Coach Rutten sacked - no, really this time. Could the Dodo face extinction too? 🙏🙏

[Lance Uppercut]

The silver lining of all this is that I get to hear Essendon supporters tell me Brad Scott is a good coach after 10 years of saying the opposite lol

It's a heck of a thing from this end too

 

[Freomaniac]

The silver lining of all this is that I get to hear Essendon supporters tell me Brad Scott is a good coach after 10 years of saying the opposite lol

A solid finals run north Melbourne got under Brad Scott.

 

[Red Black and Blue]

Or maybe. The team is now benefitting from Ruttens time in charge.

The strutures and game plan are very similar to Rutten. The timing is just better.

 

[Call Me Cake]

Or maybe. The team is now benefitting from Ruttens time in charge.

The strutures and game plan are very similar to Rutten. The timing is just better.

Yeah, nah.

Rutten was Woosha 2.0 who's only game plan was to emulate Richmond.

Was never the future from day dot.

 

[HTPunter]

Scott is more Ross Lyon like in how he gets his lesser players to shine in roles. Setterfield, Phillips to name 2.

Ultimately will it all align at once to have the senior stars be there with the core crop of kids?

That’s what ultimately gets you a flag, your senior stars sticking around.

But at this stage Scott looks like he is at least going to take Essendon forward, and set them up to build. Which he did at North, we topped up and just didn’t have the elite elite players to finish it in finals.

 

[Linda Lovelace]

The reality is that Rutten's performance was not good enough with the list he had, which astute observers like Malthouse recognised was quality (even if he was early).

McRae, Lyon and Scott have proven that you can walk into a team with serious doubts hanging over it and turn it around almost instantly (if you have sufficient cattle). They've shown it does not have to take years to get players to buy into a gameplan.

I think coaches have been benefiting from sunk cost fallacy thinking: 'give him time, we need to build a gameplan, remember Hardwick did it'. Now we might see a paradigm shift towards these types of ruthless sackings becoming even more frequent.

 

[fishardansin]

It seems like Rutten had absolutely no clue..
He was also very young when they gave him the job.
I've never actually understood how he got the job in the first place pretty much straight from playing.
Was a bizarre decision.
He probably should have stayed as an assistant for a few more years.
I guess it's hard to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Rutten got the job, in the same way, all the assistants under Clarkson and Sheedy got jobs. He and Carracella came over from Richmond after their first flag because Rutten was the assistant that set up their defence and Carra was the assistant that set up their ball movement. Also, Worsfold was a terrible coach. The key indicator of how bad he was is that:
1. Spend all summer working on his game plan: come out and get smashed for the first 6 or 7 weeks trying to implement the plan.
2. Worsfold gives up on the season and lets the players run and gun: They start winning enough games to come close to the finals to show that without his "coaching", they have enough talent to push most sides.

The other indicator is that he had one of the best lists this century and could only win one flag with them. He had the best midfield ever assembled but only had two coaching moves.
1. Never let the opposition have a spare man in the backline, even if that meant playing 8 forwards. This played into Sydney's hands because a fairly ordinary side (with 3 superstars) was able to always run them close because two of the superstars (Hall and Mickey O) had oodles of space in the forward line.
2. Swing Hunter forward.

I honestly thought he'd go well with Essendon at first because he had a huge upgrade on Hunter with Hurley!! lol

So, it was great to get Worsfold replaced. Having had a disaster with him as a "coach with a name" after Thompson getting stuck into the frozen water business and the 3rd greatest player in the club's history also being a disaster, getting another no-name coach who had come from the current best system in the league made sense. However, I am on record as saying at the time that Caracalla would have been the better of the pair after his premiership experience at Essendon and Brisbane as a player. Then his coaching experience at Collingwood, Geelong and Richmond.

As much as Brad Scott did annoy me with his emotional responses to umpires etc while coaching North, kudos must go to how far he went with an ordinary side. His role at the AFL hopefully has made him pull his head in on that one, as well as giving him an all-game all-club perspective.

