This seems somewhat at odds with your main criticism of Hird’s tactics, “contested football” and “outnumber at the contest”
The recurring impact of poor decisions. Interestingly, Spike says a couple of weeks ago we would hope to fill ~3/4 footy department positions this off season.. He noted it wasn’t realistic that we’d be able to full arm our footy dept and coaching suite in this off season alone, it could take another year or so….. In light of this financial chunk taken from the soft cap, it now makes sense. Essendon hasn’t sufficient soft cap space to support Spike with the full compliment of coaches and supporting resources. Mediocrity cements further mediocrity as Ralphy rightly says.
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What a nothing burger of an article. Jon Ralph is spinning the plates in his brain again…can someone please tell me what the point of the article is? Sports teams do this every year all across the world and have been doing this for years! The only idiots losing sleep on this are the journo’s who think they take the moral high ground on the millions of dollars wasted; the same journos that hound club coaches to be sacked and moved on when the going gets tough. Get ■■■■■■ Ralph; when you stop writing articles about sacking coaches then feel free to tell clubs to stop wasting soft cap on payouts.
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Or maybe the people mcveigh want aren’t all available next year? If the club wants to clear the softcap they can. Just do another fund raiser. Announce hird to save the day
The story line on Blitz is usually that our wealthy benefactors have so much money they are willing to contribute to the club, we can get whatever we want, including paying the soft cap tax if necessary.
Now we’re worrying about being short of cash.
1 or 2 experienced coaches would be good, but a panel of mostly young coaches recently retired is ok, as sometimes you need to develop your own talent.
Hasn’t been a negative story about Essendon for a while, must be on the HS to do list atleast once a month.
Seriously though, it’s the Monday after the second weekend of the final series and Ralph’s thought is to write a negative story about the wooden spooners, what an arsehat.
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Ground ball and tackling and outnumbering at the contest he said are big in finals footy. I don’t remember Hird emphasising ground ball and tackling. Outnumbering yes, but he did this structurally with a plus one at the contest, which left an opposition spare in our forward 50 during his coaching days.
Barlow here is simply talking about work rate to get more players to the ball. It’s also what works in finals, you do need to have a few other tricks to get to the finals in the first place other than ‘contested ball and run back to defend’, which even blokes on the couch know is a baseline requirement to be a good side.
Ralph has a point but I’d say he’s over playing it. Those clauses are never linear and almost always result in some level of negotiation depending on the circumstances. It’s not to say that it wasn’t mind boggling stupid to extend Scott and we had to be pay but Essendon will be fine. We will be able to bring good people in this year and next.
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Ralph is a flog. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
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Why extra list spot assistance comes in handy if you want a Prestia. Place him under playing list and get around soft cap that way
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The soft cap is there to maoe it equal. You cant just clear it in a year and start fresh via fundraiser IIRC. You get a set budget from AFL and if you cut someone it has to come out of the same year or next year.
Just put Bartel, Hird and Mad Dog Murray on the rookie list and use our vast salary cap to pay them.
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The Big Build likes how you think.
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I’m convinced Safe Space Ralph writes his articles in crayon.
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It’s a soft cap - go over it and pay the tax. Why be inhibited by the soft cap. We are crying out for good development coaches. Load up the footy department and smash through that cap.
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Presumably you can back-end an assistant coach’s contract in the same way that you can with a player. Which means you can still attract quality assistants while we pay BS for doing nothing next year. Would much rather have this scenario than have him still at the helm.
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Given where our list is at and rebuilding etc, getting the development coaching positions spot on is critical. Based on the potential of the kids we have, if we get this right we could quite quickly become a strong side if we match this with a solid game plan.
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We gotta get rid of Parish, if we are bringing Viney in.
You just can’t have both of them on the list.
Because it means instead of money being spent on Essendon beneficial things, it gets spent on AFL Christmas parties (presumably).
I mean, sure, pay it if we think we get equivalent onfield benefit from doing so. But it’s not a trivial amount to pay.
In principle I agree but I understand the club will report a very poor financial result and the club doesn’t have money to throw around atm.
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