The ‘90s vs today

[Tarkyn_24]

At least we had Tarkyn Lockyer in 1999 The turning point.

 

[76woodenspooners]

And then the next two years we made grand finals

We didn’t know that at the time.

It’d be like saying today “Yeah, I’m happy to put up with Collingwood’s current poor performances because we made the 2024 and 2025 Grand Finals”

 

[ZEV]

It's a bit of a myth that MM made Fraser ruck on his own for 100% of each game. He was rarely ever the starting ruckman - Steve McKee was

Steven McKee was a good honest trier but only once in his Collingwood career did he have over 20 hit outs and that was against a young J Longmuir.

He was a stopgap solution until Fraser matured.

 

[Gone Critical]

Bit hard to answer for sure as one side of the equation already has hindsight but I am concerned this current situation will end up worse than the 98-99 years which was really more a down time from about 95 onwards until the Malthouse teams kicked in.

My biggest worry in the bottom age of our current list, specifically the players picked up from the last 6 years. At the start of 2021 we had 23 players on the list who had less than 100 games experience between them. A very unbalanced list.

At that time Daicos and Quaynor were the only proven best 22 amongst players coming from the last 6 drafts. 2/3 way through the season and you could make a case for Poulter, Bianco, Cameron, Noble and McCreery to likely join that group going forward. I reckon the younger players picked in the last 2 seasons have at least performed to expectation or even a bit beyond but we need even more than that going forward. Our youth is amongst the poorest in the comp currently. Of the last 6 years group only IQ has a serious claim to have the look of a future A grader, I am sure 1 or 2 others will join him but as to who they are none of them yet scream that.

We need to nail the next few drafts and hope we become attractive to quality FA's. If we dont the years ahead will be at least as hard and the 2nd half of the 90's

 

[Daics35Marvel]

I agree with others. 1999 felt worse than this because we'd progressively gotten worse since 1990 and it felt like we'd be a basket case for decades. It was amazing how quickly Ed and MM turned it around.

But the 1999 team was much more watchable than our current team. There were more young players to get excited about (especially Tarrant) and players like Rupert Betheras and Licuria who who emptied the tank every single week. This slow ball movement and lack of any real excitement in a game makes this year the hardest to watch in my 35 years of watching the Pies.

 

[The Plowking]

Bit hard to answer for sure as one side of the equation already has hindsight but I am concerned this current situation will end up worse than the 98-99 years which was really more a down time from about 95 onwards until the Malthouse teams kicked in.

My biggest worry in the bottom age of our current list, specifically the players picked up from the last 6 years. At the start of 2021 we had 23 players on the list who had less than 100 games experience between them. A very unbalanced list.

At that time Daicos and Quaynor were the only proven best 22 amongst players coming from the last 6 drafts. 2/3 way through the season and you could make a case for Poulter, Bianco, Cameron, Noble and McCreery to likely join that group going forward. I reckon the younger players picked in the last 2 seasons have at least performed to expectation or even a bit beyond but we need even more than that going forward. Our youth is amongst the poorest in the comp currently. Of the last 6 years group only IQ has a serious claim to have the look of a future A grader, I am sure 1 or 2 others will join him but as to who they are none of them yet scream that.

We need to nail the next few drafts and hope we become attractive to quality FA's. If we dont the years ahead will be at least as hard and the 2nd half of the 90's

The Nathan Freeman/Shaz/Ben Kennedy draft fiasco has certainly not helped.
We sure stuffed that 2013 draft.
There's our missing 25-26 year old talent right there.

 

[jonmacTrag]

The Nathan Freeman/Shaz/Ben Kennedy draft fiasco has certainly not helped.

Freeman and Shaz especially were tragedies both for the players and the club - the long drawn out scenarios of these players set the scene for our current situation.
Neither injury storm could have been foreseen and the hideous bad luck has ridden our club ever since.

 

[The Plowking]

Freeman and Shaz especially were tragedies both for the players and the club - the long drawn out scenarios of these players set the scene for our current situation.
Neither injury storm could have been foreseen and the hideous bad luck has ridden our club ever since.

