Lets not write off 2016

[RedFury]

New footage has surfaced showcasing the real reason Thomas had to be sidelined for the year, after his first minute injury in 2015

Geez his team must really dislike him. He gets injured so they send on two blokes to finish the job.

 

[Dramoth]

You're missing the point. Thomas didn't miss the season because of an ongoing issue. It was an impact injury that largely put him down for the year.

That could happen to anyone and can't be put down to 'a body issue'

Carrots getting hammered in the first few minutes against Essendon in 2012 when they were all juiced up. Thats the same sort of injury that Daisy got, but people are whinging about Daisy's body... they would be bang on the money if his ankle had failed him... but to dislocate his shoulder... completely different injury and can't put the blame on Daisy's ankle.

Some people just won't listen I think...

 

[Dramoth]

It will be interesting to see if Cripps is in the leadership group. He was the one the side really fell in behind in our better performances this year.

With Judds output dropping in recent years Murphy has copped a hard tag from talentless hacks like Crowley and McAffer who through greater size are able to curb his run at the ball. Cripps stepped up this year and showed the way and Murphy was able to return to the roll he played beside a dominant Judd.

People underestimate how much impact one player can have on a group. Cripps is the cornerstone of our rebuild. Captain in 2018.

I can see an almost 30 Smurph stepping down as captain in 2017 and taking the role of vice captain to our new captain Cripps.

Captain Cripps in 2017.

 

[Dramoth]

I don't see how 2016 can be any worse than watching Carlton over the last three years, even if we win zero games.

Well go support Hawthorn or Richmond or even Essendon*.

The future looks good and we don't need negative supporters always dragging the club down.

 

[First Poster]

Well go support Hawthorn or Richmond or even Essendon*.

The future looks good and we don't need negative supporters always dragging the club down.

In his defence. I'm not 100% sure he was being negative. He was just saying "it can't get any worst"

Or maybe I'm just being optimistic.

 

[Styxx]

Nah mate, Peacock had a history of crapping on every single thing the club has done.

He is one of those guys who will never be happy.

 

[MC_Doggy_Frog18]

My ladder prediction for 2015 had Carlton 9th. lol

 

[MC_Doggy_Frog18]

My ladder prediction for 2015 had Carlton 9th. lol

Should being 19th.

 

[La Dispute]

First ever post. I'm sick and tired of conventional theory that rebuild means years in the wilderness. Bulldogs proved that wrong. West coast went from nothing to top in short time. I'm an optimist. Lets surprise em all....

Absolutely.

Too many clubs in the past, specifically Carlton, Melbourne, Richmond and to a lesser extent, St. Kilda bought too heavily into the rebuilding discourse and aligned any future success with long-term meandering down the bottom.

It worked for Hawthorn in '04, who brought in Roughead and Franklin and then for Collingwood in '05, who took Thomas and Pendlebury. However, the system then changed and clubs couldn't afford to stay down for too long. Melbourne's continual losing manifested in perpetual mediocrity, which permeated the whole club.

The other thing with these two clubs is that they invest heavily in the culture of their clubs. Say what you want about Hodge at Hawthorn or Swan at Collingwood but both these teams have top-down leadership which empowers players to take responsibility on-field and have some level of autonomy on the ground. That is the sort of system the great Carlton team of the 90's had. That's what the Brisbane Lions had in the early 00's, Geelong the late 00's. There are patterns in these things.

Going back to the Bulldogs example; Griffin was an awful, entitled captain who was happy to go out and get a kick without having too much input into the direction of the club or providing the patient, calm leadership that someone like Bob Murphy exudes.

So in saying that, becoming invested in a rebuild and completely distancing your club from the rest of the competition has proven to be a dangerous, fickle and inadvertently treacherous path to tread. I certainly hope mid-year this year will be the last time we hear the word 'rebuild' and we can play good, exciting footy to completely mitigate the need for categorisation.

Remember the last time you heard about the Bulldogs rebuilding? Neither do I.

There are so many more variables in the AFL than we can poke a stick at, so lets not have any expectations and let the footy take care of itself. It'll be much easier now we've lost 3 no-shows.

Our future backline looks mint too btw.

 

[ESKIE]

Can't dispute that

 

[doodles98]

re: thread title.... to avoid disappointment... I would if I were you.

