Is there another agenda?

No need to win. My only hope for this season is to end richmond’s top 4 hopes. Full team must be put in that round

As a Rickman, Giles is rated somewhere south of Colyer. If he plays you know we have found the bottom of the barrel.

No. Bottom of the barrel would playing a guy who got his ■■■ handed to him the week before as the lone semi-recognised ruckman, with a 190cm non-ruckman (non-anything really) and a 200cm developing forward as support.

If Giles is SO bad then why did he we target him in the preseason and lure him away from Adelaide’s more attractive offer of more years and more money?

What’s keeping him out of a side that is basically made up of players with than then 30 games? I mean, everyone else is getting a shot, why not a recognised ruckman with form in the VFL when we are desperately crying out for one?

Either Hirdy has lost the plot, Giles insulted his mum, or something else very odd is at play.

Where do you get the story that Adelaide were offering more years and more money. I’ve never heard that before

Could this “agenda” be that the club thinks they made a mistake recruiting Giles and intend to delist so would rather give games to players that may be at essendon next season? Or could it be that they rate McKernan ahead of Giles?

The sooner folks accept that the selection panel’s current modus operandi is essential, the better.

There are probably hundreds of agendas that we don’t know about and then further agendas within the agendas.

There are a lot of whiteboards at the TVC.

The sooner folks accept that the selection panel's current modus operandi is essential, the better.

There’s the answer! Giles hasn’t learnt his Latin!!!

I’m hoping that Hird has focus for balance within the side.

From the outside I want to see as many kids playing as possible. But I don’t nessisarily think this is the best option if you want to create a culture in your club of working hard on the training track.

I think Hird has a big focus on pushing players to increase their workload, and encourage a culture of wanting to learn and get better.

In the past I think we had two opposite extremes which has not helped the culture within the playing list.

Late in his career, Sheedy had a focus on playing his older players. Those that had been great servants of the club. Then would throw in a young bloke, clearly out of his depth, to play on someone like Brown or Fevola. I think there became factions between older and younger players during this period.

Knights came in, cleared out most of the older players. And put a lot of games into young players who clearly didn’t have much of a work ethic or willingness to learn. That was the start of a long term expectation that you will be playing regular AFL football if you have enough talent, and you don’t need to work hard for it.

IMO this expectation of pumping games into your young blokes, based purely on their talent is not helpful for the future of the club. This has equally destructive consequences as poor recruiting.

So I’m happy to go picking players that are working hard on areas that the coaches want them to improve upon. But also on form aswell.

I'm interested to know what people think but is it possible that there are issues other than winning against Port Adelaide?

e.g. are we now more concerned with developing young players? You may be able to think of other possibilities.

I refer in particular to the issue of Giles non selection but I also wonder about swinging Steinberg onto Brown, a player we all know he can’t handle, for a critical period last week.

Port has two fine ruckmen - we have McKernan who gives it everything but was outgunned last week and the fill in ruck efforts of Daniher and Ambrose were pitiful.

Giles played his best game for us in the VFL last week to push for selection ahead of Ambrose who averages .5 goals per game and can’t ruck. (although he did lay three tackles last week.)

Giles and McKernan are not great ruckmen but have operated very well in tandem in the VFL.

Giles has been named emergency which means that the ruckman who you are theoretically trying to “improve” won’t play in the VFL this week after his fine effort last week.

I find this puzzling but wonder if I am being paranoid and seeing something that’s not there in the latter part of the season.

Possibly there is an agenda “other than winning” but we lost last week, I feel, for the same reason we lost to Richmond.

We had a gun KP forward who dominated in the air but who couldn’t nail basic, simple set shots - this really was the difference in both games. This was exacerbated by basic decision/skill errors in Q3 by both Hooker not going over the top to Edwards streaming towards goal (instead, short passing to his opponent) and Heppell bizarrely doing an Adam McPhee impersonation on the HBF and dropping the ball once inevitably tackled.

We didn’t lose last week, or against Richmond, because we didn’t play Giles to support McKernan.

In fact we only lost Clearances by 5 last week and if I recall correctly, that is about the number of frees McKernan gave away to Goldstein in the ruck at stoppages which all therefore count as clearances - so we basically halved the clearances aside from ruck free kicks which is a little remarkable given the hitout stats. Our work around stoppages has improved markedly in recent weeks and McKernan’s competitiveness after the ruck contest is part of that…perhaps kudos to Skipworth as well regarding structure & strategies?

We are losing games because we don’t take out opportunities relative the opposition and then we have players - often experienced players - make poor decisions with the ball that result in turnovers that leading to goals from the opposition when good decision-making/skill execution would see us scoring instead. The classic “two goal turnaround”…we should kick one, muck up, don’t score and the opposition takes the ball to the other end and does score.

