A question for saints fans

[st_Trav_ofWA]

hey guys / girls
ive just been reading some of the recent posts on ross lyon game plans and basically the state of this team now i dont wanna start another thread debating how much we dont like this style of footy we are playing the question i ask is how many of the people out there actually enjoy being a saints fan ?? i quite often lurk in other teams forums to read up on what they have to say on differant issues ect ect and in all honesty with the exception of a few on here we are all a bunch of miserable sad sacks who spend too much time looking at what has happened in the past then looking at the present , we currently have a chance of making the 8 we have had a bad year but we still can make the 8 but if you read the forum you would think we were dead last with only 2 wins , i see the optimism on the dockers forum rightfully or wrongfully they are possitive that they are still a chance i then float to the carlton board (now if ever there was a team that would be all doom and gloom it would be carlton) but they have more possitive things to talk about then asking why we are sh*t and what would we be doing if so and so was coach .

as st kilda fans have we been spoilt by our somewhat success of 2004-2005 ?? i agree we have not been playing well and we should be higher on the ladder but does that mean we have to start eating our own ?
do we really think that the games we have been playing have been to the coaches liking ?do you really think RL wants us to run for 3 qtrs and then stop ?
do you really thing the coaching staff think kicking 8 goals is enuff to win consistant games ?

we are still a chance here its not time to bring out our dead yet .....

[Solar]

must say it's a hard thing because on one hand I have enjoyed some aspects of oyur development, the early work in the year of attard, the development of gilbert, dal starting to run to more contests

But I think that there is almost a concensus that we are not harnessing the upsides and potential of this squad. Ross has come with a certain game plan and tried to find the players that fit with it, not the other way around.

Ross said what we have all been saying, no point limping into the finals, we need to win well the next three games.

Finally I think we might look back at a couple of players that will get cut and wonder "what if". We have been crying out for a marking half forward and fergusson has not had a chance, yet collingwood are willing to throw the challenge out to about 8 new players this year. They were coming off a finals series as well but knew they had to blood some youngsters. We should have done the same with the likes of brooks, fergi, howard, armo and co.

Right now we have a team struggling with a game plan that does not suit them.

[Brewer]

I enjoy being a Saints fan when we are winning games. I don't mind losing games in the lean times as long as we have a red hot go, and as long as the reason times are lean is because we are building something for the future.

I think that our current situation is very sad. We had some finals success in recent years and we bloody deserved it, we had a great list and a great spirit and we were playing some good footy. But the powers that be decided that we needed a change of coach, presumably to get us that extra couple of percent that we needed to go all the way.

The fact is that we were a good thing, on a good track. We needed some improvement in some areas of our game, and we needed to fix our injury curse, but our essential team was a definite contender.

I had great hopes for the new coach at the start of the year, but I am now very disappointed and very concerned. Instead of tweaking a winning combination, we seem to be reinventing ourselves from the ground up. That's fair enough for a team like Carlton but we had a fantastic outfit with some of the finest players in the league - we just needed to fix some weaknesses and play to our strengths.

I am extremely concerned that RL is not up to the job, and he has a vision for us that involves a completely new St Kilda footy team, and even worse, that it is a highly unattractive one, and worse still, that there's a good chance it actually won't achieve anything.

It feels to me like he is currently polishing a diamond into a turd, and I hate it.

Am I enjoying being a fan at the moment? No.

[SENsei]

I enjoy being a Saints fan, always have always will.


I put down the current mood of the forum to one thing....TIME.

Many feel that the window of opportunity may be closing and that time is marching on. Could this opportunity be lost?

That's my take.

[saintlee]

I think your right st trav, there is a lot of nay-sayers and moaners on this forum....but I think that comes from they're passion so I can understand it too...

