I read the opposite. Let’s see.
I don’t mind that as long as we do the right thing with what comes the other way
- A midfield bull
- A KPD
- An elite small foward
“When a player is desperate to stay and a club is desperate to keep them, in my experience, the deal gets done. Darcy is committed to the club”
How did you read it otherwise?
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That it should have been done 8 weeks ago as per Parish comments at the time.
You might be right.
First point:
No fan should be projecting “when we might be challenging again for a premiership”.
It’s ridiculous.
Where we are today…with this list…there is no way to logically construct a path to the top of the ladder.
All we can say is that the window is closed in the near-term…and if we can’t make massive list improvements in the next ~4 years, and Tasmania comes in, and Merrett retires, then we’re screwed for a loooong time.
Second point:
I think our game style got worked out as the season progressed…
At the start of the year, sides were letting us chip-chip-chip it from the backline to ~65m from goal…then kick long to the goal square.
I think sides worked out that they just needed to pressure us through midfield, and we failed to find another way to move the ball forward.
Scott will need to come up with more strategies.
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F → Fail
I’ve said it most of the year. If we can’t hit targets by hand or by foot, no game plan in the world will work for us cause we will constantly turn it over which means we will be constantly out of position.
You can see we don’t improve this at all. In fact you could argue after you have your first season with Essendon you regress quite a bit. Why doesn’t it feel like our players get better and better. We age but don’t get finer, just more acidic.
We still don’t know what to do cause even in round 24 we are shouting at each other over who should be where and doing what, completely lost faith in finding the player in the better position, still call out to be given the ball facing the wrong direction etc…
Hobbs is probably the exception to the rule, but to me it looks like he doesn’t trust any of the players to give them the ball, so tries to do it himself. Long term we can’t win like this either.
What’s embarrassing for the fans is that we all see it coming. We know exactly how the team will play after the first 5 minutes. We know the mood. We’ve had plenty of years to feel it coming.
How’s the development in the VFL going? How are our fringe picks coming along? The project players? Less said the better.
Which brings us to our midfield and running backs / wings. We don’t know what any player is going to do. You can see they need to look before passing a ball. It’s not predictable. You can see the pressure always comes cause there is always doubt. Does someone have my back? Did they get that block in? Have they run hard to give me an out? Generally no. When you watch the opposition it feels like they know what our players will do more than our own. Why is that?
We need to have more skill with the ball. Trust to me is built when we know our players can hit their targets. We work harder knowing we aren’t going to cough it up as often. We do that repeated effort knowing we will eventually get that advantage. Till then everything else is a waste of time.
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Welcome to Essendon circa 2000s Brad, you got the complete show this year. We just really wanted to welcome you on board in big, proud, successful club Essendon style.
Great patches of form and effort, transitioning to an absolute ■■■■■■■■■■■ of bottom feeding proportions. You’ve had backroom punch ons between key staff, injuries to rd 1 draft picks, non existent performance from key senior players and a well and truly caca list on display. Oh, forgot to mention a half cobbled together vfl program. Yet, after all of that, we’re all still here, hurting, venting, making light of the situation where we can, but most of all trying to understand what the ■■■■ that smell is?
It’s essington. Good luck getting it out of the carpet. So many have tried, but failed in spectacular fashion, only making it stink deeper in to the joint.
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Couldn’t agree more with the OP.
Dodo and Sean Murphy and their whole respective teams should be gone by the morning. Assistant coaches turned over (bye bye Cara, Gia), new head of development brought in, complete overhaul of VFL program, and an aggressive cull of the list. Vozzo needs to be hard at work from tonight to detonate this place and give it a clean slate.
As for Brad, really disappointing season post-bye. Poor game plan, shocking team selection, incredibly poor effort and resilience from the group. All we can hope for is that he has all of the evidence he needs to get mouthguards out day 1 of pre-season and have them in for the whole summer to instil some fight into this group.
The sad part is that we’ve invested heavily into the draft with some high end draft picks but don’t have any very elite young talent to look forward to or have the rest of team jump on the back of. Hobbs and Martin the most promising. We’re really is no mans land.
Not one A-grader out of all our top 10 picks is just a disaster really:
McGrath
Parish - closest to it tbf
Francis
Cox
Perkins
Reid
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An absolute waste of a year.
Played close to the least number of players in the comp.
Played a garbage game plan.
Exhibited no selection integrity.
Developed no skills.
Fitness was every bit as poor as previous.
This could’ve been year one of a rebuild.
Instead the coach and the whole bloody club got blinded by a soft draw and a tilt at finals.
The list is deplorable. Where are the future stars? Who are our stars?
Many, many desks and lockers should be cleared out starting tomorrow.
We are in a whole world of hurt.
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S
H
I
T
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Thank goodness. We are very close to putting it all together with Darce and just need to add the finishing touches.
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You could not have summed up the year better
I honestly think we are nearly there. Just a few things to touch up, that being defence, offence, fitness, coaching, attitude, leadership, and a few other minor details. Have that covered we won’t finish bottom next year. 2nd to bottom i think would be a fantastic effort. All praise to our Essendon overlords in whom we trust.
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So which players improved?
Martin? Bryan? Langford? Menzie?
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I have been watching Essendon since 1961 and I can’t remember consecutive performances as bad as those we’ve put in over the last two weeks.
It looks as though the players really don’t want to be out there.
I am completely at a loss. I don’t know where we go from here. I thought Barham taking over from Brasher was a good thing. I thought Brad Scott was a good appointment.
Right now it looks as though I was wrong on both counts.
This is about as low as a club can go.
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Let’s hope your right….Essendon may say hold my beer and just ■■■■ the bed… We have a knack of making things worse when it’s not possible
I know trade talk and ins and outs gets people interested.
I have no connection to any players after the past two weeks.
I honestly couldn’t care who comes and especially who goes.
I think Brad is the man still.
But In racing terms we are coming from a long way back.
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I’ve only just realised…despite playing NM and WC twice…our percentage (89.7%) is likely to be the 4th lowest in the competition.
I think it’s important to remember that this is an odd year, so therefore, this was our good year!
Next year should be fun.
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