When we did take our opportunities against Melbourne - we kicked 9.1 from set shots I think - we won the game. And McKernan was belted in the ruck that game too.

The main risk in only playing one ruckman is that what happens if that ruckman is injured. That is the risk we are running.

For that reason I would bring Giles in to support McKernan in the ruck, send Hooker back and drop Steinberg who continues to demonstrate to me he is not AFL standard. Hird continues to back Steinberg and is not going to leave a stone unturned to see if Steinberg can rise to AFL standard before putting a line through his name.

The sooner folks accept that the selection panel's current modus operandi is essential, the better.

There’s the answer! Giles hasn’t learnt his Latin!!!

QED

Is that a tank shaft or... Nevermind....

After all the blows he’s taken & remained unflinched, I could believe the man had such a turret.

Maybe the club just wants to win a flag, any flag, this year and thinks the VFL flag is its best bet?

It’s probably reluctant to promote Giles to the senior side and mess with a successful formula with the VFL side.

Maybe…just maybe.

He can’t ride a bike without falling off. What makes you think he can drive a tank?

Hmm, yeah, … that did prove he has problems with tracks

As a Rickman, Giles is rated somewhere south of Colyer. If he plays you know we have found the bottom of the barrel.

No. Bottom of the barrel would playing a guy who got his ■■■ handed to him the week before as the lone semi-recognised ruckman, with a 190cm non-ruckman (non-anything really) and a 200cm developing forward as support.

If Giles is SO bad then why did he we target him in the preseason and lure him away from Adelaide’s more attractive offer of more years and more money?

What’s keeping him out of a side that is basically made up of players with than then 30 games? I mean, everyone else is getting a shot, why not a recognised ruckman with form in the VFL when we are desperately crying out for one?

Either Hirdy has lost the plot, Giles insulted his mum, or something else very odd is at play.


“something else very odd is at play”… Or maybe just “something else is at play”. Your ignorance doesn’t mean the only explanation must be “very odd”.

Last night I got home and couldn’t find my Kindle. I’d had it on the train but it wasn’t in my bag. In your world it was either stolen or a ghost hid it.

In reality, it fell out of my bag into the footwell in my car. 'Cause ghosts don’t exist and just because I didn’t know where it was doesn’t mean it was a ■■■■■■■ conspiracy.

As a Rickman, Giles is rated somewhere south of Colyer. If he plays you know we have found the bottom of the barrel.

No. Bottom of the barrel would playing a guy who got his ■■■ handed to him the week before as the lone semi-recognised ruckman, with a 190cm non-ruckman (non-anything really) and a 200cm developing forward as support.

If Giles is SO bad then why did he we target him in the preseason and lure him away from Adelaide’s more attractive offer of more years and more money?

What’s keeping him out of a side that is basically made up of players with than then 30 games? I mean, everyone else is getting a shot, why not a recognised ruckman with form in the VFL when we are desperately crying out for one?

Either Hirdy has lost the plot, Giles insulted his mum, or something else very odd is at play.


“something else very odd is at play”… Or maybe just “something else is at play”. Your ignorance doesn’t mean the only explanation must be “very odd”.

Last night I got home and couldn’t find my Kindle. I’d had it on the train but it wasn’t in my bag. In your world it was either stolen or a ghost hid it.

In reality, it fell out of my bag into the footwell in my car. 'Cause ghosts don’t exist and just because I didn’t know where it was doesn’t mean it was a ■■■■■■■ conspiracy.

to be fair, Giles must be exceptionally ■■■■■ to not be getting a game

recruiting someone only for him to be so utterly ■■■■■ is pretty odd

i mean ty zantuck got a game for us

We’re not tanking. The coaches think that playing only one ruck is the way the game should be played. That’s what has been done all year even when TBC was a lone hand in the ruck (even after having not played last year and sustaining an injury in round 1) and Smack was playing very well in the 2’s.

The reason they only want one ruck IMO is because the ball comes out of our forward 50 too easily. I think it comes out of the forward 50 too easily because the forwards are significantly outnumbered because we have extras at the contest because we get killed in the ruck and at clearances. If we were actually more competitive in the ruck, clearances would be better and then we wouldn’t have to play an extra at the contest and the forwards wouldn’t be as outnumbered and the ball wouldn’t come out so easily out of our forward 50. I’m a big believer in playing two guys who are at least capable in the ruck and then build the side from there. You don’t need world beaters of ruckman, you just need to give your mids a shot.

See round 21 2006 v Richmond.

If ever essendon tanked a game that was it.

ssssh. stop drawing attention to it.

Just wait until Joe starts kicking bags of goal and they drag him off the ground

On a serious note, Fark you Paddy

AFL will use this thread as evidence of tanking, gurge