Northern Blues 2015
Introduction:
As I was tossing and turning in bed last night, wondering when sleep would remember that it is supposed to come during the night, I thought of a lot of interesting and amusing ways to start this. Now comes the light of day and my brain is mush. Naturally, the right words escape me as effectively as Victory escaped us this season. Can I come up with a witty and ironic way to describe the season? Doesn’t look like it. It looks as disturbed as my sleep was last night. :o :o
I wonder what that says about me? :o
I guess I could start by going over why I am doing this and not someone like RR or Baggers. My ego, I guess. Or maybe just to show that a Maths teacher can write a decent essay (although my teachers at school would be shocked: there were good reasons why I was a Maths/Science person). >:D >:D
Am I just making this crap up? I don’t think so. I did see the Blues play a bit this season, although I really miss the game at QEO with Bendigo becoming extinct at VFL level.
Never mind. Time to start. After all, it wouldn’t be too hard to determine that this season didn’t go well. The Blues finished 2nd bottom to Frankston, who didn’t win a game.
So, why did we do so poorly?
Negatives:
[1] Lack of talent
[2] Lack of on field leadership
[3] Injuries to Carlton listed players
[4] Injuries and defections of VFL listed players
[5] Lack of time on TV
Actually, it is not difficult to determine why we failed. Look at the team that we field each week and any observer will note that few names stick out. Look at the list and as few as 6 Carlton listed players may appear, and none of those household names that reflect success. (Jones may have become a recognizable name, but not for the right reasons.) Look at the VFL contingent and the same thing happens. Which players had distinguished AFL careers? Who was close and still trying? What top level VFL names are there? The answers to those questions were all too often nobody. Which of these guys is playing like they have a serious AFL future? Again an empty silence as the appraisal brings forward no obvious answers.
Why?
The simplest answer is a lack of talent on the list. Why should there be such a lack of talent? Now that question becomes interesting.
Let’s start with our list. The Northern Blues, and the Bullants before them, struggled to attract and retain talent. Why? When Preston almost went to the wall a few years back, there were a number of significant former AFL players playing and demanding decent money. Preston struggled to get that money. Many of these former AFL players did not pull their weight and on field success became problematical. In their financial woes, the Preston administration decided that trying to grab big names was a poor strategy and one they could not afford to follow.
This was a good idea for a team with no money, large debts and few ways of making the income required.
Then comes the alignment with an equally cash strapped Carlton. The Preston board decided to try to attract young, cheap talent, especially from their own area. There was born the idea of ‘Northern’, a team to represent all of the Northern suburbs of Melbourne.
An interesting idea and not without merit. But players of quality want to be rewarded financially. So the better players stayed away.
A decade later and this policy still holds. Both Carlton and Preston have more money and are viable, but are a long way from financial powerhouses. As part of the alignment, Carlton has minimal input into list management at Northern and tries to keep things that way. It allows the Blues’ board to feel more independent, to be more than just an arm of the Carlton Football Club.
Carlton like it that way, as we don’t want to appear to be this hungry monster gobbling up VFL clubs for our own satisfaction.
However, the effects are that the list contains very few players who have elite football backgrounds.
In 2015 there were 2 players, Wilkinson and McGuinness, who had played AFL football. One of those, McGuinness, was an assistant coach. The other, Wilkinson, was trying to relight his AFL career. When that appeared unlikely, he left the club (he was Vice Captain) midseason to try out for Gridiron.
Experienced players: were there any? Yes. Including McGuinness there were 3 players who were 27 years old or older. One of those was Captain ‘Box’ Bransgrove, a guy little larger than Tyrion Lannister and more injury prone (although he, at least, did not have his nose cut off).
That is not sounding like the sort of list that is going to win premierships.
On the Carlton side of the equations things were not a lot better. Almost 2 decades of ordinary recruiting and poor player development (not to mention some questionable player management and the selection input from a coach who was sacked), Carlton’s list lacked depth and experience. Unlike the Glory Days of the late ‘80’s, there were few older, experienced heads (like Rod Ashman and Jim Buckley) or fired up young champions (like Stephen Silvagni) coming through in the ‘2nds’. There was some talent there, but our list was extremely inexperienced.
