Too much moralising here:
i. Coach gets five contact extension making him about the highest paid in the comp. Clarkson, Longmire, in fact nobody has got that even though they have far better records.
No. Coaches are paid at market rates, not by the Agarn Golden Morality Points Schema. At the time we secured Lyon it was considered a coup and a renumeration scheme was set. It's a deal made by the club not a promise to make you happy. That deal could have had a success and failure clause included - I don't know - but this sort of approach is a double edged sword. The best workers are committed workers, not guys trying to maximise their bonuses. Whatever negative feeling you may have towards your coach could not be a reason to reduce his agreed renumeration. Do you really believe our club - or any sane organisation - should be run on emotional whims? As far as I can see that's what your seem to be expecting.
ii. Promises-sustained success and a premiership by 2020. Proven to be unobtainable and embarrassing.
Did someone actually promise you a premiership by 2020, or did you make this one up? Got any documentary proof? Or have you repeated it so many times it sounds like truth? Fact: No one can promise a premiership. It is insane to believe such a thing. If someone said something that someone else misconstrued as a promise of a premiership guess who the idiot is.
Sorry, the world is not like that. The team management can work at lining up the everything up but pulling a premiership out of a magic hat is not one of their capabilities.
iii. We're a no excuses football club. Now we get nothing but excuses.
"No excuses" is about team attitude. Something like: we expect the best possible performance out of everyone. This is obviously not a guarantee of success. If Hayden Ballantyne goes into a marking contest wth with someone 20 cm and 25 kg bigger than him, "No Excuses" does not he will magically win the mark against the odds every time, it mean he won't give up and will 100% compete to the best of his abilities and might even get it sometimes. It's about attitude, not a guarantee of success. You seem to have missed that.
iv. Moving away from Fremantle against the wishes of the vast majority of members and supporters.
You can whinge about this forever but it won't help. Nor will it change anything. Moving out of Fremantle was sad, but in the opinion of management and apparently the players it was for the best. If you want to be a authentic maybe they could have stayed in the South Freo tin shed forever. Cool? Maybe. A recipe for success? Sorry, no.
v. Changing our jumper. See above.
See above. Every club changes jumpers. Take a freakin look. Find some old photos. I loved look of the old jumper. I also thought it had terrible visibility characteristics. (There's some work been done on this which concurs.) However, that's irrelevant. The real question is how bitter do you really want to be about it and for how long? Move on buddy. Have you considered: Is bitching about the jumper change ultimately beneficial to the club. From where I sit it's plainly no use. It might be providing some kind of emotional satisfaction but it's hindering not helping. Sometimes you just have give up useless activities and move on.
vi. Fitness and medical team. We constantly have long term injury concerns. Supposedly due to training at Freo Oval but obviously not true. What is ever done to rectify this? Another review?
Here you go again. Guess what: A review is not going to eliminate injuries. Every club has injuries. Every club has good and bad years. Every club does reviews. And they should. It's not a panacea. Hopefully a review picks up some areas for improvement but that's all. AFL is and impact sport played at the limits of what a human body can withstand. Things are going to break. There's a major element of randomness. If there was a formula everyone would be doing it. (And getting players to throw themselves at contests even harder, so more things break. Hey, maybe they already did this.)
vii. Poor recruiting record. Forgetting who the expansion clubs have got, would you like a list of all the picks, some very high, who we have delisted in recent years. Or others we've let go for nothing to other clubs.
Please do a statistical comparison. Every club has successes and every club makes mistakes. Plenty of champions eg Fyfe get passed over by every club. There's certainly some skill involved here, but as been noted by many people prediction is hard, especially about the future. Collecting a set of anecdotes with hindsight and using that to prove something in your own head is BS. We've done ok. We haven't done brilliantly every time and got somethings wrong, but this is true for every club. Selecting players who are going to be top notch in 5 years is not easy. It is absolutely critically important and our club (and every club) should be maximising our efforts in this area.
viii. Game plan. It appears unsustainable. Well whatever it is, it certainly isn't working. Even when we win we only play in patches and if you watch much football you'd have to have blinkers on not to see how boring it is watching a Fremantle game. That win against Port was quite possibly the worst game of football ever seen.
If you don't have the most talented team you may have to try win dirty. Are you prepared to avoid "Boring" if it means avoiding finals? All coaches play boring football when it is the best alternative. If you want to se a bunch of players going out and just having a go I would strongly recommend you give up AFL altogether and go watch a suburban youth league. The skill may not be there but the defensive football aspect is missing too. Bonus: Better fights.
ix. Lyon. I dislike his smugness, the way he speaks to the media and an air of arrogance that he exudes. Plus what he said to a young employee that forced her to leave her job. Anyone that condones that should be ashamed.
And if you were in the media spotlight 24x7 what would everyone thing of you? As far as I'm concerned coaches can do whatever they like in the media circus part of the game. The AFL makes coaches do pressers. It's not deeply relevant to team performances. Maybe you should stop watching and switch across to some thing you enjoy.
x. Ass coaches. They either appear to contribute little or are according to some sources, not allowed to contribute.
Which clubs assistant coaches would you like to swap with, and do they want to come here? Would the best coaches be more likely to come if we were based in a tin shed or the so-called "state-of-the-art" training facility? Obviously we want the best available coaches but what's your plan for achieving this? I honestly doubt that bitching is going to work. Or complaining about how much they are paid. You may not have noticed but the centre of AFL is in Melbourne and getting the best people here is always going to be difficult. (Provincial entitled attitudes don't help either.)
xi. Finances. Because our coach is on such big money and a long contract the board can't afford to get rid of him even with only 20 wins in three seasons. They have had to resort to regularly offering cheap tickets to get supporters to games which is a rip off to people who stump up their annual membership.
You're completely free to ditch your membership and buy these cheap tickets. I can tell you - based on looking at the cycle at other clubs - that we are at least a couple of seasons away from getting to the upper end of the league so if you can't handle the ride this looking like a very appropriate time to jump. Bide your time till you can get the appropriate value you deserve for your membership dollar.
xii. Reviews or should I say lack of. Each year the club or board just review themselves and say everything is okay when it is obviously not. This would not happen in any business and shouldn't here.
As I said, you should not expect review to be like a wave of a magic wand. Unfortunately, there are no magic wands. Reviews are a part of a process of continuous incremental improvement. I repeat: It's not magic, get your expectations right.
In summary, football is a capricious game and if you believe you have an entitlement to success because you chose the Fremantle Football Club maybe you need to reconsider. There are 18 teams all busting their arses to get to the top and, by definition, 17 out of 18 fail every year despite their not inconsiderable commitment and efforts. Failure is, on average, a mathematical certainty. A full half of all teams will be below average. It's a little silly to be outraged by it. Have a sip of beer and take the long view. You want to write out shaming list of faults to feel better. Well, that doesn't do it for me.