For me I love being a saints fan, and I have no concerns over Rossy Lyon, i think he will be a great coach for us, and will take us to a flag in the next few years...I like his game plan when it comes off

I still believe that far too many people expected far too much from a rookie coach in his first year, he has already developed a lot since round 1, and I look forward to watching him improve all aspects of his coaching style and our club

[st_Trav_ofWA]

I think that our current situation is very sad. We had some finals success in recent years and we bloody deserved it, we had a great list and a great spirit and we were playing some good footy. But the powers that be decided that we needed a change of coach, presumably to get us that extra couple of percent that we needed to go all the way.

but doesnt part of that spirit come from the fans ? it feels like our fans are in a mourning process to be honest , we still have a good list and we are still capable of playing good footy i just feel we are not doing it at the moment personel maybe the problem or maybe the message is not getting across is the problem ultimatly the buck does stop with the coach but at the same time he has only just met most of these guys and hes still only learning who he can depend on and who he cant . i think to a Geelong last year they were playing a similar chip kick tempo floodback possesion driven game and they got beaten cause they couldnt hit targets playing the tempo footy this year they can they kick long hit targets and break the lines maybe just maybe this is all part of a process to play better footy learn from your weaknesses and play to your strenghs

[Mr X from the West]

The real answer to this is that we, as Saints fans, are not afforded the same luxuries that fans of most other clubs are.

They have won and rejoiced in Premierships in their life time - we haven't.

[Dan Warna]

As I've said before I saw the rise and fall in the doc baldock coaching year. I was one of those soaked bedraggled fellows at saints games inthe mid 90s at waverley, I sat through the timmid years, a long time a saint, not as long as others.

I just see the players we have now : Reiwoldt, Kosi, Dal Santo, Montagna, goddard (injured), l. fisher, s. fisher, gram, maguire, ball, hayes, milne, x clarke, r. clarke, eetc etc and see the shyte we get served up and its depressing.

in previous years we have had one or two guns and they carried the team.

we would nobble an off colour fitzroy or valiantly go down to hawthorn.

this team we have can and has beaten 'top sides' and yet we see this shyte.

I see guys getting Best ofs week in and week out the seconds (brooks, watts, mcqualter) and I see clint jones and michael rix running around.

I hear a lot of rubbish about getting judd, or ball, or pace, and more shyte.

really, geelong have 2 or 3 pacy players, the rest just run hard, same with sydney, they have keneally and maybe bolton who can't kick, wce have judd as their 'paceman'.

and for years we recruited young kids with potential, some worked out some didn't, I think the oldest player we got was what 22/23? under GT, behing knobel and hackland, the others were usually 19/20/21 (gram, guerra, brooks, penny, mcgough).

we were told no more GOP trading.

now we have Birss who is a gop, clinton a mature rookie who can't kick yet, clarke who can't move and gardiner who can't play.

am I frustrated? yes? I think i've been frustrated from when I saw the rubbish we served up against essendon and hawthorn.

we let them dictate the terms.

people talk about why are we not kicking goals...well with our forwards on the wing and HBF its pretty hard to get goals.

FG, reiwoldt etc can mark and kick, what happened to kicking and running to pick up the spoil if we dont get the mark?

they kick and run to mark their man in case their is a rebound.

we assume failure in some of strategies and tactics.

we let their man get the ball, then we tackle them, where as once we went for the ball.

we are so accountable, the man in front wont leave his man to get an effective mark or spoil, but leave it the target of the ball. How many times have you seen a saints man watch the ball go past him, because he is so intent on not letting his opponent get the ball, that another opposition player gets an easy possession.

once we would take a risk, and attack the ball, and win it.

its so damn frustrating seeing 3 ssaints and 2 opposition players, and the are not working as a team, but as blocking the opposition.

if we were a crap side with no talent I wouldn't mind, but we are not and thats what is frustrating.

<waiting for teflon to blame this on GT>

[Brewer]

You might be right, St. Trav, and I'm very open to the possibility that I am a half-empty-glass type person.

I'm not sure I agree with the idea that 'well, it's OK if the coach screws everything up, it's only his first year'. The way the Saints plough through coaches, we spend a lot of our time in the first year of a coach's term.

