List Mgmt. Ross Lyon - Sacked

[Freomaniac]

Joao - I’m not being a smartarse, but how long have you been a Freo supporter? You are right, it’s wrong to compare lists for a given point in time - but Freo have been a poor club at maintaining strength and depth in its list over its history. This contrasts to other clubs that do not bottom out like we have for the last 4 seasons, or the previous times in our history. So while we can’t compare lists, I thinks it’s fair to compare track records.

Me personally? I have been a dockers fan since late 2001/ early 2002.

I know its sometimes wrong to compare lists over the years.

However..... Its interesting comparing the 2007-9 rebuild to the 2016-current rebuild.

Again..... how do you define an Ageing squad? People had their opinions I mean we had 6 blokes aged 30 or over in our list last year. Sandilands, Spurr, Michael Johnson, Danyle Pearce, Mundy and Ballantyne. 3 of those blokes retired last year. Plus a lot of taled blokes aged 23 or under are getting games.

Meanwhile back in 2008, freo had the oldest list in the AFL at like 25 years. It was that old that only 6-7 players of our whole list was aged 23 or under: Rhys Palmer, Clayton Hinkley, Chris Mayne, Marcus drum, Garrick Ibbotson, Rob Warnock and my personal favourite, Brock "Lesnar" O brien.

you can partially contribute that to trading picks for players around that 2000-2006 period such as trading picks 3 and 19 for des headland in 2002 and picks 11, 27 and 45 for Josh carr in 2004.

I dont mind freos trading of 1st round picks since 2015. At least you dont trade the farm.

The Harley Bennell Trade(s) was a good example. Trade picks 16 and 35 for bennell and pick 22. get 35 back and get pick 55, we traded our 2016 2nd rounder (which sadly was 21) and 61. So along with Bennell we had picks 22 (Darcy tucker), 35 (Harley Balic) and 55 (Sam Collins). Hardly a trade the future for one player trade.

Yet the next year we traded pick 3 for Cam McCarthy pick 8 (Logue), pick 32 (Sean Darcy) ad 72 (Luke Ryan). Again, traded a 1st rounder for a few picks.

Hell I didnt mind trading pick 5 and our 2019 3rd rounder for picks 11, 23, 30 and 49. Then traded pick 11 and 23 for pick 14 and rory lobb. Again, we stretched our top 5 pick again.


you can debate on what you define an Ageing squad. Whether its a lot of 30 year olds on the list or lack of young talent aged 23 or under coming through or both.

 

[Freomaniac]

And if (if) our list was in such bad shape in 2016, whose fault was that? It could only be the fault of the Freo Football department.

Lists don't get bad magically over a summer, they get bad one poor recruiting decision at a time over many years.

I reckon our way of trading 1st round picks have been good

 

[Johnny Dalmas]

"immaterial" ... really?
Western Bulldogs won a premiership in 2016 ranked 12th for offense. I could easily say that makes your post immaterial ... but I'm not that ignorant.

So you missed the bit where I said : "You don't have to have the most potent offense to be an effective team; especially in our current era which places such a premium on defence. The is self-evident from our best on-field season occurring when we were only ranked 12th for scoring. "

As you can see (if you bothered to actually absorb what you were reading) I am quite aware that low scoring teams can be effective. That's not the point. The points is:

- that our offense has been below average since 2012 (with the one exception of 2014)
- that our coaching group has previously indicated that scoring is an issue that will try to rectify and yet whatever it is our Footy Department has done, the trend hasn't been reversed (up until the end of 2018--this season is a work in progress)
- that our offensive performance last week can't simply be blamed on injuries to personnel but is part of a chronic problem we have with our offense (I don't say "forward line" because its not simply about the six players lining up forward of the centre. Its also about midfield running patterns, decision-making off half-back, execution with the ball in hand, etc)

 

[Johnny Dalmas]

Is that Ross' fault? Or the fault of the now departed Lloyd and Bond?

Oh no, its not one person's fault. This is a problem for the whole Football Department.

I think our recruiting has got better but we some made some bad fumbles earlier in the decade that have cost us badly.

I reckon any responsibility for "big" on field performance issues needs to be shared by all the senior Footy Operations people. I don't think the Football Department is a dictatorship nor that people like Bond or Lloyd and now Bell were/are quiet wallflowers under the thrall of the senior coach.

