So I avoided this thread for a while through fear of what I might read.
I think logically the answer is in between the black and white being presented by many.
My take:
Woosha is not the greatest Matchday coach. HOWEVER, I for one am pleased he is playing the unselfish long game to make sure these blokes manage themselves better onfield. A rookie coach would not have the confidence to cop the criticism and would go for short term glory / fix. Woosha has more integrity than that.
despite Darlis appeals I do think we have lost aspects of our winning culture. This is a big hurdle but can be restored.
unfortunately I do believe our senior players are not “winners” and that is why the onfield adjustments and coaching is not overly effective. Look for our younger players to fix this.
our gameplan is built around our strengths. No point building a gameplan based on contested ball if you don’t have contested players.
list mgmt should be done by the club not the coach. Some coaches may end up making poor decisions that meet short term pressures and not in the entire clubs best interest. Im not sure the circumstances but if you look at saints list when Lyon left and what Malthouse did with Thomas / Betts. These are possible examples of coaches making short term / poor decisions of which they were no longer even there to fix.
Essendon folk are a hard lot to please when outsiders come into the club. The way people talk about Hird it’s as if he coached us to back to back premierships. If Hird had this season we would all be praising from the rooftops. Instead the coach is an Eagle and we are overly critical.
Xavier Campbell apologising to the players Re: his tweet is probably the only mistake he has made since being at the club. He has been sensational. The players who were upset need to self reflect more and it is a direct symptom of the cultural challenges referred to previous.
In essence I don’t expect much support because I have argued with everyone. But balance in the discussion is valuable i feel.
I’m sick to death of this being brought up. I don’t ever recall reading that anyone actually said the players were upset. All we heard was he apologised. We don’t even know how the apology went.
It could have been “I’m really sorry guys for doing that. If anybody needs a cuddle I’ll be in my office”.
Alternatively it could’ve also gone “I’m sorry for putting that in the public domain, but let’s face it, it needed to be said you weak ■■■■■■”.
Or possibly somewhere in the middle. The fact is nobody knows. This place just aches for the club’s hierarchy to do something wrong so they can jump straight onto them. It’s really starting to annoy the crap out of me.
All coaches are one job move away from becoming a failed coach. It doesn’t mean they can’t coach and can’t keep up with tactical trends of the day. Look at Geelong and Knights. Hawks with Ratten.
On Friday night Bomber Thompson said on SEN that the EFC players couldn’t handle it if the coach raised his voice at them. Was an interesting, and slightly disturbing, insight.
Like you say on the one hand , its admirable he has a path and vision that he believes is right and just needs time. On the other im like , you need to be able to adapt to any situation. One thing thats ahitted mw for years is our constant always playing behind the man 5 meters to be better in position for errant euahed kicks forward. Great when we have pressure on up the field and teams are frazzled.
Not so good when its not working and teams just hit up leading players.
Belieiving he is the man to change the mental side od things.
Its a hard onw for me cos i see what you’ve described in worsfold , and i want to believe, and he can definitely see the issues.
Then he turns around and does the exact same things that thw previous coaches have done.
Again this year its hard to judge cos was it mostly to do with the returning players and juggling them.
Its a hard one to judge all round. His system may be perfect , but if you dont have the right cattle out there, it’ll be pointless.
Richmond i guess this year is a prime example.
Got rid of deleido and Vickery, pixked up some better skilled and better defensive players all round and look what can happen.
Hell i was surprised how many senior named players were playing for their reserves on telly yesterday.
As much as i like/d hocking i think its the right move, i can only hope howlett is shown the door too (yes its a **** thing but it has to be done).
And his handling of myers and goddard will be key indicators for me going forward on how worsfole is going in general.
Jerrett was pretty much shown the exit door last year cos of poor skill and panicking under presuure. Will be interesting to see how myers is treated next year if he xontinues on this seasons form of barely hitting a target by hand or foot.
Theres so many variables for once, that it really is hard to get a read on how good or bad worafold is going at present.
The players weren’t upset about Xavier’s comments they were disappointed he went public with the tweet without first speaking to the players. A bit like their reaction when Worsfold said the players had hit the wall after the Adelaide game.
Xavier has publicly supported these players no end. He was not personal and just tweeted a sentiment which was the opposite of “great win and proud of the boys” which they took exception to.