It is likely to remain that way in 2016, as the club rebuilds in almost every aspect.
So, the team that ran out onto the field contained few players who could provide leadership, experience or raw talent. Not the way for a team to win.
However, the team DID win, and beat some good opponents. Early in the season there were some heart breaking losses and a few brilliant results. The team appeared to be heading in the right direction. It had the spirit that it had lacked for some years.
What happened? Injuries. Carlton’s injury woes started in the 1st minute of the season when ‘Daisy’ Thomas was injured, got worse when Chris Judd was injured and had to retire and sunk from there. For the last round of the season there were just enough fit players to make up a team.
This left very little for the Northern Blues. In fact, of the senior list only Dillion Viojo – Rainbow and Cameron Giles did not play senior football: DVR because he was not playing well enough and Giles because he was injured. Of the rookies, only Category B rookie Frazer Russell was fit enough to play but wasn’t selected. All of the others either player senior football or were injured.
That sounds like a nightmare scenario. But it gets worse.
Looking at the VFL contingent, as the season progressed we lost Captain ‘Box’ Bransgrove to serious injury, after having him struggle to get on the park for basically the whole season. I don’t think he played injury free in any game in 2015. His form was not that good either, as he struggled with his body.
Assistant Coach Kieran McGuinness started brilliantly, but he too succumbed to season ending injury. To that point he has been one of our most effective players, even though this was his retirement gig. His leadership was sorely missed.
Joel Wilkinson, VC for 2015, ‘retired’ midseason after his best game for the Blues to play Gridiron and a number of the other, younger talented players were also stricken (like Tim Totevski and Cameron Conlon).
These injuries effectively removed most of the talent and almost the entire leadership of the Northern Blues. It is no wonder we lost.
For all that, the Blues were much better in 2015, showing much better spirit and work rate. We may have been beaten, but we were rarely embarrassed.
Another negative the Blues experienced, something that definitely doesn’t help us, was the fact that we were rarely on TV. None of our wins were televised, which really didn’t help us recruit fans, players or money. Other clubs appeared more often. Only Frankston was on TV less than we were (although we were equalled by Coburg).
In light of all of this crap, the Blues didn’t do that badly in 2015. However, we REALLY need to address some of these problems if we are to:
(a) Play finals
(b) Develop our players
Positives:
[1] Much better team spirit
[2] Good performances when everyone was on the park
[3] Curtain raisers
The season was not all doom and gloom. There were a number of positives to be got out of 2015.
The first was the considerable improvement in team spirit and the clear development of our coaching staff. The 2nd was the development of the VFL brigade when the burden fell upon their shoulders.
In the last few years there was a distinct difference between the VFL and Carlton contingents. Nor was there much faith or team work between the 2 groups. That was most noticeable when Robert Hyde was coach, but was still an identifiable problem in 2014. In 2015, however, that did not appear to be so much of an issue. There was a definite improvement in team moral, team spirit and the way the players interacted with each other. Everybody who went onto the ground did their best, they didn’t give up.
That doesn’t win games in itself, but early in the year, when there was a bit more talent on the park, it made victory possible. It was great to see this improvement, especially as it was a number of the Carlton listed players who were getting not much of the ball.
The other really good thing to come out of 2015 was the reintroduction of the Curtain Raiser. This allowed us to see the Blues more. I really hope we can continue this in the future.
One of these games saw the Blues make their best effort of the season, the obliteration of Frankston at Etihad. It broke all sorts of records and was completed by a team that was far from our best.
Future:
The first and most important thing is to introduce more talent into the ranks of the Northern Blues. Firstly, this can come about by adding depth and talent to the Carlton list. This is probable, as the 2015 draft is expected to yield a much better class of recruit than 2014 did.
But we also need to get more talent in the VFL contingent, and not just as from an assistant coach. We need to attract more fringe players who see the Blues as a way to get back into the AFL and we also need some experienced players to give on field leadership and experience. I was hoping someone like David Ellard might be recruited by Carlton to fill in that role, as his preparation was a great role model for those who would follow him into the big time.
