Simple answer.
Culture.
This!
It seems the Club has only been able to deal with situations in a binary way. It's either all good, so don't change anything in a major way (top up instead)
OR it's all bad, so rip the joint apart. There's no in between. There's no continual focus to uphold elite standards to prevent these extremes.
The past 5 seasons are a perfect example. Many of the issues that were totally exposed this year, were evident in the preceding seasons. However, because we said we were either an up and coming side (2012) or later on winning and making finals (2013-15), these issues were seen as minor and something that could be dismissed as they would eventually fix themselves the following year with an experienced top up or few
.
The mental frailties in this current team were first displayed in 2012 with the chokes such as against the Suns ("worst 40 secs of football ever") and then against Carlton in all three 2013 meetings. Nothing was changed!
The issue of the team playing sub-standard footy were there in the first half of 2014 but the subsequent 9 wins in a row meant a full on review (such as is occurring now) wasn't needed according to the Club. It was there again regularly right through last year despite 15 H/A wins. In fact, most of those wins contained at least one quarter that was diabolical and more something a bottom 4 side would dish up. It reared its head again in the North EF loss (3rd qtr) which cost us the game in the end and showed something was badly wrong. Again, nothing was extensively reviewed or significantly changed, aside from a futile pipedream chase after Treloar, more fringe top-ups (repeating past mistakes), and giving up two second round picks for a type of player we weren't desperately in need of at the expense of another ruckman (Club said we didn't need one
) and quality midfield ballwinner we did desperately need. We also re-signed the senior coach to cement "stability" in another example of everything is fine and will be okay next year, so don't change anything attitude.
Such a "don't change" attitude was even reflected in the membership base when they apathetically did what the Club told them to and allowed our members' democratic rights to be stripped back with the constitutional change allowing unelected appointed directors.
Of course, now we've had a crap year onfield, we've flipped 180 degrees and all and sundry say we need to change anything and everything within and without including some saying we need to offload our best 5 players and start all over again. We've had another farcical board challenge. Members/supporters are complaining about appointed directors being jobs for the boys/girls on the existing Board. We've sacked virtually every assistant coach but senior coach Hardwick stays (because we can't afford to sack him thanks to the Club re-signing him only six months earlier). The list is expected to be turned over again in the major way for the first time in 6-7 years. The question that sticks out is - Why only now make major changes? Why not after 2013, 14 and 15 when we were also shown up for being far far short of the mark?
The dumb and ordinary decisions on and off field have existed for a long time irrespective of those in charge and irrespective of the season we are having on-field. Elite clubs set their own standards and continually try to raise them by critiquing and pushing themselves further even when winning. However, our culture is to only act when the proverbial hits the fan on-field and then set fire to the place off-field. A sign of a lazy, fragile club with a poor culture. That weak culture off-field has reflected itself on-field for the past 30-something years
.
