HT Gold Coast 23-97 Carlton :lol:

Carlton aren't even trying any more

it took freo a good 6-10 years to get good! ill give gcs 1-7 years!

It took them 9 seasons to even break the 8 and they've only done it three times in sixteen seasons. I'd hardly say "good" is the right word. And Bisbane Bears, well let's not even get started there...

Conversely it only took Port Adelaide 5 years to be competitive and six years for the Eagles to win a title.

aww the bad new bears i forgot about them ! oh yeah sydney as well . gold coast will go good eventually

They were both building on football mad communities, and extremely competitive local leagues, or in Ports case, an already hugely successful club.

That may be true, but I don't think there's a correlation between the off-field community and on-field results in this case.

How do you explain the difference in performance between the Eagles and Freo? Both are football mad communities with passionate support.

Agents of change fume when out of driver's seat

Patrick Smith From: The Australian April 06, 2011

BEING a supporter of a sporting club is fun and a privilege. Entry into a broad group of people defined not by money, status, occupation or postcode is immediate and complete. The joining fee is passion, the annual fee loyalty.

It is empowering. You might find the prime minister of the day is the No 1 ticket holder at your club. In the football environment no one is more wrong, more right or more irrational than any other fan. PMs included. His or her choice for the wing is as good or as bad as yours.

Thus supporters have an uncommon freedom. They do not need to be informed, aware, researched or sane. Their voices will be heard nonetheless, even more so now with all the variations of the new media. On pay-TV new shows appear overnight. Quality control obviously not an issue.

For all that, there must be some parameters; guidelines that govern the direction games grow. American football itself is concussed as it now more accurately and tragically measures the years of head trauma sustained by its players. The results are frightening, sobering and no one should have their quality of life knocked into oblivion for the sake of other people's entertainment. That is coliseum stuff.

All sports have now begun refining their rules to give players greater protection and prospects of a richer quality of life. Just as something as once obscure as osteitis pubis struck down players more than a decade ago, training strategies have been overhauled to reduce the repetitive training that was the injury's womb.

Manly coach Des Hasler has come up with a simple if impractical way to reduce the regularity and force of high-speed collisions in rugby league. "Don't extend the squad, extend the size of the field," Hasler said last week. "If you've got a bigger field, they've (the players) got to do more chasing so there's more running. There is more space to run into so the hits are less."

The clarity of the logic is unchallenged but the cost and inconvenience of reconfiguring stadia and arenas to suit Hasler's suggestion means the sport will look at alternatives, just as effective but less invasive or disruptive.

Alternative thinking like this underlines that rules of all sports must change - and change regularly - to accommodate the increasing sophistication of players' physical preparation and the inventiveness of a club's train of coaches. No sport is quarantined: soccer, basketball, league, union and AFL for example have all changed radically. In golf, the advancement in physical fitness and equipment has seen a once untouchable, always revered, course such as Augusta stretched, pinched and remodelled.

The agents of change are the coaches and their medical teams. The players are prepared differently so that the coaches can use them - not just differently - but unusually too. Hence the patterns and rhythms of sport have transformed sometimes not just annually but weekly, too.

Paul Roos' man-on-man pressure gave way to Alastair Clarkson's cluster which in turn was surpassed by Geelong's relentless release of the ball which was overtaken by Mick Malthouse's version of excruciating forward pressure. All of them variations on a theme but given new life by increased use of the interchange rotations. Hence as players are rotated more, they remain fresher from the bursts of rest, and compete just as quickly and with as much impact as they did at the start of the game. The likelihood of fierce high-speed collisions does not subside over the spread of the game. Cue Hasler's solution and the NRL's concern over protecting players from repetitive concussions and a look at the number of interchanges allowed.

Sport is in the hands of the coaches. It is like a powerful car with the driver's foot flat to the board. The coach is concerned only with how fast the sleek machine can go and not at all in its direction. The steering is left to the sports administrations, which ultimately must set the course. So the two forces collide violently. The coaches seeking victory by any method at any cost; and the administrators charged with navigating the best and fairest way to the destination. And the chequered flag is a sport that grows both in execution but interest and popularity, too.

