Whilst I agree that fans can be irrational more often than not…
The Brad Scott situation is not similar to the other situations you gave.
When each of those coaches got to their club, they slowly built and improved across time. When the pressure to sack them came was when they had the ‘setback season’ as most people expect a linear improvement line with no setbacks along the way. The reality is each team hits a cliff where they fall back somewhat before rising again.
That’s when you need a strong board who know what they are doing and trust that they’ve done 90% of things right and just need to keep working on the last 10% rather than blow it up and start again which is a common sports fan trope that rarely is tested or eventuates. A very high majority of sports clubs will keep trying than give in. To try and fail is much better than to give in all together from a sporting culture perspective, but that gets lost in emotional fan responses.
Brad Scott will be judged on performance. And I don’t expect him to last the year. We are a bottom 4 side, which means we’re bound to have at least 5 50+ point losses including 2 or 3 70+ point smashings. And it rarely looks like a functioning footy team, it more often than not looks like an absolute mess. That’s what a bottom 4 team looks like more often than not. That’s what I’d expect from us this coming season.
I do not expect any board to accept that as a result though and try to be patient through this. Not in their 4th year of coaching. And I don’t expect fans to act rationally about it. Blitz is an indicator to sentiment and there is increased targets on sacking Scott (regardless of how often Nino rebuts it). Scott has almost no hope of lasting the season.
The sad thing is…
If Scott actually gets us functioning well, from a Biltz/fan perspective there will still be strong doubt as to whether it eventuates into anything decent. A mid ladder finish is not going to be tolerated. It’ll just delay the inevitable and as soon as there’s the let down loss the ‘tear it down and start again’ stuff will be the common theme. Even if this team is top 4 for the majority of the season and slides to 5th or 6th in the second half of the season and still break our finals drought with a win, it’ll still be considered as delaying the inevitable.
There is no belief that the coach, club or the players can find our way through this. We’re in the same spot as Richmond before they broke their drought last decade. No belief that we come out the other end with any kind of success. Even 2 months before their premiership. There was a lot of hope, but far more dread.
It is what it is.
I have no problems them sacking Brad Scott when we inevitable get a few rough beatings. Regardless of the style of play that we’re trying to achieve. We’ve changed almost every part of the club since he’s arrived and it’ll be time for him to show his value or find a replacement.
Where I’ll have a problem is if we just insert Solomon as his replacement without getting him to interview at all. I’m expecting that we sack Scott around mid-season, he becomes interim coach (which is fair) and we perform ‘okay’. Not great, but okay enough to just make him the head coach without interviewing other candidates. Regardless of how he goes or whether another club wants to try and get him into their interview process, we need to have an interview process and just choose the best candidate available to move forward. It’ll probably be form fitted to be Solly anyway though which is a another matter altogether.
I’m indifferent about Scott, but if we’re looking the candidates are every assistant coach in the league. Who was the last coach who won a flag who wasn’t in his first senior gig, Malthouse in 2010?
You’ve nailed the quandary we’re in both as a club and as supporters.
Either way, the club can’t win. It needs to finish bottom 4 to finish the job of building elite talent. However, the club can’t win in the eye of the fans. A 10-12th finish supported by competitive losses will be deemed holding back the rise as we’re not securing elite draft talent. A bottom 4 finish as expected will be deemed unacceptable by fans even though in some ways this isn’t justified.
It’s the year we have to have again. We likely just have to suffer once more hopefully. Unfortunately suffering once more results in irrational takes and this leads to irrational and potentially kneejerk decisions which has become a cultural trait at Essendon.
I suspect this is Scott’s last year. Hopefully the season isn’t uncompetitive and results in more damage than is necessary.
Why does it feel like we are perpetually banking on the “exciting youngsters” to change the fortunes of our club? How many exciting youngsters have turned into quality senior players?
Actually let’s forget quality, let’s talk about consistent senior players? Do we have them? Are we producing them? Nope.
So which one is it? ■■■■ at picking talent? ■■■■ at developing youth? ■■■■ at picking coaches?
What I do know is a good coach makes a MASSIVE difference. A good coach can make an average team look a million bucks because he has instilled them with confidence and belief. A good coach changes the mindset of players. A good coach will make the players go the extra mile. Sometimes determination beats talent. We have neither.
