Jimmae wrote:
Brittain lost his motivational connection with the players and, like Synbad said, had no depth of experience to draw to
steer the ship in the right direction. Injuries didn't help him but he was shot overall as a coach.
For starters, Synbad did not mention "no depth of experience." He said
a his lack of an AFL pedigree meant he may have lacked "credibility."
Pagan is a prime example of how important credibility is, for no matter
how bad his Carlton's form, the fact that he coached the best team of
the 90s to premierships has kept the wolves at bay for 3 yrs. Even now
his main defence for many is that 'he has the runs on the board.'
Brittain may well have lost the players about the middle of 2002 but
with about half a dozen games to go, he held one-on-one talks with the
entire list and, despite the mounting injury toll, turned things around in terms of committment. And he maintains the respect of the players to this day, as Kouta's article testifies.
The connection was not just motivational but resulted from a belief in his tactics and game plan (see both games against Essendon* 2001, esp Rd3). Pagan biggest problem, apart from his poor people skills, was he wasn't able to sell his game plan - mainly because it didn't work.
Jimmae wrote:
I was also told that Brittain showed scant regard for maintaining player fitness regimes, which the senior boys usually propelled the players through. This was a strategy employed by Parkin
in the golden years because these were superstars
This fitness thing is a bit of a footy forum furphy, old chap. I don't have to go to training to know if my team is fit or not. Carlton under Britts played a very physical game, based on getting numbers to the ball and muscling, handballing, running the ball out of the congestion. If anything, esp in 2001, we had to work much harder than teams in the top 6 due to our lack of talls up forward and sometimes poor delivery.
Jimmae wrote:
Tactically out of depth? Hardly. Pagan is doing the right thing and is building the list up to be multi-dimensional, and has been chipping away at a simplistic game plan to better suit his team.
Pagan has "a simplistic game plan" to suit
himself because of his lack of ability to deal with the complexity of the modern game. Multi-dimensional?? Perhaps you could expand on that....
Jimmae wrote:
Jarusa could probably cite this with statistics, but
ou don't really need it. Until we demonstrate an aptitude at particular skills like keeping over the ball in a contest, keeping in the contest and disposing the ball under pressure, why the F@%&#! wouldn't you train at those skills?! Why the F@%&#! wouldn't you build up muscle sets that make you competent at these things?
"Keeping over the ball in a contest, keeping in the contest, etc??" If there's one thing the Carlton players could do, then it was these physical aspects of the game. They were absolutely basic to Brittain's game plan.
Jimmae wrote:
Pagan stated that soon we will see a truly dominant
key-forward return to the game and gamestyles will change again but for
the moment he's trying to work with the times.
This is not Pagan commenting on how the game will evolve but an expression of a hart (or Wayne) felt wish. At least he's being honest
about his plan for the future - basically - until another Carey drops into his lap he will try to be 'modern.' And there are dominant key forwards around but their coaches don't use them anything like Pagan would.
Jarusa wrote:
Give me some examples of his tactical brilliance in 2002 when we won 3 games.
Western Bulldogs, Rd 21. Beaumont moved to full forward from the back
line, Corey in the ruck moving foward, Houla on the back flank (bog), Ang let loose at CHB. Played a long kicking game - to a moving target. With Corey dominating the ruck and getting goals, Beauey picking up a few goals, we went to about a 50 pt lead at qtr time. When Corey was
injured at half time (and how many times did that happen in 02) we lost
our accendency in the ruck, our focus on the forward line and faced the
renowned comeback skills of the Bullies. Then Britts reverted to the
possession game - to deny the Bullies use of the ball while still pushing forward.
That's
two game plans in
one game - something Pages has mostly failed to do over
three years.
Clem wrote:
However, I will defend his general gameplan in the sense
that the best way to goal is to hit targets long and get the ball into
F50 as often as you can with some semblance of structure.
There's no chicken or egg thing going on here - big marking forwards
first then long kicking. Pagan got the order mixed up.
Clem wrote:
I am all for the direct game plan when going into F50. However, out of the back half, it is imperative to keep possession.
It's imperative to keep possession all over the ground. Like the Swans
for example. They never (or so close to never it doesn't matter) just
bomb the ball up to Barry Hall. They will wait for the right moment -
either a lead or occasionally to a one-out situation where Barry has the advantage. They pay a lot of attention to not turning the ball over, as do most other coaches to varying degrees. Compare this to Pagan esp in 2003 when we actually purposely kicked to contests - we got absolutely killed by rebounds. Still hurts us a lot.
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