This all comes back to a list management ethos that the club continues to stand by, being that select members of our playing group should counteract their poor form by getting more gametime at AFL level. This has happened with O'Shea, Hartlett, AhCee, Lobbe, Boak, Jonas and Polec throughout last season.
In some ways it's very professional. Letting a player work through their onfield issues for as long as necessary until they can get their mojo back and start delivering is a nice idea, it's a comfortable safeguard between the player and coach and a mark of confidence in the player. But it's effectively a gold pass system in disguise that's ignoring the good form of other players that we could be playing instead, or inadvertently allowing some players to know they don't have to perform since they'll always have a reserved spot waiting for them when and if their good form eventually comes back.
I think Hinkley is waiting and hoping that we return to the place we were before, but if we were ever going to capitalise on our 2014 season then it would have happened by now, it should have been 2015 or 2016 and now I fear we can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.
Our 2017 pre-season has shown me all the indications that things haven't changed or improved. For example, our disposal efficiency last season was bottom six in the league. We have been failing to hit targets by hand and foot during both our pre-season games. Clean disposal is not something you hold back on as a footballer in a pre-season game, it's not like going hard at the contest which could cause an injury, if you can hit a target you do it, you don't wait until round 1 to showcase these basic skills. These same issues have pertained to other aspects of our game, like our forward 50 entries. The same deficiencies in our gameplan from last year have followed into this year.
I remember during 2014 that when we lost to the Kangaroos early in the season that most of us on here weren't particularly concerned about it. Yes it was a loss but it was the type of loss that most felt we could quickly recover from, slight tweaks in the gameplan and there's an immediate improvement to be had.
At present the club is in some ways waiting for 2017 to wrap-up to get a definitive answer on whether Hinkley is the man for the job. We all remain optimistic that we can make finals and give things a good shake-up but even the most hopeful of us would believe it's looking somewhat unlikely as improvements to other teams such as St Kilda, Fremantle or Melbourne will block our entry back into the top 8.