 

[awaremind]

Ill just say it was damn obvious we were going to fall off a cliff with our aging key position players, as far back as 2014 it should have been absolutely top priority to transition to a new generation, but that was put off, for several mediocre seasons, in which we ran out of legs at the end of the year (sound familiar?). Our skills also have been our weakness for some years too. Now this cant be all on Ross but the buck has to stop with him. The lack of effort or energy in the last two or even three games is the most disturbing though, it really looks like some players are not coping with the level or perhaps lacking motivation. Now we never do well in tasie so its hard to say how much of sn indicator this game will be ,but a limp game at home vs Sydney would be woeful, and the pressure should come on if we cant fire up.

 

[Vimal Anand]

And if (if) our list was in such bad shape in 2016, whose fault was that? It could only be the fault of the Freo Football department.

Lists don't get bad magically over a summer, they get bad one poor recruiting decision at a time over many years.

Our first round picks from 20009 to 2015 failed one way or other.... That is 7 picks....

 

[kingswood71]

All of this stems from buying the rebuild line. We set the curve, so to say we’re “ahead of the curve” is to say we’re performing better than we’d thought we would. To that I say aim higher.

West Coast “rebuilt” quicker. They finished sixth and didn’t win a final in 2016. They were 12-10 in 2017 with an aging list. They went hell for leather to keep their window open with Petrie and Mitchell coming in. Old list. Trending backwards. Worse each season after their 2015 GF. It looked like they were about to enter a world of hurt.

Then last year they debuted nine new players and won a flag. They didn’t bottom out to rebuild, they didn’t gut the list. They were projected to be bottom four but didn’t set the target of “hey let’s win a few games and make sure we don’t finish bottom four”, they retooled on the fly.

The Bulldogs won a flag in the second year of their new coach. Sydney won a flag in the second year of their new coach. The Eagles made a Grand final in the second year of their new coach. Adelaide made the Grand Final in their second year of a new coach. Melbourne made a prelim in the second year of their new coach. Brisbane are sitting top four in the third year of their new coach.

We decide the direction our list goes, nobody inherits the 2019 Fremantle list and says ok in a vacuum how many games should this squad win. We decided to go down the complete rebuild road, we sold it to the fans that this is a necessary pain, when it has been proven by Sydney and Hawthorn and West Coast and Geelong that it isn’t. So sure, we might be “ahead of the curve” (I don’t think we are, but let’s go with it), but never forget we are in complete control of the curve. The club decides every facet of their future, don’t buy this hard luck story about oh gee we’re a young rebuilding side. We’re rebuilding because it was decided we’d rebuild, and three and a half years later here we are, circle jerking over the prospect of maybe winning not quite half of our games.

Can you do us a hypothetical 2019 Freo team based on the players from 2016, who we should have kept so we could have "re-tooled on the fly" around them?

 

[kingswood71]

The Bulldogs won a flag in the second year of their new coach. Sydney won a flag in the second year of their new coach. The Eagles made a Grand final in the second year of their new coach. Adelaide made the Grand Final in their second year of a new coach. Melbourne made a prelim in the second year of their new coach. Brisbane are sitting top four in the third year of their new coach.

You left out "Fremantle made a grand final in the second year of their new coach".....

 

[Kapow!!!]

Weirdly I'm having an understandable cognitive dissonance with Ross at the moment. I think he needs to go or at least have a significant overhaul of the line coaches and we need a new or at least severely tweaked game plan. But I think we need him to stay for the short term.

I don't think he has a bad rapport with the players and with the extreme volatility of the supporter base and the outside pressure being applied I think we actually need some stability at the moment in order to both hold on to players as well as keep the club somewhat together. Historically we generally go to s**t in moments of hostility, most clubs do. The only way clubs turn it around is either by standing firm with their vision under much scrutiny (see Collingwood, Richmond, Geelong and Hawthorn) or by making any transition as smooth and meticulously thought out as possible (see West Coast).

At the moment, with the critical injuries we have in key areas as well as the lack of on-ball firepower, I'm thinking we were destined to fail and it's not like we're doing nothing. So I've developed a morbid, detached nihilism in which I just find the hysteria on both sides of the argument quite amusing. The emotions of footy fans in this age of online outrage is pretty bloody funny.

 

[Scham]

Is that Ross' fault? Or the fault of the now departed Lloyd and Bond?

Clearly all 3.

 

[Nothing]

Clearly all 3.

Our first round picks from 20009 to 2015 failed one way or other.... That is 7 picks....

