AFL Autopsy RND 13: Done by the Blues

[TheGrizz]

You cant have 1 without the other though can you? I feel like it was sold to us as Truck head coach, creator of defensive system. Cara right hand man, creator of ball movement and attack which was in direct alignment with Trucks defensive setup. Even this year we're told Cara had tried to implement the next layer to the plan which is where we've tripped up.

Whatever ball movement we would have planned on would have gone out the window considering we have had Langford, Jones, Stringer and Snelling out for the majority of the year.

That's 3 of our 6 starting forwards and our best wingman.

 

[Lore]

I think that (independent external review) would be counter-productive, costly and unnecessary. Starting again would add a couple of years to the rebuild. Working with what we've got is better than starting again. We look for free agents at next draft according to Mahoney, fill the gaps and build the list from the considerable talent that's already there. Adversity can be character and team building - as long as the negativity doesn't threaten to blow it all to bits.

An independent external review doesn’t mean they’re going to recommend a burn it all down rebuild.

But they might get rid of the CEO and the list manager and get someone who can competently run a budget and a hiring process for a professional football club rather than a small time marketing consultant.

As it stands the current build is effectively doomed for lack of competent management, so not having a proper review by people who aren’t wearing blinkers is actively undermining it through poor decision making.

You’re not going to develop players in a bare to the bones VFL program that doesn’t have enough decent state league players for the kids to even practice anything about system or structures. The holes in that list mean they’re not even playing in position half the time.

 

[Bjchan13]

Whatever ball movement we would have planned on would have gone out the window considering we have had Langford, Jones, Stringer and Snelling out for the majority of the year.

That's 3 of our 6 starting forwards and our best wingman.

Surely the gameplan is not thrown out the window when you have injuries?

 

[Matthew_Lloyd]

The game was over
i dont give a rats toss bag about Carlton why are we a team without any structure or systems

I never said we had a chance of winning. I merely pointed out that they only managed two behinds in over a quarter and a half against a team horribly out of it.

 

[sameolds33]

An independent external review doesn’t mean they’re going to recommend a burn it all down rebuild.

But they might get rid of the CEO and the list manager and get someone who can competently run a budget and a hiring process for a professional football club rather than a small time marketing consultant.

As it stands the current build is effectively doomed for lack of competent management, so not having a proper review by people who aren’t wearing blinkers is actively undermining it through poor decision making.

You’re not going to develop players in a bare to the bones VFL program that doesn’t have enough decent state league players for the kids to even practice anything about system or structures. The holes in that list mean they’re not even playing in position half the time.

But what is the point of the review? - if the aim of it is to "get rid of the CEO and the list manager and get someone who can competently run a budget and a hiring process for a professional football club rather than a small time marketing consultant." then they should just get rid of those administrators. The board doesn't need the unrest and cost and set back of an external review to do that.

My own feeling is that the board thinks that what ever's wrong can be fixed within the existing structures and administration without blowing the club to bits again. They should resist the knee jerk reaction because of this season's on-field issues.

 

[TheGrizz]

Surely the gameplan is not thrown out the window when you have injuries?

Not thrown out the window, but much harder to execute.

I think we saw what our gameplan looked like without our best players and we were horrid so we tweaked it to the players available and have been catching up since.

 

[Lore]

But what is the point of the review? - if the aim of it is to "get rid of the CEO and the list manager and get someone who can competently run a budget and a hiring process for a professional football club rather than a small time marketing consultant." then they should just get rid of those administrators. The board doesn't need the unrest and cost and set back of an external review to do that.

My own feeling is that the board thinks that what ever's wrong can be fixed within the existing structures and administration without blowing the club to bits again. They should resist the knee jerk reaction because of this season's on-field issues.

Well it’s worked well for the last 20 years so

 

[Bjchan13]

Not thrown out the window, but much harder to execute.

I think we saw what our gameplan looked like without our best players and we were horrid so we tweaked it to the players available and have been catching up since.

The players dont look slightly off the pace due to a few injuries and a minor tweak to the gameplan. They look completely confused and unsure of what they are supposed to be doing. There is a huge breakdown in communication and expectations by the look of it.

 

[sameolds33]

Well it’s worked well for the last 20 years so

My initial comment was "there's a lot to unpack there and a lot that is wrongly sheeted home as the responsibility of the current playing list, coaching team and administration."

 

[Koopa]

Please make it happen Cupido4lyfe

Reddit's got us covered:



Arrive, raise hell, leave

 

[JT_the_Man]

I hate this post because it is what essendon supporters are reduced to
the endeavour was there is an indictment of our pathetic football club
the endeavour should be a non negotiable
just like a doctor tries hard to treat patients and a paramedic tries hard every day to save lives
the club is on its knees because of incompetence, weak decision making and an apathetic playing group
showing endeavour is not something to be celebrated rather expected as a non negotiable

You’re not wrong, I’m just trying to draw something positive out of this s**t show.

