“Brad Scott comes in and says ‘Zach, your strengths are this, this and this and we don’t want you to worry about cultural and team building stuff and we’ll do all that around you’.
“That was the criticism on his leadership a few years ago that he was so focused on his own game that he couldn’t see outside the square.
Also;
“So it’s straddling that space between being a really supportive leader and challenging behaviour – that’s what we’re going to work on and we don’t expect Zach to be perfect in that space.
“What we’ve asked him to do is to role-model behaviour, to be an exceptional role model. And our coaches, me included, need to take a bigger responsibility in making sure that we’re enforcing the behaviours that we value.
“I think the risk for Zach is that he tries to be an enforcer, when really we just want him to lead by example, be the best player he can be and we’ll bring the others with him.”
And I’ll happily be accused of drawing my own conclusions, but the second quote reads as though he’s not being asked to do it because it’s not particularly a strength of his and that the other coaches take responsibility for that to let him focus on ensuring he is the example they can point to. I’ve always thought he was exceptional at setting an example, but he’s never come across as particularly good at ensuring his teammates were meeting that example let alone motivated too. As I also said, he does seem to be exceeding my expectations of his captaincy, but I think that part of that is that Scott has taken the responsibility for ensuring standards are met off his shoulders.
what morris said is true though. other people on the panel couldn’t understand it, as the thought he meant the players, but people behind the scenes still hold guilt and treat the players from that position.
like it or not, it’s definitely a directive from powerful people at the club, and or from people in positions of power to treat them with kid gloves.
The fact heppell got a guarantee last year after him being subbed out, that he’d play the rest of the year, you can’t hide the fact people use it as an excuse to hide behind not pushing players to become better.
It wasn’t just Duursma. Goldstein, Gresham and McKay all addressed needs. We also drafted for needs instead of foolishly just picking the best player. Was great to see us get more proactive about targeting a type within our pick range and trading up to get our man, too.
It’s excellent management. We’ve never done any of that before. It’s almost as if there was some other competent guy calling the shots instead of the same hack who had repeated the same mistakes for the previous 25 odd years.
That’s because Goldy was highly effective and we needed him to continue as he was winning us games. Bryan couldn’t do what Goldy was doing. Playing Goldy until the bye was a success. He has hit the wall since and now we get to hopefully see Bryan play another game or two.
I pretty much agree with all of this.
Not sure you can have Roberts and McGrath in the same backline, so I’d be adding McGrath to the trade list. (Doubt the club would do it, because they lack the balls). We really need to be looking at trading in a quality HBF, and developing/trading in another as depth. We are playing Martin their because we lack quality down back, and have more than enough that are adequate in the positions he excels in (wing and half forward).
Perkins has upside and has elite kicking inside 50, which is something we seriously lack, so I’d be keeping him for now. Could we try him at half back in the VFL?