As Vimal points out the first round draft failures are the issue. You can't blame Ross for 2009 to 2011, IMO I don't think the rest are either. However, those failures to have 7 first grade talented players in the team is why we were always going to fall off the cliff.

 

[nurries]

Being Ross’s 300th game, I guess we will see if the players still want him here or not.

 

[Scham]

As Vimal points out the first round draft failures are the issue. You can't blame Ross for 2009 to 2011, IMO I don't think the rest are either. However, those failures to have 7 first grade talented players in the team is why we were always going to fall off the cliff.

So you think Ross is totally absolved from any responsibility and it was purely down to Lloyd and his team?

 

[kingswood71]

So you think Ross is totally absolved from any responsibility and it was purely down to Lloyd and his team?

Short answer, yep
Long Answer: Ross is not the head of recruitment. The fact that our first round picks from 2009 to 2015 were either injury prone or left is hardly his fault: Morabito, Pitt (who?), Sheridan, Simpson, Apeness, Weller, Tucker.....So: injury prone, dunno who he even is, Better sunglasses than footballer, Could have been anything if he was willing and committed, Injury prone, Left for home, still playing (although half think he shouldnt be!)....
So explain how Ross stuffed that up????

 

[salim malik]

Supporters of all colours love turning on their own. Notice that Kennedy who has been a champ at WC is now their villain. Footy supporters do not think logically.

 

[Cesoir]

Supporters of all colours love turning on their own. Notice that Kennedy who has been a champ at WC is now their villain. Footy supporters do not think logically.

Go and wash your eyes and hands if you have been over on the scum board.

 

[salim malik]

Go and wash your eyes and hands if you have been over on the scum board.

I have rellies who have gone to the dark side

 

[Nothing]

So you think Ross is totally absolved from any responsibility and it was purely down to Lloyd and his team?

Not totally, but what should be the core of our team is not playing AFL. I think the constant failure to get our first round picks in the team contributes to our position far more than the coach. If you have 22 on the field, and assume the absolute best footballers will play 11 years of AFL quality football (on average), you need 2 each year brought into the team. When those two are pick 30 and pick 50 rather than pick 10 and pick 30 for 7 years the gulf in talent becomes evident.

 

[Becky2Belts]

I could probably cut us a little more slack I suppose but every team gets injuries. Having most of your spine out is not ideal, but it is also not the reason we have been so poor the last two weeks.

I think West Coast list management is good, but they haven't rebuilt ****. Their spine and best players (bar maybe Yeo and Darling) are all very mature. They didn't have to replace all their KPP players.

Stop just arbitrarily picking other teams and saying "why didn't we do what they did"? It's lazy. Compare our spine in 2016 to West Coasts last year. Do you think it is comparable? Of course not, so why would you advocate the same list management model as them (or Hawks or Cats). Every team is different. You can't just complain because you think we should be better and should have done the same as some other team. It's daft, we have a completely different list to them.

Your post isn't analysis. It's just BF rhetoric. There are literally dozens of posts just like it, and all of them completely devoid or any meaningful thought.

Sorry mate, it’s just that when someone says “compare our rebuild to other teams” I find it hard to do that without mentioning other teams. Apologies if that’s upset you, but i was responding to a direct “name one other team” post. Kinda hard to do without talking about other teams.

If other management models are successful and ours isn’t, why don’t we change it? We’re not wed to anything. Forgive me for not falling in love with the lofty target of winning less than half of your games. If other clubs have the ability to stay perpetually relevant, so do we.

We have a great home ground advantage (in theory), we have the finances, we’re in a footy hungry market. If other clubs can survive without gutting the list and doing a full rebuild, so can we, so forgive me for not getting enthused about losing more games than we win and calling it progress because we’re young.

 

[Randomizor]

Sorry mate, it’s just that when someone says “compare our rebuild to other teams” I find it hard to do that without mentioning other teams. Apologies if that’s upset you, but i was responding to a direct “name one other team” post. Kinda hard to do without talking about other teams.

If other management models are successful and ours isn’t, why don’t we change it? We’re not wed to anything. Forgive me for not falling in love with the lofty target of winning less than half of your games. If other clubs have the ability to stay perpetually relevant, so do we.

We have a great home ground advantage (in theory), we have the finances, we’re in a footy hungry market. If other clubs can survive without gutting the list and doing a full rebuild, so can we, so forgive me for not getting enthused about losing more games than we win and calling it progress because we’re young.

Well said

 

[Becky2Belts]

You left out "Fremantle made a grand final in the second year of their new coach".....

