Like any relationship between people you can probably reduce club/team culture down to honesty, respect, trust and love/care. At the moment there's a clear failure to uphold these values.
Honesty - definitely not onfield (plenty of dishonest and lazy "efforts" this season with last night being the worst). Dishonesty as far as a Club and especially a footy dept. getting ahead of itself and clearly not preparing anywhere good enough for 2014. Add dishonesty towards us supporters with mixed, contradictory and dubious public statements coming out of the Club this year.
Respect - feeds into YABB's opening post. Is there still respect from the playing list towards the coaches and vice versa? From the leaders/senior players towards the younger players and vice versa? Most importantly where is their self-respect? Given what is being dished up this year in terms of poor workrate and poor standard of skill that would be a no. Where's the pride in your own performance and standards? As far as team standards, who sets them, to what level, and who audits that those standards are being met? If it's not the coaches and leaders/senior players then don't be surprised when standards slip.
Trust - If you don't trust your teammate(s) then the whole fabric of the team, its structures and the fundamentals of working for each other, fall apart. If players don't trust the coach's gameplan then a coach can lose his players. I would also say rightly or wrongly there's a clear lack of trust from the coach and match committee in the whole playing list based on team selections this year and even Dimma's post-match comment last night that most of our best players are in the side already. If Dimma is right then add a lack of trust from the coach in the list's depth and the ability and performance so far of the recruiting dept. Clearly, unlike the previous 4 years, the inner sanctum isn't on the same page and moving in the same direction.
Love/Care - If the above three no longer exist then this value fails. Jack gets bashed in the media for his supposed antics but you can't question he cares about the Club and team. He was cut up after the loss last night. How many others were? Where was the fight or even anger and frustration? We just succumbed so meekly. Too many Tigers this year have been unwilling to pay the price again to backup their 2013 efforts let alone improve on 2013. As a result, most have gone backwards this year.
It's hard seeing all this investigated and dealt with midseason. There needs to a Geelong 2006-like intensive and extensive review at the end of the season. Obviously the 'reviews' they've had and are having have failed to address what has happened. Interesting to find out what Dan Richardson's response to the Board this month will be.
