Could be worse. Our guy has has watched his undersized mids get monstered by all the contending oppo midfields now for 9 years. Still persists with creating stoppages where his gun ruckman decides consistently to drop it at his own feet, whereupon our players bounce off the likes of Dangerfield, Martin, the entirety of GWS and so on. Seems that our million dollar ruckman is coached that way by his you-bewt ruck coach who played CHF. Don't want to go over the soft cap now by getting a specialist coach for our most expensive asset and our 3 other ruckmen we have on our list now do we? Midfielders are what's important. And flankers. It's why we have so few quality KPPs. Not sure why it was so important to drop 7 mil on a ruckman then, but let's not go there.
Fair enough though, we do win a share of stoppages, whereupon we play chip chip and kamikazee handball, allowing the oppo to structure up in their D50. We have to do this because the only way we win stoppages is by taking a forward out and have him play the +1 at The All Important Contest, leaving **** all up front to kick to. So we wait until we get our tall forwards back in the 50, by which stage everyone else has got there and, if the zone isn't completely choca block, the oppo has been able to at least get their mob right where they need them for the coast to coast rebound. Our tall forwards aren't much chop in the first place, by the way and really need one out opportunities but you know. We're all about the clearances. Except when we're playing West Coast I think. Then we're allergic to them.
We have a 7 foot guy who is great running on to the high ball 20 out and rarely misses. So we have him provide the outlet option on the wing and back flank. Time after time after time. Sometimes, we have him camp under the ball where he gets knocked off balance too easily and we just sit it on his head like he's Travis ****ing Cloke and wonder why he can't take the grab.
Our only other talls up front are a novice ruck with modest forward craft and a short, repurposed full back, while our only hope for a gun full forward has been playing centre half back for the last 5 years or so and only gets trialled up forward once the game is lost. Even then, it's a 50/50 shot at being tried. So we rely on medium sized forwards and promptly kick it slow and high to them, where the likes of Fatty McGovern dines out like he's back at his favourite all you can eat shrimp restaurant. Grimes doesn't even bother staging against us. He just stands there while we effectively pick him out for a solid 2 hour stretch.
So the only hope we then have is for a burst of x factor forward brilliance. We had exactly 2 players with that sort of ability. The first was too fat to play full seasons of footy and is now getting moved to the midfield anyway since Buckley and co realise if they don't get some weight around the All Important Contest they might be out of a job by August. Only took 'em 9 years and we'll still play the +1 anyway. You ****ing watch. The other x factor forward was sold to North for a bag of soggy Twisties on account (apparently) of him not having a good connection with his team mates. Like an episode of MAFS for ****s sake. 100 million dollar a year organisation and this is the sort of decision making that goes on.
Meanwhile, Thomas and Hoskin-Elliott can't seem to miss a game. I mean... they do like to go missing for games at a time but we can't drop them, for fear of exposing any of our first year talent to senior action before they've had the mandatory Collingwood Rip 'Er Off the Bone hamstring incident. 9 years ago, we hired Bill Davoren as our fitness guy. AKA, Dr Death. AKA Dr Davorkian. Sure enough we started dropping like flies. After a few years of (and I quote) training them till they break, the hierarchy thought better of the notion and gave the Butcher of Batman Avenue his marching orders. We then promoted his apprentice to the role. Kid had never worked for anyone else. Lo and behold! Nothing changed! Whoda thunk it?
You all know the line about leadership and not being the smartest guy in the room. The unfortunate thing at the Pies is that everyone in our decision structure seems hell bent on living out that ethos at the same time. It just doesn't work like that. Someone's gotta stop being the nuff nuff.
You know what, Melbourne fans? Look... I read DemonBlog during your darkest days and I understand that if there's one thing you guys know more than anyone else about, it's terrible coaching. But you think Goodwin's hopeless? Tell you what... we'll swap. We'll take Goodwin and you can have Buckley. Hell, we'll even throw in Banger and Sando for free.
What's that? Yeah.... Didn't think so
