What expat said - it bears repeating:
"I'd say Ross was always playing "in the moment" and not considering what happens down the track. We should have always been bringing in one or two kids into the fold to experience the level back then. Maybe 2 or 3 weeks at a time each just for the future.
But we continued to play our best players all the time until they broke. So when most of them broke all at once the other year then the kids that replaced them could not cope and so the wheels started to fall off."
In 2015, before RL got his contract extension, he had Weller, Langdon, A Pearce, Collins, Blakely, Grey and others playing for Peel. Freo were top of the ladder but flagging with every passing game. He didn't play any of the younger cohort, which is what a better coach and one who gave a rat's about the future of the club would have done. He only needed to blood one or two a week, to get games into them for 2016, and maybe even discover a rough diamond to bring energy and passion to a tiring outfit in the finals. Instead he drove the main group until they broke, and over the cliff into 2016, when he was perversely rewarded for doing this with a massive contract extension.
Since then, nothing but boring, miserable, losing footy and cynical dissembling. A GF in 2020 is a fantasy and the seeds for our current woes were sown back in 2015.