God, Brisbane were rubbish…
Morning, all.
2 Likes
Spot on. Dale in administration was rubbish all week. Didn’t step up when picking up coffees for the 11:30 meeting. Arragontly used font size 14 for his internal memo.
9 Likes
You can be pithy about it, but clubs take on distinct ‘personalities’ in entirety that can be very tough to shake.
2 Likes
**[quote=“saladin, post:3400, topic:2976, full:true”]
Its not just the playing group, the entire organisation freezes in the spotlight for matches like yesterday.
[/quote]
Sorry Sal, but that is just wrong. I can’t unfortunately repeat them, but if you had of heard some of the conversations I did yesterday you would realise how far off the mark you are.
I think it’s easy to blame Woosha because if we did a big deeper into the Essington issue where going to discover who’s really to blame for this culture and it’s not going to be nice.
Watson…Hooker…Hurley…Bellchambers…Colyer…Zaharakis…Myers…Hocking…Howlett…
All long serving, loyal Essendon people and the very essence of Essington. I’m not sure how or who infected those guys but they’re infected. Move them on.
Say what you want but we’re not going anywhere with any of those blokes in the team. Hurley and Bellchambers maybe stay. And Hooker if he’s played back.
And make Parish captain.
1 Like
Maybe we need to hear these conversations, then.
No, I don’t mean from you. Obv.
It’s possible the loss to Sydney played a part in yesterday’s listless performance and combine that with taking the bottom team for granted (players and coaches alike) was a always going to be a recipe for disaster.
That’s why I blame the coaches. Poor preparation, not having the players primed for the contest. People within the club can be piss_d all they like but it’s a serious indictment on coaches that they can have the boys playing really intense footy against top 4 teams and not have them equally ferocious against teams out of the 8.
Another season of less than 10 wins is not good enough. Worsfold is safe this year but his assistants should be under the spotlight. Time for change
I probably didnt explain it well. Im sure that some straight talking is going on. But collectively, as “Essendon”, we dished up what many of us feared -and dare i say, expected- through experience over the last decade.
Im a believer in the idea of organisations effectively being a collective living entity with its own traits and mannerisms. Thats players, admin, members, fans, the whole lot. We have invariably tripped over ourselves for a decade or more. Actually, in my time Essendon have always been a bit prone to that, but the balance has shifted too far to that end irrespective of playing and coaching personel.
2 Likes
Seems pretty clear that we have absolutely no idea how to negate teams that bring a strong defensive mindset to the game - Carlton, Brisbane, Sydney (for three quarters), Richmond etc. have all beaten us more or less the same way, which is simply throwing an extra or two in defence and/or blocking the corridor. Conversely, we’ve carved up teams that haven’t bothered playing defence or have gifted us use of the corridor, like Port and WC.
Pretty embarrassing that we’re so easily beaten by one simple strategy. Don’t know whether it’s a coaching issue or player mentality/‘cultural’ issue, but it’s embarrassing all the same.
2 Likes
I don’t think we have much tactical nouse on game day.
Everyone knows my distaste for skip worth but his game day coaching in the vfl was decidedly underwhelming.
Harv’s is a failed senior coach.
Same with McKenna.
I wanted Egan to be groomed for the head role so bad.
1 Like
Do you think the players are not feeling the consequences of this by basically going ‘yep we were arrogant won’t happen again’ and none of the worst offenders are getting dropped?
Sorry, sick of this cliche.
Port & Weagles didn’t gift us the corridor - we sliced through it.
Collingwood - congested corridor
Sydney - BS - they beat us through contested ball at stoppages when on a roll.
Bears - Oh look - they went from 27 down by beating us at contested stoppages when on a roll!
Richmond & Carlton - beat us by clogging corridor - 2 examples doesn’t make it a truism.
We are losing largely because of contested ball stoppage work shortcomings. And the inability to stop a team on a roll driving forward.
And some other issues - see above posts for a range of suggestions.
Please don’t take game analysis cliches from King & Ling
7 Likes
That’s 2 possibilities that cropped up for me, but also, Brisbane are building a pretty good side…
Many good kids there, and they can play when they get switched on, and after coming from a long way back against us & getting very close,… in fact heading us in the last IIRC, just 10 or so weeks ago, it was clear they turned up with a firm belief in themselves to be able to match us, … and if we headed them, … to catch us.
They were right, and they & their coaches used that last recent good effort to feed a lot of confidence.
They, along with Neeld, were considered good enough assistant coaches to get a go at being a head coach. That doesn’t make them bad assistant coaches. It just means they got too far.
I think AFL discards far too many coaches.
5 Likes
If Woosha doesn’t go full Terry Wallace at every quarter and half time break, sack him.
He didn’t want the job again and only did it under duress. And; BJ did a damn good job, considering.
I think Heppell should have waited a year before taking it on the Captaincy. I think it has affected his game and of course, the year off its hard to judge ratios.
The biggest thing going against Worsefold is if you put a bomb under him he would still have the same expression.
Oh and I’m not convinced we are getting the best out of our players. Which is a bit of a worry.
5 Likes
His inabilty to tag, or dogged determination to not tag, is costing us bigtime. When something is that obvious, it raises massive queries about a coach and his panel. There’s 27 of the farkers in the box. Has it not occurred to a single farking one of them?
4 Likes
1 Like
I thought the same about Hird. Spoke the same way after our losses as he did after most wins. Had to console myself with the thought that hopefully they were more direct and aggressive behind closed doors. I think all four of our last coaches have had equally bad turd-in-the-bath style performances.
4 Likes