We got Scott because Barham said he believes a more experienced coach would get more from the list. His exact words. Well here we are 4 years later…..how much more has he gotten out of the list? We’ve gone backwards. How the ■■■■ can you defend any of what Scott has given us?
I don’t think we should sack Scott because I think it’s in our best interest to see him through the year. If we want to entice an actual good coach, then we have to show we are willing to stick to a 5 year process, but there’s no ■■■■■■■ way we should be giving him another year. Unless we make finals there’s no farking way Scott should be our coach next year. Just like the vast majority of our players, he’s given us nothing.
We took a shortcut yet again on our coaching selection and surprise surprise, it didn’t work.
What do you mean by who are the candidates?
To replace Scott?
It won’t be Hardwick or Clarkson types. Or even Buckley. I can’t see any of them trusting the club to stay a particular course for longer than 3 years without going through a major overhaul. If they are available, they’ll interview, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they apply and then remove themselves and wait for a better opportunity.
Clarkson for instance got to North after 3 years of bottom of the ladder finishes. He’s into his fourth year and they’ve barely improved across that time (although I expect them to make a jump this year).
Experienced coaches know that it takes time to develop and build a team so they’ll be interviewing the club as much as the club interviews them.
As far as other candidates…
There’s the ones that went for the Melbourne job. James Kelly, Hayden Skipworth, Brendon Lade, Troy Chaplin and so will Gia.
Three of them have been at the club in the last 10 years so I’m not sure if they are up for the challenge nor how they’ll be received by fans. And it’s not certain that any one of them return us to ultimate glory. In the end, they may be the coach that just plays the kids, tries to install some kind of defensive structure and habits and gets them ready for a more experienced coach to take the final step.
If we go through a rough season, I’d have no problems seeing a new coach appointed in Scott’s place.
My main thing is that the football philosophy is in place. I want defensive first footy. Offense is important and the majority of kids coming out of juniors can play a flashy attacking style, but they struggle with the defensive structure of an AFL game. It’s something we’ve been terrible at and way behind the rest of the comp for two decades. I’d love us to embrace a Sydney style of dogged defensive footy as the backbone of our ‘style’ and apply the offensive flair to it. It won’t be pretty (very few games look great and half of a game is a grind), but it’ll put us in place to at least compete with teams.
We’re ■■■■, everyone knows it, and the list lacks quality, star power and experience. No-one should be expecting Scott to take us anywhere near finals this year, that’s just completely unrealistic.
The question that needs to be asked is this: is Brad Scott getting the most out of what he’s got? Have a quick run through the list and the answer to that question is blindingly obvious. We are routinely uncompetitive. He’s not the right guy, and hopefully the administration that eventually appoints his replacement isn’t anything like the bumbling dumbfucks we’ve had in the past.
Exciting youngsters turn into quality footballers when they’re supported by an elite, high performance footy program. Resourced development support, a leading fitness and conditioning program, elite culture etc.
That hasn’t been provided to elite young players for over 20 years.
We hope like you know what the club is shifting in the right direction on rebuilding an elite footy program.
I think this is a cop out and not true. There are different kinds of mid table finishes.
Finish mid table playing a decent and sustainable style of footy underpinned by an identifiable game plan - with games pumped into the likes of HEA, Johnson, Nguyen, Clarke, Farrow, Kondo, Sharp, Robey etc.
vs
Finish mid table playing a conservative, scared football, with guys like Setterfield, Gresham, Guelfi, Prior getting max possible games (before being delisted).
They are two different things on completely different trajectories.
You talk about four years like it’s not long enough but here’s an example of four years in football at the end of 21 this was the bottom five then at the end of last year four of those five played finals and two of the played in prelims while we brought this bloke in to get more out of the list.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m not by any means advocating that the game plan’s been successful. Worth noting however that ‘Points against’ has been trending down since 2022, last season being the exception (due to obvious circumstances).
If you get the right coach, we are probably 3-5 years away from being in a position to be near the top teams on a regular basis.
when they sack scott, they need to plan for that, and from the outset give them a 5 year deal, so everyone that’s the timefram You have to change course.
this giving people 3 years bullshit, then extending them through it without any proof that what they are doing is actually working is just perpetuating the stupidity cycle.
