The Inevitable Rebuild

A new mentor and rebuild the Captain’s ideology. Complete lack of care and couldn’t care less behaviour, when a team mate is copping it on the ground from three opposition players.

Great mentoring, oh that’s right, his mentor did the same thing awhile back, threw a mate of his under a bus and left the sinking ship.

Harsh you bet, so was that behaviour. Shows where his head is.

But you goal should be a premiership.

The strategy is about outlining goals and how to get there, a premiership not treated as the central theme to the strategy provides a cultural change in language about secondary priorities and focus.

I’m sure the board and management can justify their decision and strategy to any extreme necessary in a way Harvard Business School would be proud of. But that doesn’t make it correct.

Winning a premiership should be the singular focus of any AFL club and thus the primary goal. Every strategy should be headlined about how to achieve this. Every function of the organisation should be designed and built around achieving that focus, if it’s not then we have a major problem at the club.

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not that it really matters in the end. but was goddard a ‘■■■■ hes good at footy give him a free scholarship to play at our school.’ because thats most of the private school footy draftees.

This.

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Analog

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Yup. I definitely don’t think “went to private school” should be regarded as a positive attribute for drafting purposes, or a negative. It’s not a personality type or a character attribute. About the only thing it means is that they’ve worn a blazer, which I guess might help on AA night?

vaguely remember how to tie a tie…

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Yep, 14 years of mediocrity in all areas related to their CORE business … footy (it’s about winning games of footy, right?). Recruitment. Coaching. The board. What drives success is club CULTURE and expectations. What happened to Essendon post Sheedy? The club needed to be progressive, bold. Instead, they’ve taken the conservative / safe approach and it’s backfired spectacularly ever since. As others have suggested, clear the joint out. Get a mongrel personality like Kennett who DEMANDS excellence in every department of the club. It’s pathetic what Essendon have offered up over the years and the board/a need to take full responsibility

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one of the key focuses is picking players who are going to represent the Essendon ‘brand’ well off the ground.

Repairing The Essendon ‘brand’ has been a key focus of the whole club. It is always talked about.

Other than Stringer, we have picked players that are low risk at hurting the Essendon brand.

But this is well and truely away from my point. The point is, to rebuild we need to change the way we draft and recruit coaches. We need hardened, ruthless, competitive people at the club.

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That’s exactly what @Catherine_Lio said.

A strategy is the mid level description of how you acheive your ultimate goal, be it in business or in sport. The goal is a premiership. The strategy guides how you get there.

It would be like saying that the gameplan on matchday is “win the premiership”. That’s not how it works. You develop a gameday strategy to get you there across the whole year.

Or, you know, you don’t… like in our case…

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However the strategies outlined do not refer to the goal or represent a clear pathway to the goal. There is a disconnect between the strategy and what appears to be the implied goal.

Hence why other clubs keep the overarching goal of premierships as the headlines point to their strategy and we do not.

I accept it would be simple to add a giant, bold heading outlining that the goal is to win the premiership.

How is any of our strategy guiding us towards a flag?
We talk about “best practice member experience” “community outcomes”, “strengthening industry relationships”, “key commercial partnerships”, “responsible financial management”, “brand position”

It’s a strategy in how to succeed off field as a business and nothing to do with winning a premiership! It could’ve been ripped straight from the wall of my office and I work in FMCG!
There’s absolutely no coincidence that the clubs performing well at the moment have “win a premiership” as their number 1 strategy. None AT ALL.

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Not arguing that our strategy doesn’t suck.

I’m arguing that “Win a premiership” isnt a strategy.

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Correct

Now if the 2018-2021 GOALS omitted any talk of a premiership then I’d get my knickers in a twist.

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Absolutely.

I have a few comments to make about our strategy.

AFL is one of the most unpredictable of ball games. The unexpected wins games; unexpected moves, strategies, players. We have become too predictable and we have to become less predictable. We are too predictable because we set up too much, we overuse the ball, we handball too much, we kick backwards too much. Even when we switch we’re predictable. A few years ago I was sitting behind Clarkson at one of our games, 2 weeks prior to playing Hawthorn. You could see he was keeping mental notes. And I thought at the time how easy we had become to pick off. It’s worse now.

What is to be done?This is what I would suggest for what it’s worth.

  1. I think the players are mentally stale at game time. I think they are too focused on football. They are professional players but I suggest they might benefit from training less and thinking about football less. I guarantee they are able to kick the goals at training…the same ones they miss in the game. So perhaps practice less and do other things which helps their minds. I know a lot do short courses, have apprenticeships, but perhaps some more part-time jobs away from football might help. Give them another focus so that they are fresher for game day. Sometimes less produces more. They need to be switched on mentally. They need to be creative, not stale. They need to enjoy what they do.

  2. People keep talking about a game plan. In modern football there should be many game plans, and possibly different game plans for different groups of players.If the momentum swings against us, then switch immediately to the other plan. We need to make ourselves unpredictable and to be on the front foot rather than the back foot. Work out different strategies that are really different, not marginally different. for example, Stringer full forward or Hooker on a wing.

  3. Coaching. I think we need an assistant who is just retired from the game, a future senior coach rather than a past senior coach. And I would let the assistants be the coach for at least half a game, if not an entire game. I think Worsfold is best during the week, but not game time. And the coach should spend at least some time at ground level during the game.

  4. Finally we have to address three obvious weaknesses: interstate performances, red time , and now our third quarters. They are all related. I would suggest the red time and third quarter are related to the predictability of our game and as the opposition work us out, they find the cracks. We might do well to change the game plan at half time every week, and at the 20 minute mark every quarter.

What I’m saying is we need to start being unpredictable, not inconsistent, but unpredictable.

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It should be our primary purpose. Everything should be geared in such a way to propel us in that direction. As anyone can see we are doing a grand job.

I agree 100%.

Even with the sarcasm.

My argument is purely against the assertion that “hurrrr der hurrr win da flag” is a strategy. It isn’t.

i can go get my year 11 economics textbook that outlines goal, vs strategy vs tactics.