We are NOT fit...

[robrulz5]

Will the board have the guts to sack Quinn who is behind and obviously not up to standard as our players can't even run out half a game.

[DYSON#2]

We need a fresh face in fitness, Quinn is past it now. Way to many soft tissue injuries in past 6-7 years

[jimmyc1985]

I'm not as convinced as everyone that, as a generalisation, we aren't fit. We won the games against Adelaide, St Kilda and Freo in warm conditions after being challenged in the 3rd or 4th quarter, whereas if we really weren't fit we would've rolled over and lost. One thing I would say though is that there's a vast disparity between the fit guys at our club and the unfit guys, and that's where I think the difference lies. We have a few guys like McPhee, McVeigh and Stanton who have excellent fitness levels and can run all day, but we also have players who are sub-standard in that area (Hird isn't fit anymore, Welsh, Watson, Monfries, Lovett all aren't fit enough) and, most importantly, the players on our team who are of sub-standard fitness are those guys that assume midfield/running positions.

Teams like West Coast or Adelaide have remarkably consistent levels of fitness across all players required to run. We simply don't, and that's where I think the difference lies. How much blame Quinn can assume for this is something people can make their own determination on; I think he's certainly partly to blame, but I also think the selection committee should stop picking unfit players and the recruiters should stop recruiting players who aren't capable of training themselves up to a level necessary to be considered "AFL fit".

Ask around to any MCC members you know who were at the Lunch and they will confirm the above. Jimmy....you're a Camberwell boy....you must know someone!!

Yeah, I can confirm that actually. Some guy at work told me about this and I wasn't surprised.

[tom9779]

i'm not really buying into it either.

I don't think it was necessarily a lack of leg speed which cost us the last couple of games.

I think the loss to carlton and collingwood was 1. confidence and 2. poor team selection/coaching.

and I think losing to Hawthorn says more about how good hawthorn are, rather than how poor the dons are going.

We were outplayed/out coached against the hawks, Sheedy needs to take a look at himself first, then at the players he is selecting.

Our list of soft tissue injuries is no worse than most teams in the AFL.

[dodgey]

Said this before.......


"whilst Kevin Sheedy and James Hird are at the Essendon Football Club ....Quinn will have a job"

[bowzer]

I'm not as convinced as everyone that, as a generalisation, we aren't fit. We won the games against Adelaide, St Kilda and Freo in warm conditions after being challenged in the 3rd or 4th quarter, whereas if we really weren't fit we would've rolled over and lost. One thing I would say though is that there's a vast disparity between the fit guys at our club and the unfit guys, and that's where I think the difference lies. We have a few guys like McPhee, McVeigh and Stanton who have excellent fitness levels and can run all day, but we also have players who are sub-standard in that area (Hird isn't fit anymore, Welsh, Watson, Monfries, Lovett all aren't fit enough) and, most importantly, the players on our team who are of sub-standard fitness are those guys that assume midfield/running positions.

Teams like West Coast or Adelaide have remarkably consistent levels of fitness across all players required to run. We simply don't, and that's where I think the difference lies. How much blame Quinn can assume for this is something people can make their own determination on; I think he's certainly partly to blame, but I also think the selection committee should stop picking unfit players and the recruiters should stop recruiting players who aren't capable of training themselves up to a level necessary to be considered "AFL fit".

Ask around to any MCC members you know who were at the Lunch and they will confirm the above. Jimmy....you're a Camberwell boy....you must know someone!!

Yeah, I can confirm that actually. Some guy at work told me about this and I wasn't surprised.

i heard that welsh was one of the fittest players at our club hence the move into the midfield/hff.

and i think mcveigh has never had the best engine where as monfries can run around all day. these are assumptions..from what i've seen of these two.

[andrewb]

Geez... it's damaging when things like that get said publicly. Scary stuff.

Whether or not Quinn stays, I'd like to see us spend big bucks on fitness and conditioning and get someone from either Adelaide or West Coast to the club ASAP. It's one of the few areas that you can control in a tangible fashion as a football club and those two squads seem way out in front.

Coaching, recruitment and skills are a little more intangible and very hard to measure - but when West Coast promote a guy like Matt Priddis into their midfield and he kills it you know that they are doing something right.

Fitness may help to explain our skill issues as well - tired legs make mistakes.

[tom9779]

melbourne,
st kilda,
adelaide,
pies list is mounting,


the list is up an afl.com.au and its a week by week thing.

i'd expect we would get 1 or 2 back next week. unless the injuries are a lot worse than the club is letting on through the media.

[DYSON#2]

since 2000 tom? we have had a shit house run with soft tissues.. we have blokes at 21 years of age pulling hamstrings!

[Western Red]

Geez... it's damaging when things like that get said publicly. Scary stuff.

Whether or not Quinn stays, I'd like to see us spend big bucks on fitness and conditioning and get someone from either Adelaide or West Coast to the club ASAP. It's one of the few areas that you can control in a tangible fashion as a football club and those two squads seem way out in front.

Coaching, recruitment and skills are a little more intangible and very hard to measure - but when West Coast promote a guy like Matt Priddis into their midfield and he kills it you know that they are doing something right.

Fitness may help to explain our skill issues as well - tired legs make mistakes.

FYI..

Priddis won the Sandover last year by a record tally. In fact Daniel Bandy who was runner up had more votes than the prvious half dozen winners.

Priddis was always going to kill it. Its seems to be the selection/drafting along with the fitness.

[swoodley]

since 2000 tom? we have had a shit house run with soft tissues.. we have blokes at 21 years of age pulling hamstrings!

St Kilda have had a pretty bad run the last 3-5 years with soft tissue injuries.

I'm not sure how bad it's been at the Bulldogs but maybe playing at Telstra Dome has something to do with it as well.

[tom9779]

since 2000 tom? we have had a shit house run with soft tissues.. we have blokes at 21 years of age pulling hamstrings!

well if you look the injuries, maybe we have 2 of our best 22 unavailable.
That is as good as most AFL teams.

of our soft tissue injuries:

Hille - back this week
NLM - prob back this week, would be in best 22?
Dempsey - 1 week(best 22 anyway???)
Rama - no suprise coming back from cancer treatment, underdone.
Lloyd - club over precaution - he ripped it from the bone last year.
Jetta - new to the club, if it takes 18 months to get a player AFL fit...can you blame quinn?
Gumbleton - ditto reasons for Jetta.

[Windy_Hill]

I am sorry guys, when the fitness coach becomes the reason for our sub-par performances, then we have a monumental case of collective self delusion (if thats possible?!)

A scan through the injury stats will quickly reveal that over any significant perios of time, all clubs have about the same player game downtime as each other.

I do however wonder about the impact of playing 7+ games at Telstra Dome.

[tom9779]

I am sorry guys, when the fitness coach becomes the reason for our sub-par performances, then we have a monumental case of collective self delusion (if thats possible?!)

A scan through the injury stats will quickly reveal that over any significant perios of time, all clubs have about the same player game downtime as each other.

I do however wonder about the impact of playing 7+ games at Telstra Dome.

no worse than playing 12 games at Subiaco(eg eagles/dockers).

I don't buy into any argument that we are having fade outs either.... I don't think we were necessarily running out of legs, last weekend, we were being showed up on a lack of skills in the middle, and a lack of an alternative game plan when our forward line turned dysfunctional without Lloyd.

Carlton and Collingwood losses were IMO chokes through lack of experience, nothing more.