Is Hardwick the man for the job. What did we expect.

[the claw]

With all the wrist slashing and angst that is going on over a loss and with a lot of knives being pointed at hardwick i thought this question had to be asked.

[Jackstar is back again]

has struggled in the last 6 weeks. big time

[georgies31]

Still got faith in Dimma. He has had a rough ride off late,but let's not forget he camed to our club with a bad list and had to strip it down.I  don't agree with some calls he has made like playing Hislop,Farmer ,Mgaune,Thurfield and not Playing Gus after being in the best 2 games in a row or Posty being dropped.Even against the Suns from playing running football in the first qtr we went to playing stop start crap and going backwards etc.

The club and football department should  move Heaven and Earth to get Malthouse as a director of Dimma and his assistants just to guide them and provide he's wealth of experience or in some role just like Hird has with Bomber.We would be mad not to get him and I think he would think about it, he still holds love for the tigers.

[sugark]

He may well be the man, who knows just yet but what is clearly evident is that he has struggled of late when things aren't going our way!  I mentioned in another thread, not dissimilar to that of Ratten pre this year where it was widely regarded that he was no good match day! Hence the inclusions of Richardson and Brown.

Unfortunately Hardwick surrounded himself with people who weren't going to challenge him, people with not a great deal of successful experience.  he has tried to emulate Clarkson and become an innovator rather then get the principles right first and the worry about innovating.  I couldn't disagree more with what he is trying to do with the NFL crap, you look at our website we have an offensive coach and a defensive coach.....please this is just utter garbage we need a forward line coach and a backline coach like all the successful teas of the recent era.  This is AFL and it is a club that has been awful for the best part of 3 decades, lets do the basic things very well before we try to do things out of the ordinary.

We desperately need to get help for Hardwick before he becomes another victim of the RFC where you never coach again after you coach RFC.

Hardwick needs to be willing to accept help as well, please Dimma disregard your obsession with the NFL as not one premiership in the AFL has been won based on NFL crap!!!!

[sugark]

The other thing that needs to be done to assist Dimma is get rid of March and Cameron.

March since his early days has had too much to say on the football front when he should have been worrying about getting us out of debt, this debt drive has only eventuated on the back of Gales appointment.

March involved himself in all things football when Miller was there and then because Miller and Wallace stood up to him and tried to exclude him from football matters he took his bat and ball and sacked Miller in what was one of the most offensive things this club has done.  March then appointed Cameron to the role, please someone enlighten me to how this 60's type person has done anything to better this football club or any other for that matter.  March wanted puppets and that is what he got.

We have got Gale we now need to get someone like Balme in place and rid ourselves of Cameron and at the same time rid ourselves of March.  The club has always said get the off field structure right and the on field will follow, we we are desperately lacking in the off field structure.  Time to go March and Cameron and finally give this club a chance to be successful.

[Tigeritis™©®]

 
 

perfectly put Sugark bring back Balme and get rid of Cameron.

[Loui Tufga]

He inherited a basket case, 18 months is no where near the time required to turn the place around!
It is hard to say he's done a bad job at this point but defiantly some of the coaching tactics and selections  have been  been questionable.

[the claw]

With all the wrist slashing and the knives being thrown at Hardwick i had to ask these questions.

The answer to the first is we dont know and probably wont know for at least 2 seasons.the only thing im concerned about as far as the coach goes is what happens at the end of season not what happens thru it.
If we dont continue to cull and sell our early picks for retreads i will be very concerned.

has he made mistakes you bet ya will he continue to make mistakes you bet ya. sheesh after 9 seasons worsfold nearly got the sack i dont think people realise just how close he went.why because he kept on making mistakes and refused to change.personally i have never rated him as a coach  but the point is after nine yrs, after 4 or 5 yrs of finals and a premiership   he was still making his fair share of mistakes and getting things wrong.
mark thomson went within a whisker of going at the end of 06 after 7 yrs and some promising finals appearances he nearly got the arse.why because he made too many mistakes.

the point im making we have a second yr coach with not a lot of experience around him attempting to build a side almost from the same low ebb as gc but without the concessions and help from the afl of course. he will make mistakes and plenty of them along the way just like very experienced coaches make mistakes. if people think a worsfold or thomson or a malthouse could walk into the club and turn it around in a short space of time they  are truly deluded. and you could bet your bottom dollar they would make their fair share of mistakes along the way.

what do we expect from hardwick atm. well the answer to that is very little other than the patently obvious and doing the hard yards continuing to turn over lots of players and putting basic processes in place.
so far he has turned over what 23 players come seasons end it could well swell to 33 35 players.with more to come the yr after. what does this tell us if we use just a bit of logic. we are yet to bottom out.

what does he have at his disposal as far as cattle goes atm.

well imo he has just 2 100 gamers of decent quality. he has few experinced players of genuine afl quality and hes having to play many kids who are no where near ready and wont be for at least 2  3 seasons.
exactly what did we expect when we take into account all these factors. a bottom 4 list is ordinary no matter how much you dress it up its still a bottom 4 list.

in many ways the club and the media have much to answer for.
the club for failing to make it abundantly clear to all and sundry exactly where the list is at and just how hard and long  it will be to do any thing about it. i mean things like benny gales 70k - 2- 14 or what ever it was just raises expectations and imo unrealistic expectations. but hes right in so much of what he says we need to kill of debt we need to massively invest in recruiting and specialist personel.the ftf is great but he had to do it in a way that said hey it may take us 7 yrs before we play in a gf but if we do these things it will go a long way to getting us there.

the media well simply put they are sheep and dont think for themselves. any journalist with just a modicum of intelligence would see that we are nowhere near it and havent been for a long long time.instead we defeat a few ordinary sides in favorable circumstances and they feed the flames of delusion.

anyway enough of a rant for now is hardwick the man for the job i dont know im sure most dont either i dont get this blaming one bloke caper after hes made a few mistakeswhen we all know he will make em its weather he learns from them that is the key.
what did we expect sheesh the way so many are carrying on you would think a premiership.

