Coach JLo v RTB

[E Shed]

I think maybe I'm / we're getting hung up on lists vs teams. I mean we can list 18 players on the list now that could potentially make a grand final but it comes down to the whole list over a full AFL season. Cherry-picking stars out of a line-up doesn't get it done.

I mean you could go get a list of 17 Gold Coast players and say they are premiership worthy but it doesn't make it true. It's a weight of numbers over an entire season.

So what is your point?
My point was that I think some of the posting suggesting Lyon didn't have as good a list to work with as Longmuir were a bit disingenuous as I think history showed them to be a pretty solid team with an elite top end.

 

[Fat Nyfe]

Calling it now, this thread will end up being 100+ pages long.

Bumped after every win, bumped after every loss

 

[Kram]

So what is your point?
My point was that I think some of the posting suggesting Lyon didn't have as good a list to work with as Longmuir were a bit disingenuous as I think history showed them to be a pretty solid team with an elite top end.

Said it a few times but Cuddles Connolly wasted a good list for mine. Not even making the finals in both 04 and 05 was a bit pathetic.

 

[salim malik]

I really feel like you think I'm trying to be antagonistic Lyon when I'm not. I've already said I was a massive fan of Lyon. But you're interpretation of where the respective squads are at is revisionism to the extreme. If we look at 2016 as the starting point then the only top 10 talent from that those drafts is:

Griffin Logue: 22 years old, 23 games played before Longmuir
Andrew Brayshaw: 20 years, 39 games
Adam Cerra: 20 years, 41 games
Hayden Young: 18 years, 0 games
Caleb Serong: 18 years, 0 games
Liam Henry: 18 years, 0 games

You're telling me Longmuir should have as good a first 4 years as Lyon because of these 5?

Finals are made through the efforts of your 24-28 year old age bracket, and from our current group Longmuir has one superstar (Fyfe turning 29 this year) and I guess two other players playing good consistent football (Aish, Ryan). The rest are a mix of the unproffessional (Hogan, McCarthy,) the inconsistent (Matera, Hughes, Blakely), and the eternally injured (Acres, Lobb, Hamling, Pearce). Compare that to Lyon's group and he had a large group ready to hit their peak. Yes alot of them were foot soldiers, but they were foot soldiers who had already put in alot of time and development and had played good football for Freo prior to Ross arriving.

That list you quoted is a pretty fair line up of talent plus Darcy, Sturt.Ryan, Wilson. Aish,McCarthy
Hogan,Lobb, Hamling, Tucker plus Mundy, Fyfe, Walters and Hill are still on the list.
Food for thought to think what Lyon could do with it.

 

[Righteo]

Said it a few times but Cuddles Connolly wasted a good list for mine. Not even making the finals in both 04 and 05 was a bit pathetic.

Cost us a flag in 06 and I will never be convinced otherwise

 

[Bring back Drum]

That list you quoted is a pretty fair line up of talent plus Darcy, Sturt.Ryan, Wilson. Aish,McCarthy
Hogan,Lobb, Hamling, Tucker plus Mundy, Fyfe, Walters and Hill are still on the list.
Food for thought to think what Lyon could do with it.

I think the point is with Ross is, could he develop a young list? He certainly played them, but could he develop them.
Personally I think he battled to develop all the kids & concentrated on the ones he thought would be valuable to the starting line up.
Not good when you have injuries. Clearly the difference between Ross & Jlo, albeit very early, is what Justin can get out of the non best 22 players.
But he has been a development coach which potentially makes him more rounded.

 

[Sully90]

That list you quoted is a pretty fair line up of talent plus Darcy, Sturt.Ryan, Wilson. Aish,McCarthy
Hogan,Lobb, Hamling, Tucker plus Mundy, Fyfe, Walters and Hill are still on the list.
Food for thought to think what Lyon could do with it.

It's not food for thought as Lyon did have those players on the list and missed finals 4 years in a row.

You can add Wilson to the list of players injured or inconsistent, take your pick. Hogan, Hamling, McCarthy, Lobb I also mentioned. Sturt has 0 games of experience for Longmuir to work with. Besides if you want to include picks of players taken outside the top 10 then Lyon had mountains of those to work with as well

Tucker and Darcy I'll grant you got a lot of development done under Lyon and we certainly have him to thank for that however Darcy has someways to go.

