I just feel the excuses are poised and ready. New fitness boss. Injury interrupted pre season. Confusion over coaching handover (taking a while to bed down the game plan etc). I just feel like we’ve all seen this movie before and know how it ends. It’s taken 20 years, but I just don’t have the optimism that I’ve held in past pre seasons.
Having said all that, if we start well and are 4-2 or 5-1 in the first 6 after finally picking up a win on ANZAC Day, I may migrate to the lid off thread 
That warm fuzzy feeling when we start 8-3 and then end the season 12-10. Makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
After the success of last year, this year the membership package has been upgraded to include:
-welcome hug at the door from efc1robbo
-welcome drink (bourbon) from wimm to settle in
-box of fresh produce for the trip home from rosso
-stal says your username repeatedly in capitals with an (!) throughout the first day
Due to unprecedented demand at this time of year, get in now to avoid disappointment.
* all items only while stocks last, except for Robbo who just loves a hug, be careful walking past the front door for curious lid off types
I’d prefer a gin from johnrain
That’s so early to mid last decade.
Aren’t we now into the ‘start the season abominably, then recover promisingly before skirting on that precarious 50/50 line, and falling into the 8 whilst a number of other equally sh*t teams universally implode’ phase ?
It totally is episode 20 of modern Essendon.
But I really hate everyone saying it’s excuses, I can list out the reasons why Gold Coast isn’t going to win the flag next year, they are not excuses they are just valid reasons. We are similarly not primed to win the flag next year, people need to accept that.
I don’t think anyone is talking premierships. I think we all can accept that is well beyond our grasp. We played finals last year & IMO that should be the minimum expectation this year. We need to be aspiring to play finals and win them. We’ve played finals five of the last 10 years and with the exception of 2014, been blown away. We haven’t shown improvement. My post was in the context of we offer up excuses why we haven’t shown improvement and I can see it already for 2020. Because we’ve fallen short on field, I feel like the club needs to spin the positives off field hence why we hear about record membership, paying down debt, million dollar profit etc. Each of those are important from a business POV but do we as members and supporters take much out of a great financial result or a football result? After all the core business of a football club is pretty obvious. It feels as though that’s almost secondary at the moment because we’ve been so poor at it for such a long time.
Agree with all of that.
Hello? Is anybody else here?
“Sound of crickets”
They’ll be back after round 3
When this great club played out of the MCG and Windy Hill with decent haircuts we didnt have lids.
I blame docklands etihad marvel /the corporate souless putrid turn footy into expensive theatre pit.
Look how we played today on a wet suburban training ground.
McBride. Says. For. You. To. SHUT. UP.
Please… it was only a win, in preseason, in Perth, against a premiership contender,
with what looked like a fully fit Naitanui who played really well, and a fully fit Josh Kennedy who played really well, during a monsoon, with half our best 22 not out there, while we tried a couple of kids not even on our list
Let’s wait until we face a real challenge before we suggest that this thread is going to lack patrons.
Bottom of the ladder Suns should sort us out.
Until the siren blows on grand final day and we are holding the cup… this club and supporters should be ‘lid on’.
We have to rectify 20 years of bad habits and fragile competing mentality. We have nothing to be arrogant or confident about.
Our practice games have been pleasing so far. But that’s it.
There is suddenly some chance we won’t win a game this season.
Does your metric also say we’ll finish equal 1st down to 5th based on alphabetical hierarchy? I’ll take that.