 

[torch]

I expected different!

His head is in the gallotine!

[The Big Richo]

My take on Hardwick is that he is a good coach Monday to Friday but struggles on weekends.

Now that almost certainly means our entire coaching group are being beaten on matchdays but the buck has to stop with someone.

Having said that Clarkson was regarded as being poor on matchdays in his early years with the way the Hawks were playing roundly mocked by most experts but ultimately he was developing a premiership game style.

The question is though of course is will Hardwick prove to be a man that can deliver a premiership and only time will answer that.

The difficulty is there are men like Roos and Malthouse who you know can deliver that.

[DCrane]

Chipping it sideways when you have a 6 goal wind blowing on the back of your neck is almost unforgivable

[yellowandback]

I would say 7-9 wins was the rough band of wins to be expected for this year. The way we won those games would be the next criteria and then not getting blown away too often would be the 3rd outcome.

Basically we were on track for the 1st half of this season and the last 6 weeks has been horrid.

Losing to the Power and GC was a massive black mark (however you look at it) along with the way we capitulated against the Blues.  In the other games while we were disappointing against the Bombres at least we hung in there for 3 qtrs and the Demons were were in the contest until the last QTRndespite playing like crap.
So the next 6 weeks will define the season.
We must win at least 2 games and ideally an upset win on top of that and we can put the last 6 weeks down to a horror patch.
If not, the doubts from the top down remain and the entire club should be put on notice.
Gary March was a big man when questioning Terry Wallaces season at the end of 2008 with his 5/10 call. Someone needs to similarly bring him to account if we don't show something in the next 6 weeks.

[the claw]

I would say 7-9 wins was the rough band of wins to be expected for this year. The way we won those games would be the next criteria and then not getting blown away too often would be the 3rd outcome.

Basically we were on track for the 1st half of this season and the last 6 weeks has been horrid.

Losing to the Power and GC was a massive black mark (however you look at it) along with the way we capitulated against the Blues.  In the other games while we were disappointing against the Bombres at least we hung in there for 3 qtrs and the Demons were were in the contest until the last QTRndespite playing like crap.
So the next 6 weeks will define the season.
We must win at least 2 games and ideally an upset win on top of that and we can put the last 6 weeks down to a horror patch.
If not, the doubts from the top down remain and the entire club should be put on notice.
Gary March was a big man when questioning Terry Wallaces season at the end of 2008 with his 5/10 call. Someone needs to similarly bring him to account if we don't show something in the next 6 weeks.

i would say 7 9 wins was highly optimistic and what the stuff are we doing even talking wins. we all knew at the start of the yr having pruned the list back even further to just over half, that wins had nothing to do with this season. supporters were told repeatedly that we may well lose games we should win because of the way we will do things.

and no we were not on track for the first half of the season and yes the last 6 or so weeks heve been slightly worse than the first 9.what makes you think we were on track not a few meaningless wins against fellow battlers or injury depleted sides surely.
you know we havent just suddenly dropped off the pace and become poor. we have in the main been poor all season. we  performed on an  equal level with other poor  sides and had a few wins which has clearly wrongly raised the expectations of many supporters.
it happens every yr we overrate our own we fail to ask who did we beat and we listen to all the hype that the media dishes up.

the simple truth is we had a very ordinary list at the start of the yr and we still have a very ordinary list at rnd 17. it was never ever going to greatly change in 17 games because to be honest we never had the cattle  and we never had so many things that have been discussed ad nauseum on many threads. , things like no experience,  no size , a terrible senior core that needs cleaning ou,t a lack of structure, a lack of depth, too many kids having to play for too long, this was the case at the start of the yr its still the case at rnd 17 and ya know what it will still be the case next yr you dont just turn these things around at the flick of a switch.

[10 FLAGS]

The issue is how we get out of the current problems. This years draft is considered fairly weak in some quarters, I am a fan of chasing the 17yo picks from GWS as a starting point and then taking what we can from the draft. The 2012 draft is considered strong and we the compensation pick so our position is relatively strong. Anyway, from a redevelopment and development point of view how do you see us going about improving our stocks?

[Jackstar is back again]

I would say 7-9 wins was the rough band of wins to be expected for this year. The way we won those games would be the next criteria and then not getting blown away too often would be the 3rd outcome.

Basically we were on track for the 1st half of this season and the last 6 weeks has been horrid.

Losing to the Power and GC was a massive black mark (however you look at it) along with the way we capitulated against the Blues.  In the other games while we were disappointing against the Bombres at least we hung in there for 3 qtrs and the Demons were were in the contest until the last QTRndespite playing like crap.
So the next 6 weeks will define the season.
We must win at least 2 games and ideally an upset win on top of that and we can put the last 6 weeks down to a horror patch.
If not, the doubts from the top down remain and the entire club should be put on notice.
Gary March was a big man when questioning Terry Wallaces season at the end of 2008 with his 5/10 call. Someone needs to similarly bring him to account if we don't show something in the next 6 weeks.

Doubt we will win a game in the next 6 weeks