I think our gameplan is falling down because we don't have anough good players to execute it. They tried kicking long the last couple of years - led to some great wins but also some horrendous thrashings. We are flooding this year - has lead to closer contests (except yesterday) but is more frustrating to watch.

If we are this bad next year then Pagan will get the flick. It will only cost us a few hundred thousand then instead of closer to a million. We unfortunately just have to be patient.

Exactly.

The drafting record over those years was not the fault of Pagan ... as much as some on this site would have everybody believe.

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In WADA we trust

The first qtr against Richmond illustrated what happens when you have faith in your team to kick more goals than the opposition. Not only did we have a forward line structure, but we also kicked the ball shorter. We were winning the shootout and Pagan shat himself over RIcho

Richo still ended up taking around 14 marks so the flooding had no effect. Yet if we had've persisted with the shootout we may have given ourselves a chance.

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"You are being watched. The government has a secret system. A machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know because I built it." - Finch

I reckon their view might have been obscured by his jumper...

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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

Only 5 wins from the last 28 H&A matches!

Something will give soon you'd think

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There's so much I could say...

Exactly. We have Fev, Whits, Waite, Fisher, Betts on our forward line. That is a strength. A strength alot of club would be happy to have. Why not f***** utilise it with a decent game plan that suits. We'll never to be able to judge the players properly until they can play for a coach they're willing to "die for", where they'll run long, hard and deep with a huge amount of passion, creating opportunities and numbers forward. I've only seen that for 4 weeks during Pagan's tenure and as scintillating as it looked it was sadly that was wasted on a pre-season last year. We've cleaned out personnel before and it was just like shuffling the deckchairs on the Titanic as the main problem, our coach, is still there.

I still cannot believe the players receive no blame for dropping their heads and playing soft football.

jim, would you get the sack if your runner had an injury niggle, or if he/she was just running poorly due to not following your technique advice, or if he/she was scared out on the track at a meet?

No you wouldn't.

Look no further than St Kilda to see the value of a coach. Grant Thomas is a motivator, and is not very tactical at all.

There was a thread linking to a Mike Sheehan article a few weeks back on here, the article was a fly-on-the-wall effort inside the St Kilda coaching box and it demonstrated how bloody little they do on match days.

Would you stand on the sidelines and critique the runner while they're running? You bloody can't, they either wouldn't hear you with all the noise at the meet or they'd run too far past to hear the tail end of your message.

You're also referring to a sport where very little decision making comes into play. Sure in middle and long distance running there's timing your bolt and so forth but that's one decision, pre-planned, and very little can be done in a race to affect that.

Anyway back to Thomas, he has taken St Kilda to preliminary finals. Sure the list has amazing depth and most clubs would be envious. Sure a decent coach may have even seen premierships by now.

But it still demonstrates that a good and confident 22 is a greater influence on the game than a good coach. A good coach merely provides them with the ideas and strategies to take out there to best play to their strengths and weaknesses and those of their opposition.

If it is shown that a game plan is failing due to anything other than poor execution maybe the coach can be flogged for that, but so long as he is working on the execution a coach shouldn't be flogged for his players mistakes unless he is clearly misusing them in a particular role.

Can anyone nominate such a thing?

You'd be surprised what a T & F coach get the sack for. Some athletes have strange mindsets......
lol

Yes, the players do have to take some responsibility as, even if it's true that they don't greatly respect Pagan, you'd like them to give more than we're getting. But, in the end, though, what makes a confident 22 is the coach. If he has a poor, unsuitable methods, poor, unsuitable game plan etc.........and loses and/or can't get the confidence of his players the players will play that way. Just as we are, in many ways, are product of our upbringing in life, it's the same far players under their coach. That has been proven time and again over many years. We wouldn't be the first side to suddenly "find something" out of seemingly no-where after a coach has been sacked during a season. History is littered with it. The last time we sacked a coach mid-season (1989) we were on the bottom with 2 wins, then we promptly won 7 1/2 of our next 10 games, the 2 losses by 3 points and 4 points respectively. Pagan, himself, was a beneficiary in 1993 after Schimma was sacked. Thy went from rabble to champion team out of no-where (boots on the other foot now). Joyce taking over the Footscray job from Terry Wheeler in 1995. They went from rubbish to a finalist in that year. They're just a few examples of probably many. So no-one's ever going to tell me a coach doesn't make a difference.

I'd like to see Barry Mitchell in the job. Morrell, Harford and Franchina are back playing for the Bullants simply because of Mitchell and the repsect he has. Tells you something to start with. You can see that when the Bullants play. Players that play like they don't give a toss in the seniors, suddenly play with terrific passion when they go back to the Bullants. I'd like to get him before some other club does. I ws a Pagan supporter until the middle of last year until it became obvious he had lost the players again, as well as recognising he's getting past it and unable to adapt to the current game.

What kind of game plan is that? A flood where we don't rotate the bench enough to maintain players able to run and carry in order to carry it out.

No players forward of the ball!

Forwards forced to compete against 3 backmen!

Failed execution my ar*e. The game plan doesn't work because it's complete and utter garbage. The players hate it and this bagging them out about confidence in the media is a complete smokescreen. Why are they low on confidence? Because the coach lacks any in them to be able to implement a half-decent game plan, to put players forward of the ball.

We've squandered the lead twice in two weeks because we've become too negative.

It frustrates the daylights out of me that people can't see the friggin' thing. I was a Pagan supporter until the season started, but after seeing them against Sydney, that was it.

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"A good composer does not initiate. He steals."

