2018 Rd 9: Post Game Calm: Carlton vs Melbourne

[PaulP]

We need to identify truely tough characters and get them leading the club out of this hole.
We don't need thugs, just mentally tough people that will not back down.
Our captain is the weakest captain in the competition.
Start this process today. Make Cripps skipper.
Make Ed Curnow vice captain.
Any player that doesn't commit their body to the contest plays two's.
Make Liam Jones accountable for his man!!! First and foremost he has to beat his direct opponent before trying to leap over packs, and if he does leave his man he MUST impact the contest.
The one thing any team can give is effort. We need to start by become the best tackling team in the competition.
I don't mind if we get beaten but don't get smashed like yesterday.
We also need to start hurting opposition players when we tackle and bump. We are simply too nice. Richmond tackle and bump with intent every time.

I'm too wussy to be endorsing tackling to hurt. The game is played by big, strong, fit men, and given the nature of the sport, no amount / absence of malicious intent and no amount of mucking around with the rules will ever change the overtly physical nature of the contest. But I accept I'm in the minority on this one, and so I'll leave it at that. Incidentally, there was a story going around during the Ratten era that at a certain point in his tenure, he was instructing the players to tackle to hurt at training - one player's name was mentioned as objecting to this, and that was Yarran. Make of that what you will.

The rest of what you write may well be true, but what I'm talking about is much bigger than changing captains or making Jones accountable. It's almost as though an invisible, negative force field exists around the club that turns everything to sh1t. I really cannot figure it out.