I would have liked to have seen the playing group dictate the playing style to a larger extent. A new coach should take what is good, build upon it, and take what is weak, and strengthen it. A complete ground-up rebuild should be reserved for the worst teams in the worst form. I think it's a terrible shame to try and totally reinvent a team that has so much potential, and it feels like that is what has happened.

Perhaps, as others have suggested, next year will see us stronger - if we have our 'proper' game style plus some good experience at the 'Swans' style of play, and if Lyon is better skilled at picking a plan and adapting to the day, then that flexibility could serve us well - but my concern is that our losses (and draws, and pathetic wins) this year have not been due to constructive experimentation but due to extremely bad coaching.

[st_Trav_ofWA]

<waiting for teflon to blame this on GT>

i hope not this has nothing to do with GT
i agree with most of what you have said as the bad aspects of the game plan but as a coach could you agree he would know this more intamatly then we would and he would have plans to change aspects of the game plan that are crap ? as i have felt from day one ( i was hopeful we would click straight away) it was going to be hit or miss this year with us trying things and failing and trying things that work RL job is to find what works and impement it and scrap what doesnt work if more of the same continues next year then yes ill agree with the nay sayers and say RL isnt the coach we were after but i can see improvements from round one to now , the problem is we are looking at things from last year and even as far as 2004 to now and we are miles apart from there . if you discount where we were pre RL we started off the year in dire situations and now to the point where we are a chance for the 8 so there has been improvment but there are still lots of gaps we need to fix as your mentioned will we fix them b4 the end of this year ? who knows i hope so (but not really confident) will we have them fixed by next year ? we would hope too but time will tell

[Dan Warna]

of course it has nothing to do with GT St Trav, but he gets blamed for it raining at the moment, he was recently blamed by one poster I think for drafting birss

Injuries are an issue, but I would say if you watch some games we just dont click or play as a team. we have bludgeoned some teams on raw talent.

we basically have as close to the best team available for a number of years and we still aren't playing well.

[Persuader]

I agree with the observation of the 'sad sack' aspects of our forum. Very little of the light hearted humour you often find on other sites.
But I think it's been a tough year - we're frustrated. I also hate the more negative style of football we've been playing this year. Perhaps it's been forced on us for reasons I don't understand...injury, form, fitness etc...
but it's made it hard to be positive....however, love being a Saint.
Builds character.

[saintsRrising]

we are still a chance here its not time to bring out our dead yet .....

Yep we are not dead yet. We still have an ok crack at this years flag....and will be better set up over the next two years.

The dees I hope will beat the Pies..and if so they may not win another game this season.

Injury wise Max and others are looking better...so yoes now is te time to build some momentum.




I am bullish about our future...and hopeful about our present.

However a lot of the angst is the Me Now Mentatlity that pervades Australia at present....people want and expect things when they cannot really afford it, when they have not earnt them...and spend more than they have. Jjust check out the average Credit Card Balances.....and the multitudes of Australians paying %interest rate in the teens just so that they can have things now......all the while not realising that this actually means that they get less in the long term.


The previous coach spent poorly....and we now have someone new in change. One no fivated ona few stars winning games off their won boot...and one that wants the team to earn their wins.



But the Me Now Generation want all the damage fixed instantly.


St Mart wrote a post the other day about the long list of underveloped talent we have not realised....



We have a black whole in our list....and will need some hard Yakka in player development and good recruiting in the present and future to get the team back on track. This I believe is occurring.

Injury management still hasa way to go....but has improved.

People are writing off the Gtrain for example....but forget that he has been playing witha hand and foot injry.

Now they have written off Harvey......too early I reckon.



Footy goes in cycles....and some believed the GT spin that he was building a team fora decade of success.....which is in part the reason for discontent now....as footy goes in cycles...always has and always will. Despite the spin GT abodanded youth for a fleet of GOPS.....and not freebies like M Clake.


People also ignore that teams have improved...and we get posts stating that the Geelong Team is the same team (which if you actually compare their teams it is not...) and so we should beat them TOTALY ingnoring that the Geelong of 2007 is a vastly improved unit.