Oh for sure.
Then you look at 15, 16,17 draft and you realise why we are where we are.
Even 2012- Kennedy Broomhead Ramsay.
We got Grundy for a steal.....and are now hamstrung with a ridiculous million dollar contract.
Will reserve judgement from 2018 draft -to now. Too early to tell

 

[Finnishpie]

The 90s were way worse - at this point. We played in a GF only 3 years ago. By late 90s it had been close to A decade and our best players still included the 1990 stars, Brown, Crosisca, etc. Basically, this is a discussion about list management and whether we can see a future finals side emerging in the next say 3-4 years. The question then is, will things get worse so that in 3 years we’re still at the bottom? Then we’ll have a comparison.

 

[Finnishpie]

Freeman and Shaz especially were tragedies both for the players and the club - the long drawn out scenarios of these players set the scene for our current situation.
Neither injury storm could have been foreseen and the hideous bad luck has ridden our club ever since.

Yeah, I’d add in some other serious bad luck: not predicting that Beams would bail, not predicting that Wells would be constantly injured. But those two really hurt. They were both meant to be A grade players in their prime right now. Basically, imagine we had Lever and Petracca in our team right now.

 

[Chief Ten Beers]

This slow ball movement and lack of any real excitement in a game makes this year the hardest to watch in my 35 years of watching the Pies.

Not to mention, 7 games left and Harvey and Co. still have no idea how many talls work in the forward line, the Grundy issue, the list issue where decade of poor list management will come home with no real KPP coming through, how bad the midfield currently is and will get worse when Pendlebury retires, Sire gets moved on, in faction fighting with the president, so many other issues.

 

[Chief Ten Beers]

not predicting that Beams would bail,

He screwed over Pies and Brisbane, think he's behavior was pretty much established..

 

[jonmacTrag]

Yeah, I’d add in some other serious bad luck: not predicting that Beams would bail, not predicting that Wells would be constantly injured. But those two really hurt. They were both meant to be A grade players in their prime right now. Basically, imagine we had Lever and Petracca in our team right now.

The worst piece of luck was Swanny getting that freak footy injury that killed his career.

 

[The Dawes]

90's definitely better IMO.
Still had some very good players from the 1990 flag, plus Buckley the Rocca boys etc.
One thing that stands out to me from that era is that we always gave 100% but it was often the skills that let us down. We had no shortage of 'goers' but equally a long list of blokes who were genuinely poor kicks - James Wasley, Jason Wild & Stephen Patterson's left foot spring to mind.
At least we played a better brand of footy - lots more goals and some very big wins - saw us beat Freo by 100 points at Vic Park in 1997 maybe?
I looked forward to going to Vic Park or wherever and seeing the big Saveloy kick a bag which he did fairly frequently - 9 or 10 on the aforementioned day, or Buckley ripping them apart or Pebbles kicking a 70 metre bomb.

It wasn't all doom and gloom though - we started so well in 97 that we were on top of the ladder by round 8 before it all fell apart. Even so we just missed the finals by half a game in the end.

Now the team plays a barely watchable version of the game, we have few if any players I look forward to seeing play and I find myself watching more out of habit than anything.

 

[76woodenspooners]

The Nathan Freeman/Shaz/Ben Kennedy draft fiasco has certainly not helped.
We sure stuffed that 2013 draft.

I’d separate out Shaz / Freeman from BenKen / Broomhead.

Shaz / Freeman were victims of our terrible run of injuries from circa 2012 until circa 2016. I know many think ACL’s are just plain bad luck and can’t be prevented, but we must have had around 12 - 15 of them during that period (4 a season in some cases) - compared with maybe one every two years in the periods before and after. Likewise with soft tissue, I know we have a bunch of players out today - but it’s nothing like things were during that period. If Shaz and Freeman hadn’t begun their AFL careers with a bunch of ruptured ACL’s (3?) and shredded hamstrings respectively, they might have become decent players for us today. Hard to call them drafting mistakes.

Broomhead also had his own injury woes (the main one genuinely bad luck), but at least in his case we got to see what he was genuinely capable of. Likewise with BenKen. I think they can be reasonably labelled drafting mistakes.

There's our missing 25-26 year old talent right there.

To be fair, we have made that back a bit by the drafting of Mihocek, and whilst expectations on a pick 6 or 9 player might be a little higher (think DeGoey, Moore) his output is not too far off, he’s certainly more valuable to us in the forward line than Broomhead at pick 19 was.

Also Noble. I know he’s unfashionable, but he offers us far more than BenKen at pick 18 did.

