WARNING-Anti Sheedy Rant Follows

[Rossoneri]

Sheedy failed because he didn't get back to the basics that made him successful, and that was playing the kids. He did it in 81, he did it in 93 and he did it in 97 (Which led to '99-'01)

By 2003, it was discovered that the only way you can get to the top was to bottom out for 2-3 years and get the draft picks that Carlton, St Kilda, WC, Melbourne, Hawthorn, Richmond got. Of those teams, two have won a flag, one will win one soon (St Kilda) and Carlton are moving up fast.

In saying that, it's not just getting draft picks, it's about picking the right players as well. Under Knights, we have picked up Myers, Pears, Daniher (F/S) Hooker, Hurley, Zaharakis, Still, Slattery, Skipworth, Prismall (via trade)

Pears, Hurley, Zaharakis look like players who will become out and out stars. Myers has been carrying an injury, Hooker is an honest toiler who I have high hopes for.

When Sheedy left, we had a shit midfield that was slow and un-skilled, a defence that had Fletcher and nothing else and a forward line that had Lloyd and Lucas and that was it.
Now, our defence looks a hell of a lot better than this time last year, the midfield has improved to "crap" (still need pace and in-and-under grunt) and the forward line looks decent enough with added potential. Neagle needs to lift his game but Monfries improved this year (playing one good game every three now as opposed to every 5), Hurley looks a star and with Paddy playing down forward when not in the ruck, it can be menacing. Need another small-medium forward.

[DC]

someone should teach davey how to crumb

[Windy_Hill]

Filth, I dont think its so much an Anti-Sheedy rant rather than a statement of fact. The biggest mistake Sheedy made in my opinion was list management in 2001. Whereas other clubs (noteably Brisbane and Geelong) had players commit to salary reductions in order to win flags, our 2000 Premiership players wanted top dollar. The club including Sheedy should have worked harder to keep Hardwick, Caracella, Blumfield, Heffernan etc in order to preserve the 'spirit' of the team that was so powerful in 2000/2001. Instead we lost these guys and when it came time to retire Misiti and Mercuri we had no experienced middle aged players. We are still living with this problem and unti the group of Stanton, Dyson, Watson, Laycock, Winderlich reach their mid-20's. we remain a club with two extremes - very young and very old players (this is somewhat less pronounced with the retirements of Lloyd and Lucas.

However, lets not loose sight of Sheedy's many great contributions ot the club including of course 7 Grand final appearances in his first 21 years as coach - thats one every three years!!! Thats all you can ask from a coach - the rest is up to the team.

[Mrs Mercuri]

How can Geelong possibly keep their core list together next year?? Considering that we had to move on Caracella, Blumfield, Heffernan (in his prime) and Hardwick because of the salary cap (which probably cost us another grand final appearance at least) its hard to see how the Cats can keep their list together for another season.

[boncer34]

How can Geelong possibly keep their core list together next year?? Considering that we had to move on Caracella, Blumfield, Heffernan (in his prime) and Hardwick because of the salary cap (which probably cost us another grand final appearance at least) its hard to see how the Cats can keep their list together for another season.

Because their blokes aren't going off to chase the almighty dollar.

[Mrs Mercuri]

How can Geelong possibly keep their core list together next year?? Considering that we had to move on Caracella, Blumfield, Heffernan (in his prime) and Hardwick because of the salary cap (which probably cost us another grand final appearance at least) its hard to see how the Cats can keep their list together for another season.

Because their blokes aren't going off to chase the almighty dollar.

and ours were??? thats disapppointing to hear... i dont think Hardwick wanted to leave, neither did Blumfield. Its just hard seeing the Cats players so loyal to each other and winning flags together when our boys werent able to do it.

[Rossoneri]

No, we had players whose contracts would increase by say 5-10% per year of the contract as we were expecting the Salary Cap to increase as well. When the Cap didn't increase as expected, we were f*****.