We also need to develop our list more, to get more out of the talent that we have. This includes having them train more with the seniors and having them do many of the same more professional preparations that the AFL boys do.
We also need to retain our talent. At the beginning of 2014 the Blues lost a large group of players to Williamstown. We have also had our leaders move on, instead of remaining. There would be nobody at the Blues at the moment who has played 100 VFL games with us.
We need to pay the players so they want to stay and we need to make the place a real tight knit club, not just some place to play footy sometimes. We need to be seen as the springboard into the future.
Conclusions:
2015 was ruined by injury, but we never at any stage had the list to go all the way. We need to rectify these problems if we are to succeed. Carlton requires that the Northern Blues succeeds. Otherwise we cannot develop our players as we need to.
Look at the Bulldogs. Their 2014 VFL team the premiership. A large group of those young players has gone on to fuel their success at AFL level this year. Their experienced players largely remain to provide the correct milieu for future development.
There is no good reason why we could not emulate this model. Footscray never had a large amount of money. Preston is no longer insolvent. The Blues need to take some risks and become the leaders.
I have deliberately NOT addressed the issues of a stand-alone team and those things that follow from that. It appears clear that the Carlton hierarchy does not want to go down that path at this time. What the future may hold is another matter entirely, but we appear to want to make this alignment work. As such I have assumed that this model will remain.
This is only my personal opinion, but if you want to know what a boat anchor looks like, look it up in a Webster's!
This is only my personal opinion, but if you want to know what a boat anchor looks like, look it up in a Webster's!
Sorry, LP, I don't understand.
Coach (preventing movement).
The penny drops. Looks like it had a fair way to go before 'the little grey cells' started to function:
Our coach: to be honest I have quite mixed feelings here. In 2014 I felt he was a backwards step. His speeches at 1/4 time and 3/4 time left me cold. I was pleased to see him pushing the 'structures' line, but his addresses wouldn't have motivated me to get out of bed. The team was playing with little heart or there appeared to be significant gap between the factions that make up the side.
However, I reckon Webster improved significantly in 2015. The team was much more a team, there was a distinct spirit in the way we played. Some of our systems were almost recognizable. I still wasn't a fan of his addresses, but I had no idea what they were like off the field.
One of the implications in Baggers' comment was that Webster didn't make many on field moves and fewer yet that were inspiring. That is a relevant criticism. it was noticeable in 2014 in particular. I noticed that in late 2015 he had improved in this area: some of his position moves against Collingwood late in the season were quite good. However, like Brett Ratten in his time as coach, Webster put a lot of faith in guys being able to fulfill his plans. As a result he was slow in making moves, especially unexpected ones. That cost Ratten in the end, as our players may not have been able to do the jobs given to them.
At the end of 2014 I wanted Webster gone. I thought I could do as good a job on match day.
This does not say anything about how he went as coach off the field, as I never saw him in action to be able to compare him to anyone. He may have been a genius in that area. certainly the club saw fit to give him an important job wit very little experience. It must have seen something in him.
At the end of 2015 I feel certain he will be moved on. However, I am not as certain that this is a good thing.
The Blues do need a good coach, of that there is no doubt. I would like someone who get into dropped players minds and get them to perform. I can still remember Justin Murphy being dropped many years back (1998?1999?) . His response was to get 42 possessions and demand promotion again the next week. I see Chris Yarran being dropped and he struggled to get 15 possessions. I want someone who can motivate the troops, not just depend on the structures for results; someone who can raise to adrenaline and confidence levels and get a change on the field. is that too much to ask for?
@Crash
Agree, footy is an emotion-charged game (or should be IMO) and players need to get fired up at the critical times for a team to achieve ultimate success. I don't believe it can always be played in cold blood - the adrenaline has to flow freely when the circumstances call for it.
A good coach needs then to be capable of connecting strongly at the emotional level as well as at the cerebral.