 

[jackcass]

The worst piece of luck was Swanny getting that freak footy injury that killed his career.

And Langdon.

 

[76woodenspooners]

The worst piece of luck was Swanny getting that freak footy injury that killed his career.

Swanny was 32 when that happened in 2016. His 2014 season was “putrid” (his word) and many were wondering at the time whether he’d reached the end of his career. His 2015 season showed that he hadn’t.

Obviously you don’t like seeing any player exit the game in the way Swanny did …

… but realistically, expectations around a 32 year old do need to be tempered. There are good reasons why players over 30 typically get one year contracts.

 

[jmac70]

90's definitely better IMO.
Still had some very good players from the 1990 flag, plus Buckley the Rocca boys etc.
One thing that stands out to me from that era is that we always gave 100% but it was often the skills that let us down. We had no shortage of 'goers' but equally a long list of blokes who were genuinely poor kicks - James Wasley, Jason Wild & Stephen Patterson's left foot spring to mind.
At least we played a better brand of footy - lots more goals and some very big wins - saw us beat Freo by 100 points at Vic Park in 1997 maybe?
I looked forward to going to Vic Park or wherever and seeing the big Saveloy kick a bag which he did fairly frequently - 9 or 10 on the aforementioned day, or Buckley ripping them apart or Pebbles kicking a 70 metre bomb.

It wasn't all doom and gloom though - we started so well in 97 that we were on top of the ladder by round 8 before it all fell apart. Even so we just missed the finals by half a game in the end.

Now the team plays a barely watchable version of the game, we have few if any players I look forward to seeing play and I find myself watching more out of habit than anything.

Add to that the time slots we now find us in, and it’s hardly worth bothering with.
I find myself looking forward to the local footy more and more these days.

 

[jonmacTrag]

Swanny was 32 when that happened in 2016. His 2014 season was “putrid” (his word) and many were wondering at the time whether he’d reached the end of his career. His 2015 season showed that he hadn’t.

Obviously you don’t like seeing any player exit the game in the way Swanny did …

… but realistically, expectations around a 32 year old do need to be tempered. There are good reasons why players over 30 typically get one year contracts.

I am realistic - I am the hardest nosed realist you will find anywhere. As you said 2015 showed he was still the same old Swannie - I would have expected him to play another year or two at that level followed by a couple more tapering off.
The key point is we lost him too early by a couple of years.

 

[Linda Lovelace]

We are clearly in a worse spot than the late 90s because unlike then we can't even rebuild properly yet even if we were capable of it.

In the late 90s we still had a young superstar Buckley to build our team around, not a Pendles who is collecting pension cheques.

And we weren't paying players to play for other clubs or saddled with ludicrous contracts that will hurt our list for years. And while we screwed up some draft picks then we didn't just set fire to them like we have in recent years.

 

[76woodenspooners]

Add to that the time slots we now find us in, and it’s hardly worth bothering with.
I find myself looking forward to the local footy more and more these days.

Get on board our VFLW train!!

Undefeated so far this season, and currently playing finals.

 

[76woodenspooners]

I am realistic - I am the hardest nosed realist you will find anywhere. As you said 2015 showed he was still the same old Swannie - I would have expected him to play another year or two at that level followed by a couple more tapering off.
The key point is we lost him too early by a couple of years.

We’ll never know.

I guess one thing we can both agree about is that there are more pressing matters that affect the club today and how we move forward.

 

[TradeDraft]

We are clearly in a worse spot than the late 90s because unlike then we can't even rebuild properly yet even if we were capable of it.

In the late 90s we still had a young superstar Buckley to build our team around, not a Pendles who is collecting pension cheques.

And we weren't paying players to play for other clubs or saddled with ludicrous contracts that will hurt our list for years. And while we screwed up some draft picks then we didn't just set fire to them like we have in recent years.

But we got some Good Kids Coming Thru which I doubt we had many in the late 90's

 

[jackcass]

But we got some Good Kids Coming Thru which I doubt we had many in the late 90's

Tarrant debuted in 98, Mal Michael and Pebbles in 97, Lockyer, Nick Davis and Scotland in 99.

 

[jonmacTrag]

We’ll never know.

I guess one thing we can both agree about is that there are more pressing matters that affect the club today and how we move forward.

Absolutely, the list is thin and unbalanced and there are ongoing questions about the board and administration in general.
We have plenty go worry about.