[robbie67]

Nobody will be ever able to convince me otherwise that it was anything but our recruiting from 97 to 02 that resulted in what happened between 04 and 07. I dont care care who the coach was, when you get it wrong so many times in the first two rounds, you are going to pay the price down the track. It's no coincidence that in the second half of the decade, we did a much better job in this area, and are starting to see the rewards for this. Is it Sheedy's fault? Probably, I'm sure he had the final say in these matters. But we can crap on all we like about the lack of game plans etc etc, we just didnt have the cattle pure and simple.

[robbie67]

No, we had players whose contracts would increase by say 5-10% per year of the contract as we were expecting the Salary Cap to increase as well. When the Cap didn't increase as expected, we were f*****.

yes, and as a result, we became the blue-print for what not to do when it came to long term, and back ended contracts. All of the clubs that have had success, havent seen a break up of their list like we had, because they have planned for it. The only exception to that is West Coast, but they broke up for other reasons.

[Ossie]

No, we had players whose contracts would increase by say 5-10% per year of the contract as we were expecting the Salary Cap to increase as well. When the Cap didn't increase as expected, we were f*****.

yes, and as a result, we became the blue-print for what not to do when it came to long term, and back ended contracts. All of the clubs that have had success, havent seen a break up of their list like we had, because they have planned for it. The only exception to that is West Coast, but they broke up for other reasons.

Also didn't help that we signed Mercuri to a five year deal (not his fault - we offered it) which I am sure skewed our salary cap calculations for people like Blumfield and Caracella.

[Mrs Mercuri]

Yes unfortunately Mercs was never the same after the death of his brother early in 2000.... hard to believe he was runner up in the Brownlow in 1999.

[Jazz_84]

we just didnt have the cattle pure and simple.

do you think we are there or close now?

[Mrs Mercuri]

we just didnt have the cattle pure and simple.

do you think we are there or close now?

maybe close to the Baby Bombers of 1993.... i think we are still a couple of season away from seriously challenging for the flag. We need to get the boys up to around the 100 game mark first.

[robrulz5]

I'm so glad to be an Essendon supporter. 9 years without a flag and we are all itching for another one, while some other clubs such as the Bulldogs, St.Kilda, etc. almost just accept that it's been so long since their last flag.

[s'dreams]

Nobody will be ever able to convince me otherwise that it was anything but our recruiting from 97 to 02 that resulted in what happened between 04 and 07. I dont care care who the coach was, when you get it wrong so many times in the first two rounds, you are going to pay the price down the track. It's no coincidence that in the second half of the decade, we did a much better job in this area, and are starting to see the rewards for this. Is it Sheedy's fault? Probably, I'm sure he had the final say in these matters. But we can crap on all we like about the lack of game plans etc etc, we just didnt have the cattle pure and simple.

I posted in another thread the names of more than 60 players recruited over an 18 year period that did not play a single game for the seniors (I think it was closer to 70 but I can't be stuffed counting) - on avearge 3 and a bit recruits a year. This either means that our recruiting was crap or there was a reluctance by Sheedy to develop youngsters into AFL form. I cannot say which.

In terms of the performance post 2000, I recon that the EFC Directors need to share some of the blame here as they inserted the KPI of top 8 into Sheed's contract. This was one element that influenced list management over the last few years - especially in picking up recycled experienced players rather than bringing very young players through the ranks (eg re-recruiting Allesio and the stream of discards from Carlton). There was also the small issue of the AFL punishments for the salary cap breaches.

Finally - some of the recruiting in Sheedy's latter years seemed to be more about presenting a personal challenge to the coach rather than building another team for a 2-3 year GF dominance (eg wanting the first NZ player or recruiting players with known discipline problems).

Time to move on -


Cheers - STI

[ealesy]

Um don't just blamne Sheeds, blame the f****** boards that gave him total control over the Football Department.

