Worst Coach

[Crow-mo]

Ha ha crow mo. I was there. I heard it from the horse's mouth! He did not know the technicality of a certain rule and JR explained it to him.

ok, so this great lack of knowledge was a technical point on one particular rule?

gotcha.

 

[Southerntakeover]

ok, so this great lack of knowledge was a technical point on one particular rule?

gotcha.

To be fair, the rule in question was 'the team with the highest score at the end of the game will be declared the winner'

 

[Crow-mo]

To be fair, the rule in question was 'the team with the highest score at the end of the game will be declared the winner'

aha, my bad

 

[cmndstab]

nah that's bollocks. if it were true it would be even more damning of a weak administrative regime. We know that he favoured Angwin, and that everyone was on board to pursue Carey and that's about it. Heck looking back he wasn't even at the club long enough to have the sort of impact people claim - maybe that's because they don't want to blame blight for anything, whilst giving St Neil an irrational free pass?

the buck stops at the top of the tree, and that's not Ayres. If the board allows him to make decisions that he doesn't have line authority to do, to detriment of, and against the advice of the recruiting team then they are far more culpable that the perpetrator himself.

Fair call - though they couldn't exactly preside over every decision that he made. I guess what should be said then is that if the rumours of him taking charge where he wasn't supposed to are true, then he should have been placed on severe notice by the people up top, and been sacked much earlier if he kept doing it.

I don't think anyone gives Blighty a free pass. Most people recognise that our squad was dire straights in 1999 when he up and left us, and that Ayres turned that around in his tenure. However, he was precisely at the club long enough to have the impact people blame him for - five drafts, five years of extremely few worthwhile players being brought into our club. The only remaining debate is whether he is responsible for that or not. I take your point that the coach is responsible for developing players and what happens on match day, not picking the right players, but the stories that go around say otherwise. I don't know what happened so all I'll say is that if the stories are true, then Ayres, along with those that put him there and kept him there, must take the lion's share of the blame.

 

[Mismatched]

nah that's bollocks. if it were true it would be even more damning of a weak administrative regime. We know that he favoured Angwin, and that everyone was on board to pursue Carey and that's about it. Heck looking back he wasn't even at the club long enough to have the sort of impact people claim - maybe that's because they don't want to blame blight for anything, whilst giving St Neil an irrational free pass?

I think that Blight does have as much to answer for as Ayres does, regarding the shape of our list when Craig took over. It wasn't so much that the list was bad, it was a pretty solid list, the issue was that we hadn't recruited any genuinley elite players since Shaw was in charge. Our top 5 players were still Ricciuto, Goodwin, McLeod, Edwards and Hart. Admittedly a couple of players from the list have come close to that company, ie Burton, Basset, Johncock, Bock and Rutten.

the buck stops at the top of the tree, and that's not Ayres. If the board allows him to make decisions that he doesn't have line authority to do, to detriment of, and against the advice of the recruiting team then they are far more culpable that the perpetrator himself.

But I think you'll find they did, stupid as it sounds and its really only changed recently, Coaches did have direct authority(and may still do) to over-rule the recruiting department. I remember hearing and interview of Craig where he flat out said that yes, he could choose whoever he wanted, however he didn't want to make decisions, lets face it, he isn't really qualified to make. There is also the rumour that when Rendell came across, he requested that he have ultimate control over recruiting, not the Coach.

Now I agree that it is essentially the Boards fault for giving the Coach this authority, but that was the way things were run across the entire AFL, it was a spill over from the time when the recruiting departments didn't exist and recruiting manager was part of the Coach's job description.

It was also essentially the Coach's list and they are more often than not, judged by the quality of their lists and how it performs. As such it was thought Coaches should be allowed to have the final say in recruitment, unfortunately their knowledge of players was minimal, so they really weren't equipped to make the decisions.

As such, things have now changed and Coaches would do little more than say, I need an X-type player, Y-type and might just question why the the recruiters think player A is better than player B and such and such, to ensure their logic is sound.

 

[footy4ever]

ok, so this great lack of knowledge was a technical point on one particular rule?

gotcha.

Gotcha?? just where was I gotten? Not that I care, mind.

