Forgive me for asking...

[Cheer Cheer]

Yes red agree with all of that, took the words out of my mouth.

[Angelic Upstart]

There's nothing wrong with re-building, but what I saw last night against Hawthorn was so hopeless that I started getting Gary Buckenara 1993 flashbacks! On that performance we must now be favourites for the wooden spoon.

What annoys me, and the reason why I'm making negative comments on the board is that other, better-managed clubs like North Melbourne, Adelaide, West Coast can go through a rebuilding process barely skipping a beat - they miss the finals for one or two seasons and then they recover, and even in their lean years they still put in respectable performances. Whereas it seems we have to go into spectacular freefall.

I don't mind being patient - it's second nature for a Swans supporter! - but I do hate seeing us as easy-beats.

[swan_song]

Upstart, that's very true...we have been 'rebuilding', it seems for the past 70 years....
Brisbane have had a gun list now for three or four years, after building from a team of easybeats...adelaide has rebuilt after their two premierships, and the eagles are doing so again as well. What I dislike (about the swans) is that no matter what, supporters of these other clubs still expect and usually get their players to put in, even if they are beaten. As a swans supporter I hope they will, but more often than not, I'm disappointed. It used to be that when they were playing relatively well, they'd lapse at crucial games...
Personally, I see us now as a sort of new Carlton. Our list was getting old two or so years ago, but we didn't have the quality youngsters to come in and take over the reins of kell, dunks, schwatta, cressa, etc. The same will be true for willo and stewie in a year or two. Carlton shd have been rebuilding after kernahan, sos, etc, but they went for stop gap measures, now their remaining 'better' players are getting older, battered and slowing down too -- kouta, McKay and campo. and their salary cap penalty means it's liable to get worse for them. Let's hope we don't waste this dismal year, and that at least we cop some good draft picks at the end of the year.

[Dpw]

What do the Crows,Eagles and Loins(under Mathews) have in common they never had a rebuilding plan ie a three to four year plan they never work. they trade and draft in a educated manner planning for finals and the future just look at the last few years we have had rejects from all over the show Russell and so on.

Getting qaulity players is one thing but injury prone vets is another.

[Charlie]

DPW.... we all know the mistakes of the past. But the trick is making sure that we are working for the future NOW. We can't go back and erase the selections of Russell, Allison, Tingay and Daffy. We can only learn from them.

[Dpw]

Charlie, that is my point but first we must pay for those mistakes and that time is now.

[liz]

Originally posted by Dpw
What do the Crows,Eagles and Loins(under Mathews) have in common they never had a rebuilding plan ie a three to four year plan they never work. they trade and draft in a educated manner planning for finals and the future just look at the last few years we have had rejects from all over the show Russell and so on.

Getting qaulity players is one thing but injury prone vets is another.

Not sure about your observations on those 3 teams. The Crows' record since they've been in the comp has been up and down. They managed to almost "steal" two premierships in the late 90s (by which I mean they weren't a stand-out team but just put it altogether when it counted). Even last year they surprised by how together they were. They also have one of the absolutely outstanding players in the comp at the moment (and I'm talking McLeod, not his feathered friend) and Riccuito also highly skilled and very strong. Players like this, when on form, can make their team mates stand a foot taller.

It was only a couple of years ago that the Weagles received two top 6 picks (including a priority) for finishing with 5 or fewer winners. Worsfold has done very very well to pull them together as quickly as he has. But with Gardiner (a past no 1 pick), Cousins, Kerr and Judd they certainly now have a very strong midfield. I wonder a bit about their young KPPs, but time will tell.

Andrew Ireland spoke a bit about the development of the Brisbane list at the Redbacks brunch last weekend. He pointed out that it has actually been a very gradual process that started well before 1998 - their horror year. If you look at the star players on their list, most have been there a while. As with Adelaide they have an absolutely outstanding player in Voss, and another not far behind in Aker. Their bomb-out season of 1998 netted them Headland, who in turn has turned into Caracella and Brennan.

If you look elsewhere on their list, there are a few pieces of "good fortune". Jon Brown was a father and son selection - those you just have to grab and not think about too much. Black was one of those flukey or brilliant pieces of drafting given how many times he was passed over. Chris Johnson and Mal Michael (indirectly via Molloy) fell into their lap via the Fitzroy merger. I'm not trying to belittle the achievements of Brisbane here. They clearly have a superb list and Matthews has instilled discipline and outstanding self-belief. Their physical conditioning is also superb. But a lot of things have "gone right" for them in recent years that have enabled them to get to where they are. Their injury run has also been pretty good recently, meaning that they haven't had to throw unprepared players into the fray, and their depth hasn't really been tested that much.

As with Adelaide, I wonder whether some of the rest of their team would look as outstanding if they weren't playing alongside Voss, Aker et al. Take a Notting, McRae, even a Scott or two, and transplant them into a Sydney or WB team and they might turn out to be just decent ordinary players. Certainly Brad Scott never set the world on fire while he was at Hawthorn.

One interesting comment Ireland made was on Lappin. Apparently it took quite a while before he developed into an AFL player, and the Lions had reservations for several years about whether he had what it took to make it at the top level. Look at him now! Ireland's point? - that some players take quite a while to develop into top flight players and sometimes clubs will be rewarded for patience and faith in their squad.

