Carlton Supporters Club

We still hear the same old claptrap on this forum, sack the coach, sack the players, sack the President, sack the Board sack the staff, sack the assistant coaches, every deal is a dud, nobody is any good, the world is woeful, everyone is against us, they should have listened to me. What is the alternative.
We have the fundamentals of a very good list, the club is an very good shape off the field, and they have a plan that they are sticking to.
Tell me the alternative, who, what, when, where, how and why. Give me the details.

Beat me to it Big Nic. I've been a supporter since 1981 and a member for 25 years but I've just about had enough of this crap getting served up week after week. No disrespect to St Kilda but they're ordinary and yet they made us look stupid at times. Too often they ran it from one end to the other with good disposal and picked off unmarked men in their forward line at will....if they'd kick straight we wouldn't have been anywhere near them. They were missing arguably their best defenders in Carlisle, Roberton and Geary and yet with three key forwards we couldn't hit a target if we tried. Charlie worked hard up the ground and probably his best game for the season but if we're plugging holes in the middle by using him up the ground it defeats the purpose.

You can sugar coat it all you like but we're bottom of the ladder (again), destined for the wooden spoon (again) and this year we won't even have the number 1 pick to look forward to. You're kidding yourself if you think we've progressed in the last 3 years. Our skills are absolutely deplorable and turnovers kill us week after week. If you're brutally honest, there's probably 3 blokes on our list at the moment (excluding Docherty who's out again) that would get a game at another club right now....Cripps, Walsh, McKay.

How many times this year has Dow butchered a shot at goal at key moments in games? I'm sick of hearing about "elite runner", "great endurance" and "breakaway speed" when they talk about draftees. If you can't do the most basic thing in the game, kick the footy, then you can have all the running ability in the world and you'll be good at chasing an opponent and not much else. I hope I'm wrong, but we'll look back in 3 or 4 years on the 2017 draft as another one that we slaughtered.

I was taken with Bolton initially and his youthful enthusiasm and honesty but we've stalled, our young players are not coming on (Walsh excluded) and for the life of me I can't work out our game plan. In defence we're like Richmond of about 6 or 7 years ago where opponents just waited for the poor skills and decision making to eventually show through and they'd turn it over trying to kick short, backwards and sideways. If Thomas and Simpson are all we've got to keep a cool head down back then we're in strife. Newman showed some fight yesterday but even he turned it over numerous times.

Agree with EB's earlier comment about Kreuzer. He's been a warrior for us but he looked tired and cumbersome yesterday against a smaller/inexperienced opponent. Like many, for weeks I was calling for Kennedy to be in there to help Cripps but he showed us exactly why he hasn't been in there....slow and ineffective. Take Cripps and Walsh out of that midfield and at the moment we've got nothing. SPS/Fisher/Dow etc just don't do anywhere near enough. Yes they're young, but so is Walsh...so is Cripps.

This mid-season draft is a free hit of sorts but we're gonna blow another chance with Deluca. There's a reason he only played 4 games in 3 years with Fremantle.....slow and not big enough.

I'm not sure how many more weeks Bolton has got left but another bad loss this week and we need to be put out of our misery.

Everyone is smart in retrospect. We had eleven players who came out of the past four drafts in the team yesterday. This coming off four drafts where we have turned over a third to a quarter of our list. There is a lack of continuity in the team which has to be expected and is on display most weeks. This is the plan the Club laid out and is sticking to. I think they are twelve months behind where they wanted to be and I think they have the ingredients of a very good team but they need time to become a team. I like BB press conferences, I am not sure what people want him to say.  They have a plan. I dont see or hear what the alternative is.
I think we need some hungry half forwards, Pickett is a big loss, and we need pace out of the backline, which explains Garlett being developed for down back, we also need another young ruckman to develop.
It is a five-year plan and people need to do more than say everything is rubbish,  they need to articulate what they think needs to be done, how it would be implemented and how it is a better process than what is happening now.

Agreed, more high draft picks aren't going to fix us....

How many times this year has Dow butchered a shot at goal at key moments in games? I'm sick of hearing about "elite runner", "great endurance" and "breakaway speed" when they talk about draftees. If you can't do the most basic thing in the game, kick the footy, then you can have all the running ability in the world and you'll be good at chasing an opponent and not much else. I hope I'm wrong, but we'll look back in 3 or 4 years on the 2017 draft as another one that we slaughtered.

I was taken with Bolton initially and his youthful enthusiasm and honesty but we've stalled, our young players are not coming on (Walsh excluded) and for the life of me I can't work out our game plan. In defence we're like Richmond of about 6 or 7 years ago where opponents just waited for the poor skills and decision making to eventually show through and they'd turn it over trying to kick short, backwards and sideways. If Thomas and Simpson are all we've got to keep a cool head down back then we're in strife. Newman showed some fight yesterday but even he turned it over numerous times.

Agree with EB's earlier comment about Kreuzer. He's been a warrior for us but he looked tired and cumbersome yesterday against a smaller/inexperienced opponent. Like many, for weeks I was calling for Kennedy to be in there to help Cripps but he showed us exactly why he hasn't been in there....slow and ineffective. Take Cripps and Walsh out of that midfield and at the moment we've got nothing. SPS/Fisher/Dow etc just don't do anywhere near enough. Yes they're young, but so is Walsh...so is Cripps.

Agreed, and I think Stocker is showing some real class and will surprise a few people over the journey. I like him a lot from what I have seen.

We need to stop focusing on this as its not that much of an issue in the scheme of things.
Betts wanted to leave for Adelaide - we didn't give him away.  [/quote

That's certainly not my memory of the events.  Yes, he asked for bigger dollars and would have stayed had we agreed.  Stupidly, we didn't

I too would hate any coach naming specific individuals in a post game interview... that's left to internal discussions.

But are we really better?  The ladder position suggests otherwise.

But (and though this was not on Bolton's watch) think of Robinson and Betts still with the club.  We sold ourselves into mediocrity.  Same with Waite despite the fact he's now retired.

This obsession with youth gives us little grounding.  Those clearances for little return or salary cap impact were beyond dumb.

Agree on Stocker....has a bit of mongrel in him too. Commentators were blasting Newman yesterday for conceding a free kick to Long but I don't mind that.....Long is soft and took a dive and typical of the umpires to pick up on that but not the other obvious free kicks that we didn't get.

Can't over-estimate how much we've missed Jones in recent weeks too. Weitering looked lost at times yesterday and I'm still not sure what role Marchbank plays for us. For mine, Casboult is worth perservering with down back.

Yes, same here.