 

[La Dispute]

re: thread title.... to avoid disappointment... I would if I were you.

Disappointment isn't something to worry about.

 

[sosos]

re: thread title.... to avoid disappointment... I would if I were you.

(Cue Collingwood stereotype)
If you were me, you would have teeth and a job.

 

[jj1978]

It will be a season which is so unpredictable... We've had 4 seasons straight of such bad luck with injuries we'd hope that this year we finally get some luck in that regard.

If we start the season off with some wins the confidence in the group will permeate... The senior players will play with some pep and the fight to get a spot in the 22 will increase and you get what happened at the dogs this season.

If we start poorly then it'll be the usual, we are young and building and don't expect success for another two years... As long as the new coaching group can get these players mentally playing at their best we will be a big surprise packet.

 

[therubbernub]

At the risk of stating the obvious AFL is a ZERO SUM GAME. All this pontificating about what we need to do to win a premiership completely ignores the fact that there are 17 other teams all trying to do the same thing and mostly, all are now converging on a very similar methodology ( culture, leadership, etc)
So it is never going to work simply following what the others are doing unless you have a natural advantage. Without said advantage you have only 1:16 chance of winning a premiership. There is a missing factor. LUCK. Hawthorn were just really lucky for a few drafts and happen to pick highly skilled , natural leaders that really complemented their existing team structure. They were the first to the party with the club culture first philosophy and along with their lucky but also good recruiting, they have become the team to emulate. Geelong were lucky as well with some father son selections that really set them up.

We on the other hand have been both unlucky and incompetent with our drafting and have at the same time stuck with losing bets for too long rather than moving second rate players on.
Each draft selection is a bet, some are surer bets than others but nevertheless they are never a sure thing. Thus the more bets that you have, the more chance you have of winning a bet. Those players become 200 Game players and add to your leadership. The losing bets should ideally be recognised as such, as soon as possible and a decision to delist made. Occasionally that may backfire and the player kick on. Mostly they dont.

I really believe that our hopelessly inept early drafting, ageing stars (kept for too long) and AFL imposed draft penalties of the late 90's on, gave us such a poor base to develop from that we are only now starting to recover. Sure Hawthorn was smart in letting Croad McPharlin and Thompson go and in so doing picked up Franklin Roughead Hodge Lewis and Mitchel. In hindsight that set them up for their enormous success. But they had those players that had trade currency. Also , what if instead they werent so lucky .For example Richmond could have and should have taken Roughhead before the Hawks, but instead took Tambling. The Hawks took Thorpe instead of Joel Selwood for example in 2006 showing just how fallible they are. This demonstrates two things
1. The Hawks had luck on their side and
2. You have to trade quality players to get picks which allow you to rebuild (with luck) .
Carlton in the early 2000's simply didnt have anything of value to trade. We had no senior players of note , a result of the delayed exit of the superstars of the '95 premiership, and subsequent lack of development of replacement players. We simply had no ammunition to fire even if we had wanted to embrace the draft. Our drafting then became necessarily reactionary ( the famous ruck /KPP fiascos) in order to fill glaring holes. We also tried to take risks ie gamble in order to try to unearth overlooked players with our later picks to try to plug holes. Through bad luck and bad management, mostly these strategies failed dismally. Consequently our depth has never recovered, which has been exposed in recent years by bad runs with injuries.

So what is the point of all this? It is really, to demonstrate that merely embracing the draft (finally ) we are just putting ourselves back in the game. A game that 17 other clubs are playing with a similar intensity and professionalism . We still need luck and also the right key people in order to take the next step. Our luck is unknown and our key people SOS and the coaching panel are also unknown. Despite our best efforts we may still fall behind, or with some good luck we might do a Bulldogs.

 

[rp84]

2016 definitely is NOT a write off. It will be great to see a motivated, albeit inexperienced, 22 players.

I cant wait to watch out new guys, and our new coach.

However, to think we will win more than 4 games is very optimistic.

To think we will be an outside chance for top 10 is insane haha

Our midfield should stop us from getting belted every week. That said, 10 goals losses will be common.

We are a good chance to have pick 1 and a priority pick next year. Will they give us pick 2 or pick 20?

