If you try rebuild your house, by keeping all the rotten foundations, what do you think is going to happen in the end?
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I donât think a full blown rebuild is necessary and Iâm comfortable how the club is redirecting itself resources wise, cultural and Iâm much more hopeful success can eventuate following all the changes the last 24 months.
Now I think we need to give the club time and space to embed the changes, build a solid base and grow from there.
Good culture woth afl lifestyles will stop the rot
My point is list quality plays a critical role.
However, I think where we differ, now getting to the core of our differences, I think the implications of poor culture had an adverse impact on list managements ability to build successful teams over the time. And that this function was at times hamstrung unfairly, restricted in its ability to execute its strategy and frankly unable to freely do its job well.
By this I mean, a terrible culture of short cuts, outside influence and interference in football, under investment in development and recruiting, external crisis enveloping the club and creating distraction, division and infighting⌠Standards unable to be enforced all led to underperformance on field which then led to further crisis, coach sacking, unrest, division etcâŚâŚ
This resulted in new regimes, new plans, revised list strategies on the run, new perspectives on listed players and this prevented list management to have sufficient space and time to build and develop a listâŚ
The key pointâŚ. Whilst our list management has has shortcomings and made errors over a long period, I think it was hamstrung and impossible for this dept to effectively do its job over much of the last 20 years meaning the cultural failings that led to poor performance unfairly impacted list managements ability to operate which resulted in an unreasonable judgement of its impact on the clubs failure the last 20 years.
Talent trumps culture, and stability comes from winning.
I have a friend who works at Pies and can tell you that Collingwood was anything but stable from 2020 to 2022. But they had talent on the list and it shut the outside noise up.
Richmond had players leaving the Covid bubble to party during the week in 2020. What great âcultureâ that is. Hardwick didnât just forget how to coach in his last years at Richmond. His star players got old and all his depth players left for other clubs.
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Quality avatarâŚ
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Talent and culture are both critical to success. I think itâs the other way around but thatâs the crux of this debate.
Talent that isnât given the opportunity to grow and develop due to lack of support or injury remains just talent. Essendonâs had many of these.
This
Whatâs the correct list/culture compilation?
- Culture more important comfortably
- Culture more important but itâs close
- Theyâre even
- List more important but itâs close
- List more important comfortably
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voters
Development of skills in individual players. Scott remarked on the handballing skills of the Doggies.
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Couldnât disagree more.
Talent is wasted without the right attitude or culture. The reality is that youâre only going to ever have a handful of game breaking players, the rest need to be elevated via team culture.
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I would love a reality where we have a handful of game breaking players, just quietly.
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Good players elevate and inspire those around them. Some players just arenât committed to do the work, regardless of where they are at
A rebuild isnât just about getting top 10 draft picks. Absolutely you need to get value from those opportunities (which we havenât)but filling out the list with late gems then filling gaps with targeted trades & FAs is equally important. They also traded a 1st rnd pick for Boyd which was very much a rebuilding move at the time but it was finding quality players like Dahlhaus & Johannisen from the rookie draft and Dale and Daniel at 45/46 that were the more astute picks. It also never hurts to have a few FS picks dropped in your lap.
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I think culture is less important when you already have a winning team. Sometimes youâre just so good that it doesnât matter.
When youâre a club that needs to develop players and has low standards, changing that culture is probably more important. The catch is that you can change the culture much faster by changing the talent.
Correct. Then thereâs stuff like tackling techniques etc. sometimes we overlook the detail and specific skill work needed and focus it needs to build. For so many years we were expecting great progression of our talent with half the coaching resources we now have. Itâs a reason why talent at Essendon often didnât improve and progress. And thereâs so many of them over the years who either didnât progress or got injured (or both), didnât train, didnât complete preseasons, played in a sub standards vfl program and eventually either left the joint or got pushed out. Years of neglect and mismanagement of the footy program.
Absolutely agree but the concept of a rebuild is generally underpinned by a clubâs decision to hit the draft hard with early picks after strippping its list in search of young talent to build a; new list.
The Dogs did not ârebuildâ their list in the years leading into their 2016 success.
They had their captain & best player walk out and that was after losing Ward to GWS. Rebuilding was forced upon them - 3 x 1st round picks in 2012 was a big part of that just as 2020 should have been a part of a rebuild for us but that draft was of course compromised. They added 18 of their Premiership team from those 7 drafts leading into 2016. I donât think we have to throw out everything to rebuild & I actually think weâve attempted rebuilding numerous times in terms of hitting the draft but unlike WB weâve just had a really really poor hit rate.
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Bulldogs traded out Griffin, Cooney, Lake and Higgins. Not all by choice, but still, they certainly âtransformedâ (if one doesnât want to use the R word ) their list between the 2010 prelim and the 2016 flag.
And they nailed the three high-ish picks that they did have. Bont, Stinger and Macrae.
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We did with Rutten how did that work out