The Defence

[LP]

If you go by the stats I showed above for the Pies 2011 season, plus the fact they played off in a GF, plus the results for Collingwood since, it's not unreasonable to conclude that Malthouse was at or near the top of his game when he left the Pies. He didn't fail because he was an autocrat, or the game had passed him by, or because he had a fat cat contract etc. These are simply examples of post hoc rationalism. You see an event without seeing all the moving parts behind the event, and you create a nice neat story to explain it.

I can assert the same regarding your perspective of the Malthouse final years at the filth, you have basically attributed all their success to Malthouse and ignored the other moving parts behind the scene!

Don't you see that in your argument?

Yet again you've focussed on The Club in isolation in trying to exonerate The Coach, because it seems to me you want to blame The Club and The Club alone.

Nothing stops The Coach having free will, they chose the path they travelled, and nothing stops The Club imposing a collaborative regime. The club should be bigger than the individual, not bow down to them as they did to Malthouse! By the time The Club gather enough courage to deal with it's mistake, the damage was done and another 5 years lost! Yet to this day The Club has escaped scrutiny.

There is something rotten in The Club, and there is something foolish in The Coach, ............ hubris? Does hubris linger on from the Jack Elliott days, in both the way The Club conducts itself, and in the people it chooses?

I see Pagan and Malthouse as very very similar mistakes, The Club thrashing against the winds of change, the dying of the light!

The demise of Ratten and Bolton were also similar, not just victims of The Club but victims of self-inflicted wounds, Ratten has stated as much in recent times.