Roast Road trip earns concern

[Blu3_Boy]

CARLTON coach Brett Ratten has questioned the NAB Challenge schedule after his side was confirmed for a journey to Bunbury, Western Australia for its last match of the pre-season.The loser of Saturday night's semi-final was slated to meet Fremantle at the regional ground and an under-strength Carlton became that opponent when it lost to Geelong by 17 points.
Ratten shared his concerns over the timing and suitability of the venue after the match.
"It's an interesting concept from the AFL. That's probably the hardest road trip of the NAB Challenge," Ratten said.
"We play the earliest game [of the premiership season] and we've got to go to Bunbury and do a final rehearsal.
"It's quite interesting that we can't do a full dress rehearsal at an AFL ground and make sure our IT (information technology) is up to speed and all our communication and everything like that.
"I don't think Bunbury and Subiaco would have the same facilities. Probably the timing of that is pretty interesting for us."
Carlton meets Richmond in the highly-anticipated premiership season opener on Thursday, March 26.
Ratten said the possibility of playing in Bunbury next weekend had no impact on the selection of his side and maintained star players Chris Judd, Brendan Fevola and Marc Murphy were always scheduled to rest in the third week of the competition.
Ratten was behind the concept to take the game to the country, but felt such excursions should be taken earlier in the competition and not the final week when teams have one last hit-out.
"Most teams in the final week pretty much do a full dress rehearsal and try and get [all their] players back," he said.
"For us we play on the Thursday so it's not like we can even use the following Saturday [after the NAB Challenge match] to tinker because you don't want to be putting players through practice matches knowing that you have to play on Thursday night.
"So our preparation is probably a bit different to Richmond who are on the same schedule as us."
On Friday, the Tigers will play the Brisbane Lions at Gold Coast Stadium, which regularly hosts AFL games.




http://www.carltonfc.com.au/tabid/4311/default.aspx?newsid=72983

 

[iRemember87]

AFL should take itself straight to the tribunal for idiotism, no match review panel required.

 

[Aussie Joe]

Play the kids again, and leave the stars home.

 

[Chism]

Play the kids again, and leave the stars home.

Yep

Not worth the risk for our Stars.

 

[Murph_The_Smurf]

geez ratts, should of thought of this before last nights game

I'm no fitness guru , but was was wrong with playing the stars last night , could of well won in the end !! then resting them all next week and the week after??

 

[Jatz]

Yep

Not worth the risk for our Stars.

agreed

 

[HBF]

Play the kids again, and leave the stars home.

Spot on AJ.
We know what we can expect from the guys that we rested last night, and i'd even go so far to rest Stevens, Thornton and maybe even Jamison. What's the point in flying them all the way to Perth, and then jump on a bus for a couple of hours down to Bunbury. They'd be far better off leaving them in Melbounre, meaning that they'll be cherry ripe for the opening round against Richmond.

 

[blue_boys]

geez ratts, should of thought of this before last nights game

I'm no fitness guru , but was was wrong with playing the stars last night , could of well won in the end !! then resting them all next week and the week after??

They wouldn't have rested them against Collingwood in a NAB GF... even if it is the preseason and we could beat them with our B side we wouldn't have wanted to leave it to chance.

Last nights game probably worked out perfectly for Ratts.... I would rather our guns be firing come September rather then wasting it at the start of March. The side will be nearly the same as last week, Stevo will probably play considering he is suspended till 4th of April and needs the game time. Doubt they'll bring anyone back maybe just Robbo and Houla.

 

[blues4flag]

Spot on AJ.
We know what we can expect from the guys that we rested last night, and i'd even go so far to rest Stevens, Thornton and maybe even Jamison. What's the point in flying them all the way to Perth, and then jump on a bus for a couple of hours down to Bunbury. They'd be far better off leaving them in Melbounre, meaning that they'll be cherry ripe for the opening round against Richmond.

You'd think the coaching team would want the final dress rehearsal though, to iron out the kinks and make sure everything is in place for round 1. I wouldn't want to be going in against the Tiges with our better players not having played a game in almost a month...

While it might affect our preparation in the lead up to the Tigers game, we do have almost two weeks to get over it.

 

[Blues_Man]

geez ratts, should of thought of this before last nights game

I'm no fitness guru , but was was wrong with playing the stars last night , could of well won in the end !! then resting them all next week and the week after??

Our MC and fitness specialists > you..and by a long long way.

 

[rdhopkins2]

Just take the kids. Leave the stars at home. With all due respect to the people of regional areas, AFL players and teams do not want to play at sub-standard grounds with sub-standard facilities. Why risk your players?

Hence they will continue to play reserves sides if you schedule games there. Bring the practice games back to the real venues and add an extra community camp for each club instead for preseason.

