See also: Parish, D.
Lot to look forward to with our picks 46, 53,54&60 this year then
4 Likes
You’re making an assumption that all Travis Cloke could teach someone is football skills. Conveniently ignoring his run on “Dancing with the Stars”. So sick of Blitz ignoring facts that go against their arguments.
7 Likes
Also we tend to have selective memories around here, while their dad played some decent footy he really barely fell over the 100 games line. Their uncle was an absolute gun at Melbourne, but Alwyn Snr was a “good ordinary footballer”
1 Like
I think Alywn senior was good early on and had a couple of good stints after he got himself injured, but yes in the later stages he was pretty garbage. i think his main strengths were pressure and tackling, rather than goal kicking too, so he was never a particularly prolific player
He may have been as you say, a ‘good ordinary footballer’. One thing he did have was leg-speed, a quality sorely lacking at the moment.
He had an odd career.
Exploded onto the scene in his first year, and during that period, I reckon he was as quick/evasive as any player I’ve seen play for us. The shoulder (collarbone maybe?) injury followed closely by the knee kind of lost him both confidence and explosiveness, and he wasn’t the same type of player after that.
But goal wise, his best season was 2012 (cough not saying anything cough) where he kicked 29 goals in 17 games. even his last season in 2013 he got 19 goals from 13 games.
But some of the things he did in his 2007 year, boy oh boy wowee. That Anzac day goal where he stormed through the middle of the ground and just shrugged off tackles, that’s one of my favourite Essendon goals ever.
Overall as a career, you’d have say ‘good ordinary player.’ But during his best periods of footy he was a lot more than that.
7 Likes
I thought he broke his arm, and was never the same player after that.
2 Likes
Still remember the first time I saw senior. He was so fast, especially once he hit his stride, it felt like there was a glitch in the space-time continuum.
I always think of him as the opposite of good ordinary- amazing at one thing but not even across all aspects of the game.
Actually, I think you might be right.
-
Im not comparing Massimo to Jayden , I was taking about him as a recent example of our inability to recognise high end talent as part of a broader point that we over value the wrong traits and undervalue natural ability to play football.
-
Prime example of this is we only offered him a 1 year contract and let him walk for basically nothing over a second year and he damn near goes All Australian.
11 Likes
My agenda of we are ■■■■ at developing players?
I don’t need to ‘pluck facts’ to prove that, have you watched the Essendon football club the last 20 years? 
6 Likes
I think we can all agree we are both ■■■■ at developing players and there is some top-shelf fact-plucking going on too.
2 Likes
Agree to an extent but we all know there has been a decent shift towards investment in the footy department to improve player development, skills, performance etc
It’s too early to call it as money well spent although there are some indications players are showing benefit.
I’m sure the Davey boys were getting their share of it, but with Jayden’s delisting the top brass in the box are saying you’ve had your acl, we’ve helped you work through that, you’ve done a decent stint in the VFL, played some fair footy but we reserve the right to make the hard call.
Why the hard call on Jayden and not say Menzie? I would have preferred to give Jayden one more year- he’s fluid and can sneak a few goals.
But.
The crew and l went to quite a few VFL games this year.
Oskar Smartt when he’s on or off the ground just wants to rip into it, same with Foley. Caddy is in Skunks ear pointing out all his bad moves. Roberts with fire in his eyes. Bryan week in week out taking a pounding in the circle.
Jayden (and Jr.) goes on or saunters off like he’s not really invested in the gig, a gig that’s brutal and tough in the tight spots. Query on his fitness, didn’t appear lean.
You can turn around and say opportunity deprived, undos a lot of the work of the performance and development team, how the fck did Menzies get all those games, not played in right position etc.
Jayden is not soft as butter but Scott and co dig a bit deeper than a a throw away line and unfortunately he’s come up short.
Dances around the edges maybe.
If the application isn’t what it should be, the metrics suffer.
3 Likes
From Nov 2022. Well at least we can say Go Alwyn!
9 Likes
Wrong thread.
Wrong thread.
Wrong thread.
That kind of discounts the hype, much of it supporter generated but a lot of it coming it of the club