DudleyDocker
Cancelled
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2011
- Posts
- 3,106
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- Location
- Perth
- AFL Club
- Fremantle
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- NE Patriots
I think there is an element of truth in both arguments, but nothing is ever that clear cut.You are entitled to believe that and I don't believe anyone was misleading, they just judged it wrong and hind sight which is what I'm working on proves it. Other than Bennall all the rest did play at seasons start and we were still losing. So what I'm trying to say IMO the recruiting staff and coaches got it wrong and again IMO we should woke up to it last season as soon as Fyfe was not at his best due to carrying injuries that we were not going to win it this year.
There were several things in play at one time this year - change of coaching staff, change of game plan, willingness to get games into young players and also changes to the rules of the game. Sure, we performed poorly at the start of the season, but I'm not sure that was not to some extent by design. The previous year we peaked very early and ran out of steam, I think this year we probably trained to start a little under-done then build to the end of the season. Of course injuries to key players put paid to that theory, and as you say in hindsight it was maybe not the right way to go. Who knows where we would be right now if we could have kept the majority of our "star" players on the park while developing guys like Weller, Blakely, Collins and Tucker?
It was blindingly obvious towards the end of last year that continuing along the same path was not going to win us a flag and to their credit the coaching staff have tried to change things up this year. In doing so I think they (Ross) have acknowledged that they broke some things that didn't need to be broken, and probably changed too much at one time. They will learn from that, and I think we have already seen some signs of what we can deliver when everyone gets on the same page.
Call me sycophant and tell me I'm drinking the Kool Aid, but I have faith that Lyon is an exceptional coach and that he will quickly take us through this rebuild phase and we will be challenging from a much stronger position from 2018 onward.







