Good evening ladies and gentlemen.

I'd like to ask you to kindly indulge me for a few moments and then throw the tomatoes!

I'll make it short...

PAGAN - Has he been worth it?

I ask you all to put aside your perceptions based on Denis's success at the Kangaroos aside and objectively evaluate his worth since he came to the seen in the 2002 PreSeason.

I'll hold my comments for now, but this weeks selection really sums up my feelings.

YES he HAT been worth it.

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I think he has.

He had the guts and sheer determination to walk into a place that looked like bomb had hit it - the place was a mess both on the field and off the field.

He stood up to the dissenters at the club and wouldn't let them walk all over him. He did the right thing by trading/delisting all of them. None of them were going to take us forward and really, they were just baggage that we didn't need.

His attempt to fill the void, left by those dissenters, at the 2003 draft seemed to be a successful attempt at the end of 2004. He now had the even bigger task of getting them improve even more in 2005. At this stage, 2005 for the Foreign Legion has been a failure. Not one of them has been playing well since Round 1.

But, really, did we expect them front up again and put in another mammoth effort to resurrect the club and get us back into the finals? I had my reservations, but I was optimistic and willing to see how things went.

All of those players have suffered second year blues and as a result are either sitting in the twos or clinging to dear life in the ones.

Pagan did what he did with what he had.

While I don't like to dwell on the lost draft picks, had he been able to use them, we would have been in a better position than we are now and probably would have about a quarter of the recycled players in the team than we have now.

Overall, I have faith in Pagan.

Like the old saying goes, you can't pull your pants up if they aren't there. In ours and Denis' case, you can't create and re-build a side without the necessary draft picks.

Besides, which other coach would have the patience and determination to do what Denis has done, is doing and will continue to do?

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Couldn't have done much more with the list we have.

The rebuilding only starts when the Pagan haters are off the list

Is a Grange really worth $500??...probably not.. but if you want the best you have to pay for it.(Denis , Mathews)
Or you can drink the Tyrells Long Flat Red for $5.... (Danny Frawley Peter Rhode)

You get what you pay for in life Crazycahn...

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denis has gone for pace because that is the Dogs strength, not size, not height, but pace and especially up there - what's so crazy about that?

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This type of slight is alien in the more cultured part of the world - Walsh. Its up there with mad dogs, Englishmen and the midday sun!

But has he created a new batch of these with the current crop after already culling the first batch? Just asking is all.....

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Yep, could be implementing an extra high rotation policy during the game to combat the heat and humidity.

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Yep i posted much the same on another thread already Pheonix and not gonna double up on your good work.

After seeing the make up of our list i have to say its a monumental task and happy that we have a coach who has the experience to come in and try a fix a lot of broken bits..

He has fixed a fair bit of the on field dramas and hey since we have had DP Membership is up / More sponsers have come on board.
He has extended his Tenure to fix a job half done so far

And hopefully he executes the rest of the plan by 2006.

I kind of think that he risks a lot in terms of his coaching record with the Blues from coming from a successful decade with the Kangas many finals appearances, 2 flags to the Blues where he has draft pics taken away ... a club struggling and a possibility to ruin his great win / loss record.
So i guess the next 3 years will either see him win this challenge put in a new era for the blues or he will go down with stuffing up his excellent record i go for the latter and do believe in all this chaos he has some direction

As Pheonix said i have faith as well and we will see how we emerge this dark period in the Blues history

why didn't he go for pace against the lions? especially as they've been exposed in that regard all year!

why has he started now being reactive at selection? why ignore match ups & structure all year (eg play teague on stafford), then all of a sudden start picking horses for courses?

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... an eagle flew out of the night. he was something to observe, came in close i heard a voice, bending stretching every nerve, had to listen had no choice ...

No.

No, but then in my book it's not worth $40 either cos I don't like its style, and whenever we have had it in a blind tasting it always comes last. However, that's not the topic!

But Pagan has been OK, certainly a vast improvement on the previous few years in terms of trying to sort out the list and priorities.

Headie it might not be worth 500 bucks but you should get your tongue map exercised if it comes last in every blind tasting you go to... i think youre thinking of the Kalymna...

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What are you people talking about when you mention pace. Where on earth is it coming from? Surely not the lot at Carlton. There is a lot of talk about Carlton being faster this year but game after game they are run off their feet. Pagan is playing favourites just like all coaches.

