The supporters need the players to give them something and vice versa.
It’s been that way at games for many years, like there’s a tension, an expectation of disappointment.
The sunday arvo games against interstate teams are the worst. Even when we win, I find them really tough going.
Bottom line : the fans don’t trust the footy department week to week to be competitive and handle sides we should realistically defeat. We drop to their level almost without fail. The expectation seems to weigh everyone down. You can feel it. And too often it’s well founded.
Coaching and on-field performance aside…the absolute arrogance, the lack of self-awareness, the…ungratefulness from the club.
It doesn’t deserve 10,000 members.
Seriously.
It doesn’t deserve Gold Coast numbers of membership.
I joined the fight plan.
I gave time and money when it was needed.
To see last year our captain in a membership drive throwing dogshit at the door of an Essendon supporter that the club wanted more money from, to hear him say he’s going to do that every day until he coughs up, that was pretty bad.
To see the club say to supporters this year, ‘No More Excuses.’
Last year I chipped in for three shares of player sponsorship. And that was fine, I certainly got my moneys worth and I’d encourage others to experience that.
But after seeing that, I can’t enable them any further.
Basically, the Essendon Football Club has been an under-performing business for 15 years. That’s a long time, and unfortunately now there’s a deep-seated culture of mediocrity that we need to shake. Players, coaches, administrators that have been a part of the club for any decent length of time are all part of it. The biggest problem is that the long-serving players at the club, Hurls, Hooksey, Zaka, Myers, Belly, Dys, etc, don’t know any better. They probably think they are working hard, but if you put them in an environment that’s been perennially successful over the past decade (Hawthorn, Sydney, Geelong, etc), they’d probably get a rude shock. As much as I like John Worsfold I’ve been somewhat dismayed by some of the comments that he’s made over the past 12 months, which are diametrically opposed to how he played the game himself. I hope he tore strips off them privately because what he says in the media doesn’t fill me with much hope that his message is getting through.
That we dont seen to learn from our mistakes , and just follow the same cycles and patterns.
That the worst part about our last period of meh it mostly comes down ro constant lack of effort on gameday.
You can handle most things if it at least looks like they are giving it their all.
Yes we sll know they dont go out there to suck and eith the best intentions, but still.
