It never fails to amaze me how many excuses some people make for Brad.
He’s three years in and getting worse each year, not better. It’s been a massive fail.
All good, let’s waste more of the members time and money, as well as waste away any talent on the list until they request a trade out until the club act on it
Watched the final, just got home, had a few, found out our coach was sacked. Fark, Potter from the Hammers. Wish it was Scott from the bombers as well 
Pray tell
Sounds like a premonition
Not when it matters.
Geelong beat em in a qualifying final.
I wouldn’t make any excuses for Scott. I’ve just got sacking coaches fatigue at Essendon.
The new guy Melbourne got seems good. I’d only want a new coach or maybe Buckley. And Buckley is sold on Tasmania.
Can we sack brad Scott now that Chris is a grand final loser?
Wonder how Chris would go coaching our crap side lols
See yesterday’s result
He has nothing
Brad, things I noticed about Geelong:
But Port Adelaide are worse than us and they kicked him out. How good can he be?
We’re not getting Hinkley the coach. We will be getting Hinkley the club builder, connector and cultural driver. He is exactly what we need.
Nice list.
Yet they found themselves 10 goals behind in the space of 20 minutes when they were within a kick of the Lions.
The way I saw it, both these teams had different styles.
Geelong’s strength is in the contest. So they were fine as long as the ball doesn’t get out into space. They basically played a ‘forward press’ style during the finals series, just with good foot skills and good decision making along the way. During the season, they can do the win the contest and win outside the contest style and hammer teams (that’s why they smash us), but when it gets to finals, their best chance is keeping it in the contest and waiting for your opportunities to come. They did take on some risk at times yesterday. They looked inboard and took a chance, but Brisbane were aware of it, gave it enough space to look like an easy kick before closing down the space and getting it outside of the contest where they could cause damage.
Brisbane on the other hand prefer to control the footy. The kick mark game to eat up time, but again, when they have the opportunities they take it. It a bit different to last year which was more of an attack at all costs because they were 5 goals down. Instead, they are now a defensive first based team so they don’t get 5 goals behind and just try and split contested possessions but win it on the outside to start their kick mark game or win the contest out of the backline to start their kick mark game. Part of that has evolved because they don’t have the mobile tall forwards to rely on but another part is being able to set up your defensive structure during that time to mitigate damage.
Out of most of the teams in the 8, I’d say Brisbane were the slowest for longest period of time in a game. But they were able to switch to a fast paced game when the opportunity arrived. Whereas Geelong were a similar speed through their games. So Brisbane had greater variance within the game, whereas Geelong were less variable in speed of movement. That’s just going by the eye, not necessarily stat based.
I did listen to the Scott’s post game presser and agree that Stewart out was a big problem for them to deal with. It didn’t hurt them statistically as his matchup may have been Bailey (who wasn’t kicking straight) or Lohmann or Ah Chee who were dangerous, but just did their job on the day. Where he was missed is the way he structurally organises that back six to create the loose man. Guthrie, Henry, O’Sullivan and De Koning are good, but they couldn’t generate the loose man as easily as if they had Stewart there. Obviously, Brisbane would have had a strategy to keep their loose man honest or away from impacting the play, but Stewart is better at being able to position himself and take the opportunities that are there. Where as the others don’t have that in their game or are still developing that part of their game.
To me, the finals series just re-inforces what usually wins finals footy. Regardless of how pretty teams look during the season and how free flowing things look in the first two months of the season, once winter sets in and finals begin you have to defend first. Every finals game was an arm wrestle until there was a ten minute period where one team got on top and the other team took some time to combat it.
Then you need to be very good in the contest. And that has multiple aspects. The centre bounce and stoppages you have to at least halve them (stop the opposition from being damaging) or win then and either get it to the outside or just keep running a rolling contest to contest game. An aspect of that is also ground ball gets. It’s not just in the forward line, but at the centre bounce, around the ground stoppages and obviously in the back line.
One thing that has been common this century is that your key x-factor as far as list management is father-son and academy recruits. You are always paying less for them than what they are worth. So they are an ‘easy’ addition to a list that can certainly allow teams the flexibility to get some stuff wrong along the way. The other x-factor is leveraging from what you have. Whether that’s lifestyle, the businesses around your football team or just being in a Prelim every so often is a good enough carrot to get players relatively cheaply. Done at the right time as you are climbing the ladder or in the top half of the ladder helps you mitigate the drift pick collateral that you give up for it. After those two, you only have the draft to rely on to list build, marginal free agency plays and trades moves. If you make more good choices than bad, you’ll do well, otherwise you remain where you are or keep dropping until you actually do.
Also…
Injury luck seems to favour the better teams. Brisbane had Neale with a calf injury and managed it well, but it could easily have backfired on them. You never know how those gambles turn out until after the game is finished. Everything before that is really just gambling on the odds that it works for you. Brisbane took a gamble on Neale and Dunkley whilst not gambling on Jarrod Berry. Playing Dunkley with a syndesmosis injury was a large gamble that could have impacted on next year. But they took it. He didn’t play his best game, but he did well enough. Brisbane did gamble after they already lost Coleman (he’s been out for a few years now), Answerth, Hipwood and Payne. All of which were best 22 players prior to their injury.
Geelong’s injury list is a bit more absurd. It’s just Stewart only and that’s it. You could argue Kolodjashnij, but De Koning’s progress the last three years has allowed that to be mitigated. They manage their injuries through training. They do rest the older guys and nurse them through their injuries, then slowly increase the load on them. They do enough through the season to get to finals with a full list and let it play out from there.
The finals games themselves were pretty bloody ugly. They were highly contested and highly defensive orientated. It’s obvious to see how far behind we are. Both with the footy and without it. And that’s before you actually see how much up and back running both team’s forwards do. And how they handle and adapt to situations on the fly. There are plenty of aspects we’ve been behind on. It won’t be an easy fix. It’ll take multiple coaches, assistant coaches and maybe even multiple S&C and recruitment staff to get up to speed.
Has @Finding_Nino caught up with the news that he’s been sacked?
Spot on. Brad is process driven and Essendon isn’t. We need process driven, but he won’t be the coach to land us a premiership.
Just checking in to see why it was Brad’s fault that his brother didn’t win the flag
This is like some weird meta version of a satire newspaper headline.
“Blitz in shock after footy nuffy claims to have not contemplated his team’s predicted ladder position”
And was given his first AFL coaching job by the Melbourne coach
Neil Daniher
An article from 2 years ago - thought it was an interesting read in hindsight.
Essendon’s final ladder placement during Brads tenure? 11th, 11th & 15th.
By no means is this the only factor for where the club currently resides, but it’s a contributing factor.