HK Tiger said:
I understand the comments and thanks to the one who said its just me! Why did we not pay out the contract of McMahon, he has added nothing this year and our cap would have allowed it.
Western Tiger you miss my point - the guys we let go are fine such as schulz and co - good luck to them. Today we have kept at least 3 players who I would have let go in front of Brown, Coughlan and Bowden. these guys are far better than King, McMahon and co.
Also how long are going to keep good players when we get smashed and for how many years more do we need to endure this.
Mate, I share your pain, and agree we might have been better off keeping Bowden for another year - he was willing and god knows we could do with some experience, even if he's not the fastest beast going around. Especially in light of Richo signing off.
If this bottoming out approach works, I'll be as happy as the next (RFC) bloke, but I question the strategy at this particular time in AFL history. I'll have many an opposition to what I'm saying, but I would rather have seen RFC remain somewhat competitive over this and the next two years, giving what decent young players we have a competitive environment - well more competitive than we are now and likely to be at least.
Then a serious bottoming out could occur thereafter, when the draft picks are going to be worth something serious to us that far down the ladder.
The reason I say this, is the margin for error for getting everything right over the next three years is just too fine for us to avoid a prolonged period of pain, perhaps 5-7 years in the bottom 4 is what we may be looking at.
I'm not pessimistic by nature, often accused of being a brightsider, but the dominos are looking like they are all falling in the wrong direction. Wallace rolled the dice in 2005 and came up stumped IMO. 2006 was not much better. They were the years, as the once Mighty Claw was saying, we needed to be bottoming out - while we still had senior players capable of holding some structural things together. Though I'm just not sure that finances allowed for such an event.
If Hardwick can pull this off, he and his cohorts will be modern day coaching and admin marvels - and all the more praise too/for them if it happens. Statues will be cast and displayed signifying pure genius. If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is!