AFL football is appropriately clashing heads over a new rule that allows for three interchange and one substitute. The change has prompted bouts of madness, with Essendon's second-year skipper Jobe Watson seeking support for a sit-down strike on the oval before the first game of the season. It was brought in by officials to help minimise congestion, to lessen high-speed injury and for fairness.

It is understandable coaches feel aggrieved that somebody would change what they have so meticulously manipulated. On this issue, the fans are against change of any sort and are unrelentingly unthinking. But logical analysis is not a prerequisite for a supporter. In fact, it is to be avoided at all costs.

So protective are coaches of their gains that two with four premierships between them have been quite mischievous in this debate. Roos, not coaching now but the man who took the Swans to the premiership in 2005, denies that it is the coaches who change the manner in which football is played. OK then, what rule has been introduced that says players must kick backwards, or that interchanges reach 170 or that has seen the proliferation of 170 uncontested marks? None, it is the coaches' doing.

In The Weekend Australian Malthouse, two flags with West Coast and one with Collingwood, wrote that the first time he had heard the new interchange rule addressed fairness was on a football show early in the week.

Really? When the new rule was announced in October last year the AFL announced: "The Laws committee was also concerned about the increasing effect of the interchange on match fairness. The interchange was originally designed to help teams when they had an injury, but was increasingly a disadvantage to a team with an injury, because it was unable to rotate their players as much as the opposition."

But wait, there is more. Back, way back, in 2008 when Collingwood's opponent Adelaide lost two players early in the match and thus restricted Neil Craig's rotations, Malthouse called for a change to the interchange rule on the grounds of fairness.

When Malthouse hands over Collingwood to Nathan Buckley at the end of this year and retires (possibly) to the rigorous role of director of coaching, he will have plenty of time to catch up on his reading. Something he desperately needs to do.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/sport/agents-of-change-fume-when-out-of-drivers-seat/story-e6frg7mf-1226034296367

Members don't want AFL clubs

Simon White
April 6, 2011 - 1:02PM

WAFL clubs are adamant their members do not want Eagles or Dockers reserves teams in next year's competition but believe they must still consider the proposals being put forward by the AFL teams.

The nine club presidents met last night and re-affirmed their unanimous in-principle opposition to the bid for West Coast and Fremantle to field reserves sides in the WAFL from 2012 onwards.

But South Fremantle president Haydn Raitt, chairman of the council of WAFL presidents, said the clubs also had a responsibility to consider a submission from the AFL clubs that is expected to be put forward by the end of the month.

"One thing we all talked about last night is that our members are dead against the idea,'' Raitt said.

"The members have made it loud and clear that they just don't want it to happen.

"We'll sit back now and wait for the submission.''

South Fremantle was one of two WAFL clubs visited yesterday by representatives from the AFL outfits, as part of a tour that should be finished by the end of the week.

Raitt said the presentation from West Coast and Fremantle had failed to persuade him that there were "too many" benefits in the reserves concept and that protection of the WAFL competition's integrity remained his greatest concern.

http://www.watoday.com.au/sport/wa-football/members-dont-want-afl-clubs-20110406-1d3yo.html

Sydney don't count. They were an established team relocating. They didn't have to start from scratch.

That may be true, but I don't think there's a correlation between the off-field community and on-field results in this case.

How do you explain the difference in performance between the Eagles and Freo? Both are football mad communities with passionate support.

Two young champions who could be sacrificed in football's turf war

Patrick Smith From: The Australian

IT must be conceded that rugby league and the AFL are at each other's throats. Ears, eyes and assorted vital organs. It is a fight for the minds of football fans in NSW and Queensland. For several years it has been merely poking faces with the odd finger gesture. Not any more.

Season 2011 has become a critical year in shaping the future of sport in this country. TV rights on offer, crowd figures combustible. The slightest movement one way or the other dissected like a frog in a science lab.

There is individual pressure. Umpteen coaches fall out of contract at the end of the year. For them, 2011 is an unforgiving season. Dean Bailey has painstakingly put together a Melbourne list that is young and spruiked. But quality coach that he is, he cannot work miracles and in his first three years he has won just 15 of 66 matches.

This year he has begun with a draw against Sydney and a drubbing against Hawthorn. In the third quarter on Sunday the Hawks had 19 scoring shots, Melbourne two. That's most unpleasant but add to it the Hawks' 123 possessions to Melbourne's 68 and it is a damning quarter that would snuff out the positivity of even the chronically optimistic.

