McKay is on a long term contract for huge bucks, and he was the handpicked special target of the coach and the admin. Moving him on would mean they admit their huge-money move was an abject failure, and because so far he’s been a huge-salary middling-output prospect, we’d end up paying a big chunk of his contract probably until 2030.
McKay ain’t going nowhere.
We just need the kicking consultant (.com)
in to bring McKay and Co. up to standard.
Chronic knee injury forces Mckay into an early retirement. Everyone saves face.
the mckay move was a classic essington overrating it’s list move. given that since that move we got rid of disco and seemingly conceded the list needs a lot of work it now looks really stupid.
It also doesn’t sit comfortably along side Scott’s assertions that he was taking his time to assess the list. iI that was the case make such a big FA signing was not done with appropriate due diligence. It was a win a final now move in his 2nd year because that was his contractual KPI.
Scott isn’t really who we should blaming though, it’s the board. Of course the need to rebuild the list makes them look silly for sacking Rutton on the basis that a more experienced coach could get more out of the list.
The way we are going we will finish bottom 4 and get some nice draft picks, check out all our draftees from the MSD and last years draft. We need to be ruthless with list cloggers in October.
But Zak Johnson has already proven after 3 games, he is most likely one of those rare diamonds you can sometimes pick up very very late in the draft.
It looks like for a 3rd season in a row the team will collapse to bottom 4 after the mid season bye.
This season we can blame injuries. But what about the other 2 seasons?
Could it be that while BS wants an uncontested game plan, the best 22 team has many players who wilt under pressure, has poor one on one win stats, and low disposal efficiency by foot, too many slow runners and too few endurance athletes.
By mid season, good sides have worked us out and know exactly how to beat us.
How many years will it take for the playing group to be assembled to be able to execute the BS game plan, or should BS change the game plan to get team defence to work properly as a starting point
Against Geelong we won hitouts, clearances, contested posessions, uncontested possessions, and lost the game by 95 points. Something is rotten in the state of denmark.
the hole Durham leaves in our midfield is absolutely enormous. he’s the only player who seems to be able to reliably take the ball from inside to outside and retain possession for us .
i think the list is minimum 3 preseasons and 3 drafts away from being genuinely competitive and that assumes everything goes well in terms of drafting, trading, and development
we’re clearly deficient in terms of average skill and composure level but also average size and strength and game plan.
lots of work to do.
The game has moved on from possession winning and is instead about transition.
Unfortunately for us, our list management team only worked that out last offseason. Our coach only worked that out 3 weeks ago
We won clearances and contested possessions and uncontested possessions.
The key stat was turnovers 71-57.
A lot of our turnovers were in our defensive half.
Lloydy went through dumb sideways or backwards kicks that put us under pressure.
Were we afraid to kick it forward to a contest, yes and didnt have skill level required to get past Geelongs zone.
Why - regardless of where we think we were we clearly needed a big defender - it was a gleaming gap for a few years and Reid was still a complete uncertainty. It cost us $$ upfront in particular but no draft capital and it gave time for Hayes to also develop. I don’t have nay problem with acquiring Mckay it was a clear need to help improve. If we had used draft capital I would agree but not as a free agent. He is also still young enough he was 25 when he joined.
we could have stuck with zerk who was showing promise, accepted that things were going to take longer than we wanted, and finished bottom 4 (or worse) for a couple of years and piled in some genuine pointy end of the draft talent for 2 or 3 years running which we haven’t done once in the last 25 years.
I would have liked to keep Zerk as well but he clearly still needed support just as Port recognised this with getting Esava as well to play on bigger bodies. Would we have won less without McKay who knows maybe but it was marginal so even if we lost an extra game or two we would have fallen at least a few more spots. But getting McKay is not the single problem it would have meant also getting rid of other players as well - Stringer a year earlier and according to many on here Redman Parish Langford Shiel McGrath and anyone else who had trade capital.
McKay is certainly not the single issue or decision which is holding us back i agree.
We tried to keep BZT
“It wasn’t an easy thing [to leave Essendon]. They didn’t want me to leave but (Scott) was very understanding that it was nothing against him or the club or anything and I was very grateful for the opportunity he gave me.”
Anyone notice how Zak is overhead?
I am thinking in the short to medium term that term he might displace Jaxon Prior.
Honestly zak was our 3rd highest rated player against Geelong, while Jaxon, was
5th highest.
Any 186cm player going against a 198cm player is a lamb to the slaughter, and Jaxon was that person.
Both Jaxon and Zak had similar DE around 85%.
Jaxon was well on his way to being the whipping boy to rival Stants, but based on that performance where he had to cop the result of our second tall defender being unable to get into the contest, I would like to let him off the hook for that.
Wiki has it as our 5th round pick.
I also don’t think he’s going anywhere, just wanted to add to the point on his contract. From memory the talk at the time was that the bulk of it was being paid in the first two seasons, something well north of a million per season, and then after that from season 3 onwards it was significantly less than that.
And that’s assuming Brad and co even know what type of gamestyle they need to build for.
if you build a list chock full of players who are composed under pressure, who can execute basic skills to at least an above average level consistently, and can win more contests than they lose, you can design any game plan you want.
I’d like to see us try and get the ball into this guys hands more. May as well give him the kick ins while Red and Rids are out.
