I understand and respect, the desire for people to show faith in McCartney and hope that some of the strengths that he was reputed to have when he got the job actually come to the fore. However, I place a lot more weight on tangible evidence than hearsay. My observations of McCartney's actions (and the scoreboard results) suggest to me his weaknesses outweigh his strengths as a senior coach. It is frustrating seeing the same mistakes being repeated over and over again, and AFL playing careers wasting away.
I appreciate your contributions to the board, Proff. And I also appreciate that you are not completely dogmatic, but are simply a person who demands evidence before investing faith in people.
I am also aware that to date we may be seeing plenty of positive "signs" in the team. But they are just that - "signs", nothing more. They aren't conclusive of anything, or necessarily demonstrative of anything more than the normal turn of events at a footy club (e.g. some young players improving, some brief periods of good play, wins against cellar dwellers). There are also plenty of negative signs, if we chose to look for them instead. We could still very easily find ourselves in a little over a year concluding that the McCartney era has been a miserable Rhode-esque failure.
Where you and I differ markedly however, is that I feel you will NEVER turn a club over completely and see such evidence within 18 months. It just doesn't happen - never has, never will. And there is no doubt that McCartney is trying to completely turn the club over. Given that, I think 3 years is actually a relatively short period of time to start seeing tangible results we can point to. And I am very comfortable giving BMac until mid 2014 to provide incontrovertible evidence as to why his contract should be renewed to finish the job.
I guess the next question is - Should the club have been completely turned over? After all we did just come off 3 PFs, and Eade did seem to have the club running well. I guess the answer to that question depends on how you feel about Mike's culture point above. Personally, I agree with him - that our culture did need changing. I would also add that the fact we only really genuinely contended for 1 season in our last cycle (2009) points to there being something wrong with the club that demanded addressing.
You may disagree with that. You may feel that persisting with Eade or at least with the general thrust of Eade's club leadership would have seen us back to the top soon enough. The truth is though, that that horse has bolted. And protesting it, is just howling into the wind. Right now we have two practical choices - 1) See whether BMac's vision is leading anywhere in about 30 rounds' time. And if not, either start again completely over, or remodel his vision with a different leader. or 2) Tear up his vision root and branch now before we even know what it looks like, and start again. If he is leading us nowhere, this is the smart move.
In my opinion, it is far from clear that he is leading us nowhere. In my view the evidence is not yet in. What we see is a club in huge flux. And they play like that too.
Which is why I feel it is well worth waiting that extra year and a bit before we start getting itchy trigger fingers. BMac knows that's his time frame. If he can't prove to us why we should rehire him by then, then he deserves to go. But until then, I'm watching to see if those "signs" turn into evidence.