meher baba wrote:Goodness me, this old nonsense is still going on! We had a great list under GT in 2004-06 and it generally delivered. We almost got to the GF in 2004 when I don't think we were really ready (remembering that we were absolutely thrashed by the Lions in our first final). In 2005, we also got desperately close to the GF, even though Riewoldt was out for much of the season and we lost several key players at the end of the year. In 2006 we lost Lenny and Maguire with major leg injuries (neither of which would have been preventable by any sort of off-field injury management) and Kosi was criminally assaulted onfield, and then other injury problems emerged later in the season. We still made the finals and, if we hadn't had 2 points wrongly taken from us by the AFL, would have made the top 4.
I've read endless comments on this forum about GT having wasted his glorious chances. But, whether you consider him to have been a good, bad or indifferent coach, any fair assessment would be that the club was pretty unlucky over this period: without the loss of Hayes and Kosi and the 2 points in 2006, that could have been our winning year. Of course, there are some who want to blame GT personally for all our injuries over that period: I guess they are just looking for any excuse. An extreme case is that of Luke Ball, whose injury problems were apparently all GT's fault because he played him in too many games early on in his career (this sort of comment coming from some of the same posters who continually demand that the club "play the kids"!)
As for Lyon, he too had a pretty good list: good enough in 2009 for pretty good players in Armo and Gwilt to struggle to get a game at AFL level. Players such as Goddard, Montagna (who was never a regular first team player under GT), Sam Fisher and others really came into their own under Lyon. He was able to acquire Schneider and Dempster, who both added a lot. Sure, he used some mediocre players to perform the sorts of roles that mediocre players can perform. That was the same under GT and at every other club under every other coach: since the advent of the salary cap, it is rare for any team to be able to send 22 top grade players onto the field: perhaps the Lions in the early 2000s and the Swans more recently, but, of course, they have a different salary cap to us.
It's no secret that I was a much bigger fan of GT than Lyon. I liked the approach that Butterss- GT -Waldron adopted of trying to build our club into a long-term powerhouse. It was working well when GT was removed, and then Lyon and Nettlefold took us in a different direction. I felt extremely frustrated watching clubs like Geelong and Hawthorn persist with similar longer-term approaches and reap the rewards, while we put everything into winning just one premiership, and ultimately missed out. But, having said that, I admired Lyon's coaching abilities and their results in 2009 and 2010. But, of course, we then reaped what we had sown and are only just starting to recover now.
Can't we all (except for Teflon of course) accept that GT and Lyon both had their strengths and weaknesses and then move on?
Good read and unbiased.
I dont necessarily agree with the luck conspiring against GT but your points are valid.
I do think soft tissue are not luck injuries and are poor management, but impact injuries like Maguire just happen.
Ball was an interesting one, I heard him state at a sportsmans lunch that playing through OP in his early years robbed him of pace and flexibility, so there is some truth in that.
I absolutely believe GT had an absolutely far superior list than RL and that had we got an experienced coach after Blight but follwed th rebuild through the draft path things would have been different.
As a firm supporter of RL over GT, I ponder this.
Freo offered a fortune for RL, where did GT coach and who wanted him after he got sacked?
( God help me)
