Were we?
The forward line was Crameri, Hurley, Bellchambers. That’s a hacked together forward line, if ever I’ve seen one. The midfield was Jobe, Stanton and Hepp, then fell away badly after that.
IMHO Jobe & BJ’s heroics that year (and kudos to them, and to Hird for his coaching throughout the year) covered a lot of other faults.
We should have finished 7th, and played Pies - who’d just pipped us by 79 points in rd 19.
Which I’m not sure changes the overall story, TBH.
We were 7th/8th good, but frankly I think that’s where we topped out. We’d had no early picks for years (with the GC/GWS drafts), and we’d struggled to attract quality talent from elsewhere.
I want to see the players be desperate in every single contest of every match. I want to them to look like they fear failure as much as they believe success will come.
I think that the belief that success will come is the problem with the EFC culture. I think the club needs to face reality that we have been an extremely c r ap club for at least 15 years. One finals win won’t change that. 2020 is now or never for some of the players. I hope that that 1-4 year group play like they know success won’t come unless they bring it…together. The club is now theirs for the making.
Lid on. We’re not going to make it, instead we’re going to add the list of clubs who unsuccessfully chased success by trading in players rather than building from the ground up.
I’m just happy we won’t be adding to the list of clubs who unsuccessfully chased success by drafting in players rather then seeking to improve their list through trading.
Geez, my hopes have been re-calibrated over the last 15 years to the point where I go into each season expecting us to be somewhere between mediocre and average. As long as the accountants and marketeers that run our club continue to be content with that, we will continue to be just that…
Since the Sheeds era, our recruiting policy seems to have been increasingly to draft good kids from good families, you know fair-minded, well balanced lads, with leadership qualities, typically the kids that come out of one of the top private schools.
Now I happen to appreciate the qualities of that type of kid, but are they ruthless, unrelenting uncompromising mongrels when they get on the field? I just believe that a team of ruthless, unrelenting uncompromising mongrels are more likely to win a flag than a team of gentlemen.
Believe me, that is a criticism that was voiced by some Bomber fans in the 60s and maybe even before that.
I don’t think people understand actually how big of joke our finals record is to the whole competition. Man it’s depressing
After the Adelaide game, stupidly I believed we had “turned the corner”
Then we managed to finish off the season by winning one game out of our last 5 And getting belted interstate in a elimination, again.
I have zero faith we are on the right track. None. Like always, il sign up to be a member, il go to games, il watch weekly. Il support. But where are we at? I have no idea at all. And that sucks
We were 13-4 that season before it became apparent that it wasn’t going to matter. The 3 weeks that followed we had the 3 largest statistical differentials for free kicks of any team for the season. And then we were thrown out of finals.
To suggest that we were 7th/8th good that season is completely overlooking the shtstorm of the last 6 weeks of the season. Given even an average run over that period we’d have finished top 4 and been playing Geelong for a prelim final spot.