 

[Bunk Moreland]

One less scoring shot than the Blues. We weren’t that bad. They obviously have a great forward line with McKay and Curnow so were more efficient.

We urgently need a strong key forward which should be a priority come trade / FA time, it’ll help Jones and Wright enormously. We need to replace Hooker.

 

[Foreverdon]

Is there anywhere I can watch the whole pre-game celebrations

 

[Albertross]

Is there anywhere I can watch the whole pre-game celebrations

Kayo shows most of it I think

 

[Schnitzengruben]

Have to agree there.

Yes, the scoreboard always remained within 5-6 goals - a theoretical chance. But we never looked close to worrying them without Carlton leaving 2nd gear.

 

[Foxx]

Have to agree there.

Yes, the scoreboard always remained within 5-6 goals - a theoretical chance. But we never looked close to worrying them without Carlton leaving 2nd gear.

They are perfect results atm.
Competitive loses.
It keeps the kids interested, and we get high draft picks at the end of the year.

 

[ant555]

The players dont look slightly off the pace due to a few injuries and a minor tweak to the gameplan. They look completely confused and unsure of what they are supposed to be doing. There is a huge breakdown in communication and expectations by the look of it.

Never under estimate what playing a lot of young players does to what you are working on. The mistakes they are bound to make create a bit of mayhem within the whole learning new styles / attitude. The fact the coach is trying to build a blue collar style with players who are not blue collar does not help either.
The break down in communication is coming from the lack of ability to transition from attack to defense quickly. Good sides have a number of players who make that decision quicker. They make less mistakes as far as transition goes. Right now we have a top end group of midfielders that are very attack focused but struggle to switch to defense consistently and they can ball watch a bit before shifting their focus. We also have a forward line with no real pressure forwards taking up the slack.

The confusion / breakdown comes from repeated mistakes not just from on or two guys but from various members of the team at continual stages. So it may be Perkins makes 5 or 6 errors due to inexperience. Parish and Merrett make 5 or 6 errors due to being hard wired attacking players. Shiel makes 5 or 6 errors due to be an attacking player and not always playing the defensive role he can actually play and so it goes on with others making mistakes as well. The confidence goes down and players go back in their shells not wanting to make mistakes.
Throw in a real lack of leadership across the side that ca help rectify some of the on field stuff and you get what we have.

Personally I think we need this to happen as bad as it is. Last year we got the usual spike from a new coach and a playing group escaping what was a pretty bad year in the bubble with a bit of infighting and players wanting to leave. A lot of the issues where left behind and the club was looking for a new direction.
This year the reality of the grind has set in. We get to find out if the coach can be up to it after not really running a proper process to appoint him. We also will find out about the top level of our playing group.

Previously we have floated around the mid table 90% of the time and never gone in either direction. We have not been good or really bad. Now we are seeing really bad which is how you learn a lot about where we are really at. There are a lot of issues. Is the coach any good ? How much of an impact has total list management / building really hurt the balance of the list ? Has the poor quality of the VFL side and total lack of footy for the players hurt our development ?
How much has the injury situation and having players not ready to play compromised the ability for pressure on selection ?

For me right now I do not know if Truck will be the guy or not. My gut says he will get sacked this year if we can get Clarkson or we completely fold up and win no more or one or two games and look totally uncompetitive. If he pulls something out of the fire and we win a few and play some half decent footy then he lives another year but will still be sacked if we are a 8 or 9 win side.

It sound strange but it doe not worry me as I have never been under the opinion we are close to a flag despite the club saying 2 or 3 years. I got seduced by the improvement in team defense in the back half of last year and thought we should be playing finals with no injuries but that bird got shot down quickly in the new year with the injuries just continually coming. The reason I am not worried is we need list changes and we need to be bad and not just mid range so the real issues are exposed.
In my mind this is a 3 to 5 year process to see if we can build something that is finals competitive. Right now we are in year two of that despite Truck having been the learner driver in 2020 . I think the process stays the same even if we replace the coach and the reason I say that is even if Truck can not deliver or sell the game plan the base of it is right. We need to get away from being the nice club with nice leaders. We need more Blue Collar. This means we do actually need to suck so this can be exposed.
It now comes down to Josh Mahoney to steer a similar plan he drove at Melbourne where they went after competitive players . They made selection mistakes along the way but in the end they found enough via draft / trade / FA to change things and become a serious side even with a few speed bumps along the way.
We may fail again but being what we where for the last 15 years and being a side that was just within reach was simply giving us more of the same mid table average stuff.

