What would you call Mark Graham?
I call him a waste of a pick and a top up. Could have put a kid in his place from day 1 but a pick like Graham added with Kellaway and Gaspar proved he felt our backline was sound and thus of the notion that we could stem the tide and possibly make the 8. Hence appease the fans who have been starved of siccess and increase his mystique and aura that indeed yes he was the Messiah being ablr to turn things around so quickly.
After a 7-2 start many believed him. Fooled us once. Injuries such as Brownys and some other to less notable players as well as us playing above ourselves and trying to impact and impress the new regime saw us fall 1.5 games out side the 8.
How about in 2006 many floggings from top 8 sides Dogs Saints Swans by over 100 pts. Eagles by 88. Still we finished 9th with a record of 11-11 and a percentage of 88% yet many thought the inveitable and we were to take the following step. Fooled us twice.
Rebuild came 2 years too late and yes some of our youngsters are okay and coming along nicely we still need to draw from the well of draft picks for a few more players. Don't let Terry fool you again that is all I am saying. Many psychologically call politicians liars and scumbags and find any conspiracy for any policy they come up with yet for some reason those same people remain loyal to footy coaches and recruiters merely because of peoples loyalties to a footy club and that they would never do anything to compromise it due to some misconception they have. Come on guys the man is selling us snake oil and when this partnership between club and coach end watch the vitriol come out of the car salesman mouth to undermine the club and its direction something he was not willing to reveal whilst he was getting a pay cheque. If he was a man he'd have stood up to it and done all this finger pointing earlier.
1 As for Graham, i think i already called him an older recruit. But we lacked a bigger bodied defender in 05. We had already recruited a whole bunch of kids. See my earlier post. Graham's influence is still being felt at the club: see Thursty's article earlier this year where he credits Gas and Graham for helping him learn the FB role. He said he still speaks to them regularly. Tell me which kid he kept out of the team in the 05 season? Answer = no one, as no one was ready to play senior footy.
2 How did drafting so many new players in 04 and 05 and playing them i might add...consitute not rebuilding. Maybe you would have been happy drafting 38 new kids...had us lose every week then call for TW's head cos we lost each week.
3 Not loyal to the coach cos i am loyal to the footy club. I just see the plain facts: our recruiting was poor in 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 and we are paying the price now. It is now that we dont have the 28, 27, 26, 25 and 24 yos to build a team around. Last night on Footy Classifieds, Peter Jackson said that essendon are now paying the price for poor recruiting in 1999 to 2001. Well our recruiting was worse over a longer period.
exactly
kingsley also occupied a spot on the list which a younger guy would have had.
yeah we r rebuilding lets go after kingsley and graham
my theory is TW misjudged our list and hence recruited K.Kingsley as the missing link he hoped would get us into the top 8.
well that didn't turn out now well did it TW.
Kingsley is a guy that could kick up to 8 goals in a game of AFL footy. Guys like that dont grow on trees. It didnt work out, no biggie. Who was drafted after him that is a gun that we missed out on? Back up your comments with facts...who? The best player drafted after him was Cameron Cloke...wow...world beater that he is.
Take off your anti-Wallace glasses ..face facts..our list was in a deplorable state and until we have a number of players reaching 24 to 28 yos of age...we will not be dominant...Wallace was right, our window will be 2011 by then you would have a number of players with over 100 games to their names like Lids Bling Foley Thursty Moore...then cometh the hour of the tiger.
As for snake skin oil...i heard it tastes great in baclava