04-12-2018, 01:16 AM
(04-12-2018, 12:36 AM)ElwoodBlues1 link Wrote:Agree...Youth also gives you an excuse if you lose, its easier to sell failure to the poor huddled masses and blame inexperience rather than anything
wrong from the coaches box.
Lets face it we are back to square one shuffling deck chairs on the titanic, the rebuild has hit an iceberg as our senior playing group are not good enough to carry the juniors while they develop and one of the worries when you rebuild is you hope other teams dont improve at the same rate as you but that hasnt been the case. There are no easy games and other teams who we thought we should beat have actually improved more than we thought, teams that should have collapsed into a screaming heap after cycles of success like Hawthorn, Swans etc refuse to die and bottom out.
We have no choice but to continue with youth but it isnt going to be pretty watching and unless Bolton can improve his coaching and planning on game day to make up for our deficiencies its going to be a long couple of seasons ahead with no guarantees..
There's the problem....and it's the same problem we've had since 2003-4
Our youngsters don't have the advantage of developing in an environment where senior players provide an example, support and yes... even protection.
They're forced into this "getting games into kids" philosophy.
Fine, great.... if you're getting games alongside a Hodge, Mitchell, Lewis etc
Yep, we have a Cripps and even a Murphy but that's about where it ends for our young mids...and Cripps especially is always under extreme pressure as our main man, so it's hard to provide a lot of aid to the young guys.
So we have a choice...we steer away from the course we've chosen and add some experience or we stick with the youth approach.
If we're going to go down the "games into kids" path I suspect some of them are going to get broken.
The hope is enough make it through unscathed to provide the leadership and support for the next generation.