BOTTOM line is that we did not develop enough GOOD talent to replace those retiring or fading....
Penny, Jones, Powell, Pecket, Black......did not have enough good replacements.

Players always retire....and some are orced out of the game....that is why you needa continual production line of new talent and equally importnatly you must develop the talent you have.

we hada swag of oor selections...and while you do not expect perfection....the areas of development and recruiting are now on the improve.




So I am bullish about the future as I see better;
*injury management
*player development
*recruiting


And yes Ross will improve as he gets to know in the ins and outs of his players......and yes that means that some of the current list will be cast aside at seasons end.

[meher baba]

I support what Dan has posted earlier.

After years in the wilderness, and two false dawns in the early 1990s and around 1997, long-term St Kilda supporters thought that the day had finally arrived when our club would join the Essendons, Pies & etc. as a dominant force at least in Victoria, if not nationally.

This came against all of our expectations. When RB and GT first arrived on the scene, and for about 18 months afterwards, I - and I'm sure many other supporters - believed them to be the simply the biggest joke in the history of a club that has a proud record of farce, pathos and of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Instead they took us near to the top of the tree, only to fall out with, and then turn on each other leaving us in the situation where we invited Robert Walls (FFS!!) to choose our next coach for us through a process which turned out to be highly dubious, if not nepotistic (I'm sure that Longmire and co went away feeling highly peeved, if not outraged, about the way that they were used).

We then all continued to hope for the best: believing Lyon had played an integral part in the success of the Swans - less prominently, but perhaps more crucially than Longmire - and that he would meld the toughness and defensive discipline with the Swans with our attacking strengths and create something better than the sum of the parts.

Instead we've seen..............well you've all seen it. It looks for all the world as if we are going backwards rather than forwards: backwards to where we were throughout most of the 1970s and 1980s. Many of you seem to believe that, like the Victorian era concept of how to treat illness, we must let our decline "run its course" and then we'll see a sudden and massive improvement.

The argument seems to run along the lines of "we were on the threshold of greatness, and all we needed to do was to change our coach, the majority of our list and adopt an entirely new playing style, and then we could go to the next level". FFS!!

So why wouldn't I be feeling sad and pessimistic? It might all change: coaches learn on the job and often look pretty unsure of themselves in their first few years in the role (which is a good argument for letting them cut their teeth coaching a cellar-dwelling team, such as we were in 2001, rather than letting them loose on one of the preseason favourites, but never mind about that now). We might even still make the 8 and go still further because (despite what many on here keep saying) we actually have one of the 4 or 5 best playing lists in the league, and pure talent is capable - on its day - even of overcoming poor coaching.

But let's all stop pretending that it isn't poor coaching, that it's all part of some master plan that will suddenly transform us into something better than we were. What we are seeing - as some of you are increasingly admitting - is a novice coach with three novice assistants being paid a lot of money and given a lot of responsibility while they go about the process of learning on the job.

If that's "eating our own" so be it. But remember that all I am doing is attacking a coach and three assistants who have never had anything to do with the club in the past, who seem to have relatively little commitment to it, and who have been put in place by a board of corporate types who like to think they are hard-headed, a general manager who had probably not even heard of AFL before he reached the age of 35, and a club president who was engaged in a million dollar lawsuit with the former coach.

The pro-RL posters on this forum constantly "eat their own": the players are hopeless, their execution and commitment is terrible, it's time to delist anyone and everyone who ever showed any loyalty to or gave great service to the club, etc., etc. Terrific: why didn't we just make an offer to purchase the entire Swans outfit lock, stock and barrell, relocate it to Morabbin, and offload all the useless baggage - Riewoldt, Dal, Harvey, club tradition, whatever - and wait for the premierships to start rolling in. That's what a ruthless business operator would do, isn't it?

FFS!!

[n1ck]

[ One no fivated ona few stars winning games off their won boot...and one that wants the team to earn their wins.

----

But the Me Now Generation want all the damage fixed instantly.

First of all, how can you say that? GT was hell bent on playing team oriented football. Just because it wasnt a defensive or negating style doesnt mean he fixated on a few players. Have you forgotten the KPIs, and 100% from 100%?