However, when you look at the whole thing, not much has changed at Essendon from last year. All of the assistants are the same. Most of the footy department is the same. I think Brad has delegated a lot more and just opened up communication and been a bit clearer with that. I also think making the change of coach makes it clearer to players that heads will roll if they don't pull their fingers out.

1. Essendon has ok injury run to our senior players other than Wright. What has been frustrating is that a lot of our high-end draft investments over the last few years have not been available. This affects our long-term development, but not our performance in 2023.
2. We've had a very easy draw to start with, so we were gifted 3 wins in the first 4 games. Based on last season's form and with injuries to key saints it could/should have been 4 from 4.
3. It is hard to tell if Melbourne had a mare, or if they were made to look bad by Essendon running hard to outnumber them at every contest and then using the ball going back the other way allowed us to outrun them again.

I get the feeling that what we see now is a continuation of the expected development of a young list with healthy senior players. Perhaps there is better and clearer communication and better effort from the players.

Regards this season, let's see how Essendon now goes in the next 2 months of Collingwood, Geelong, Port (away), Brisbane (away), Richmond, West Coast (away), North (their GF and us returning from Perth), Carlton, Freo (away). It is not extraordinarily unlikely that Essendon loses every single one of those games.

What is most important for me is that Hobbs gets back in the firsts, Voss gets a few games in the firsts and there is the continual development of Cox, Reid, Hayes, Baldwin, Bryan, Wanganeen, Munkara, Davey, D'Ambrosio and Tsatas in the VFL. One more preseason for that lot and you would hope they are all banging down the door for senior selection. I'm interested to see how Scott coaches when that talent is at his disposal.

 

[Bunk Moreland]

Essendon were appalling in 2020 and tipped by most to be bottom four in 2021. We won 12 games and finished eighth, and in there were losses by 1, 2, 3 and 7 points.

There’s no doubt Rutten was the big difference, he was winning plaudits from all angles and deservedly so. Our game looked fluid and effective.

People forget that no less than Zach Merrett, now captain, was a free agent and fielding offers and openly said he decided to sign on due to the the place finally having a plan and structure in place under Rutten.

The wheels fell off last year and he was thrown to the gutter by an incoming president wanting to make an enormous statement and sign Clarkson.

Rutten wasn’t the first coach to have a poor year and he won’t be the last. Some survive, he paid for it with his job which was in large part due to boardroom circumstance.

To say he was no good is simply wrong, he had one very solid year and one poor one.

I really hope he gets another shot, I reckon there is a coach there. It was just bad timing for him to be at a club so unstable.

 

[Red Black and Blue]

Yeah, nah.

Rutten was Woosha 2.0 who's only game plan was to emulate Richmond.

Was never the future from day dot.

Implemented forward handball, which we are doing a lot. Implement aggressive roll up for frontal pressure which we are doing a lot.

Much like Brendan McCarthy before Beveridge. The reward goes to the guy after the skills are drilled.

Take out Setterfield and every small forward, give us a stack more injuries and wed look just as bad as last year.

 

[BOMBERS 4 LIFE!!!!]

The reality is that Rutten's performance was not good enough with the list he had, which astute observers like Malthouse recognised was quality (even if he was early).

McRae, Lyon and Scott have proven that you can walk into a team with serious doubts hanging over it and turn it around almost instantly (if you have sufficient cattle). They've shown it does not have to take years to get players to buy into a gameplan.

I think coaches have been benefiting from sunk cost fallacy thinking: 'give him time, we need to build a gameplan, remember Hardwick did it'. Now we might see a paradigm shift towards these types of ruthless sackings becoming even more frequent.

Yep Gold Coast would be thinking maybe we should have hired one of Lyon,Clarkson,B.Scott instead of re-signing Dew

If Hinkley is avaible they need to get him.