I don’t mind their list, but who is their best young midfielder? It’d be [Darcy] Parish, but is he an A-grader? [Andrew] McGrath is a flanker and [Jye] Caldwell, we don’t know if his body will hold up yet,” another recruiter said. “What else is there? They haven’t brought in an A-grade midfielder in a long time.
I don’t get this. It ignores Merrett completely. Parish nearly won a Brownlow and won a bag of medals. We drafted a mid with our first pick this year and Perkins a few years prior. Shiel too was an attempt at bringing in an a grader. It’s not talent in the midfield that’s the problem. It’s that our talented players are too similar.
So we are again admitting whatever the fark they were doing over pre-season (first back lol) was a complete waste so we’re acquiescing to the players again, the cycle continues. Fark. Them. All.
Bernard Shepherd.
Another internal promotion who is way out of his depth.
The fact we hired Stanton as the VFL coach shows we don’t do our due diligence. He is a terrible communicator and can’t believe relationships with people.
He either gets support (mentor) or he will go. I know it is about winning but we are unwatchable. My 2 daughters, mum and I mad supporters and members for over 20 years can’t be bothered to drive 2 hours and ‘waste’ 5 hours of the weekend. Like Aceman says they will take notice of empty seats.
The club is always arranging a 5 year, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 etc year anniversary of past premierships, so basically every year there is an anniversary of one of our past premierships to focus on. Maybe the club should arrange 25 and 50 year celebrations but the players can sort out the less important ones. To me we are a club focussed way too much on the past and don’t take the future seriously.
If we were a good club with standards and not a pathetic laughing stock for decades that made mistake after mistake, i would be fine with shiel being sub
but i struggle a little bit to understand how people can’t see its just another pathetic move from a club that has no standards. his omission was a half of fkn football. even if he didn’t get on the ground, its still not the point
we do things in halves. we aren’t ruthless. And now this week, shiel is still in the senior side. Maybe he did learn his lesson (i doubt it) but its not about that in some ways, its about starting to set some fucken standards at this club. He should have played VFL
Seems inevitable Dodoro will go at the end of the year now. So much criticism of our list, it’s deniable. Even his defenders are turning on him on Blitz.
Glad someone has publicly stated that Smith didn’t fit out list
Haaaaave you met Essendon? The fluff pieces will start about Dod and Truck have analysed our list in depth, the best analysis ever, and have developed the most awesomest strategy for trade and draft season that is signed off by the board and the whole club is behind it, then we’ll convince some nong with name value to nominate us so we’re in the news and the shittrain will go on.
The views of the unnamed recruiter in that Age article provide good insight regarding how some players need to be coached, but also what we can reaaonably expect in the short term.
The comment about Cox indicates a lack of intensity and perhaps focus. Most supporters would say that is evident this year.
The comment re Perkins, can we expect him to become the main big midfielder? Perhaps not, but at least he’ll be very dangerous.
The comment re Jones, we can all see his talent. Just will his body stand up or not is the question.
The question about who is "A grade " in the midfield, well I think we’ll see Martin develop into that role to be honest. He looks every bit like he’s going to become the main man in the midfield for us. But he’s 6 games into his career, so there is that.
Robert Shaw in the latest ‘Sacked’ podcast talks a bit about what he thinks has been going wrong at Essendon (from about the 46th minute onwards). He says it wasn’t until very recently that someone said they were playing ‘for’ Essendon rather than ‘at’ Essendon, that has been an indictment on previous coaches/admin/players and one of the reasons why we’re no longer a strong club.
the club reminds me of people who say “just talk nicely to your kid” when they are chucking a tantrum.
they try to be stern, but don’t want to be considered mean so thay say naughty boy, then give them a hug.
shiel has been in the system for 11 years, he’s played a certain way all his life, and this club things it takes missing half a game to rectify 11 years of bad habits. when they can’t even implement new aspects to a gameplan after 8 odd ■■■■■■■ months.
we are the epitome of the new wave bullshit that breeds nothing but softness, not exactly a great recipe for building a success sporting organisation from.
The club has bought into Dodoro’s crap constantly in the past.
I find it funny when people say “but Cox, Perkins and Reid are so talented, how can you say Dodoro is bad?”. They’re literally first round picks. Any player in the top 20 is super talented.
If Dodoro had have drafted Oliver Henry, Tanner Bruhn and Heath Chapman instead, people would say the exact same thing