- Igor Stravinsky

Clem, you want them to win games of football or develop?

What you're asking for with your suggestions is to develop 100%, and bugger up any chance of winning, probably shooting their confidence to pieces.

The VFL is for developing. Unfortunately in many cases we don't have that option so we're developing while trying to win.

I go away for 5 pages and come back and find the empire of intelligent debate in ruin.

Advice for anyone - just don't engage ludicrous points. Suddenly in 5 pages we've got wave after wave of poorly considered points that are just patently wrong. Please just don't engage poor points and they, and the people who post them, will go away.

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Love Cricket? Love me

Well, we're not winning friggin' games of football at the moment are we? We're "developing" the players and the way we develop them is for them to be smashed by 12 goals in front of a crowd of 60,000 playing with a negative game plan that's not even producing honourable losses.

At least some of us who used to back Pagan now have the balls to realise that we were wrong and are now admitting it. I can't believe you are still being deluded by what he says in the media. The truth is before your very eyes in the poor performance of the Carlton Football Club on the field.

Abysmal.

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"A good composer does not initiate. He steals."

- Igor Stravinsky

Clem

it takes a conscientious media watcher to separate fact from propaganda. Some people just aren't able to do that.

thats a shame for them.

sadly for us, I reckon a few of them are on the board as well

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Love Cricket? Love me

The sky is falling the sky is falling....

Look.. the problem with Denis is nobody thinks he has the answers.. and i really doubt he thinks he has answers too,.
Its tiring looking at him for me.. imagine the players???

The deal needs to be done.. someone needs to tap him on the shoulder and point him to the stables...

Thats life... everyone has a used by date...

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Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas, and oil....... the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off. We apologize for the inconvenience.

It's just sad we're crap. We were crap when we won the wooden spoon in 2002 before Pagan, and we're crap with Pagan. It must be karma for being successful in the past.

Oh hush.... whiteanting is abit over the top.
I reckon he got just near on 4 years... at some point something gives.
Everyone is accountable for their actions. Denis is no exception.
Tere is no semblence of confidence around the team and the way they play. Were getting huge hammerings game in game out month in month out year in year out.. something is WRONG!!!... yes we dont have the best playing group out there... and i believe its coming along presonel wise.. but the development .. skills.. game plan is severely lacking.denis has tried a few things they havent worked.

Ok.. he tried .. he failed... lets move on and see if someone else has an answer.

I agree we need to be patient.

But i dont think you can be that patient that you can wait around forever.. because Old London Bridge was patient.. but wave after wave brought it down...
Today there is a sign that says 'This way to Old London Bridge' but it looks nothing like its former self.

Lets make the changes.

In Mitchell and Harf and....

Out Denis and Trout.

Mitchell and Harf need 10 weeks minimum to make sure they work out what player is worth keeping to rebuild this club.... they deserve that.

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Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas, and oil....... the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off. We apologize for the inconvenience.

I personally feel we need to develop our players more, rather than attempt to win games we're not equipped to win.

What I am saying, is that you're all over the place in your opinion, what do you want from the team as of right now? What do you want from the coach?

Pagan is trying to win game at the moment as best he can with a developing 22. The style of footy prior to this round had us middle of the road in terms of average points against. He was/is playing to win.

Is that what he wanted to do? Or is that what others wanted him to do. The Smorgon influence is becoming more apparent to me now, he didn't ask him to play like this, he asked him to play a brand of footy that kept them in games by the sounds of it.

What sort of game plan, do you feel would keep us competitive, long and direct, chipping, flooding, corridor play, moving up the wing and centring 30 out from goal?

What do you think Pagan is trying to do? He's trying to maintain possession so the team can get marks inside 50, something that we've been struggling with for ages. This is what a coach does when he's trying to win games, he manipulates how his players play to improve on areas that are down, in this case, clean use of the footy into the 50, and in the 50, along with an overall lack of defensive work in the midfield.

Pagan isnt trying to win games.
Pagan is trying to self preserve ..

He isnt after a win.. development isnt the most important thing for him.. not getting thrashed is.

I keep harping back to shit players like Ben Johnson and Dane Swan.. and they can play AFL standard footy.. cos theyre playing to a game plan and theyre being developed.

Can they keep it up????God knows!!... but they are more credible as footballes than our players are.

again keep in mind theyre not gun footballers.. they worked hard and they have improved over time and are playing with confidence.

Then compare them to Sporn and Wiggo... who as first and second year players looked better to me... but have not improved one iota!!!...

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Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas, and oil....... the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Unbelievable.

First you say that you want us to develop our players, then you say that we're playing to win. If you want our players developed, then how can you support what Pagan is doing if he's playing to win and you claim we can't have both?

If we're playing to win, we're not doing a very job of it are we? This ridiculous chip, chip, oops, turn over 50m out with all our players streaming the wrong way. You call that playing to win? I call that playing so that we don't lose by that many.

Look at your statements closely jimmae because you're the one who is confused. Just like Denis is.

I think the current chip-chip numbers behind the ball gameplan is stupid. It shows little confidence in the players. Pagan keeps harping on about how footy is played 80% behind the ears. Well, if he shows no confidence in his players, he's shot them down mentally before he's even started. I want one-on-one contests around the ground, find a free man moving into space, if none presents, then kick long if there is no option. And I don't want numbers behind the ball, if we play a sweeper, let it be a small mobile man rather than a lumbering ruckman who can't read the play. Try something different rather than this predictable rubbish that Pagan trots out (excuse the pun) every week which he calls his 'gameplan'.

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"A good composer does not initiate. He steals."

- Igor Stravinsky