When was the last time the CFC board took a risk?
They don't wanna disappoint fans.

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Give and you shall recieve

Other than Kouta being the obvious choice we both agree on . If he stands aside at the end of 2006 . Who is your choice . Mine is Lance . He is Carlton man he wants the job and he shows leadership on the field.
Simple question not bluff and buster. We dont want the cryptical answer to avoid implecating you of any statements that may be brought against you. Just a name

Who the hell is Soulfly

And I dont recall you ever being critical of Pagan at any stage for bringing in recycled players and I can vaguely remember an arguement where you supported this . So from this it is easy to suggest that whilst you are a supporter of Pagan you also support his recycle policy

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If you allow the Government to change the Laws in an emergency
They will create an Emergency to change the Laws

My understanding is that Lance Whitnall is currently significantly above his ideal playing weight and is certainly heavier than when he reported for pre-Christmas training this time last year.

So Sydney Blue - if you think that is the basis to make Lance Captain - go right ahead.

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"Hence you will not say that Greeks fight like heroes but that heroes fight like Greeks"?

Winston Churchill

That's rather contrary to BV's training report from today.

Your absolutely right that does seem contrary to BV's training report from today.

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"Hence you will not say that Greeks fight like heroes but that heroes fight like Greeks"?

Winston Churchill

Weird.

How did his time trial compare to last year?

At this point I would be pushing for Skinny to be capt

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Can smell the gf its there for the taking we are the form side

Lance has sooooo many characteristics of a captain.....ever since the big kick up the bum he has done nothing but give it his absolute all....and lets not get ahead of ourselves, there are months and months before the footy starts...so he could lose heaps before then.....()

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The problem will be made. for the solution to be sold, to your face before your eyes, tolerance is now the new danger

Jarrad Waite

give the kid the nod or at least make him a vc

kid's got leadership at Carlton written all over him!

Rich

agree on that one bluey...he is a very stable and strong young man

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Can smell the gf its there for the taking we are the form side

The whole point of the initial post was that it was the right decision to stick with Kouta because there wasn't another "name" at this stage and that hopefully one might appear in the next 12 months (Waite). If that doesn't happen then Stevens would be the next best choice though not ideal for a couple of reasons. I thought that was all fairly clear in my post. I also outlined in that post why I thought others such as Lance were unsuitable.

As for supporting Pagan and recycling?

Why is it that people seem to forget we didn't have any decent draft picks for two years when this comes up? If Pagan had been recruiting guys like Teague and Morrell in exchange for first and second round picks I would have been ropable but he wasn't - he was picking them up for next to nothing. Now that we have draft picks we're using them. Where's the problem? It seems a pretty obvious strategy that you use the first couple of rounds worth of picks on quality youth (unless someone offers you a deal you can't refuse such as Judd for pick 20) and then the rest of your picks are a mix of youth or trades depending on the state of your list at that time.

Dean Laidley's currently throwing away the future of the Kangaroos by trading high picks for B and C grade talls. That would be killing me if I was a Kangaroos supporter. Carlton's situation was completely different. We had no high picks for two years and we had a group of older players with hard bodies who were moving on or retiring or basically pissing a lot of people off. If we'd cleared out guys like Beaumont, Allan, Murphy etc and replaced them all with kids picked from the third round on we'd be in a lot worse position now than we are.

The recycled players brought in during that time were never going to win us a flag but they did help change the culture around the place and for that we should thank them. If one or two play 100 plus games then that's a bonus.

Luckily we've also managed to pick up a very good bunch of young players with a lot of potential through other means over that period such as Betts, Bentick, Carrazzo, Setanta, Aisake, Thornton, etc.

It's all well and good to say that we should have used every possible pick in those years on youth but what if we had - where would we be at now? There weren't too many standouts from the third round on in those years and considering we managed to pluck Simpson and Fisher out of it I thought we did pretty well.

It's quite obvious that now that we're back as a full participant in the draft we'll be drafting more kids each year than we did in 2002 and 2003. It doesn't take too many brains to work out why.

This year we only took one "recycled" player in the trade period and basically all we paid was a swap of pick 52 in a draft where the club appears to have decided not to go past pick 36. Had they wanted to use another pick on a kid in this draft then we could have had one around 70 odd anyway so it's not as if Saddington's cost much and considering the player he's been I'm happy to have him.

Does that mean I support "recycling" over "drafting". No. It doesn't mean I support "drafting" over "recycling" either. I believe you make the best decisions based on your situation at the time. We probably could have used one or two of our later picks in 2003 on kids rather than "recycled" players but have a look through the list at who was drafted after the third round and there really isn't too much joy in either the drafted kids or experienced players.