I mean due to that we ended up with a recruitment manager who also had a match day role, so most weekends instead of watching junior talent he was at the f****** MCG, or Telstra Dome, or Subi, or Footy Park or every the f*** else we were playing. Not really fair to blame him for our recruitment problems we could not focus on that role. Look at the much better performance we had with the recuritment of players once Dudoro was released from having a match day role and could just focus on recruitment.

He was also hamstrung by the fact that Sheeds essentially recurited whoever the f*** he wanted, for whatever the f***** up reason he wanted (Daniel McAllister- because he wanted to coach a Maori). No wonder our recruiting was so piss poor.

But it was just recruitment. It was support staff as well. John Quinn got an extra 8 clubs at the year after he did anything meaningful (fixing James Hird), in that time we had a ridiculous injury list....high performance manager my arse. He was comfortable in the knowledge though that he had a job for as long as he wanted while James Hird and Sheedy were still at the club. There gone and the end of 2007, he's out the door at the end of 2008.

All in all Sheedy management of the list might have been shocking from 2001 onwards, but the Board played a massive role in giving the Sheedy complete control of the Footy Department.

[Windy_Hill]

He was also hamstrung by the fact that Sheeds essentially recurited whoever the f*** he wanted, for whatever the f***** up reason he wanted (Daniel McAllister- because he wanted to coach a Maori). No wonder our recruiting was so piss poor.

Or Kepler Bradley as he wanted to coach the first Giraffe to play footy

[dom_105]

Nobody will be ever able to convince me otherwise that it was anything but our recruiting from 97 to 02 that resulted in what happened between 04 and 07. I dont care care who the coach was, when you get it wrong so many times in the first two rounds, you are going to pay the price down the track. It's no coincidence that in the second half of the decade, we did a much better job in this area, and are starting to see the rewards for this. Is it Sheedy's fault? Probably, I'm sure he had the final say in these matters. But we can crap on all we like about the lack of game plans etc etc, we just didnt have the cattle pure and simple.

That's a line of thinking that I have perpetuated in the past.

In the period between 99 and 01, we recruited 25 guys through the three drafts. Out of those 25 only two players are still at Essendon (Hille and Welsh), and only two more are still getting a game at AFL level (Ted Richards and Jordan Bannister). Discounting Salmon and Barnes, for obvious reasons, the only other player out of those 25 that had anything above a half-decent career at AFL level is Peverill.

Yeah, we were never getting top 5 draft picks, but 2 out of 25 is pretty shit recruiting work.

[MH_Bomber]

Or Kepler Bradley as he wanted to coach the first Giraffe to play footy

Funnily enough Kepler is starting to look okay over there at Fremantle. Perhaps he was just too raw to be playing senior footy in his time at Bomberland.

We had guys like Hird and Lloyd in the side that must have been paid big contracts circa 2001 along with that crazy 5 year deal to Mark Mercuri. I still cant believe we lost Heffernan, Blumfield and Cara but I remember many aspersions were cast about their value on this very forum. Their form had been spasmodic throughout 2002.

I found this piece from Esssendon;

http://www.essendonfc.com.au/news/email-trade.html

I think the worst recruiting move was Shane Zantuck. That was a disgrace.

We lost Mercuri, Misiti, Barnard and Wellman all too quickly and Sheedy seems to be trying to fill their loss with experienced players like Camporeale and Mal Michael. When you compare our ability to keep our 2000 group together with the current Geelong side - its truly is lamentable. However a lot of our guys I think were older in 2000 than than their lot were in 2007.

[s'dreams]

Or Kepler Bradley as he wanted to coach the first Giraffe to play footy



Funnily enough Kepler is starting to look okay over there at Fremantle. Perhaps he was just too raw to be playing senior footy in his time at Bomberland.

Or perhaps he wasn't being played in the positions he should have been (backline ??? OMG)

I think the worst recruiting move was Shane Zantuck. That was a disgrace.

Heheheheh ... there's a long list of dud recruits from about this time ... my fave is Cole - for all the angst in here about the snacking habits of Laycock and Neagle, RC took the cake... and the after dinner mints, and the pavlova and the choccies ...

Cheers - STI