Staw clutching.....

Every other club is in exactly the same position...

Its not like .. only our players are made to do this...

Why does a 17 year old HAVE TO play against men. when 6 months ago they were playing agsinst 16 yr olds???

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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.

jogging up and down the corridor on his own .. like usual

very disappointing day

I think Scotland is a little better than a 'B grader' Elwood, I think he suffers from being in a poor side and with better players around him would actually be a very good player...for instance throw him into the Collingwood team at the moment and he'd look fantastic, I'd say he's a better player than someone like Johnson or Swan or players of that ilk that were named in another thread...

He turns the ball over a bit but also has some of the best skills in the side and some of his ball usage is superb. He is also a stronger body and unlike most of our players can fend off opposing players. I suppose he hurts us when we don't have the ball but he's not the only one. I know he has been playing off a half-back flank but I would throw him into the middle more.

I'd love to add to a midfield of Stevens, Scotland, Houlihan etc and then you'd see how these players would shine, I honestly believe Scotland would be a really good player.

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Formerly Blues-Back2003.

Why is it the better way?

Why can’t we TRY to do some things better than “every other clubâ€

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There's so much I could say...

Why is it the better way?

Why can’t we TRY to do some things better than “every other clubâ€

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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.

Why is it the better way?

Why can’t we TRY to do some things better than “every other clubâ€

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There's so much I could say...

3 words

performance based contracts

3 more words

carlton sucked balls

hey, here's 3 more

renew your membership?

for this?

hearts the size of PEAS

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i'll think of something funny to say later.

They dont draft football players or basketballer players in the USa at 17/18

And not many soccer players push through at 17 .. only freaks like Pele.. or Rooney.. and alot are nothing by 20 (of those)

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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.

Change the AFL draft age rules then.

I just think that playing/developing competitively against other clubs COLLECTIVELY with your (new) teammates every week is just a mandatory basic team bonding/learning about each other thing to develop. It surely beats the hell out of a fractured playing group playing at three different times on a weekend.

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There's so much I could say...

That is the problem with our system Synbad - David Parkin didn't believe in it either and thought we could get the jump on other clubs in the 90s by eschewing the drafting of young 18 year olders - thats why if you look most of our draft picks through the 90s you will see a raft of Senior WAFL and SANFL players with what Parkin called mature/strong bodies that would slot immediately into AFL football. Parkin thought that recruiting the 17/18 year olds from the TAC was the wrong way to go - and when he woke up to the fact the damage was done - and we made a few mistakes anyway by recruiting the likes of Murray Vance who we thought had a mature body.

This was Carlton's recruiting philosophy and it has cost the club dearly whilst the rest of the competition went of and creamed of all the elite young talent.

We have been left with nothing and we are playing catch up about 5 years too late.

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

Winston Churchill

Fair enough argument.....skills wise he is better than Johnson or Swan and his ball usage is good when he is in form...dont disagree but I dont think he is a frontline midfielder who can cope with the best that other teams have ....as a second tier player he is handy and I wouldnt be dropping him off the list just because he is a B grader...you need your B graders..Brent Reilly is a handy player for the Crows but isnt in the frontline group of Mcleod, Goodwin, Roo, Edwards....we need to get some A graders to build up our frontline.....

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"When you have the attitude of a champion, you see adversity as your
training partner."
- Conor Gillen

At the Carlton Leaders Breakfast last Friday, the MC Gearge Donikian wished us all the best for our upcoming game against St George

I reckon we would have struggled to beat the NRL's version of the saints.

College system is very good in the states for basketball and its a good point about the age factor....College ball is better to watch than the NBA if you like your basketball played in the pure form and its there the players hone the skills...NBA doesnt teach you skills it expects you to have them.
Players come out as ready mades.....young adults not kids....

I think we almost need a U20 competition rather than U18 where players get a few extra years to learn the game.....its amazing seeing kids like Murphy do so well considering their age and body size....

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"When you have the attitude of a champion, you see adversity as your
training partner."
- Conor Gillen

That's the system we have in place here Synners.

We don't have university football, well we do but it's the Ammos. We don't have secondary leagues or U/21 level footy at a high level.

We're not big enough a sport to support such a large infrastructure. I would personally love it if we adopted the NFL kind of system and threw in some of the salary cap measures they have like franchise players and different types of contractual payments. I'd also love state of the art facilities and your reserve players spending all their time just developing and watching their senior players playing the game and sitting on the bench hearing from the coaches.

But it's just not how it's played here.

I'm sure St Kilda would love to pay Hamill for match play rather than him scoring a signing bonus. You can actually do that over there. Just a thought.

Interesting thought Elwood. Give them a couple of extra years. Would those like Murphy who are ready at 18 still be able to be drafted though?

I would say no and make it top age U20 player's only....

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"When you have the attitude of a champion, you see adversity as your
training partner."
- Conor Gillen

Freak players still crack through earlier in basketball (Iverson), not so sure about NFL ranks but I think you can.

Generally though it doesn't happen. But you would think a Judd, Riewoldt (although maybe at 19) and so forth would have come through earlier than most in such a system, so you wouldn't fix it purely at 20 or so.

They do run the risk of dropping down the pecking order a bit compared to their more developed counterparts in those circumstances.

I reckon increasingly in the NBA particularly, freak players who step straight out of high school like Kobe Bryant will bypass college... and chase the $$$

the kids who maybe not as gifted use college as a learning environment (pardon the pun)... similar to our VFL or reserves for the kids incapable of steppnig straight in

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Love Cricket? Love me

I alluded to this point earlier in the thread - David Parkin's philosophy was to go for what he thought were ready made SANFL & WAFL senior list players as it was his theory that they had mature bodies, were already playing senior football and would give Carlton a head start against all other AFL sides recruiting 18 year olds from the TAC.

Clearly it was the wrong way to go.

Unless the the entire system is changed and the quality 18 year olds in the TAC migrate to an Under 20 competition where they then be drafted from it wont work.

Or another thought was send them to the Bendigo League and we could just recruit them all from there "insert whistful emoticon here".

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

Winston Churchill

Did anyone see an incident with Wiggo & Troy Schwarze.

I just caught Schwarze running away & Wiggo in pain on the ground holding his nuts, and the commentators were saying it should be looked at…obviously it hasn't been. Anyone see it?

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#DonTheStash