You lot who've brought up Paul Roos - you've shot yourselves in the foot with your argument. Nice desperation here.
Paul Roos came into the Sydney club, a club that was struggling under Rodney Eade (who's now being hailed as a wonder coach at the Dogs - but rightfully so). Sydney players had had enough of Eade, his tactics were stale, the team hadn't been performing well. Rumour up here was that he'd lost some of the players.
In comes Roos - the place is transformed. From all accounts, extremely likeable, brilliant encourager of players - team oriented coach with great tactical brain to boot.
IMO if Paul Roos had come into this Carlton side, he might have had a bad first year, but he would have made a bigger difference in 2004 and 2005. I'm not denying we could have a better list, but Sydney's list is not that spectacular either. We all looked at Sydney's list versus West Coast and thought - no way, Swans are gone - but they won in 2005 and lost by a point in 2006.
If you look at the Swans best 6 - Hall, Goodes, O'Loughlin, Barry, Jolly, Kirk. - we're not that far behind - Fevola, Stevens, Thornton, Murphy, Walker, Simpson - it's our 17-22 players that are lacking. Sydney's worst players in their 2005/06 sides has been Nick Davis, arguably Jared Crouch - neither of these players are poor, but neither are they stars.
What you Pagan-lovers don't seem to realise is that he hasn't got the players playing as a team. There's no spirit - Roos would have engendered it.
And don't start talking to me about Pagan and North and how players played for him. Players were made to tow the line by Carey, Archer and co. Pagan hasn't got this at Carlton. The captain (Kouta) has been ambivalent at best about supporting the coach and the captain has not rallied the players, cajoled them, bullied them into following the coach like Carey, Archer and co did.
When players aren't talked to for weeks on end by the coach, you wonder why they have no respect for him.
The Duke wrote:
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The only thing that could make a seemingly intelligent person overlook the blatantly obvious as you have pointed out,BL, is their blind passion and love they have for the CLUB.
I argue that Pagan not being liked by a great proportion of the Carlton list is one of the plain reasons why we are so poor. What are you going to say when we're 1-6 next year? Blame it on the players again?
We should theoretically be better - we've just about got enough high picks as St Kilda.