If you want to take Walters, Mundy, Hill into consideration for Longmuir then you have to take into account Pavlich, Sandilands, and McPharlin for Ross - a much superior trio of veterans.

The only benefit that Longmuir has over Lyon list wise is young top end talent and even there Lyon had 8 years of drafting to get that right.

I'm not saying that Longmuir is above reproach, I'm not saying that he's better than Ross in anyway. I'm saying that you have to give him the time he deserves to get this list into position to make finals.

 

[The Heartbreaker]

Said it a few times but Cuddles Connolly wasted a good list for mine. Not even making the finals in both 04 and 05 was a bit pathetic.

Failing to give a yelp at the end of 04 should have put him on thin ice in 2005. Instead his contract was extended!

 

[Ben The Donkey]

Calling it now, this thread will end up being 100+ pages long.

Consisting of one page of posts making an actual argument, and 99+ of repetition, table thumping, and nostalgic assessments of past players.
All the way to the year 2024 when we actually have a fair basis for comparison... and even then, there'll be some still arguing about it

 

[FreoMonocle]

How can you blame the coach for list management issues when that's not his department? We fell in a hole because we burnt early picks on Apeness, Simpson, Sutcliffe, Sheridan, Pitt, etc. That's not Ross' fault.

Yeah we burned the picks we had way too often, plus it was a bad time for all list managers just preceding and up to Pitt due to the concessions given to the 2 new clubs, GWS getting first access in one year to all the best 17 year olds for example, pushed back the effective pick numbers - pick 20 effectively being 30 etc. Even before the new franchises, Freo's managers swapped the cow for magic beans repeatedly - we threw away high draft picks to trade in players and it usually went sour (Tarrant for example). Then, factor in that the team did well for a few years, so crap picks as a consequence...

Long and short of it, we were starved of quite a few years of quality youth (that's why Ross never played the young uns in our contending years, there wasn't much that was worth playing) and it all caught up with us because we weren't putting quality into the list at the rate it was retiring, forcing a rebuild.

Probably the only way that we would have escaped the rebuild was for the coach to be a spud in 2012-2015 and get some quality picks in then - but our list management probably would have burned those picks anyway.

 

[Purple Jesus]

Cost us a flag in 06 and I will never be convinced otherwise

I too will die on this hill.

 

[FreoMonocle]

It was fairly obvious the cupboard was bare as early as 2014 when few younger players were breaking into the side. The coach bears ultimate responsibility for on field performance, he should have been asking questions of his list management for why talent was thin beyond the best 25.

List management doesn't report to the coach, it reports in to the coaches boss, so at best you can have a conversation or at worst a hissy fit but you can't discipline them or change their goals and objectives. The list manager is using the crystal ball so that the picks they draft now can contribute to the future team a decade and more away, far beyond the likely tenure of the coach (though there is some thought for the present with trade ins etc) - rather than appease a coaches immediate need for x.

From the coaches perspective, while exciting young players have potential, it's your 24+ group that are the bit that your team is built around. So, it would be "6 to 10 years ago, why did you draft these squibs!". So, some damage was done (talent being thin beyond the best 25 that you mention) way before Brad Lloyd started in our list management back in ? the end of 2007 rings some distant hazy bell.

But crikey! A future gun tall forward should already have been developing for 2-3 years before Ross even arrived, we had a little bit of Keplar when he wasn't injured in the role for a while, but missing a quality tall working with Pav was a critical flaw (along with depth as you mentioned and other things) in our teams contending years, a list management fubar.

 

[Docker82]

I'm biased because Danyle Pearce is one of my least favourite Freo players ever. Always seemed to go missing in big games. I would have played Clanceeeeeeee Pearce over Danyle.

I was a big fan of Clancee Pearce. Always felt he was underrated.

You’ll never see me include him (or Danyle) in lists of our bottom six players between 2013-2015 and I think I’ve made those lists, if anything, a little too often.

 

[UFO Tatsu]

Calling it now, this thread will end up being 100+ pages long.