@Crash
Agree, footy is an emotion-charged game (or should be IMO) and players need to get fired up at the critical times for a team to achieve ultimate success. I don't believe it can always be played in cold blood - the adrenaline has to flow freely when the circumstances call for it.
A good coach needs then to be capable of connecting strongly at the emotional level as well as at the cerebral.
The key is to have the emotional adrenaline when its required.
You don't want blokes playing on emotion as they will effectively give you a rollercoaster, but they need to be consistently able to perform their task, and call or channel upon that emotion when they need to use it, i.e. critical contests.
I think if you try and play on emotion every week you will have players struggle to back up, and it will eb and flow, whilst if they play a little bit controlled, then they can unlock the emotion for when they need it.
The key is to have the emotional adrenaline when its required.
You don't want blokes playing on emotion as they will effectively give you a rollercoaster, but they need to be consistently able to perform their task, and call or channel upon that emotion when they need to use it, i.e. critical contests.
I think if you try and play on emotion every week you will have players struggle to back up, and it will eb and flow, whilst if they play a little bit controlled, then they can unlock the emotion for when they need it.
I think I did say that Thry.
I think I did say that Thry.
Oh sorry, I thought you meant that you wanted us to be more emotional on game day.
Thanks for the review Crash, it was a good read. I hope the New Carlton strive to make the NB's a better place for both lists, it can only benefit everyone.
Thanks for the review Crash, it was a good read. I hope the New Carlton strive to make the NB's a better place for both lists, it can only benefit everyone.
Thanks. As for your comment, I can only agree. Failure would be an open wound that doesn't heal, a disaster.
For those who don't have time to go through crash's excellent review. Here is a summary:
(http://orig06.deviantart.net/4d51/f/2014/009/9/8/what_would_you_do__if_you_saw_a_sad_poo__by_werxzy-d71gzc5.png)
Walsh won the Lachie Hill medal as Best and Fairest. Reminds me of Cripps year last year. Get a solid pre season and needs to play round 1!
Walsh won the Lachie Hill medal as Best and Fairest. Reminds me of Cripps year last year. Get a solid pre season and needs to play round 1!
Shades...Glad to see you have stuck fat and still on the Walsh bandwagon....as you said need s a good preseason and with some sprint and running work
will be a senior footballer next season...I just like old fashioned footballers and Walsh is one of my favourite young players...
Certainly fits in with Boltons aim of leadership depth.
Don't know how good he will get, but clubs need leaders at all levels and he's showing that hard work is the key.
Well done.
Another WA boy keeping the club afloat. ;D
JJ Liston Voting:
Northern Blues J. J. Liston Leaderboard
N. Graham 5
J. Tutt 4
L. Jones 4
B. Bransgrove 3
D. Ellard 3
M. Watson 3
T. Wilson 2
K. McGuinness 2
M. Whiley 2
B. Johnson 2
B. Walsh 1
M. Kreuzer 1
D. Buckley 1
J. Wilkinson 1
CLUB ROUND TOTAL 34
Not a heap of votes compared to some of the 'better performing' teams, but with the injuries we had it was the best we could do. A huge spread of votes with only Nick Graham and Tutt managing votes in multiple games.
Walsh didn't manage to attract the Umpire's view much.
Not so the NB hierarchy. Walsh won the Laurie Hill Trophy by 26 votes from Nick Graham (I'll post the votes when I can find them).
A couple of things to consider:
[1] Nick Graham: For all Nick's problems under Malthouse, he certainly performed at VFL level. His injury really hurt us in the seniors when he got his chance.
Hopefully he can replicate this form in 2016.
[2] Brad Walsh: he has a few more 'rough edges' than Cripps did in 2014, but he now has a real role model to follow. Hopefully he can, but he is going to have to work pretty hard.
[3] Compared with the other VFL clubs, the NBs really lack VFL talent. You don't have to look very hard to notice some of the better performers at other clubs are not on AFL lists. We really need to address that.
[4] Injuries, Injuries, Injuries: Note that Box Bransgrove, the NB's captain, did well in the Laurie Hill, even though he struggled to get onto the field. He barely played, yet he stood out of the voting. So many others were in similar circumstances. It is difficult for a club to have it's leaders unavailable on a regular basis.
