But are we still doing this? Surely no reasonable human (I know we cant be Saint fans and be considered anything by masochistic lunatics
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Battle, Long and DMac playing gives us NOTHING against the best side in the comp at home.David-Lee wrote:The standard at every club is play to win...play to get into finals...play to win the grand final.
But are we still doing this? Surely no reasonable human (I know we cant be Saint fans and be considered anything by masochistic lunatics) can say we will win the grand final. Can we get into the 8? Sure. Anything can happen if we win. But planning for 2018...as we were told in 2015 as the year we go to the top...why aren't we playing Battle, Long and the whole farking sandlot? We can only win. I am not talking about everyone in so we get done by 100 but surely let whoever we need games into have a run. If Battle goes out on form where does that leave others? Is it form or games to win that we are hoping for....or is it getting senior games into boys needing a run? Leave Battle. So we lose by 80 instead of 55. So what!!
Like.Proph3t of egan wrote:3 debutants this year, maybe by the end of the year we can bring in freeman and rice and make it 5
Ricoh said it was unlikely, and probably is, but if by the game against north Melbourne we can't make the 8 and Freeman is tearing it up in the VFL, why shouldn't we? We got him so he would play AFL, not VFLsamuraisaint wrote:Like.Proph3t of egan wrote:3 debutants this year, maybe by the end of the year we can bring in freeman and rice and make it 5
I have never thought we'd make the 8 and play finals this year, but we are on track to do what I thought we would and could do - win as many games as last year and finish ninth or tenth and hold ground with a far more difficult fixture. If we can do this and get some more games into our younger players, which we look likely to do, it will have been a good development year,
Probably unlikely to get Gilbert back this year and Armo has to only be an outside chance to return in 2017 - especially if the next two games are losses - and this creates opportunities for the likes of Rice and Freeman to play some games in the back end of this season.
I thought the club made a statement that Freeman wouldn't play seniors this year though?
skeptic wrote:I still maintain that Mav was bloody great last season and earned what he got... has been way down this season and deserved to be dropped.Johnny Member wrote:Well to be fair, Wellard was put into the leadership group when we were a bottom 4 team with no leaders.WellardSaint wrote:the elephant in the room...Maverick Weller.
Remember him? He's in the leadership group.
Is he still carrying that ankle soreness?
He got 17 disposals for Zebs, and 8 tackles,
whereas Blake Acres got 26 and 8 tackles, but had a hard tag all day.
Go figure
Maybe (and hopefully) we've improved. And when that occurs, some get left behind.
No need to write him off, let him work his way back in.
Quite a good summation, very good points.Johnny Member wrote:And that's not a knock on Mav necessarily.
It is what it is.
As teams improve, not everyone on the list is capable of taking the next step. If a team is to improve, everyone has to get better or be replaced by someone who is already better. If that doesn't occur, then guess what? You don't improve!
I still think we have probably about 10 guys in our team each week that aren't good enough to part of a team that would contend for a premiership. Of that 10, I reckon 4-5 are capable of getting better and improving to the point that they could be part of a legitimate Premiership contending team. So that leaves about 5-6 that we need to replace with better players. Either with young guys already on our list that are improving, with young guys from the Draft that will become good players, or with players from other clubs.
It's highly possible that Weller just isn't up to it. Maybe what he's producing last season and this season is his best? And maybe his best is no longer good enough to make it into our best 22?
That's not good news for Mav if true - but it's fantastic news for the club.
Who ever rated Mav as a superstar?Johnny Member wrote:
Maybe, shock horror, just maybe Saints fans may have overrated him and seen him as a superstar whereas in fact he was a average-decent player in a terrible team?
Had MAV been more accurate this year we would be singing his praises I reckon, if he fixes it next year, there is a place in the team for his intensitysaintsRrising wrote:Who ever rated Mav as a superstar?Johnny Member wrote:
Maybe, shock horror, just maybe Saints fans may have overrated him and seen him as a superstar whereas in fact he was a average-decent player in a terrible team?
Personally I think he has been carrying an ankle injury for most of the season.
So lets see how he goes next season before writing him off.
But certainly IF the Saints keep improving, including our playing personal, then players are going to get squeezed out of the 22, and Mav may well be one of them.
Or they're still young and developing, and will have the capacity to be part of a really good team.WellardSaint wrote:
In case some think you're suggesting that the 10 guys are "list cloggers", you're not-
these guys are part of our best 22 at the moment, are doing a job well- when we win- but they don't possess the skills or ability to improve those skills,
and/or the right attitude or approach to go the next level.
But as the team sits now, they are part of the team and are helping the journey- but they won't necessarily be part of a finals campaign.