Nice to see nothing much has changed since I was last here lol

 

[Inveigh Slang]

Nice to see nothing much has changed since I was last here lol

No they have mate

You were around when Bushie was at his most vocal. Was some fun reading

 

[Inveigh Slang]

So what is your point?
My point was that I think some of the posting suggesting Lyon didn't have as good a list to work with as Longmuir were a bit disingenuous as I think history showed them to be a pretty solid team with an elite top end.

I agree with you

 

[UFO Tatsu]

No they have mate

You were around when Bushie was at his most vocal. Was some fun reading

Good old days. Bushie and Reg were some of my fav posters.

 

[Scham]

Cost us a flag in 06 and I will never be convinced otherwise

What did? His coaching?

 

[Scham]

I think the point is with Ross is, could he develop a young list? He certainly played them, but could he develop them.
Personally I think he battled to develop all the kids & concentrated on the ones he thought would be valuable to the starting line up.
Not good when you have injuries. Clearly the difference between Ross & Jlo, albeit very early, is what Justin can get out of the non best 22 players.
But he has been a development coach which potentially makes him more rounded.

That was the big knock on Ross coming out of his time at the Saints, and his time with us particularly 2012 - 2015 did nothing to disprove that.

 

[The Heartbreaker]

List management doesn't report to the coach, it reports in to the coaches boss, so at best you can have a conversation or at worst a hissy fit but you can't discipline them or change their goals and objectives. The list manager is using the crystal ball so that the picks they draft now can contribute to the future team a decade and more away, far beyond the likely tenure of the coach (though there is some thought for the present with trade ins etc) - rather than appease a coaches immediate need for x.

From the coaches perspective, while exciting young players have potential, it's your 24+ group that are the bit that your team is built around. So, it would be "6 to 10 years ago, why did you draft these squibs!". So, some damage was done (talent being thin beyond the best 25 that you mention) way before Brad Lloyd started in our list management back in ? the end of 2007 rings some distant hazy bell.

But crikey! A future gun tall forward should already have been developing for 2-3 years before Ross even arrived, we had a little bit of Keplar when he wasn't injured in the role for a while, but missing a quality tall working with Pav was a critical flaw (along with depth as you mentioned and other things) in our teams contending years, a list management fubar.

If Ross wasn’t responsible for the bad times, then why was he responsible for the good times?

 

[salim malik]

If Ross wasn’t responsible for the bad times, then why was he responsible for the good times?

Most recognize that the last years were not great but some won't accept that the first years of Ross were the best so far .
Ross is not responsible for what happens going forward though , good or bad.
The future is now in the hands of the new regime.

 

[The Heartbreaker]

Long and short of it, we were starved of quite a few years of quality youth (that's why Ross never played the young uns in our contending years, there wasn't much that was worth playing) and it all caught up with us because we weren't putting quality into the list at the rate it was retiring, forcing a rebuild.

Not sure of this, Ross gave Sutcliffe an extended run in his first year, and Sutcliffe was pick 77 in a depleted draft. At some point he lost confidence in who we were drafting, probably around the time of the Josh Simpson episode.


But the reality is we never truly committed to a rebuild the way the club forced Harvey to in 2008. It was always half a rebuild, with some hope of competing quickly again, which is why we traded for McCarthy, Lobb, Hogan, Wilson, Hamling, Hill, etc.

 

[The Heartbreaker]

Most recognize that the last years were not great but some won't accept that the first years of Ross were the best so far .
Ross is not responsible for what happens going forward though , good or bad.
The future is now in the hands of the new regime.

I think everyone agrees 2012-2015 were the best years in Freo’s history, but they weren’t good enough to guarantee Lyon his position after the dreadful performances of 2016-2019.

 

[Sully90]

Most recognize that the last years were not great but some won't accept that the first years of Ross were the best so far .
Ross is not responsible for what happens going forward though , good or bad.
The future is now in the hands of the new regime.

I've never met a Docker supporter who doesn't think that 2012-2015 were the best years of our history.

 

[salim malik]

I think everyone agrees 2012-2015 were the best years in Freo’s history, but they weren’t good enough to guarantee Lyon his position after the dreadful performances of 2016-2019.

No some will not recognise that 12 to 15 were great years.
The complaining started the minute Lyon walked thru the door and never let up for the next 8 years.
To defensive, won't play the kids blah blah blah.
The back stabbers were waiting to pounce and when the hard times started they were waiting with sledge hammers.