Measuring success with a football club is possibly the easiest thing in the world to do. Therefore, measuring the opposite should be equally simple. I don't buy into the myth that the 22 players fronting up on game day have somehow 'lost their skills' or that some odd psycho-nova swept over them and turned them into a bunch of bumbling retards over the summer. They are, or rather should be, one year more skilful and wiser than they were last year. We've got a good list, no more holes than any other club - if properly developed, we should be the best.
<strong>By instinct</strong> footballers are competitive and offensive minded - they want to win, they know what it takes to win. They plot ways of getting up the ground with their mates and getting more points on the board than their opponents. <strong>By instinct</strong> every one of them has been taking a ball and kicking it at the sticks since they were little tackers. Every genuine footballer knows how to score, some better than others - but they all know how to do it. Instinctively. That goal that Rampe kicked, the goal that Johannisen booted and any number of goals by Betts and Rioli from the last round are examples of what a real footballer wants to do. Kick goals and win. No one wants to bust arse, week in/week out to lose - what a bloody waste to time/talent. We're a win over Port better than Brisbane.
Our problem is a football department problem - it is an organisational problem because the Steves are finding it real difficult to get people to pull out their wallets and front up to a game. It's not a player problem, it's a coaching problem. Someone has convinced the players that they are fumbling imbeciles instead of skilled footballers. Round 1 showed everyone that our structures and game strategy was not good enough - in fact, it was way off in the boonies somewhere (compared with everyone else). As the season progressed - one painful week at a time - it became so one-dimensional that even a child could see through it. Trying harder, and harder, and harder wasn't going to change that. What it did do was turn every one of our players (with a few exceptions) into reactive (and frightened) idiots - even high stat achieving idiots. There was plenty of time to correct things, by Round 8 or 9 I would've thought. But no, if any development was going on it was heading south - like a slow and persistent truck rumbling down the slow lane of a freeway. Once again, our players have been developed into fumbling imbeciles instead of skilled footballers
And, as sure as night follows day, someone is responsible for that.
