Opinion The Official Brad Scott Thread - Back, at the club (Relax - bumped thread)

[hilly]

It's putrefying how often you get lost for words. But, as they say, patience is a virgin.

As for the bulls, I think it's now excepted that, for all intensive purposes, colour makes no difference; it's a pigment of our imaginations.

Come on Kimbo, be more pacific.

 

[giantroo]

 

[DunderHead]

Man we went for the premiership and fair enough too.

But we you travel W,L,W,L,L,L,L,L,W,L,L,L,L,L,L.

You go.......


View attachment 345512


We need to grow balls across the board at our club. I think we'll push for the bottom reaches of the eight and call that a successful season.

Geebus we pay Scott the best part of 800K P.A, he aint going to bottom us out and lose his gig- what's his options outside of coaching? Cleaning the seats at the Barrel Cinema? Yeah I know it closed down.

When you say the best part pf 800k do you mean 500k or almost 800k. Rest easy, he's not on 800k.

 

[Zondor]

When you say the best part pf 800k do you mean 500k or almost 800k. Rest easy, he's not on 800k.

So I assume your Bum Chum Brayshaws has pissed in your ear and told yah what Scotts is on? :stern look

 

[giantroo]

 

[Gasometer]

The only worthy news in that is Lyons doesn't watch TF Show....just like the rest of Australia.

 

[Luke72]

I know it could be bullshit and Brad had a lot going on last year but this has a horrible stench similar to the end of Laidley's tenure where the coach has to be convinced to stay. If that's the case even remotely it's time to move on, everyone has to want to be there.

 

[Tas]

I know it could be bullshit and Brad had a lot going on last year but this has a horrible stench similar to the end of Laidley's tenure where the coach has to be convinced to stay. If that's the case even remotely it's time to move on, everyone has to want to be there.

My gut feel is that Brad has struggled with the coaching over the last few years and I am not convinced that the club has been honest about the reasons for him missing coaching games the last couple of years. I think he has too strong a relationships with players and that makes it difficult for him to make the hard calls or have that objectivity. He has admitted having a different perspective of the game or the way we play between sitting in the coaches box or watching the idiot box. That is a concern to me.

I don't rate Brad as a good coach simply for two reasons, our players lack a high enough standard of skills (and that is entirely the coach's responsibility to ensure it is high enough) and he isn't a great matchday coach, he is too slow to react to shifts in momentum and looks at times lost in the coaches box. We can refocus at a break but often the damage has been done by the time Brad can react.

I do think he has good qualities as an assistant, I think his people skills and communicator as a coach makes him an ideal assistant, especially to younger players. He just lacks the ruthlessness required, our team has often lacked discipline or has repeated the same mistakes repeatedly, that s**t wouldn't have flown under Pagan. We needed the Brad Scott that played for Brisbane, that ruthless competitor. He didn't transition from the youth coach to the premiership coach that Pagan did. We didn't set the bar high enough and because of that we lacked the consistency required to finish higher and have a better crack at a flag.

 

[LuvtheKangas]

I've always cut Brad a lot of slack, because I think he is too often blamed for things outside his control.

My real fear is that Tas' post above is acccurate.

Sent from my LG-H990 using Tapatalk

 

[jclei]

The other question for mine outside of Brad's performance is do we have a strong enough football department to move on from him. Theres no doubt Brad has brought some amazing stability to our club from some dark days. He has been a great spokesman for the club and had some solid performances.

Geoff Walsh is now gone and really he was a pretty disappointing head of football anyway so good riddance.

Cameron Joyce now has the role and it would be fair to say he has already made some big calls with Brad on the direction of the team. Everything we have heard from Brad and Cameron to date has lead me to believe they have a pretty strong relationship but regardless of that Joyce is in his first year as GM of Football and does he have the balls to potentially sack his mate in Scott at the end of this year to start fresh? Does he have the experience to hire a new coach and bring him up to speed on how things are going to work at NMFC?

So far I am pretty happy with the moves Joyce has made - list refresh and new recruitment team (after some pretty lacklustre recruiting over the last 5 years, for which he is also responsible). The ultimate test will be if he is strong enough to make a call on Brad or does he let this contract just run its course in a safe and conservative way.