'Technicality' was probably a poor choice of word. Let me tell you, it was a basic, basic rule involving a tiny bit of ...geometry shall we say, that every single coach and forward should know. (and thats enough clues) Now I'm not going to elaborate because I've said enough already and I would hate for some idiot to get hold of it and take it for a ride. The conversation lasted 5-10 seconds, but that was long enough. The damage was done.

It certainly stunned me, and those sitting near to me.

You are free to call me a liar. And if that's what you intend to do, to get it out of me, you'll never know.....But if you guess it....

 

[footy4ever]

PS. Cro Mo, you're the one calling it a great lack of knowledge.

 

[Crow-mo]

PS. Cro Mo, you're the one calling it a great lack of knowledge.

Nah that's you. When you claimed it was significant enough to write him off based on it. The clear import is that it is of a great magnitude rather than a piece of trivia or gossip.

Ps stabby 4 years, not 5. And of those 4, 2 were writeoffs.
I agree we hadn't recruited any champs since shaw - or basically since our concessions dried up. But show me all the blight ruined us, worst coach etc etc threads

 

[cmndstab]

I thought we decided earlier in the thread that Ayres was there for the 99 draft?

There are write-off years, but seriously, 03 was a disgrace. Hudson was the only half-decent player we were able to find. Funnily enough, we did kinda alright in some senses in 02 given that we traded out of the draft. Picked up a 150-game player in Shirley, took Begley who filled a gap for a while, likewise with Skipworth, and first recruited Porplyzia. And of course, Jericho. Two fine players out of that group, and a few hole-fillers. Throw the Carey experiment and Jason Torney on top of that and it wasn't a disaster year. You could argue my "three a year" theory was fulfilled by Shirley, Torney and Porplyzia.

 

[Crow-mo]

I thought we decided earlier in the thread that Ayres was there for the 99 draft?

quite the opposite actually.

There are write-off years, but seriously, 03 was a disgrace. Hudson was the only half-decent player we were able to find. Funnily enough, we did kinda alright in some senses in 02 given that we traded out of the draft. Picked up a 150-game player in Shirley, took Begley who filled a gap for a while, likewise with Skipworth, and first recruited Porplyzia. And of course, Jericho. Two fine players out of that group, and a few hole-fillers. Throw the Carey experiment and Jason Torney on top of that and it wasn't a disaster year. You could argue my "three a year" theory was fulfilled by Shirley, Torney and Porplyzia.

given how horrible both years were, I agree, think we did pretty well. and we did *great* in 2001. I think generally you need one proper player each year, you can always get replacement level guys but if you can get 1 serious player per year, plus some platoon guys all is well.

2000 - Johncock
2001 - Reilly, Bock, Rutten, Mattner. I'm not sure about Reilly, but he has been with us a while.
2002 - Torney & Shirley
2003 - Hudson

you could do a lot worse. and i'm sure we have on occasion

 

[Macca19]

A few old Crows, namely Smart and Hart, have come out and said that Shaws main issue was the players being confused at what he wanted them to do, as he used to change gameplans on a whim, often send out a message to play plan a, b, c & d in the space of 20 minutes and the players didnt really know what was going on.

Still, the basis was there in 96 for the premierships that followed. The first 6-7 weeks of 96 I thought the Crows were right up there as a premiership threat, they were destroying sides, almost everyone was fit and you could see the team working well together. Then it all turned to shit and they won only 1 or 2 games for the rest of the year, but the basis was there.

But you look at the players he lost during the year, in terms of injury...Rehn played 3 games and did his knee, Tregenza played 2 games and did his, Koster played 9 games and did his, Connell only played 14, McCartney 11, Anderson kept ripping his hamstring and only played 9. Everyone thinks Blight getting rid of Mcguiness and Mcdermott was a god send, but I recall both of those out of form and playing a fair few games at Glenelg between them in 96 as well. Throw in AJ not wanting to play and you can see by mid year that the wheels came off in a big way and he couldnt put them back on, and first year players like Johnson, Vardy and Collins were never going to come in and fill that void.

Id still put Shaw as the worst coach the Crows have had. Ayres for all his short comings, still got you arguably just as close to a GF as Neil has.