I don’t think we’re at that point just yet, maybe by the bye yes, but if we beat Brisbane it’ll be a very positive place again and the club will claim we’re still on track.
Btw, I’d rate Belly’s thinking of the game and club over both Roos and King.
List Mgmt. Ross Lyon - Sacked
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I don’t think we’re at that point just yet, maybe by the bye yes, but if we beat Brisbane it’ll be a very positive place again and the club will claim we’re still on track.
Btw, I’d rate Belly’s thinking of the game and club over both Roos and King.
My memory isn’t what it used to be but no, I don’t think we did?
Tbh, at the time I wasn’t critical of the signing of Ross to his current contract and couldn’t understand the negativity from some about it. 18 months on from that point I understood.
Yes true, and I would have liked to have kept Crozier. Both of these two may have moved on at the instigation of the club though, rather than them choosing to leave, whereas the club clearly wanted both Weller and Neale to stay.
Are you talking about just being fit and healthy and in the current Freo team? Wouldn't you???
Playing in the AFL, what's more playing for Freo, having great camaraderie across the team. I'd be questioning either the sanity or motivations of anyone on here who'd be turning that one down.
On a regular basis Port, Crows, Saints, North, Essendon, Carlton etc want to get rid of their coach (in the not so long ago past you could add Geelong, WC, Richmond and Pies as well).
If you visit their boards, very few of them want to go for a rookie/untried coach. And most of them then talk about making Clarkson an offer he can't refuse.
In the meantime, Clarkson is contracted until 2022.
That in itself is not a reason for keeping Lyon by the way. If there is a better coach available; get that guy! And eventually the use by date comes for everyone.
I actually caught an interview Crozier did a few weeks ago on SEN and he was liberal in his praise for Lyon. He talked about how Lyon connected well with the players and would be open always to the players coming to him and with their development.
Crozier also went into how the Bulldogs came to him, sold him on owning a position and helping him achieve that. Crozier talked about how appealing that was to him after he had felt he'd stagnated a bit going back into the forward line at Freo after the previous year playing well off half-back (Freo playing him forward to cover for Ballantyne's LTI). Plus the fact it would have the bonus of going home. He said before that moment with the Bulldogs at that time, he was perfectly happy at Freo and saw himself as playing out his career as a Docker.
It's really hard to stop every player being poached, especially interstate ones when you're spending some time on struggle street.
And how do you know when there is? Or even if there isn't one now? Do we just accept what we've got until someone comes knocking on our door or when jinxd is happy that theres someone available? Who do you rate as better than Ross?
Sending him back to the forward line absolutely boggled me after he flourished off half back
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That "hack" Clarkson has his team #11 on the ladder... Game must have passed him by...
Or, is it that there are a range of things that contribute with plenty of it outside of Clarksons coaching (list management, poor picks in the successful years leaving a legacy on the list for the next decade, who and where you play, injury, when you have a team suited to do x and they change the rules - it takes years to change the list to be suited to rules y, etc etc etc). If people can want Clarkson and to sack Ross, they are making an allowance for the things outside of the one mans control and not the other.
Don't forget that he actually went back to WAFL before getting the forward role once Balla was injured. Unbelievably overlooked for Suban in round 1!
I'm not saying we should extend Ross's contract... Just that we need to find a quality coach first. I don't want us to go backwards. I honestly don't know who is available, but I don't want to continually change coaches (aka Gold Coast, Carlton) in the hope that one 'might' be good.
Really? While I could understand some conjecture, moving Crozier back to the forward line was hardly without some sound logic.
He was recruited as a forward and was probably best qualified to play that role in the squad (Crozier acknowledged this himself). Freo needed dynamism and craft in the forward line with other options being pretty thin on the ground.
They probably also liked the weapons Weller brought to half-back and what role that would also play in his development.
It was just one of those circumstantial pivots that shift how things work out.
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Didn't we draft him as a forward?
While our defence could have used him, it was able to do without him. However our forward line needed a zippy small forward. The issue was that Crozier wanted to go at pack marks all the time and not hang back to take the crumbs.
No Freo supporter wants us to go backwards. And we certainly don't want to continually change our head coach but no one is suggesting that either. But most don't want to be middle of the road either.
At some point you have to have faith in the people that are in high positions in our club to make the right choices. I know that's hard given some of our recent form but if our club is even half decent, we'd know exactly who the best head coach candidates currently are. But they're not going to come on Bigfooty and discuss it with us that's for sure, so its not a matter of backing Ross in because you don't know whether there's a better candidate available. Do you think he's good enough to take us to a flag?
During that 2017 preseason , both Weller and Crozier were training across half back as distributors. Then that Ballantyne injury happened and Crozier was moved back to the forward line.