Big year for Brad and Joyce.

 

[GarnerSmash]

My take on Bard.

A current day coach needs to be a lot of things. They need to be a driver of culture, but to do that they need to have strong characters around the club to, a; help be the pillars on top of which the culture is built, and b; drive that culture forward.

Scott has certainly changed the culture at the club since he came on board, particularly early. Culturally we are a much more professional and systematic club than we were before he come along. Scott did the right thing by using his senior players as drivers but unfortunately Petrie, Boomer, Wellsy, Dal etc just weren’t good enough, or most importantly imo, resilient enough to take us all the way. Hence the time for the reset being now and why it is best that Boomer is gone. This playing group needs to find its own identity.

Should he have done more to change the culture earlier by dealing with these guys differently? Maybe. But he would have had to cut the heart out of the club in the process.



A coach needs to be the central cog from which all areas of the football business are run, so need to have sound knowledge of recruitment and development practices, medical and training practices, learning and teaching practices, and strong management principles.

This is a very difficult area in which to analyse what impact Scott has had because you need to be really across the industry as a whole, but anecdotally one of his strengths is his no nonsense approach to pushing for the highest standard of performance out of his people. Despite being a small club we have been able to attract some quality people to look after key areas, specifically non-football. We had Dan Meehan who was pinched by the Brooklyn Nets and replaced him with a bloke who ran the Dutch Olympic program. We nabbed Steve Saunders who, despite last years’ spate of hammy tendon issues, would still walk in to any club in the comp.



They need to be able to organise a football department structure, put in place a set up that encourages the coaches to get the best out of themselves and the players and attract top quality participants, be they players or coaches. To this end we have looked to improve our own coaches by having Crocker move into a pretty much a coaching development role to assist these guys in getting better. Again, anecdotally, Scott gets kudos across the industry for implementing such activities on his watch. Despite being a small club we have been able to attract FA’s to the club who have had offers elsewhere, largely because they have been impressed with the culture of the club and the set up behind the scenes.


They also need to be across the latest trends in playing styles, and employ set ups that provide players with a base format on how to engage the enemy, but one that is either cutting edge which requires the opposition to come up with something new to counter it, or resilient enough to be able to absorb other teams tactic and still come out on top. It is this area that I feel Scott is not quite up to it. And by it I mean the best of the best. He is good, and his structural set up stands up as long as we have everyone on the same page and everyone we need fit performing, but I feel that he has too little flexibility in changing the teams approach when the going gets tough. To be honest I can kinda understand why, working on the assumption that the reason for his lack of flexibility has been his lack of faith in the depth of talent at his disposal over the duration of his tenure. If we are to be fair it is true that we have never had the best nor deepest list thanks to not bottoming out and the crazy concessions given to GC and GWS. I think in his mind it is more likely that success will be achieved in having faith in the structure rather than asking ‘lesser’ players to do new things, but there comes a time when you just need to give the players the responsibility, to let them sink or swim and to have them learn from that and develop as a consequence.



Tas feels that Scott is best suited to an assistant role but I disagree entirely. The guy is far too qualified for that. He is a head coach in the very modern sense, but I think it entirely possible that he be better suited to a Director of Football role and would not be surprised to see him move into this area once his time with us comes to an end.

Scott has a great deal of strengths that are recognised industry wide, but I think his biggest downfall as a coach is his lack of faith in his players to respond to changing game day circumstances and concurrently his faith in structures to see his team through. These two combined stymie and real tactical innovation which in turn makes us easier to combat. I hope that the changing circumstances re the list provides him with the ability to remove these blinkers and that we grow as a group as a consequence.

 

[Only Forwards]

B Tron cracking post.

Should he have done more to change the culture earlier by dealing with these guys differently? Maybe. But he would have had to cut the heart out of the club in the process.

Would have made us Melbourne and we'd have mired in s**t because of it. The converstaions regard playing games in Tassie and the dreaded R word would be everywhere. North Melbourne with no heart is no North Melbourne at all.