 

[SeVi]

2016 definitely is NOT a write off. It will be great to see a motivated, albeit inexperienced, 22 players.

I cant wait to watch out new guys, and our new coach.

However, to think we will win more than 4 games is very optimistic.

To think we will be an outside chance for top 10 is insane haha

Our midfield should stop us from getting belted every week. That said, 10 goals losses will be common.

We are a good chance to have pick 1 and a priority pick next year. Will they give us pick 2 or pick 20?

If Melbourne and Brisbane cannot get a priority pick, no chance Carlton gets one.

 

[The Flying Doormat]

I wouldnt write off 2016 and heres why...

*The players we have traded/delisted/retired. Gave us nothing, with the exception of Judd/Bell.
*Thomas missed the whole season. Gibbs, Kruezer large chunks of it.
* New coach, new approach
* We should attract genuine quality at 1,8,11,19 with a real youthfull exuberance

Don't forget the benefit of getting games into players like Graham, Holman, SOJ and hopefully more development from Boekhurst, Jaksch and Smith.

 

[HARKER]

We play the Tigers in the season opener again.

Yarran vs his ex-teammates hey?

 

[La Dispute]

You can't emphasise enough how good Jacob Weitering is either - If he plays like Lever did for Adelaide this year that'll be a big win.

It's pretty much unprecedented taking a defender with pick 1 and the more you think about it, the more sense it makes. When key forwards are drafted early to developing clubs, they face the scrutiny of the entire football community that hinders their development.

With Weitering, the ball will be at his end of the ground a good portion of the time, which will accelerate his development and allow him to learn the structures of AFL. Given him three years and he takes over the number 1 defender's mantle.

I reckon we'll see him push up on to the wing and up the ground at times too. His ground level skills are the equivalent of most midfielders and his reach enables him to impact more contests around the ground. You can see in his highlights video how clever he is at trapping the ball and dishing off to a nearby team mate.

 

[Prem17]

I can see an almost 30 Smurph stepping down as captain in 2017 and taking the role of vice captain to our new captain Cripps.

Captain Cripps in 2017.

I would like to see that happen in 2016, except that it would be pointless having Murphy appointed as vice captain, just relinquish the position and hand the v/c role to Docherty.
It's a big call re Cripps but Murphy would be able to concentrate on being the goal kicking mid he once was.
If all the raps are on the money (and we do recruit him), Weitering will be likely to be v/c within a few years as well.
New coach, new rebuild, new strategies, and a new Captain

 

[Prem17]

We play the Tigers in the season opener again.

Yarran vs his ex-teammates hey?

I would like to wish him all the best............. nah - **** him!

 

[Aphrodite]

re: thread title.... to avoid disappointment... I would if I were you.

To avoid disappointment, don't bother coming back if I were you!

 

[TheCoach16]

Pardon the intrusion.

I'm not here to troll at all, just to offer up my experience with where you're at.

Tigers were in a very similar position to you guys going into 2010, new coach coming from Hawks, a mass exodus of experience, and an incredibly young list seemingly full of holes.

And in the first 9 weeks, we got hammered from pillar to post, and couldn't get close to winning a game.

But eventually, at some point, the boys got sick of losing, and sick of being called worse than Fitzroy, and started really digging in. We pushed the Hawks in Round 8 that year, and then finally in Round 10, we broke through and had a win against Port, and that breakthrough win really set the standard for the remainder of 2010.

We ended up basically splitting the season from that point (won 5 lost 7) and discovered a few gems in Riewoldt and Martin.

To be honest, your list as it stands is probably in a worse position than what we were in 2010, at least on paper, so it's gonna be a really hard first couple of months for you guys in 2016. But having an ultra-positive coach like Bolton will help, and as long as you are willing to put in the hard yards, you'll be back sooner than probably some people expect.

Just gotta make sure you absolutely nail these 4 picks in the Top 20 this year.

I'm going to pretend I didn't see this post. You CANNOT ! As a Richmond supporter come on to this board and make that much sense!
You're meant to post things like, "oh the Tiges will win a premiership and you guys are shit!"...
That's what I expect, not some measured, well articulated, logical post with insight and perspective.
You're really letting your side down.

 

[El Topo]

Can't wait until 2018 when we have several genuine captaincy options. Hasn't happened yet this century.