The Defence

[PaulP]

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.

There are many things of which I could be accused, but hopefully not double standards and hopefully not hypocrisy. I am perfectly aware that none of us work in the AFL industry, none of us have in the past or ever will. None of us have played AFL or VFL footy, and we have basically no access to any inner sanctum information. We all sit in a pitch black auditorium, and we all pull out something at random, which is not provable or verifiable, but which we hold up as strong opinion regardless. Of course I am aware that I live in the same post hoc rationalist cul-de-sac as you, even if my previous post was off by one personal pronoun.

Nevertheless, I stand by my opinion about the Club v the Coach. There seems little doubt in my mind that the entire process is stuffed, from selection to support to sacking. Two examples :

1. I read somewhere that the club knew after 6 months that Malthouse was the wrong man. Leaving aside a great many issues that arise from this, I mean....... what ? When I first came across that, I read it about 6 times, with increasing incredulity. How the hell does that happen ? We are supposed to be a professional sporting organisation. There is a wealth of information, exposed form, psychological profiling, interviewing the candidate, what his intentions are, what his game plan will be, how he relates to players / executive / board, interviewing past players, assistants, media work etc. In short, you could analyse his life, game plan, method etc. down to the tiniest detail, but apparently not. We give this guy a million bucks, and the keys to the kingdom, then after 6 months we marginalise and undermine him, then we wonder why results go tits up. 

2. Bolton. Bring in a rookie coach, give him the mother of all rebuilds, fill the list with kids and spuds, make him a de facto change manager, don’t replace his mentor, bring in a spy and an assistant coach with whom he has little in common, change key members of the executive and declare the rebuild over, then after 3 years of turbulence and insanity, demand results,

This IMO, is chronic, endemic, systemic mismanagement that would leave the Shepparton Bears feeling embarrassed.

The "evidence" if you can call it that, is there for all to see. Teague has been in a holding pattern for most of his time at Carlton. The benchmark he established in the back half of 2019 has not really improved. That's not a reflection on him or the list IMO. To get to the level required simply takes time, time which no one is really willing to accept. Getting rid of MM or Bolts has not accelerated the process at all, and neither will moving on Teague.