It is this area that I feel Scott is not quite up to it. And by it I mean the best of the best. He is good, and his structural set up stands up as long as we have everyone on the same page and everyone we need fit performing, but I feel that he has too little flexibility in changing the teams approach when the going gets tough.

I really wonder if he sometimes coached from the bench and was fed info there but had to coach with more feel whether this would cause a shift in his adaptability.

He is a head coach in the very modern sense, but I think it entirely possible that he be better suited to a Director of Football role and would not be surprised to see him move into this area once his time with us comes to an end.

I think that role will be with us. I mentioned previously that I actually don't see us sacking him, or him really walking, I see us trying to retain him.

Scott has a great deal of strengths that are recognised industry wide, but I think his biggest downfall as a coach is his lack of faith in his players to respond to changing game day circumstances and concurrently his faith in structures to see his team through. These two combined stymie and real tactical innovation which in turn makes us easier to combat. I hope that the changing circumstances re the list provides him with the ability to remove these blinkers and that we grow as a group as a consequence.

If we had a situation where we could have both Brad Scott and JYD at North at the same time in a complementary way there could very well be the perfect storm.

Brad can stay on trend and Laids can craft wins from nowhere.

 

[astrovic]

Great posts from Tas and B Tron. Some excellent points. Great to see some meat put on the bones of the argument, too.

I concur with Tron's director of football analysis. Reckon he could be very good at that.

 

[Mav]

My take on Bard.

A current day coach needs to be a lot of things. They need to be a driver of culture, but to do that they need to have strong characters around the club to, a; help be the pillars on top of which the culture is built, and b; drive that culture forward.

Scott has certainly changed the culture at the club since he came on board, particularly early. Culturally we are a much more professional and systematic club than we were before he come along. Scott did the right thing by using his senior players as drivers but unfortunately Petrie, Boomer, Wellsy, Dal etc just weren’t good enough, or most importantly imo, resilient enough to take us all the way. Hence the time for the reset being now and why it is best that Boomer is gone. This playing group needs to find its own identity.

Should he have done more to change the culture earlier by dealing with these guys differently? Maybe. But he would have had to cut the heart out of the club in the process.



A coach needs to be the central cog from which all areas of the football business are run, so need to have sound knowledge of recruitment and development practices, medical and training practices, learning and teaching practices, and strong management principles.

This is a very difficult area in which to analyse what impact Scott has had because you need to be really across the industry as a whole, but anecdotally one of his strengths is his no nonsense approach to pushing for the highest standard of performance out of his people. Despite being a small club we have been able to attract some quality people to look after key areas, specifically non-football. We had Dan Meehan who was pinched by the Brooklyn Nets and replaced him with a bloke who ran the Dutch Olympic program. We nabbed Steve Saunders who, despite last years’ spate of hammy tendon issues, would still walk in to any club in the comp.



They need to be able to organise a football department structure, put in place a set up that encourages the coaches to get the best out of themselves and the players and attract top quality participants, be they players or coaches. To this end we have looked to improve our own coaches by having Crocker move into a pretty much a coaching development role to assist these guys in getting better. Again, anecdotally, Scott gets kudos across the industry for implementing such activities on his watch. Despite being a small club we have been able to attract FA’s to the club who have had offers elsewhere, largely because they have been impressed with the culture of the club and the set up behind the scenes.


They also need to be across the latest trends in playing styles, and employ set ups that provide players with a base format on how to engage the enemy, but one that is either cutting edge which requires the opposition to come up with something new to counter it, or resilient enough to be able to absorb other teams tactic and still come out on top. It is this area that I feel Scott is not quite up to it. And by it I mean the best of the best. He is good, and his structural set up stands up as long as we have everyone on the same page and everyone we need fit performing, but I feel that he has too little flexibility in changing the teams approach when the going gets tough. To be honest I can kinda understand why, working on the assumption that the reason for his lack of flexibility has been his lack of faith in the depth of talent at his disposal over the duration of his tenure. If we are to be fair it is true that we have never had the best nor deepest list thanks to not bottoming out and the crazy concessions given to GC and GWS. I think in his mind it is more likely that success will be achieved in having faith in the structure rather than asking ‘lesser’ players to do new things, but there comes a time when you just need to give the players the responsibility, to let them sink or swim and to have them learn from that and develop as a consequence.