Walsh didn't manage to attract the Umpire's view much.
Not so the NB hierarchy. Walsh won the Laurie Hill Trophy by 26 votes from Nick Graham (I'll post the votes when I can find them).
Carlton rookie Brad Walsh has taken away the 2015 Laurie Hill Trophy as the Northern Blues’ best and fairest player this season.
Walsh was Northern’s most consistent performer in his 16 VFL games, triumphing ahead of place-getters Nick Graham (second), Mark Whiley and Northern Blues captain Brent Bransgrove (equal third).
Walsh polled in a team-high 11 matches on the night including his last six matches of the season, on his way to a vote count of 82 for the year - 26 ahead of Graham in second place.
. . .
Walsh is the youngest player to win the award in the last decade and the first Carlton-listed player to win it since Brock McLean in 2011.
LEADERBOARD
Seniors
Brad Walsh - 82
Nick Graham - 56
Mark Whiley, Brent Bransgrove - 51
David Ellard - 46
Liam Jones - 45
Tom Wilson - 43
Keiran McGuinness, Nick Holman - 38
Tom Fields - 35
Development
Dean Soncin - 72
Zach Ballard - 61
Ben Walton, Sam Cattapan - 46
Ben Toman - 35
Matthew Haynes, Steve Murray, Jack Johnston - 34
Liam Jones attracted the attention of the NBs hierarchy too :o
Liam Jones attracted the attention of the NBs hierarchy too :o
Carlton rookie Brad Walsh has taken away the 2015 Laurie Hill Trophy as the Northern Blues’ best and fairest player this season.
Walsh was Northern’s most consistent performer in his 16 VFL games, triumphing ahead of place-getters Nick Graham (second), Mark Whiley and Northern Blues captain Brent Bransgrove (equal third).
Walsh polled in a team-high 11 matches on the night including his last six matches of the season, on his way to a vote count of 82 for the year - 26 ahead of Graham in second place.
. . .
Walsh is the youngest player to win the award in the last decade and the first Carlton-listed player to win it since Brock McLean in 2011.
LEADERBOARD
Seniors
Brad Walsh - 82
Nick Graham - 56
Mark Whiley, Brent Bransgrove - 51
David Ellard - 46
Liam Jones - 45
Tom Wilson - 43
Keiran McGuinness, Nick Holman - 38
Tom Fields - 35
While we would expect the NB's B&F to have a fair Carlton contingent in it, to be dominated so much is a worry. It suggests, as I have been harping on about, that the VFL side is in need of a real talent boost. Particularly in that neither 'Box' Bransgrove nor McGuinness could see out the season. That leaves just Tom Wilson as making a real mark on the season.
Another question is how long can Box keep going? We have lost a lot of VFL leaders in recent times. Box's last 2 years have been very injury interrupted. I don't know how long he can keep going. At least he is not just jumping ship, like the others did.
Box has a heart as big as he is, but he isn't much taller or much quicker than Tyrion Lannister. He gives an excellent account of himself, but he is not durable enough to depend on.
Liam Jones: he actually played a few decent games for the NBs, although a few of them were in the ruck. He dominated against Frankston, for example. But that is quite normal for him. He did the same thing for the Bulldogs. Playing consistent footy, especially against decent opposition, is his issue.
Development
Dean Soncin - 72
Zach Ballard - 61
Ben Walton, Sam Cattapan - 46
Ben Toman - 35
Matthew Haynes, Steve Murray, Jack Johnston - 34
This group of people is the one that we have been depending on for maybe the last 6 weeks of the VFL season. Not bad guys, but not match winners either. Hopefully it makes my point for me.
While we would expect the NB's B&F to have a fair Carlton contingent in it, to be dominated so much is a worry. It suggests, as I have been harping on about, that the VFL side is in need of a real talent boost.
I agree entirely; the NBs must have a core of solid VFL players.
As a starting point, Davey Ellard should be convinced to turn out for the NBs for the next couple of years.