Denis Pagan came to a club in the deepest, darkest hole a club can be in. He arrived expecting money, but it turns out money was the problem in the first place...we were giving away too much of it...

He did the only thing that could be done after such harsh penalties, and that was to recruit "recycled" players who had at least an ounce of talent. For the short, it worked...we came out of the midst to steal some fantastic wins in 2004. The unfortunate thing with "recycling" players is that some will not work out...however others will be absolute diamonds in the rough.

He's rolled the dice a couple of times and its worked out...to an extent...like the fast-tracked development of our irish star in Setanta o'hAilpin. Now it comes to the point in time that i guessed, yet feared would happen. Although it seemed the draft penalties werent all that bad to us at first...we our now paying the price...after a false sense of glory and fame we are now paying the price. Of coarse, like most flower do, the first person people blamed was Denis himself. The question i ask is what coach in the league would be able to get 10 wins after suffering an absolute belting from the AFL and have to recruit "duds"...?? Denis is an absolute hero in my eyes...after the clubs record loss of money...he won us $220,000 in a 'pointless pre-season competition'...,..

now we are suffering the downfall i feared...but its also the downfall we need...we dont have any young talent....with a few exceptions of coarse....

we look likely to finish last...but it doesnt feel as bad as 2002...and i beg of you, get of Denis's back...he has done more than any other coach could have done for our proud club.

LEAVE HIM ALONE....!!!

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R A D I C A L B R O T H E R S

Inspired by the One-Minute Sculptures of Erwin Wurm

"All in all is all we are..."

it cuts deeper than even young talent though that fact is hurting us greatly ... we need some Leadership also either we have to get some or fast track some of the possible ones on our list ... with the kids you still need experince and guidance something we lack. so if we can get another gun who is potential leader that would also be a high priority as well

Nope.......sorry! I wont leave Dennis alone. He is as much to blame for where we are as the players! Not good enough!

Everyone is to blame: administration, coaching staff, training staff, players, sponsors, supporters (past and present). We are all in it together and we will get through it.

What should he do then to turn things around?
How would our current team be playing under a different coach? Matthews? Malthouse? Worsfold? Thomas?

agreed we need on field leaders to keep Denis message goin. We started well except for the 3 freebie golas the lions got. The first half the players put in worked together well most did.. But after half time when the players are loosing concentration on the ground .. maybe start to drop off or lack the same endevour .. there was nobody on the field to get them sparked up or for them to rally around ...

I reckon maybe Dennis should work on T-Bird as a VC for the backline ... give him the responsability .. Kouta / stevens for the midfield and Whits i guess in the forward line .. campo got to be stripped he creating more problems on the field than doin any good. last thing the players need when they startin to feel the pressure is have a guy mouth off give away frees it just sends a worse message out on the field..

I agree,
We all know that we excelled last year with a 10 win record that no one predicted.
We should look forward to the rebirth of our talent at seasons end.
The only negative is the lack of leadership from the people that should be standing up.

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BOWER TO MURPHY TO JUDD GOAL !!!
BRING IT ON
mens sana in corpore sano : a sound mind in a sound body

Because coaches like Worsfold, Matthews and Malthouse have balls and take part of the responsibility rather than piss fart around with weak excuses!!!!!!!!!!!

He has been outcoached all year!

I'm sorry, i know he's got a lot of supporters on this site but i've never been one of them and i was not at all happy when we re-signed him for 3 years! This club is gonna take at least 5 years to repair itself to the point where we can be a competitive team aiming for a Top 4 finish........by that stage, pagan will be well past 60 and i doubt very much if he will still be coaching!

As coach you must take responsibility. Maybe he is behind the scenes, but he doesnt appear to be publicly.

The only coach I see who comes out publicly and says a loss was his fault is Thomas, and he's not a coaches arsehole.

Week after week after week i hear the same bullshit excuse in regards to dennis pagan............"A coach is only as good as the list he has to work with!"

Two words............"Grant @#$%&! Thomas!"

If that were true, then he should have won 3 premierships by now!

Well interesting point you have there Ryan ... lets compare lists of Worsfold and Mathews even the pies .... i reckon i would prefer there list over ours ... well compared to West coast and Mathews .... Yep the coach has to take responsibility but geez if you dont have the cattle .... you have very little onfield leadership yer gonna be pushing sh.t up a hill i reckon..

What i would like to see Denis do is accept where we are now ... try and re assign the leadership group ie remove some who dont deserve and implement others that will embrace it. And mis up some of the kids with the best of the recycled players so that the kids have some mature bodies around them ..

Poor argument.
Imagine Pagan had coached the Saints and Thomas had coached us over the last 3 years. We'd be worse than we are now and the Saints would be better than they are now.

What exactly is it you want Pagan to come out and say at a press conference? "We're really shit and try as I might I can't fix it"???

Ryan can Pagan win the tap outs?
Can he win clearnaces?
Can he lead the team out in the middle?
Can he hit targets on the field?
Mark or kick goals???

We have a shit list.. not sure what you want him to do..

You did say that we would win when Deluca was dropped and Bryan came in.....

care to give us Bryans stats today????

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Coach could have done no more today, thought his match ups were good, we looked for options with the shortkick, forward setup was a little different with Fev and Lance coming in board from each pocket. Lions just showed their class and I reckon our guys played our best game for a while so I think the Lions are back.

I don't think it would matter who was coacbing us...you could have Norm Smith, Ron Barassi, Alan Jeans, Parkin etc in the box and they'd have us no better off than we are now..

I actually thought that we weren't bad tonight but as usual mistakes kill us, almost every time we turn the ball over the opposition capitalise on the scoreboard and that's it in a nutshell really, to use a Denis phrase...we're our own worst enemy, we make it all to easy for the opposition.

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Formerly Blues-Back2003.

Didn't the method of selecting the leadership group change this year and it was selected by the players rather than the MC? Sounds like that hasn't paid off.

Lol Ryan If we would have had Grant Thomas we would have been last 4 years in a row and gotten the cream of the crop ... oooops Thats what the Saints have had lol and even with all that talent there team is still under performing ... If Pagan had the Saints and he was 2.5 wins for the first half of the season i would agree with you 1000% Ryan but i think most Blues supporters know our list is crap .. hell i reckon most of the Media and commentators think our list is crap so why cant you work it out. Most People in the media reckon with our current list its a 10 year exercise unless we bottom out .... Now i have a lot more faith ... but the main disadvanatge we have had under Pagan is finishing 10th last year .... if we had a hack coach we would have won 2-3 and gotten some much needed talent but we didnt so this year we are really suffering.

Agree with Synbad today. Pagan is f.ucked! He has a shit list and is trying to make a premiership team... How many Premiership coaches are there in the league these days boys... Very few from memory...

We have one...

Relax, we will improve. But, without a leader with testicles on the field we are in strife!

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What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet
Woody Allen

No coach in the world can turn houlihan into a Michael voss, no coach in the world can turn Wiggins into a Chris Judd. They are duds and they will be a dud for the rest of their life. We have a shit list because of the previous coaching staff. And with the current draft system it only allow teams to rebuild very slowly, and there's nothing Denis can do about this.
Watching tonight our players can't even get the ball, so it doesn't matter what game plan we have, we will lose no matter what.

ryan, if you were the coach what would you do differently?