Tas feels that Scott is best suited to an assistant role but I disagree entirely. The guy is far too qualified for that. He is a head coach in the very modern sense, but I think it entirely possible that he be better suited to a Director of Football role and would not be surprised to see him move into this area once his time with us comes to an end.

Scott has a great deal of strengths that are recognised industry wide, but I think his biggest downfall as a coach is his lack of faith in his players to respond to changing game day circumstances and concurrently his faith in structures to see his team through. These two combined stymie and real tactical innovation which in turn makes us easier to combat. I hope that the changing circumstances re the list provides him with the ability to remove these blinkers and that we grow as a group as a consequence.

I think you're giving to much credit to Scott and not enough to JB, the board and senior management. This is especially the case when it comes to developing a culture of professionalism, don't underestimate the work of others around the club. For example it was Eugine that set up a General Manager in Tasmania, Carl bringing Walsh back to the club and then Walsh himself, a more professional operator there is not.

As a coach I don't think Scott is anymore professional nor systematic than JYD. He certainly has more resources available to him, but with the conditions JYD had to work under he was as proficient as Scott. As for the setting up of the football department, no doubt he was influential to this but would the Director/GM's of Football not have been even more so?

 

[GarnerSmash]

I think you're giving to much credit to Scott and not enough to JB, the board and senior management. This is especially the case when it comes to developing a culture of professionalism, don't underestimate the work of others around the club. For example it was Eugine that set up a General Manager in Tasmania, Carl bringing Walsh back to the club and then Walsh himself, a more professional operator there is not.

As a coach I don't think Scott is anymore professional nor systematic than JYD. He certainly has more resources available to him, but with the conditions JYD had to work under he was as proficient as Scott. As for the setting up of the football department, no doubt he was influential to this but would the Director/GM's of Football not have been even more so?

I take your point and it is well received. Everything that has happened at the club since we were almost shafted has not been all on Scott. There were certainly other key players. What I will say though is that Scott’s input into the direction of football department activities and personnel acquisitions is extremely significant. Very little happens without him being involved in its inception or without him being on board with the decision and this goes back to the early days of his tenure.

As a football department manager I think he is far more worldly than JYD, specifically in relation to the broader contextual stuff and player relationship development.

As a game day coach Scott may not be as flexible on game day but overall I think they are quite similarly bound to their structures first and foremost. Remember, this is the same JYD who got the arse the season he said he was employing a more flamboyant style, yet in the second half of the first preseason game at Princes Park he reverted to his beloved kicking to contests down the line because we were getting opened up.

 

[GarnerSmash]

B Tron cracking post.



Would have made us Melbourne and we'd have mired in s**t because of it. The converstaions regard playing games in Tassie and the dreaded R word would be everywhere. North Melbourne with no heart is no North Melbourne at all.



I really wonder if he sometimes coached from the bench and was fed info there but had to coach with more feel whether this would cause a shift in his adaptability.



I think that role will be with us. I mentioned previously that I actually don't see us sacking him, or him really walking, I see us trying to retain him.



If we had a situation where we could have both Brad Scott and JYD at North at the same time in a complementary way there could very well be the perfect storm.

Brad can stay on trend and Laids can craft wins from nowhere.

Thanks OF.


I’m not sure if Scott needs to be on the bench or not, but his mindset does need broadening. How he does that I really have no idea as each person is different. Perhaps he just needs to try a few things on advice from his staff?

Anyhoo, once his time as coach is up with us I think it will probably be best for both parties to step away from each other. A decade is a long time for things to stay somewhat the same. Scott’s legacy will now be the position he leaves the club in off field in relation to performance standards and club buy-in.

 

[giantroo]

My gut feel is that Brad has struggled with the coaching over the last few years and I am not convinced that the club has been honest about the reasons for him missing coaching games the last couple of years. I think he has too strong a relationships with players and that makes it difficult for him to make the hard calls or have that objectivity. He has admitted having a different perspective of the game or the way we play between sitting in the coaches box or watching the idiot box. That is a concern to me.

