No cattle, what can a coach do?

[6621104]

The Pelchen blueprint??? --we're supposedly stocking up with left footers so it must be in play

[Legendary]

Hawks won 4 games by less than 6 points.

Lose those four and they finish 13th.

Lose two and they finish 8th.

It's a very fine line in this competition.

Buckley couldn't buy a supporter last year and now he's a GF coach.

Not arguing against Clarkson's genius (would take him in a heartbeat) but I think the top 4 finish this year was a flattering reflection of his team.

Things are never as good as they seem and never as bad as they seem.

[samuraisaint]

Hawks won 4 games by less than 6 points.

Lose those four and they finish 13th.

Lose two and they finish 8th.

It's a very fine line in this competition.

Buckley couldn't buy a supporter last year and now he's a GF coach.

Not arguing against Clarkson's genius (would take him in a heartbeat) but I think the top 4 finish this year was a flattering reflection of his team.

Things are never as good as they seem and never as bad as they seem.

And the Hawks won seven games by under 2 goals this year.
And a similar result got them into the top 4 in 2016. Very lucky team and club. Very lucky. I also think they work very hard to make that luck.

What there can be no doubt about however, is Hawthorn's ability to develop players, and evidence of this is that their reserves Box Hill won the grand final. Teams who's VFL team do this usually translate the VFL premiership into an AFL premiership.

[samuraisaint]

Richo's wins came largely off the back off players who were recruited and developed at St Kilda before he arrived. Riewoldt, Montagna, Fisher, Dempster, Steven, Schneider, Geary, Armitage, were all several seasons into their careers when Richo began at the beginning of 2014. Since then I cannot think of a single player who has improved in real terms from when we recruited them. Not a one. Not all his fault, certainly his team around him have not worked out either, but I believe that a lot of the wins which got him the extension, in 2016 and to a lesser extent,2017, were won off the backs and experience of those players I listed above.
The players we have drafted do have talent. They just do, but they need mentoring and development and to play in a system which supports their continued growth and improvement. Anybody who watched us this year can see that the players are trying, but are hopelessly under-resourced in coaching. The Bulldogs and Essendon games are excellent examples of what I am trying to explain here. We throw a game away, and then we are asked to 'park the last five minutes of the second quarter'. Well, no; I won't park the last five minutes of the second quarter because that is exactly where we threw the game away, in exactly the same way as we have thrown matches away with poor decision making and shocking skill execution since 2014.
I don't see how, as AR is having his extension honoured, his assistants will be at the club in 2019. If they are then we as members are entitled to answers as to why.
It isn't simply the players, sorry.

[Yorkeys]

Would love to have an information session on how the analysis of footy stats can assess the qualitative aspects of a performance and provide anything more than interesting historical meta data - can it allow real time applicable info that coaches can't observe watching play? (Can we design a winning algorithm) As a team game, analysing the 22 human playing component parts is probably intellectually challenging but its team synergy that brings results. Also luck clearly plays a part in footy results, but if a team wins or loses most of its close games it may be because of a good system/coaching under pressure. I imagine we are all exhausted by the debate of whether AR is a "good" coach or not. I doubt it but if he is of reasonable intelligence he must learn from all the mistakes he has made and naturally improve. Recently he seems to be more insightful and self confident - like a man who knows he has nothing to lose now; its September finals or the bush so to hell with being cautious. All power to him for 2019. The 2019 win/loss stats won't need much computer analysis or disaggregation of player poor performance by age, experience and draft year, an abacus or a bead bracelet will do.

[spert]

Would love to have an information session on how the analysis of footy stats can assess the qualitative aspects of a performance and provide anything more than interesting historical meta data - can it allow real time applicable info that coaches can't observe watching play? (Can we design a winning algorithm) As a team game, analysing the 22 human playing component parts is probably intellectually challenging but its team synergy that brings results. Also luck clearly plays a part in footy results, but if a team wins or loses most of its close games it may be because of a good system/coaching under pressure. I imagine we are all exhausted by the debate of whether AR is a "good" coach or not. I doubt it but if he is of reasonable intelligence he must learn from all the mistakes he has made and naturally improve. Recently he seems to be more insightful and self confident - like a man who knows he has nothing to lose now; its September finals or the bush so to hell with being cautious. All power to him for 2019. The 2019 win/loss stats won't need much computer analysis or disaggregation of player poor performance by age, experience and draft year, an abacus or a bead bracelet will do.

Nothing like a bit of deconstruction with my cuppa!