Secondly, we want to be winning games. We were told by the board that the new coach was being brought in to tweak. He was a ready made replacement for someone who had brought more success that anyone BUT ONE coach to our club, and was designed to give us a GENUINE chance of a premiership in 2007. We were told to expect to go foreward from the first bounce.

We want to be winning games NOW, because we'd been winning games before.

Im a proud rose coloured glasses fan, and i love being positive about our chances, year in year out, but if you fair dinkum think we're really in with a GENUINE chance of winning a flag in 1007 you have rocks in your head.

We;re in with a GENUINE chance of scraping into the 8.

Id love to be proven wrong. I would eat humble pie for breakfast lunch and tea, id be the happiest person in the world... but i cant see it happening this year.

[CURLY]

While Im dissapointed were we sit at this stage of the year I am rapt in the way we have fought on. This season could of so easily turned into the year Melbourne has had. Going into a block of games with only 25 max available was never going to leave us in a healthy position but to the clubs credit they are still a chance to play finals.

[st_Trav_ofWA]

first off the bat this dicussion has nothing to do with GT he is the fromer coach and in all honesty has sweet f all to do with this clubs future as far as im concerned

secondly the club is not going through a rebuild imo but it was a bit rich for us to think the tweeking the team needed to get over that last step to win a flag was going to happen overnight . we have weakneses in our list and we have weakness in our game plan but i can see RL working through these weaknesses look at our roungs 2 loss to the brions to our last loss to the swans we have improved already next year RL will work more on the list improvement more and the game plan improvement will continue

as for thinking we would win the flag after last year with GT i felt we were not going to do it this year then he go the arse and it kinda made it more sure it wasnt gunna happen this year (but i was forever hopeful )

[joffaboy]

I'm just bored to death with it all.

It engenders no passion or excitement the way we play.

It is gutting my love for AFL football.

I will go to the remaining games but am really getting disheartened with the game style.

[meher baba]

look at our round 2 loss to the brions to our last loss to the swans we have improved already

Gee, st Trav, that's a strange comment. How about we compare our round 7 win over the swans (or, if you are looking to compare away performances, our round 12 win over the WCE) - when our team was struggling against the weight of injuries to key players - to our round 19 loss to the swans?

Over even our round 3 thrashing of the bulldogs with Griffen and Gilbee to our round 18 draw against the same team without those two players, but with more of our star players available?

I'm not sure that there have been any signs so far this season of our having improved in any department of the game other than our ability to flood back.

[saintsRrising]

[ One no fivated ona few stars winning games off their won boot...and one that wants the team to earn their wins.

----

But the Me Now Generation want all the damage fixed instantly.

First of all, how can you say that? GT was hell bent on playing team oriented football. Just because it wasnt a defensive or negating style doesnt mean he fixated on a few players. Have you forgotten the KPIs, and 100% from 100%?

.

Yes was very good at spin..yes...but not the delivery.

Don't forget that he was a salesman by career...

[saintsRrising]

We were told by the board that the new coach was being brought in to tweak.

Well that may have been the Board's view,,,but not mine. In my view GT badly mismanaged the list he won by luck (Blightlotto, finish low...and the Blues cheating...plus priorty picks in the years we finished low...ALL LUCK and nothing to do with any talent by GT).

Given the potential talent he could and should have had he has let much of our potential wealth be squandered. We SHOULD have the best list in the competition, but do not.


No St Kilda coach had such a head start before.........

RL has also been given a very good head start...but he was given a list in DECLINE...and not on the rise.He has a lot to work with though....but the team and list need work and improvement.

He was a ready made replacement for someone who had brought more success that anyone BUT ONE coach to our club, and was designed to give us a GENUINE chance of a premiership in 2007.

I don't recall GT getting us into a GF. One coach won one...and others did. GT was not one of them.

We were told to expect to go foreward from the first bounce.

See my first comment.

[jonesy]

Always hopeful no matter what,who or where we play.....always expect the worst however. How could you not be following the saints!!!???

