Sure but they are all in a professional environment where they can far outspend there competitors and move on contracted players with absolute ease. We are in an environment where that’s not the case and coaching changes and pre-seasons are really your only two ways of overcoming your shortcomings.
I don’t want Kev gone for a second but I do expect a lot better than this. I can acknowledge that everything has gone wrong this year but the footy on display has been rank almost always. Shithouse defence, bog average fitness, clueless attack, poor selection of players at times. It’s not good enough. I think we probably have a bit to much money tied up in to few players personally. When you pay the money for the likes of Ezra, Walsh and Cobbo they have to be on consistently. I’d be cutting Selwyn loose and using that money to rebalance the side, get a quality halfback and improve the depth. Kobe is probably another one on my chopping block if he doesn’t pick up his act.
Not really true, it appears the NFL - far from being some sort of bastion of the robber baron culture - has actually had a salary cap scheme in place for nearly 30 years: currently around $255M per 53-man club roster. I had thought the top soccer leagues like the EPL, the Bundesliga, La Liga etc. were pretty much free-for-alls, but it appears they too will be implementing caps.
(BTW, did you see in the last minute or so of the linked vid, that fellow's spray on his head coach, from the sideline, in semi-public view ? Now Selwyn,
that's how to do it ...)
The thing is that even all that is no insurance against long droughts, there are several onetime NFL powerhouses that then went up to 30 years without further championship success; then too there's the case of Man U drifting back to the pack after Ferguson's departure (sound familiar?).
I guess the message for clubs like Melbourne and Penrith is to appreciate the present success because nothing lasts forever, as those same winds and currents of circumstance that delivered the right people through the door in the first place can also shuffle those cards again at any time without notice.
Back to the Red Hill ranch, it's as if an organization that started out as a footy club on a mission to win titles but had the attributes of a business, then started, sometime around Bennett's (first) departure in '08(?), to morph into a business with some of the attributes of a footy club. I wonder just where and on what the Board's attention has been principally devoted.
Well that's enough of my speculative rambling.