 

[Bjchan13]

Never under estimate what playing a lot of young players does to what you are working on. The mistakes they are bound to make create a bit of mayhem within the whole learning new styles / attitude. The fact the coach is trying to build a blue collar style with players who are not blue collar does not help either.
The break down in communication is coming from the lack of ability to transition from attack to defense quickly. Good sides have a number of players who make that decision quicker. They make less mistakes as far as transition goes. Right now we have a top end group of midfielders that are very attack focused but struggle to switch to defense consistently and they can ball watch a bit before shifting their focus. We also have a forward line with no real pressure forwards taking up the slack.

The confusion / breakdown comes from repeated mistakes not just from on or two guys but from various members of the team at continual stages. So it may be Perkins makes 5 or 6 errors due to inexperience. Parish and Merrett make 5 or 6 errors due to being hard wired attacking players. Shiel makes 5 or 6 errors due to be an attacking player and not always playing the defensive role he can actually play and so it goes on with others making mistakes as well. The confidence goes down and players go back in their shells not wanting to make mistakes.
Throw in a real lack of leadership across the side that ca help rectify some of the on field stuff and you get what we have.

Personally I think we need this to happen as bad as it is. Last year we got the usual spike from a new coach and a playing group escaping what was a pretty bad year in the bubble with a bit of infighting and players wanting to leave. A lot of the issues where left behind and the club was looking for a new direction.
This year the reality of the grind has set in. We get to find out if the coach can be up to it after not really running a proper process to appoint him. We also will find out about the top level of our playing group.

Previously we have floated around the mid table 90% of the time and never gone in either direction. We have not been good or really bad. Now we are seeing really bad which is how you learn a lot about where we are really at. There are a lot of issues. Is the coach any good ? How much of an impact has total list management / building really hurt the balance of the list ? Has the poor quality of the VFL side and total lack of footy for the players hurt our development ?
How much has the injury situation and having players not ready to play compromised the ability for pressure on selection ?

For me right now I do not know if Truck will be the guy or not. My gut says he will get sacked this year if we can get Clarkson or we completely fold up and win no more or one or two games and look totally uncompetitive. If he pulls something out of the fire and we win a few and play some half decent footy then he lives another year but will still be sacked if we are a 8 or 9 win side.

It sound strange but it doe not worry me as I have never been under the opinion we are close to a flag despite the club saying 2 or 3 years. I got seduced by the improvement in team defense in the back half of last year and thought we should be playing finals with no injuries but that bird got shot down quickly in the new year with the injuries just continually coming. The reason I am not worried is we need list changes and we need to be bad and not just mid range so the real issues are exposed.
In my mind this is a 3 to 5 year process to see if we can build something that is finals competitive. Right now we are in year two of that despite Truck having been the learner driver in 2020 . I think the process stays the same even if we replace the coach and the reason I say that is even if Truck can not deliver or sell the game plan the base of it is right. We need to get away from being the nice club with nice leaders. We need more Blue Collar. This means we do actually need to suck so this can be exposed.
It now comes down to Josh Mahoney to steer a similar plan he drove at Melbourne where they went after competitive players . They made selection mistakes along the way but in the end they found enough via draft / trade / FA to change things and become a serious side even with a few speed bumps along the way.
We may fail again but being what we where for the last 15 years and being a side that was just within reach was simply giving us more of the same mid table average stuff.

Good post as always Ant. I get the same feeling that Trucks job is under a lot of pressure. Frustrating at the moment because of how we are losing. Not only are we terrible defensively, we have no potency offensively. Our skill level and decision making terrible as well. I would be fine with losing if we could see a clear defensive gamestyle and the our opposition were made to beat us with better play. At the moment our opposition can have their worst night for the year and we will still hand them the 4 points. Agree also the list needs that much work done to it that it will take 2-3 years to be truly competitive. If Truck stays i want to see him, along with Mahoney, make the calls at the end of the year that need to be made

 

[Lore]

 

[Lore]

 

[CBombers17]

Might have looked more likely if half of them did

 

[citizen-erased]

Might have looked more likely if half of them did

Lloyd, Hird, Fletch, Rama & Tippa would be nice about now.

 

[Mr Mojo Risin]

Best way to describe watching this team play is boring. No entertainment factor.

I don't know about that, I found many moments throughout the match to laugh at.

 

[Squeaky]

I don't know about that, I found many moments throughout the match to laugh at.

If you don't laugh, you cry...

 

[Mr Mojo Risin]

If you don't laugh, you cry...

Exactly.