Yeah I did, but that only serves my point more. There is evidence time and time again of a fresh approach rejuvenating a list and helping them achieve great things. Freo, Sydney, west coast, Melbourne, Bulldogs, Adelaide, Brisbane. Add Collingwood to the list, in a Grand Final two years after overhauling their footy department.

I have no personal issue with Ross. I thank him for his contributions to the club, helping us turn the corner into a true flag contender for the first time in club history. Fremantle had the respect (and fear) of the football world for longer than we’d ever had before, in no small part thanks to Ross Lyon directly. Once again, unequivocally, Ross Lyon was a great figure in the history of the Fremantle Football Club, and clearly our best ever coach.

His time is up. In my opinion, this brand of football is not going to help us get to a flag any time soon, it’s just not damaging enough. I thank him, but every coach runs their course, and I think his eight years at the helm are enough.

This is not an “I hate Ross Lyon” issue. I respect what he did for us. As with all things, sadly, it’s time to move on.

 

[Nothing]

Sorry mate, it’s just that when someone says “compare our rebuild to other teams” I find it hard to do that without mentioning other teams. Apologies if that’s upset you, but i was responding to a direct “name one other team” post. Kinda hard to do without talking about other teams.

If other management models are successful and ours isn’t, why don’t we change it? We’re not wed to anything. Forgive me for not falling in love with the lofty target of winning less than half of your games. If other clubs have the ability to stay perpetually relevant, so do we.

We have a great home ground advantage (in theory), we have the finances, we’re in a footy hungry market. If other clubs can survive without gutting the list and doing a full rebuild, so can we, so forgive me for not getting enthused about losing more games than we win and calling it progress because we’re young.

Once you acknowledge that in 2016 the list needed a clean out (and surely everyone agrees it did), what options were available to Freo to rejuvenate the list? How long should that take? You can not add 10 best 22 players in one off season, there's not that many available each year, who are willing to move to WA, even if you ignore the cap space.

 

[Scham]

Not totally, but what should be the core of our team is not playing AFL. I think the constant failure to get our first round picks in the team contributes to our position far more than the coach. If you have 22 on the field, and assume the absolute best footballers will play 11 years of AFL quality football (on average), you need 2 each year brought into the team. When those two are pick 30 and pick 50 rather than pick 10 and pick 30 for 7 years the gulf in talent becomes evident.

I wonder what percentage of first round picks turn out to be top players though?

And the way you’re putting it, it’s as if we just didn’t have a first round pick for 7 years whereas we actually did in some of those years. Ross has full use of Weller and Sheridan. So really if we’re talking about 2016 and using the “50 game rule” then it was really 2009 - 2013 that Ross truly suffered from. 1 hit from 5 attempts! That would have to be below industry average, but hey, back then we were the no excuses football club.

The poor first round record can also somewhat be balanced by the great later picks in Fyfe, Blakely and Neale.

 

[FreoMonocle]

We have a great home ground advantage (in theory), we have the finances, we’re in a footy hungry market. If other clubs can survive without gutting the list and doing a full rebuild, so can we, so forgive me for not getting enthused about losing more games than we win and calling it progress because we’re young.

I'm absolutely p$#ssed that we gutted the list. Probably every fan and person associated with the club would be.

But that comes down to preexisting issues (re: Ross). We often sold the cow for magic beans when it came to draft picks and then just fubar'd many after. While some are going to be busts as picks, you still want 5-6 years minimum and hope that the top 18 year old picks are around til at least 30. Of our first round picks (that we drafted) on the list, it's SHill - then nothing til Logue.

In 2016 when we went down the rebuild path, it's because the cupboards were bare for talent. This is a Ross thread, rather than a list thread, so in relation to him, he can only use the players on the list and it's on the club that we don't have a list that's talented and with enough of it's talents in their peak years (24ish to 30ish).

The club did stuff up, it owned it by going down the rebuild path and it was a major rebuild, we've turned over 3/4 of the list. That big a turnover was only going to cause a world of hurt for the interim and it doesn't matter who we had as coach during the rebuild - we were only ever going to look like spuds in it. But the rebuild is pretty well done, while we still need a few quality top up players, another preseason into all those under 20's players along with the stack of new trades that we have - getting time to gel, will help.

 

[kingswood71]

I wonder what percentage of first round picks turn out to be top players though?

Trolling thru the list, I would say is fairly high!

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AFL Draft selections by year

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