[SWANSBEST]

Lizz
Very good point about Lappin ; he is now leadng the Herald Sun best player award and is fourth in line in the betting for the Brownlow this year behind Voss , Buckley and McLeod.

Unfortunately, I think that we all may have to learn to be very patient before we obtain the results that we want. I would be embarrassed to say how long I have been waiting so what is a few more years.

[swan_song]

Lizz
I think u do adelaide a great disservice to suggest it was just putting together performances when it counted for the 1997 and 1998 premierships. For a start they had to be good enough to make the finals in the first place; secondly, they rose to the challenge Blighty gave them. When in 1996 we played our 'grandfinal' against essendon, we couldn't rise the next week. Adelaide played an equivalent 'grandfinal' against the Bullies but nonetheless stood up the following week. Personally, I believe that both the Kangas and Sainters had themselves overachieved those years to get to the GF, more so than the crows.

"Take a Notting, McRae, even a Scott or two, and transplant them into a Sydney or WB team and they might turn out to be just decent ordinary players..."

I'd settle for some decent ordinary players...LOL

[Mike_B]

Originally posted by swan_song
Lizz
I think u do adelaide a great disservice to suggest it was just putting together performances when it counted for the 1997 and 1998 premierships.

Funnily enough though, Peter Caven said just that at the aftermatch following the Adelaide game - Adelaide may not have been the best side in either of those 2 years, but they played great footy when it really mattered. To be coming from a guy paying at the Crows at that time, I'd say Liz was actually pretty spot on.

[swan_song]

Interesting thought indeed...were PCs teeth still rattling from his run in with plugger...
Personally I think that Adelaide were only lucky those years in that they came up against 2 pretty underwhelming sides. Heaven only knows how the sainters got to the GF, and North wer already being described as too slow and old.
My point is or was that I just don't like the bagging of any team (with the exception of the bombers maybe ...oh right, they didn't did they)... that has won 2 consecutive premierships.... you REALLY don't do that out of luck, no matter what PC says. The insinuation I found in Lizz's comment is that it's fortune, luck or whatever that has given the crows premierships in 97 and 98 and brisbane in 01 and 02.
To some extent good luck does play a part in sport, but bad luck also plays a part. In the adelaide premierships, as I recall, it was one player who put his hand up when it mattered, and he was a champion player.
No matter, at least those adelaide players, and the brisbane ones too, have 2 premiership medals for the mantle piece or to hand down to the grand kids...

[NMWBloods]

I find it a bit rich to downplay the performances of the three interstate sides to have won 2 premierships each in the past decade, particularly from the supporter of a side that is one of the perennial underachievers of the comp.

Sure luck has something to do with it, but to insinuate anything more seems rather strange. They have been potential challengers more frequently and more realistically than we have in the past decade and have bounced back better than we have over the past few years.

This sort of argument smacks of self-defence by misdirection that many football and company administrators use to deflect criticism of what has obviously been a poor performance.

[Mike_B]

I don't think Peter Caven ever said they were lucky. You don't make the finals through just luck, there has to be some ability. I think his point was that although they may not have been the most consistent performers in the Home and Away season, they played great footy at the business end of the season.

[NMWBloods]

I agree, and in any event they finished 4th and 5th at the end of the H&A season in their premiership years, and had the highes t % in both of those years. Since then they had two sub-par years, and are now back challenging again.

[liz]

Originally posted by NMWBloods
I find it a bit rich to downplay the performances of the three interstate sides to have won 2 premierships each in the past decade, particularly from the supporter of a side that is one of the perennial underachievers of the comp.

Sure luck has something to do with it, but to insinuate anything more seems rather strange. They have been potential challengers more frequently and more realistically than we have in the past decade and have bounced back better than we have over the past few years.

This sort of argument smacks of self-defence by misdirection that many football and company administrators use to deflect criticism of what has obviously been a poor performance.

I don't think that is what I was trying to say - I certainly wasn't trying to denigrate their achievements. But Adelaide didn't have an all-conquering squad in 1997-8 in the way that Essendon did in 2000 and Brisbane had now. They certainly played the best footy in September but had a handful of teams who were at least the equal of them over the whole season - evidenced by their H&A ladder positions. And they were lucky in a way to win the 1998 GF. They were completely outplayed in the first half by the Kangaroos, except that the Kangas couldn't kick straight to save their lives. I was at that game, sitting directly behind the goal that the Kangas kicked to in the second quarter and some of their misses were hilarious. They should have had the game wrapped up by half-time. All credit to the Crows for punishing them in the second half, but they really shouldn't have had the chance.

West Coast's two premierships were almost a decade ago. They were up there in 1996 and would have finished top after the H&A instead of us had they won that memorable rain-soaked r22 game. But they haven't really been a serious contender since then, and have finished low enough to gain a priority pick one year, so to say they haven't gone through a period of rebuilding isn't really true. (And that is the comment I was responding to.)

And for Brisbane, I'm in awe of what they've achieved. But it has been a long long process to develop their squad and I stand by the fact that they've had some lucky recruiting coups along the way. Even Voss fell into their arms as a zone selection. That's not to say that there hasn't been a huge amount of work and dedication gone into how they've put it all together. (Don't you just love those double negatives!)

Read my post in the context of the one I was responding to, and hopefully it will be clear that I wasn't trying to denigrate these teams' achievements. But I don't think they necessarily present a blueprint of how to win a premiership.