RD 7 : Blues V Giants (Pre-Match Pre-Amble)

[Thryleon]

Sucess in the future can only be possible if a team starts to conduct itself in the way that it wants to be right now. Playing the kids is the mantra of the loser. It says we are not good enough now, so we hope that by gaining experience we will somehow get better. In a team sport that is a recipe for continued poor results. It nurtures an environment where losing in the present is acceptable in the hope that tomorrow will be better.

Know what?  Tomorrow never comes and losing begets losing. And bringing in ill prepared young players to such a mix retards their development. Senior players figure they can coast along as the team is in rebuild mode, and first round picks figure they get a game cause they 'need experience' but never fully grasp the level of commitment required to earn selection on merit. So let's all lose together and explain it away.

The best footy teams (like any succesful team in any walk of life) hate losing and are filthy about it when they do. It's great to learn from mistakes but once losing is acceptable for a team then the rot has set in and it spirals down. And the exchange of a team losing a few games for the gain of getting experience into individuals is a lousy trade off.

Anyway, rant over. Hoping for a good performance against the Giants. If our midfield work hard enough we may get a decent spread and some clean ball forward. We saw a couple of glimpses last week when this happened.

Yep. Smashed it out of the park.

Carrots, GWS are the exception not the rule. They built a side with the above ethos using many kids to compete for first team football as part of a long term project.

The comparison doesn't work for a team that played finals three years ago and has been where we are before.