Rd 3: Carlton vs Gold Coast: Post Game Pain

[Inboltswetrust]

X 2.

No pain no gain.

This will take a couple of years not a couple of weeks.

Here's a few tips to preserve your sanity in the short term:
Celebrate every contest we win.
Admire our younger players when they beat a seasoned player.
Cheer loudly and proudly when we kick a goal.
Welcome our first gamers like we believe they'll succeed.
Go nuts when we win a game.
Knock yourself out when we have a NAB rs nomination.
Then, when we finish at or near the bottom of the ladder. Be scintillated when you see the top talent we draft. And then get excited about what they will add to Cripps, Weits, Charlie, Harry, SOSOS, and co.

Hang fat Bluebaggers. We're all in this together.
(And yes, I'm definitely a glass half full type. But hey why not!)

I like this post.  Cheered me up

[ItsOurTime]

Anyone else think Curnow is the opposite of Jones? Manages to find himself in the play if he's somewhere near the contest. First forward since Fev with that quality. I'm excited about this kid, so glad we weren't scared off by the off field crap.

[ItsOurTime]

This rebuild isn't easy... and it's not guaranteed.

It's hard to win a GF. We can only progress and with some good planning and a bit of luck end up where we hope to be.

[BluePhantom]

No forward coach is going to fix our problems unless he is a development genius, the problems are ball use and decision making.

I think if the club had a panic room a dozen players would be locking themselves in there daily!

In the first couple of weeks there were plenty of good signs, little gives and gets, sneaky underground kicks and handballs, shepherds for team-mates even! Get the ball forward, disrupt the opponent.

It mostly stopped on the Gold Coast Saturday night, and it wasn't the newbies who are to blame. It's the older entrenched playing group who revert to doing stuff by bad habits that are regressing. They seem to be so mentally damaged from their past it has become a tragedy! Saturday night reminded me so much of that last season from TBird or Russell, you just knew their time was up despite the odd good outing! Old dogs, new tricks, but only sometimes!

I hear you LP, we all saw that first quarter against the Hawks in the NAB cup. We were great, so they can do it but as you say we revert to old habits.

[dodge]

heard a bit of the radio commentary at half time - we were apparently kicking it long and high into our forward line, where Cas was the only target against 2+ Suns players.  They forgot to add the bit at the bottom - doing it since 2002.

I see the forward line as the biggest issue, as that where the reward for effort should come, but at the moment it isn't coming at all.  When the reward is there, confidence spreads and everything seems to improve.

[PassIt2Carrots]

Anyone else think Curnow is the opposite of Jones? Manages to find himself in the play if he's somewhere near the contest. First forward since Fev with that quality. I'm excited about this kid, so glad we weren't scared off by the off field crap.

Will be an unstoppable beast.

[Jofo]

I like this post.  Cheered me up

This.

[IvanAwfulbigone]

All the talk/print in this morning's papers is lauding the exciting, attacking style of play that has characterised the first 3 rounds. "Fast", "unpredictable", "joyous" are some of the adjectives.  A return to "attack at all costs" type of football.

The Blue Boys obviously didn't get the memo from HQ. Apart from a couple of passages against the Tiggers you'd have to say we've been tentative, dour, predictable.

Still, as much as it pains me - correction, sickens - me to say it, I have to acknowledge and agree with the recent pragmatic posts - we're at Year One of a 5 year plan. Ain't gonna be any success for a couple of years - a lot more mediocrity to come.

One HELL of a challenge confronts BB. A recent birthday actually has me wondering if I'll be around to celebrate future Flags.  I guess, when it does come, my kids will hopefully appreciate it all the more as they've grown up having been forced to stick with The Blues through thick and thin. They've never known anything except famine - apart from one year when the umpires in WA stuck it to us. But they're young, they'll get over it. Unlike me.

[ItsOurTime]

Ain't gonna be any success for a couple of years - a lot more mediocrity to come.

Champions exhibit champion qualities well before they become champions.

Same as teams, so i dont accept that mediocrity and results are the same thing.

We need to work harder than anyone else, we need to prepare better than anyone else. We need to manage our lists better than anyone else. We need to strive to better everything we do.

We can do all this regardless of what happens on the scoreboard. We may need to accept that we wont often get the results we want but we dont have to accept mediocrity in how we apply ourselves in every aspect of the game and how we approach improvement.

Our time will come.

[Thryleon]

I'm prepared to judge over a season. I'm prepared to give the club time....but what the club has achieved through the rebuild/reset  statements is that we have been conditioned to accept weekly results as unimportant.

I see that as a clever strategy.
What it's designed to do is buy time.

You see the club really has no idea if the rebuild will actually work.
They can put in plans, and it would appear that there has been considerable thought go into these.... but the success or failure of any rebuild is dependent on so many variable factors such as injury, sound selections, proper development, player satisfaction, team unity etc  that they can't guarantee things will work out as they hope.

The only indication that we're on the right track comes from on field performance....you can accept poor performance while we're in the early stages of building and uniting a team (like now) but we also need to see positive developments as we go along.

At the moment there's a lot of scrutiny on some older members of our list.
How will that play out as the pressure on these players increases and how will those "redundancies" be managed in a way that doesn't upset the apple-cart.

This rebuild isn't easy... and it's not guaranteed.

Im replying to you Lods, because you are talking about philosophy and strategy.
There is something that you have tied to them in terms of success, but there is a problem. 
You didnt define it, and if you have you seem to have tied the success aspect to a premiership.
Now like everyone here, I am under no illusions.  We play football, to win matches and ultimately premierships.

Life is ultimately cruel.  You can try your hardest and make the best decision possible, yet still come up short in terms of being succesful.

This is where our football club has fallen over, repeatedly.

we have strived to become succesful, by winnning.  Quickly.

We need to reclassify success to something different so that we can actually start achieving things and with any luck, premierships will follow.

That is to be the best football club that we can be.  That means making good decisions, based upon the right things.  Developing talent.  Drafting the best players we can.  Engineering the best trade deals we can.  Looking after Carlton people the best we can.  Selling memberships the best we can.  Building a stadium the best we can.  Building a harder, better, faster, stronger football club, AS BEST WE CAN.

This is why Saturday night hurt.  It was seen to not be doing things, as best we can.  But we can learn from it, as best we can, and improve from it as best we can.

Success is never guaranteed.

Premierships are never guaranteed.

All we can do is do what we can with what we have, and get 100% out of it, which is why we are looking at our elder players and moving them on, but there are intangibles we need to be wary of.  Simply replacing whats broken doesnt mean we get an upgrade.  Which is why we need to focus on doing the best we can.

Which is why we dont worry about the results (or at least those of us who have accepted we were and still are a club that is working out how best to move forward don't).

All we want to see is a side that is doing the best it can.  To provide our young players with an education to become the best they can.  To provide an environment where people want to be, to become part of, and then simply become the best they can.  Thats when we can measure our club as succesful.  Richmond and Collingwood wont be winning a premiership any time soon, but they are focussed on being the best football clubs that they can, and for it, they have big supporter bases, and players that want to play for them.

For too long we have searched for an elusive premiership, and simply need to focus on being the best we can, and we start with simple things.  Handballing the best we can.  Kicking the footy the best we can.  Running the best we can.  Tackling the best we can.  Marking the best we can, and scoring the best we can. In time, we will improve.  Will it win a premiership?  No guarantee, but I think we will garner more support if we simply do the best we can and that will ultimately be the only way we will get near a premiership anyway.  You dont get there by not being the best you can be, but it wont hurt your chances.