Why will it be a wasted draft? Why will our recruiters go from being very professional and very good 12 months ago to being incompetent and useless 12 months later? What basis do you have for saying that because our first pick is #16 we can therefore only ever hope to achieve a "couple of quick finals visits before dropping down again"? If you thought that Sunday's win was not worth it at any level - team, club, sponsor or supporter - then I don't know that you will ever be capable of seeing the positives.
Why a wasted draft? - Well if our first pick is at 16 and our next in the 30s and so on our great team of recruiters are going to have their work cut out for them finding average players let alone the talent we need to inject into our structure at the moment. We don't need average battlers. The recruiters may find some 'diamonds in the rough' but we need more than one or two talents, we need a group of them for as we all know, the star teams are those who bring through a group of similar aged talented players. We can't afford another draft such as the one that brought us through gems such as Hughes, Casserley and JON. The more early picks we have the better our future chances to build together as a team. I think our time to lift is not here yet - we don't have the foundation in place to do it. I think our focus should be seeing who is worth keeping, where they are going to play and what are our strengths and weaknesses as a list.
As much as I loved the win on Sunday, I am trying my best to see past the excitment and euphoria of the present and make the hard decisions that will give us the opportunity to be a top 4 team for years to come. Winning or way to mid-ladder is not what we should aim to be and even if we have the best culture, endevour and structure, without the players that's all we can hope to ever achieve.
If you've read many of my posts over the years Smokey you would know I'm usually very positive, probably too positive and supportive in many ways. I am positive about our future but I think this year we have an opportunity to take advantage of our present position and a couple of wins at the end of the season will only disadvantage this. A few wins does not create a winning culture, the processes/structure and determination to win creates a winning culture.
The Hawthorn loss was valuable only in the fact that it was a further step in proving the effort required to win and be successful at senior AFL level - it taught our team just how much further they had to go to actually win. We had been learning the same lessons since Round 1 this year and the Hawthorn game was just an extension and further proof of what the team was already well down the path of learning. You can't make the mistake of isolating a win or a loss as the single influential factor, you must look at the season in it's entirety to judge the improvement or otherwise.
As far as the club goes, our season began after the Hawks game. A game in which we lost. Reading the Cotchin interview, he said the HAwks game was the single most important game of the season to date...yet we lost. Explain that?
Please explain how you can create a winning culture by the club trying not to win? Please explain to one of the anti-tankers that "don't get it" how we can develop, transform and build to a premiership without actually winning games of football? What big picture am I missing by thinking that "wins don't necessarily equate to a winning culture" and that redemption and success will come by deliberately losing?
Who said anything about the team no trying to win? I
want the team to fight for every game. I
want the players to fight for each other. I
want them to fight for club and coach...but that should not be the clubs number one focus. The future success of the club should be the administrations first priority - not the present. If the selection panel can trial more players, try players in multiple positions and try different combinations then we could lose but we could also find out alot more about the list in a year whenthe win/loss record doesn't really matter.
Of course we don't have the cattle yet - we will need to draft another 10 or so recruits this season and probably at least another 8 or so the following year before we have the list that is a genuine chance of winning a flag. But in the meantime it is absolutely imperative that the current list learn to win and to win at all costs. It is stupidity of the highest level to think we can choose to lose for a period of time and then 'flick the switch' to start winning and watch it all fall into place. When do we make the call to say - ok, we now have the list, let's start winning? It takes a number of seasons for a club to develop a winning attitude and you would have us not work on that facet for the sake of one higher draft pick? Sit back and listen to the screaming masses when we go through another 2 years of 'experimental development' and the realization sinks in that it will take another minimum 3 years to now learn how to actually win a game of football. Newman is gone, Tuck is gone, Foley is gone, Deledio is approaching 30 and the club is still on a learning curve?
I remember some knobnut on here a year or so back preaching the virtues of Worsfold and his tanking strategy of a couple of years ago - how this was the smart way to go about football business and how we at Richmond had no idea. I'm still waiting to see just how this tanking strategy is going to come together for Worsfold - I'm sure it will make damn fascinating watching over the next couple of years as they 're-tank' this year. Is this part of the strategy that the pro-tankers see for us in the near future?
Stupidity at the highest level
Strong words smokey
Is Lids going to take some sort of aging medicine to jump to 30 in a couple of years?
Even Foley and Newman have a few years in them left as far as I know! Geelong was a basketcase the year before they began their march. The media was calling for Thompsons head and the whole rebuilding a failure, then all of a sudden 'flick the switch' and bang!
Now I don't actually think they did 'flick the switch' but I do think everything came together it that year. They finally had the cattle, had the understanding of each other and the game plan, grew in confidence and brought it all together. They would not have reached the heights they have unless they had the group of players they have. I think we can do a similar thing if we get the players first.
I think the Eagles will be a great team in the future but their younger stars are not ready yet. I think they will come together in future years but not until their midfield has matured. I hope they don't come together as well as us but you may be eatting your words when teams such as the Hawks, Saints, Freo, Eagles, Melbourne and even Carlskum begin to become powerhouses of the comptetion. I hope I'm wrong there but they made the decision to bottopm out to get the players to develop and if they can develop and educate them correctly then watch out. Do you think GC and GWS won't be successful if they lose in the first couple of years - the AFL vey much doubt it!
Stripes