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“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a king. The palace turns into a circus.”
Turkish Proverb

Mr.GWS please meet Sydney Blue, Mr.Blue please meet GWS. Mr.GWS - this is Mr/Blue's favourite topic.

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Formerly: Ackland the Wonderkid / Army the Wonderkid / quivering mess / molsey / Tony Lynn Fan Club

Kouta is not a natural leader. But I agree that he should captain out this year. Captaincy is more than just leadership, it is about marketing, player development (esp for the younger players) and more importantly, the media. No doubt Kouta is weak in the media, but he is extremely strong on the side of marketing and is a great example for young developing players (esp if he plays on for a reduced salary in 2007). with the new bunch of young guys expected to join us, I think he remains the man at least for another year and makes the kids want to be part of the club. All kids want to be like Kouta and what better than to have the opportunity to play under the legend that he is.

We need to give him the respect he deserves and it has always been the Carlton way to reward our loyal servants. Kouta is a loyal servants. He will have sufficient Vice Captains to make up for his perceived weakness in on-field leadership.

GWS

Your post was easily the best post I have read in the off season.

Very, Very well written...

Should be POW IMO

I could not agree with you more strongly GWS.

All good points on the captaincy AND the draft vs recycled policy.

Unfortunately, our lowly position is going to mean a lot of criticism for the club, coaching staff and players. A look at the circumstances behind some of these decisions is often useful when trying to evaluate whether Pagan did the right or wrong thing.

FFS we have people in here saying it was a bad thing to win 10 games in 2004! I still think it's better to win games than risk creating a culture of medicority and acceptance of losing which still afflicts a number of other AFL clubs.

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In WADA we trust

GWS you must be a politician of have political ambitions .

I will rephrase the question.

If Kouta was unavailable to Captain Carlton tommorrow who should be captain. I know you have suggested Stevens if Waite doesn't come through but what about right now.

I brave enough to put forward Lance and I have no hesitation in nominating Waite as his sucessor as I have seen enough of him to know he will be a future Captain of Carlton. no proviso's or what if's .Stevens a big fat NO. I want at least one position of authority to belong to a Carlton person.

And despite you magnificant post in regards to how our recruitment policy was the only one Denis could take . I still think it was wrong and until such time as the team starts heading in the right direction and that is upward I think I am right. Three years - four drafts things should be turning round if we are cellar dwellers again in 2006 things will have to change.

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If you allow the Government to change the Laws in an emergency
They will create an Emergency to change the Laws

Yes, alot of people forget those wins.

The recycled were never intended to win us a flag, we must've only had very short term in mind when we did that.

You could argue though, if we didn't recycle we may just be a little more advanced now, just a little closer to our goal.

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The problem will be made. for the solution to be sold, to your face before your eyes, tolerance is now the new danger

So far Pagan has had one full draft. I agree with GWS that in terms of where the playing list was, and the options he had available, Pagan took a reasonable course of action to address what he perceived to be a number of significant issues. It seems to me the perspective is important.

As for the captaincy, well no-one is really standing out and demanding it. If not Kouta, then probably Stevens as i don't subscribe to the philosophy that because he didn't start with us he can't lead the team. If he shows the right qualities,and sets the right example, then why not? He has demonstrated some on-field leadership qualities this year and last.

A few years back I was in favour of Lance, but much more reluctant now. Waite I don't think is ready yet , Lappin just not really suited.

Some very good points GWS but I dont agree with this point.
Why do we assume that we'd be worse off ?

Instead of taking David Clarke, why couldnt we have taken picks for Beaumont?
Instead of giving a pick for Harford and Johnson, why couldnt we have punted on a Sam Fisher or Michael Rischitelli or Daniel Jackson.

Instead of picking Glenn Bowyer who was a long shot at best, why not back our recruiters on a Shane Tuck or Julian Rowe or Brent Hartigan?
Or a Adam Bentick or Aaron Davey?

I dont understand why we trot out the line that we'd be worse off with kids.
How would we be worse?

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

I think what GWS is trying to point out is that if we didn't have the players with the necessary experience on our list at the time, we'd be further behind than we are now.

Trading off Beaumont, Allan, Murphy etc was necessary, but we couldn't replace them all with 18 year old kids.

Also, there would have been no time for proper development for those kids had we drafted them. We would have thrown them in the deep end and they probably would have been burn out by now.

I think what we did in that draft was the right thing to do.

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Writer for SuperCoach Paige www.scpaige.com.au
Twitter - @johnfeeney24