Carlton Supporters Club

There's not a shred of evidence anywhere that Bolton destroyed the list by playing kids. I know this is a pet theory of yours, and Lord knows we all have them, but there's no basis for it.

I'm sure if you asked Dow, Setterfield, O'Brien etc. whether they prefer languishing in Magoo no mans land or being given tough assignments playing with the big boys, they would give an obvious answer.

You could probably mount an argument that Teague hampered the development of players like Dow by moving them out of the way and giving their tasks to more experienced players.

The change from youth to experience gave us a short term fix but in the long run it wasn't successful, and probably made it difficult for the young ones to get continuity in their development.

Things like that were road blocks in the rebuild.
It made it a 'stop-start-reset' process that now extends to 7 years without a finals appearance.

There it is, it's called player development and historically we have had next to none!

Instead we tend to pump up tyres, overpay, throw them in the deep end to see who floats, then complain about slow or stalled development.

I think our club still until recently anyway, had a downhill culture, given a choice between the certainty of the hard yards and the chance of a quick fix, we go the quick fix on almost every occasion!

Even BB who is known industry wide as a top player development type coach, almost destroyed the list by trying to accelerate youth development through adversity, what didn't kill them made them stronger, except you break a lot in the process and if you get it wrong you break them all! BB needed somebody to reign him in, but instead we chose to avoid the hard discussion and let him hang himself and almost destroy the list.

But I feel things have changed under Voss, he's stopped the rinse and repeat cycle we've been on for almost two decades, we are actually seeing good football out of guys who most fans and I presume many at the club had written off!

Voss knows the key to success is the performance of those at the bottom of the list, not accolades for those at the top!

Breust didn't debut till he was 21, Smith was 23 when he played his first game.

The annoying thing about the finals is that we all know we are better than the Bulldogs and Lions, and can hold our own against the Magpies, Demons, Swans, Freo and Tigers...  Cats still need some work.

A lot ot clubs will be sleeping better that we aren't there - but we will be!!

I hope the club (and I'm sure they are) is getting behind Charles and Small Durds in particular. They've been singled out by many, and, yes, they made critical errors but they should not carry the burden of the loss. Beating themselves up, or taking to heart criticisms will serve no useful purpose. They're a coupla quality young men who made strong contributions through the year to us being in the 8... that's what's important now, and everyone learning from mistakes, then acknowledging how much was done right and will be improved upon in 2023.

The annoying thing about the finals is that we all know we are better than the Bulldogs and Lions, and can hold our own against the Magpies, Demons, Swans, Freo and Tigers...  Cats still need some work.

A lot ot clubs will be sleeping better that we aren't there - but we will be!!

You can't replicate what we went through in the last 2 rounds at training. Unfortunately you need to experience it to learn from it. Hawthorn had the Kennett curse where they lost a dozen games in a row under 10 points before they broke it and won 3 flags. Collingwood had played in 10 thrillers this year alone and were well placed to handle the occasion on Sunday. They also didn't have the same pressure in that their finals spot was secure, same as Melbourne.

There it is, it's called player development and historically we have had next to none!

Whoa there, Spotted One. Let's not rewrite history, or compare oranges with cheese.

BB was tasked with stepping into the breach after a blow torch was taken to the list to begin probably one of the most ambitious rebuilds in AFL history. I don't believe his attitude was teach through adversity, but rather teach through a thorough education of the basics... then how to handle adversity and grow through it. Adversity was a given, given the inexperience of the list. For the first two years of his tenure, in particular, his ability to not only hold a club together but temper our expectations with reality and hope was first class.