. Too overloaded at half back. One game we played a 50 gamer 188cm Tom Jonas as our only key defender. We played an entire season with a key defensive utility playing ruck, and then shifted that player forward the following season. That lack of interest, so far, hasn't changed for 2019. The changes we made for round 3 swapped a pure outside mid for a pure inside mid, and a tall forward for a short midfielder to play in a forward role. Ridiculous and bad for business.

The coaches have got the gameplan right in 2019. To be successful, we need to settle into a rhythm and build some confidence in what we're doing. If the selection remains inconsistent and baffling, both in regards to form and in regards to function, we won't be able to execute that gameplan well enough often enough to realise our potential, and our potential is the Premiership.

 

[tribey]

He is probably a bit put out as he didnt have full say in selection and game style and see what happened.

Lol yep.

Practically nothing about that selection, deployment, style and result seemed to have Ken’s fingerprints on it.