It’s literally a response to the post above it.
All good points.
I think there’s a big leap between saying the year’s not a failure, and saying there’s not still stuff to work on and improve.
I think the big picture’s going very very well, but there’s still a lot of detail things to get right.
I think this was absolutely spot on… I don’t think it is anymore.
Pretty sure Mynott’s the only mid - or running player of any sort - who didn’t play a game? Clarke got a run, mutch, Long, Colyer, guelfi, mcneice, redman, Jerrett… etc etc.
Only Cats and Saints used more different players than us.
We only had 3 full time mids (and 2 part timers) play 17 games or more - not a heap of continuity.
Zaha missed weeks, Myers, Guelfi, Parish, langford, Fanta, colyer missed 2/3 of the season… on and on and on.
Silver lining is how many different guys and combinations we were able to get a look at. @Dunlop’s efforts on the “who attended centre bounces” make interesting reading.
Link? Would love to read that
That’s just wildly speculative and part of the problem on this board. Might as well say a fit Gleeson would have had us comfortably in the eight, or a fit someone else. And so could half a dozen other sides.
As far as I am concerned I tend to agree with @barnz. I think the season was a failure. If we are still not playing finals then we have achieved nothing.
Realistically we are in a worse position than we were last year. Someone earlier said the team and coaches worked out what was wrong at the start of the season and fixed it. It might be fixed but there is nothing to say they worked out what was wrong. Nothing to say it won’t happen again next season.
I think we are wildly inconsistent, and as I said in some other post the good sides play consistent footy quarter in quarter out, week in week out, year in year out. Have a look who are in the eight. Hawthorn, Sydney, Geelong, Collingwood… and most of them rarely miss a year. And they turn over players and go through low times, but they’re pick themselves up and continue to play the same brand of footy…
We struggle to make finals every year and we haven’t got a clue what our brand of footy is, except helter skelter run and gun.
Until we become consistent, consistently good that is, or win the flag, the season is not really successful imho.
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I’m looking at the ladder and see Hawthorn and Geelong both in the 8 and just wonder how, I mean they have pretty average lists after losing so many premiership stars.
How the hell is Collingwood in the top 4? seriously Collingwood are not a good side.
North Melbourne will finish above us along with Port, NORTH bloooody MELBOURNE.
Crap year by the Essendon football club.
Maybe he should be the one coaching…
Here we are yet again looking at the younger brigade to improve our side the likes of Francis, McGrath, Parish, Langford, Laverede ect because like the 17 years before hand our older brigade fail to deliver.
We need heart, toughness players like Hodge, players who want to win no matter what.
2017 season
(with firing JD, Fanta, and having experienced midfielders such as Stanton, Watson, Howlett, Bird, Hocking):
2018 season
(mostly missing JD, Fanta, with young midfield on the way up)
I would say this year’s result is better than last year’s; its just that it was harder to make the finals this time around. Disappointing, but I think its reasonable to expect top 6 for next year.
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That’s a massive statement…care to qualify it?
You say good sides play consistent footy… I agree with you… I would say the last ten games of footy we have played consistently good football. I can’t remember another block of games like that since 2000 - 2001.
It’s fine to be disappointed in the year as whole, I would hope everyone from the coach to the boot studder is disappointed. But to not acknowledge how this team is building, and the potential it has, is at best short sighted and at worst dumb.
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The proof of how the team is building will be in the results. An equally valid argument could be made that we have been building for all but 3 of the past 17 years. And that hasn’t translated to results.
I would prefer to reserve my judgement about how successful our building has been.
It’s great to see the team playing how it has been and many of the younger players doing well. I wouldn’t however call it very consistent. We still don’t know which EFC side is going to turn up on any given day.
Reckon the past 11 weeks we’ve had a fair idea.
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You haven’t been watching very closely in the last 14 games. Consistency of effort has been fantastic.
And how you could say we’re in worse shape than the end of last year is beyond me
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I do also. Not only does it look and feel more stable, the players seem to have bought in.
I can’t remember when I last thought that. We played some fantastic footy under James Hird, but much of it was played (for obvious reasons) on emotion and looked and felt brittle. This team, this gamestyle, looks and feels strong.
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Right on.
We wanted to “make the 8 and win a final…” to achieve linear improvement. Really we probably wanted to win a flag, but a few things impacted us more than we thought (JD, new players gelling, whatevs).
We just won 10 from 14 with a lot of injuries to key players. If we can maintain that for the full 2019 season it’s (10/14)*22=15.7 wins, or 60 points and what would have been top 4 this year.
Not sure if Gleeson will make too much difference, and I’m not really banking on JD being fit, but just knowing what we can get out of the rest of the team (esp. Francis) and what we can add to their roles etc will make us a better side.
Not penciling us in for a flag, but if we just maintain our form through 2019 we’d be on track for “Top 4” which would have been the logical next step after “make the 8 and win a final”.
I reckon we are on track, big picture.
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and the preceding 9 we’ve had nfi.
merely flipping the end of season fade with never starting until the halfway point.
I didn’t say we were in worse shape I said we are in a worse position. Which we are. Somewhere between 9th and 12th.
I am also not sure how hard the concept of failure is to understand.
We set out to achieve a goal. We never changed that goal. We didn’t achieve the goal. We failed.
Whether there are positives is a completely different question. There are always positives. Problem is we focus too much on positives, slapping ourselves on the back saying haven’t we done well, aren’t all the signs good, next year will be great etc etc…without facing up to the fact that we failed to do what we set out to do.
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Who gives a ■■■■ what “we” think?
There is not a chance in the world the club are thinking that way (slapping themselves on the back etc)
why do you care so much that people outside the club think it was a failure of a year?