I don't rate Brad as a good coach simply for two reasons, our players lack a high enough standard of skills (and that is entirely the coach's responsibility to ensure it is high enough) and he isn't a great matchday coach, he is too slow to react to shifts in momentum and looks at times lost in the coaches box. We can refocus at a break but often the damage has been done by the time Brad can react.

I do think he has good qualities as an assistant, I think his people skills and communicator as a coach makes him an ideal assistant, especially to younger players. He just lacks the ruthlessness required, our team has often lacked discipline or has repeated the same mistakes repeatedly, that s**t wouldn't have flown under Pagan. We needed the Brad Scott that played for Brisbane, that ruthless competitor. He didn't transition from the youth coach to the premiership coach that Pagan did. We didn't set the bar high enough and because of that we lacked the consistency required to finish higher and have a better crack at a flag.

This!

 

[Zondor]

I take your point and it is well received.

Had that very same comment made to me by Half Tonne Mom the other day. :stern look

 

[Mav]

As a football department manager I think he is far more worldly than JYD, specifically in relation to the broader contextual stuff and player relationship development.
.

He maybe more worldly but to me this is his biggest failure. Remember when he said our improvement would come organically? Well we've let one import go from last year but we've added 2 more! And the way the end of last year was handled would suggest his player relationship development ain't that good! Young players threatening to walk, an old player walking and 4 stalwarts demanding answers. He's every ones mate, yeah sure, but that doesn't mean he's building good coach/player relationships.

 

[LuvtheKangas]

Wellsy leaving was down to his relationship with Brad, is that it mav?

Nothing to do with us sensibly deciding there was no way on God's earth that he was worth a 3-year contract on significantly increased dollars. Of course not, it was all Brad's fault. Sack Scotts!

 

[GarnerSmash]

He maybe more worldly but to me this is his biggest failure. Remember when he said our improvement would come organically? Well we've let one import go from last year but we've added 2 more! And the way the end of last year was handled would suggest his player relationship development ain't that good! Young players threatening to walk, an old player walking and 4 stalwarts demanding answers. He's every ones mate, yeah sure, but that doesn't mean he's building good coach/player relationships.

My take on how s**t went down is different to yours. All players owe the club, not the other way around, so if a player wants to take it to the media then whinge when they don't get the answer they like then thats on them.

And as for your point re organic development, if better options are available elsewhere the go for it. In effect we swapped Bread McKenzie for Marley Williams. Thats a win. We brought in another young quick rotation mid with plenty of scope for organic growth.

 

[Mav]

My take on how s**t went down is different to yours. All players owe the club, not the other way around, so if a player wants to take it to the media then whinge when they don't get the answer they like then thats on them.

And as for your point re organic development, if better options are available elsewhere the go for it. In effect we swapped Bread McKenzie for Marley Williams. Thats a win. We brought in another young quick rotation mid with plenty of scope for organic growth.

I don't disagree with this at all, but the reason we swapped out Bread was because we didn't have a coaching system that develop his talent.

 

[muttley45]

I like the idea of Brad spending more time coaching from the bench and interacting with players as they are interchanged,
(whilst taking input/stats etc from the Assistant coaches et al in the box) for a trial period. Seems like more to be gained than lost to me.

 

[GarnerSmash]

I don't disagree with this at all, but the reason we swapped out Bread was because we didn't have a coaching system that develop his talent.

I don't agree. And it seems the AFL community don't either considering he is playing at Sturt this year. The bloke has a laser boot and a decent brain but is too slow for the roles his is capable of playing and too poor on the inside to do anything else.

 

[Mav]

Wellsy leaving was down to his relationship with Brad, is that it mav?

Nothing to do with us sensibly deciding there was no way on God's earth that he was worth a 3-year contract on significantly increased dollars. Of course not, it was all Brad's fault. Sack Scotts!

either that or he wanted a change of scenery while he walked laps.

Plenty of players stick around clubs on less coin than offered elsewhere.