Carlton should play it's worst side possible. Maybe take Fev for some PR but that's about it.

 

[Murph_The_Smurf]

Our MC and fitness specialists > you..and by a long long way.

lack of reading skills ?? read my post again . and to be honest you dont need to a scholar to know two weeks off is better than 1 .
never did i say they made the wrong decision because, im a fitness guru and i know more than the carlton mc and fitness guys , i actually stated the opposite . wake up grumpy this morning???

 

[Murph_The_Smurf]

Just take the kids. Leave the stars at home. With all due respect to the people of regional areas, AFL players and teams do not want to play at sub-standard grounds with sub-standard facilities. Why risk your players?

Hence they will continue to play reserves sides if you schedule games there. Bring the practice games back to the real venues and add an extra community camp for each club instead for preseason.

Carlton should play it's worst side possible. Maybe take Fev for some PR but that's about it.

hence my reason in winning last night game and resting the players for 2 solid weeks . but each to their own i suppose.

We would of had a clearer indication of where our kids are at by playing collingwood they're the team to beat in this competition (nab cup) . geelong were toying with our kids!

 

[Jack TY]

Play the guns for a half to top them off and then put them in cotton wool. Let the kids get all the experience they can get.

 

[Ryan Dixon Webb]

The problem with taking the stars over and playing them for a half or whatever is that if the game's is in the balance they aren't going to be rested, temptation my friends.

 

[Kaladin Stormblessed]

Yep play the kids and rest the stars, actually borrow some Bullants players and let them play like Hawthorn against Adelaide.

Then play an intra-club full dress rehearsal at Princes Park.

As we saw, our reserves will give us a better hit-out in the intra club than Fremantle anyway

 

[celtic_pride]

As someone else said, no point in Ratts complaining really, we all knew from a week ago the loser of the semi-final was always going to play in the middle of nowhere in WA, so think it's a bit rich of Ratten to blame the AFL, if he wanted to avoid the trip and bad timeslot, he should have played some of the stars to ensure that we won and avoided this nightmare fixture in the first place.

Besides there is a week's gap between the practise game, and rnd 1, so I don't think the timing of the game is really an issue ...

 

[Chops_a_must]

I fail to see how this fixture is worse than a WA team going to Tassie, Gold Coast or Canberra...

 

[thylacine60]

I fail to see how this fixture is worse than a WA team going to Tassie, Gold Coast or Canberra...

It's a ****ing practice match against a third rate regional franchise played in a sand-pit? Fail to see that, Docks_a_bust.

 

[Chops_a_must]

Highly logical post.

 

[celtic_pride]

Highly logical post.

Don't worry mate, it's actually quite hard to argue with someone who has more anger management issues then Mike Tyson and OJ Simpson

 

[blue_boys]

Don't worry mate, it's actually quite hard to argue with someone who has more anger management issues then Mike Tyson and OJ Simpson

Lance Armstrong is pretty mad i hear.......

 

[Ryda]

CARLTON coach Brett Ratten has questioned the NAB Challenge schedule after his side was confirmed for a journey to Bunbury, Western Australia for its last match of the pre-season.The loser of Saturday night's semi-final was slated to meet Fremantle at the regional ground and an under-strength Carlton became that opponent when it lost to Geelong by 17 points.
Ratten shared his concerns over the timing and suitability of the venue after the match.
"It's an interesting concept from the AFL. That's probably the hardest road trip of the NAB Challenge," Ratten said.
"We play the earliest game [of the premiership season] and we've got to go to Bunbury and do a final rehearsal.
"It's quite interesting that we can't do a full dress rehearsal at an AFL ground and make sure our IT (information technology) is up to speed and all our communication and everything like that.
"I don't think Bunbury and Subiaco would have the same facilities. Probably the timing of that is pretty interesting for us."

http://www.carltonfc.com.au/tabid/4311/default.aspx?newsid=72983

Where exactly does Brett Ratten think Bunbury is? I don't think this is anywhere near as hard a road trip as going to places like Alice Springs and Cairns.
If he wants a dress rehearsal at an AFL ground what the ......... does he think Subiaco is - there is an AFL game there every week

 

[Warsaw]

At least the boys get to travel. Firm believer that we should play at least 1 game in the preseason interstate.

 

[iRemember87]

Where exactly does Brett Ratten think Bunbury is? I don't think this is anywhere near as hard a road trip as going to places like Alice Springs and Cairns.
If he wants a dress rehearsal at an AFL ground what the ......... does he think Subiaco is - there is an AFL game there every week

Ratt's said that he doesn't think Bunbury would be of the same standard as Subiaco...re-ead the article before posting please.

Ratt's would be happy to play at Subi.

The difference between playing in Cairns or AS is there is a flight to those areas and not a 2hr bus ride, see the difference.