While that may be understandable, after 6 weeks or so of finding Crozier was still a very ordinary forward I think he should have been moved to defence. The defence did need him, we didn't have Wilson and Ryan had injuries and didn't come in to the team until the second half of the year. Weller was going just so-so.
It is necessary to make the most of the players that you have and IMHO we didn't. I feel we are in grave danger of having players poached because we don't play to their strengths.
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Crozier loved to take a speccie. He could only get away with that in the forward line, can't do that much as a defender. To Croziers mind, playing forward would be playing to his strengths to have a crack at mark of the year.
Not sure about that logic.
People have an idea of a minimum set of wins for us for the year but its pretty obvious its the way we are playing as well as the results which is losing people.
Thats completely in Ross' control.
I gotta confess I reckon the whole "playing players out of position" is a bit overblown and a bit arseabouts and this probably illustrates it as much as any (Mayne's case too).
Sure while you want to play to players strengths where you can, the team needs come waaaay in front. The team needed forwards way more than they needed half-back flankers at that time. Crozier had talents that could've made him a valuable forward weapon and it wasn't a reckless experiment to give him some time to develop those.
Mayne's similar, Freo needed forwards way more than they needed defensive wingers (plus they didn't have the incentive of a highly scruitinised long term contract to try and make him work as a player).
How is it completely in his control? You're attributing complete control to an individual of something that 22 other people are trying to execute in coordination (of which, to reiterate, he isn't one of them), while 22 other individuals are simultaneously trying to stop them from doing what they are trying to do.
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Mr Fonebone
Club Legend
TBH I have somewhat tuned out this season ( have not bothered to watch the last two games ) and I cannot see myself tuning back until Lyon is replaced.
This season is eerily similar to recent ones in that, after a promising few games early , the team falls into quagmire due to Ross returning to his default game style. He doesn't seem to be able to help himself. I cannot wait until he is flicked. Sick of the ugly game plan. Sick of the mind-numbing repetitive arrogance after every lousy game.
My biggest fear is that the team scrags away to a few ugly wins and Ross somehow bullsh!ts his way into a contract extension. If that turns out to be the case , then I am done. Better things in life to worry about.
This season is eerily similar to recent ones in that, after a promising few games early , the team falls into quagmire due to Ross returning to his default game style. He doesn't seem to be able to help himself. I cannot wait until he is flicked. Sick of the ugly game plan. Sick of the mind-numbing repetitive arrogance after every lousy game.
My biggest fear is that the team scrags away to a few ugly wins and Ross somehow bullsh!ts his way into a contract extension. If that turns out to be the case , then I am done. Better things in life to worry about.
Of the current coaches who may actually be available, I give you the following as my top 4;
Hinkley
Pyke
Longmire
Dew
I would rule out Longmire as too similar to Lyon, although he is the only one with a premiership.
The others I would ask them to propose a game plan for our current squad which would likely achieve top 4 for attack and top 4 for defence, and what list changes would be required to achieve that, and to name the assistants that would help create that result.
I quite like the idea of Dew as senior coach with Solomon as assistant, but would think Port would already be onto him, and he is contracted for 2020. If the club were interested in Dew then it would be madness to dump Lyon before his contract was up, and I have no doubt that Bell has a spreadsheet somewhere with coaching targets and their contract dates on it. Worth remembering that Connolly, Harvey and Lyon were all head-hunted rather than chosen from a bunch of candidates; Our club prefers to go after the coach they want.
Untried coaches are similar to draft picks; they have no guarantees. Both Drum and Connolly were highly recommended. At least Harvey had something.
Hinkley
Pyke
Longmire
Dew
I would rule out Longmire as too similar to Lyon, although he is the only one with a premiership.
The others I would ask them to propose a game plan for our current squad which would likely achieve top 4 for attack and top 4 for defence, and what list changes would be required to achieve that, and to name the assistants that would help create that result.
I quite like the idea of Dew as senior coach with Solomon as assistant, but would think Port would already be onto him, and he is contracted for 2020. If the club were interested in Dew then it would be madness to dump Lyon before his contract was up, and I have no doubt that Bell has a spreadsheet somewhere with coaching targets and their contract dates on it. Worth remembering that Connolly, Harvey and Lyon were all head-hunted rather than chosen from a bunch of candidates; Our club prefers to go after the coach they want.
Untried coaches are similar to draft picks; they have no guarantees. Both Drum and Connolly were highly recommended. At least Harvey had something.
Oh, ok. Thanks for letting us know.
I'll piss myself laughing if we were to replace Lyon with Longmire. You could literally recycle the Ross and Melt threads and just do a find/replace on the name.