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The more people I meet, the more I like my dog!

Squarehead.. there is pace in a race and pace in a game.

We have some fastish player if it was a football Olympics but they have to be abloe to get the ball and use it and run to where the ball is.

We have players that with pace run to where the ball aint...

You need to be fleetfooted but have a brain too...

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My oath it is.

On Pagan, I think given our poor win/loss ratio, coupled with the apparent success, if you could call it that, of Eade and Wallace it is only natural to question Denis' results at Carlton. Given that both Eade and Wallace were available to us at the time we signed Pagan it adds even more curiosity to the debate. Would we be in this position with Eade or Wallace? Nobody really knows.

This year is probably the toughest to take in some ways because many of us, myself included, were expecting so much more off the back of 2004 and the Wizzer Cup.

I can't answer the question if any other coach would have been better for us. The beauty of speculation is it always allows for best case scenarios, so in that way it may be easy for people to mount a case saying we might be better off without Denis.

The thing to remember is that Pagan, or really it should be Carlton, is operating in a somewhat unique scenario to the other 15 clubs and our list problems began before Pagan arrived, he's not only dealing with our inability to accept the draft pre 2001, but he's also dealing with our inability to use the draft in 2002 and 2003, Walker excepted.

I still believe that Denis has the abilities to get us back in the finals and am still happy that he is our coach. However, I too have been a little unsure how to interpret the team selections over the past few weeks. Indeed it scares me in some ways to establish theories as to what he is doing.

C'est la vie. We'll be back, of that I am certain.

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600+k/year for 3 years and chances are we will be finishing last this season. In effect we havent progressed on the ladder for 3 years.

Has he been worth it? Unless you have blind faith in the guy or follow the 'mob supporter' mentality, then no he hasnt been worth it. Given our 'financial constraints' we would have been a LOT better investing in a younger coach @ 200k/year and spending the saved 1.2mill elsewhere

At the risk of stating the bleeding obvious....

We have no second tier leaders that should now be stepping up.

When you look at the Tigers and Bulldogs they have many players in the 24-27 yo bracket that have played over 100 games that are now excelling. They are being added to the ageing star list that every club has including us.

So the difference in the performance of the 3 sides (Carlton Richmond Dogs) is not so much the coaches but the players ages and experience.

Any Coach knows that you need a mix of experience and talent. We lack both but are really missing the experienced players ATM. The recycled players was an attempt to supplement our youth with some form of experience unfortunately you don't get "Browns and Riewalts" without picks and salary cap room- we had neither. So we ended up with a bunch of experiments all with their limitations. Such players should not be asked nor expected to be leaders, rather if they are to succeed they need to supplement an already talented and experience team structure- eg Martin Pike at Brisbane.

Instead of focusing on Pagans ability to get our team competitive again we should be wondering how we can regain our experience base -lets call it the "lost generation of Carlton".
We can address talent via the draft- but how do you address experience without either going after a name player(and when we do there will be cries of anguish amongst Carlton supporters because we will be percieved to be going down the old Elliot cheque book route therefore it "must" be bad.
Alternatively we go down the route just travelled - the recycled player route- and once again there will be cries of anguish that this route doesnt work either- "just look at our failures" and the lists that we have seen plenty of the last 2 months -the "delist lists" will be paraded around as evidence that this strategy doesnt work either.

Obviously we have to keep trying and turning over our list, this will require patience. It will also require some degree of stability in the football department -otherwise we could have the Pagan strategy taken over by another coach who starts the rebuilding process over again and this just delays the day when the vision becomes a reality.
If we had an unproven coach he would probably be sacked during this rebuild period, but one thing a proven coach brings to the table is a track record that buys him faith and time. That is what this team needs and thats what Pagan will get(well at least from me anyway)

That's an interesting way to look at it. And on a pure dollars and cents perspective one could argue a pretty strong case to say you're probably right. But let's not forget the manner in which Denis was signed. Sure the Collins lead board will be responsible for Denis' second contract, but relieving Denis of his duties during his first contract,after Elliott had signed him, was not really an option either. Indeed when Elliott signed Pagan do you think he was considering the points you raised in your post?

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I could have coached this side to its current position on the ladder.
Man who speaks with forked tongue no good for football team

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