The glass is definetly half empty! I could never argue that. They have given me much more heartache than joy in my lifetime. But would I want it any other way???

Nope!! I love the sainters!!

[rodgerfox]

as st kilda fans have we been spoilt by our somewhat success of 2004-2005 ?? i agree we have not been playing well and we should be higher on the ladder but does that mean we have to start eating our own ?

Perhaps the reason supporters are so shhitty is that when the going got 'semi' tough, we did eat our own.

[st_Trav_ofWA]

look at our round 2 loss to the brions to our last loss to the swans we have improved already

Gee, st Trav, that's a strange comment. How about we compare our round 7 win over the swans (or, if you are looking to compare away performances, our round 12 win over the WCE) - when our team was struggling against the weight of injuries to key players - to our round 19 loss to the swans?

Over even our round 3 thrashing of the bulldogs with Griffen and Gilbee to our round 18 draw against the same team without those two players, but with more of our star players available?

I'm not sure that there have been any signs so far this season of our having improved in any department of the game other than our ability to flood back.

thats a fair point you make but im sayin in the early part of the year we looked like we were a bunch of individuals playing there was no team effort and from the outside i looked like the teams morale was low and we were all worried that the players were not warming to RL last week we looked like a team (all be it a poor performing team )and we have for a while now so there is the possitives in that remember RL has to start from scratch with these guys so it was always gunna take time

[meher baba]

We were told by the board that the new coach was being brought in to tweak.

Well that may have been the Board's view,,,but not mine.

And the relevance of your view is...........? Or did you have play some role in the replacement of GT by RL about which we have not been aware?

Given the potential talent he could and should have had he has let much of our potential wealth be squandered. We SHOULD have the best list in the competition, but do not.


No St Kilda coach had such a head start before.........

RL has also been given a very good head start...but he was given a list in DECLINE...and not on the rise.He has a lot to work with though....but the team and list need work and improvement.

Maybe you did: in fact maybe you are Lyon himself. After all, it's a favourite trick of someone taking over a new CEO role suddenly to announce to the world that what appeared to be a well-performing organisation turns out - after a closer inspection of the books - to be on the verge of bankruptcy and "thank god I got here just in time to fix it".

What "potential wealth" did GT squander exactly? Under his stewardship, many exciting young talents developed and matured into top drawer players, while some veterans and fringe players got a new lease on life. He showed faith in players like Joey, X, Grammy and Leigh Fisher who many other coaches would have given the flick. He brought the much-maligned BJ (oh, how quickly they forget on this forum) through a rough patch to become a budding superstar (assuming he comes back from injury ok). He developed an exciting, attacking brand of football which took us from the bottom of the table in 2002 to winning 10 straight games at the beginning of 2004.

And don't go onto me about list management. Yes, it's true, GT and Bevo and whoever else was involved in the decision-making didn't manage to come up with a player as good as Sams Fisher or Gilbert with every single one of our lowly draft picks. Believe it or not, some of the picks and trades they made resulted in getting players who have turned out not to be as good as Riewoldt and Dal. Shame on them: I'm sure you and the other GT-haters would have done so much better. Perhaps as well as the decision to recruit Michael Gardiner at the end of 2006: hasn't that turned out to be a ripper!!

If there has ever been any squandering of talent going on at the club, it's happening right now: highly skilled, creative talents like Dal and Joey being forced to play most of a game in the back half of the field, players like Riewoldt and Harves being used as workhorses and made to run themselves into the ground every week. Gehrig being asked to run up and down the field to no good effect when we all know that he is at his best in the goal square or close to it. Kosi alternating between the ruck and a spot inside our defensive 50. Vossy struggling to get a game ahead of creative geniuses like Attard, Blake and Birss.

I realise I'm getting narkier and narkier in my recent posts, but I'm getting sick to death of all the carping and/or deluded nonsense I have been reading on this forum about (a) the quality of our list, (b) GT's achievements as a coach (c) the attitude and skill levels of our players and (d) the ways in which Lyon is supposedly making us into a better team.