In the next two matches Melbourne face the Gold Coast Suns and the Brisbane Lions. If Bailey loses one of them then hands will be in his back. Lose two and the hands will be gripping a knife.

Setbacks as devastating as this can be turned around. The Bulldogs played like poodles against Essendon in round one and lost by 55 points to a team coached by James Hird-Thompson-Watson, a most well-connected man.

It was subsequently reported that coach Rodney Eade had called an "honesty session" which seemed remarkably premature for a season just one round old. It turns out not to be quite as dramatic as that, honest. It was the planned weekly assessment of the match by the players. The term "honesty session" was perhaps slightly high faluting.

The point is that football is a fluid and fickle sport.

No particular game should ever be emphatically deemed as a portent to the future. It is why the debut of the Suns should not automatically be seen as facing another 21 games as gory as Saturday's humiliation to Carlton.

Nonetheless, as an opening statement to the good folk of the Gold Coast, it was a birth well in advance of a christening. Karmichael Hunt, a superstar from both league and union, played in defence for the Suns. We mention this mainly to let Hunt know because it didn't appear that he was aware he was thus positioned. Former AFL coach and now one of the game's best analysts, Terry Wallace, said he figured Hunt cost the Suns between eight to 10 goals.

On the same weekend, Israel Folau played for the little people of west Sydney, quaintly known as the Giants. He played both back and forward - and badly - for them in a game against the Sydney reserves. Folau said he was befuddled by the speed of the game. Pray for him when he leaves the mini-moke of Sydney grade football for the Formula One of the AFL proper. He might never leave pit lane.

The best Kevin Sheedy could say about Folau's game was that he punched the ball well. Which is like praising the bowling skills of Shaun Tait because he wore his whites neatly. Folau did not get possession of the ball once and there was evidence enough to suggest he has never held one in his hands at all.

The NRL and the AFL and rugby union - if it can muster the fire power or interest - will continue this brawl and the victor will be deemed the one that eventually has the headlines, the viewers and thus the biggest hold of sponsorship and advertising.

There will be scars. It is inevitable. What should sadden the hearts of all sports lovers is the real danger that the genius of Hunt and Folau in their previous sporting lives will be diminished if not forgotten if they cannot cut it in the AFL.

Of course, they can lick their wounds and count their riches at the same time. On that they cannot feel short changed. But unless Hunt and Folau learn by rote what others know by instinct their overall sporting careers will be deemed half-drawn masterpieces.

Conventional reasoning has it that both players could learn the new patterns of AFL playing in the backline. In their previous careers the ball and their opponents were always in front of them. But the indigenous game is no longer so simply structured that play unfolds in front of defenders. Multi-skilling has not escaped football. Such are the modern skills that unless you can anticipate the rhythm of the game two and three beats ahead it is impossible to intercept the movement of the ball.

Without that intuition your direct opponent will always get to the ball first.

It is not much easier up forward. Unless you can sense not just when but where the ball will arrive the defender will beat you to it. This is the issue for Folau and Hunt. Yes, they can get fit. Yes, they can learn to kick, mark and handball. They can learn football but that does not mean they can play it.

Both men will be granted a learning period by supporters but it will be short and not in any way necessarily sweet. Million-dollar men who do not perform are a supporter's prize catch. Catch and release does not apply. In the sense that we love men and women who delight us with their mastery of their sports, it would be a deep shame if champions like Folau and Hunt were heckled into intensive care with ruptured reputations.

The prognosis is not promising.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/sport/two-young-champions-who-could-be-sacrificed-in-footballs-turf-war/story-e6frg7mf-1226033602037

What I wouldn't give to shave those fucking shitty looking dreadlocks off Scott Pendlebury's head.

I dont know whats going to be worse this season. Brisbane's failures or Collingwood winning the flag again...

I dont know whats going to be worse this season. Brisbane's failures or Collingwood winning the flag again...

They look terrible. O'Brien's on the other hand. They are hectic

I dont know whats going to be worse this season. Brisbane's failures or Collingwood winning the flag again...

Definitely the latter. Collingwood fans are almost as insufferable as United fans.

You forgot the Essendon train!. Were coming for you

Dude, they couldn't even beat Sydney :lol:

What are you trying to say?