Getting excited!!

[Dyer Disciple]

Getting back to the orginal topic. Yes I am more excited than I have been for years at this time of the season, which is to say I am cautiously optimistic.

I'm also enjoying how pumped my fellow Tiger supporters are (a few misery guts on PRE aside). It's nice to have a buzz around the club about finals for a change rather than priority draft picks.

Hell yeah.

 

[Phar Ace]

Hell yeah.

I'll second that!

 

[McMurphy]

I'm excited! The last few years our pre-season games have been awful. I'll never forget that game at Geelong where Tuck was in the ruck...ouch.

However, this year with some of the kids pushing through and the arrival of St Ben, well bugger me, I am stoked!

Cya all there!

Go tigers! :clap

 

[B1 and B2]

I'm pumped too, will be even more so if we get off to a solid start over the first 5 or 6 rounds in the real stuff.

B1

 

[Inspector]

I'm also pretty sure that Hawthorn won the premiership last year and we finished out of the eight. That round 20 (and I was there) was a match that Hawthorn didn't need to win having already secured their place in the top four and that they played like it. Likewise I'm pretty confident that our record against teams in the top eight last year was by and large pretty bad. And I also remember that Geelong match where the cats only needed to play one quarter of football to blow us away and then coasted for the rest of the match (in fact if memory serves me correctly they thrashed us twice in the end). Moores performances against Buddy, yes they were credible but he was helped a hell of a lot by Franklin leaving his kicking boots at home. If he had bought them along in the first match in particular it would have been a very different story (and will be when he does eventually bring those boots along).

But whatever, you can select an individual game, take it apart and make whatever point you want. Bottomline is that we are middling side (one of about 10 or so you can throw a blanket over) if we don't have injuries to key personel, a potential bottom 4 side if we do. Our elite is old, our rucks dangerously thin, and our backline is undersized and our power forwards non-existent. Those are some of the things that will stop us winning a premiership. Thinking that we can do a Hawthorn or Geelong at this stage of our developement is stretching optimism to breaking point. I hope you are right, but I won't be holding my breath for it.

Are you ok do you need a hug? Bloody hell this is football not rocket science it's about passion & emotion if a side is up on the day & the other is slightly off no matter the side they can get beaten hence the Hawks beating the Cats the Pies thrashing the Cats etc if Richo had his kicking boots on we also would have won alot more games over the years he wouls have kick almost 1000 goals he didn't have his kicking boots on because we didn't allow him the space to he was kicking them from the wrong side of the ground it's called smart football Buddy no matter what will get his hands on the footy because they go to him so much if you can make him lead to the right side of the ground he is not as effective & limit his ark that he kicks in. You can't deny that Deledio Cotchin Foley Moore Thursfield McGuane Raines Riewoldt Vickery Edwards Tambling White Morton all have talent whether it will come to fruition or not only time will tell but they are all young & not aging the only aging players we have are Richardson Brown Johnson Cousins Simmonds & Bowden of which Brown Cousins Johnson Simmonds & Bowden are 30 to 31 with at least a few years of good footy ahead of them.

Sydney have had an old side for years & have played in 2 grand finals & not missed a finals for a while Brisbane were not spring chickens when they won you need a good mix of youth & experience which we have I'm not saying we will win the flag in 2009 but you would expect us to improve finishing 9th winning 8 of 11 making finals is not a stretch & that is exciting.

Think you need to lighten up a bit!!

 

[stripes17]

As a kid growing up I always thought we would win.....and most of the time we did. The last 20 or so years have knocked the stuffing out of some of us "older " supporters I want to be excited and dare to dream again, but I must admit, I'm a little scared of disappointment. That sounds soft I know.

Can't imagine what it must be like for people under 30 years who haven't had the bragging rights that we have had. I keep telling my kids that we will be arrogant and feared once more. Hope it doesn't take too much longer!!

 

[hottopic]

Being 21 its been hard not ever having seen any real success out of our great club, but some of the signs at the club are very positive and over the next few years the sleeping giant will awake!! the thought of that is very exciting and theres a legion of fans in my age bracket that will see it for the first time.

 

[Tygrys]

As for the hawks game.Why didnt the Hawks loose their remaining matches considering they had secured a top 2 finish?Oh wait nahhhhhh its much easier to make up a lame excuse rather than give credit where credit is due :.its nearly as lame as Buddy leaving his kicking boots at home :

I'm quite happy to give credit where credit is due. Richmond played very well, Hawthorn played very badly. However the fact remains that last years Hawks at their best were at least a five to six goal better team than Richmond. Certainly if they had bought out their A-game as they did for the grand final the result would have been very different. Positions on the ladder don't lie.

 

[Tygrys]

Are you ok do you need a hug? Bloody hell this is football not rocket science it's about passion & emotion if a side is up on the day & the other is slightly off no matter the side they can get beaten hence the Hawks beating the Cats the Pies thrashing the Cats etc if Richo had his kicking boots on we also would have won alot more games over the years he wouls have kick almost 1000 goals he didn't have his kicking boots on because we didn't allow him the space to he was kicking them from the wrong side of the ground it's called smart football Buddy no matter what will get his hands on the footy because they go to him so much if you can make him lead to the right side of the ground he is not as effective & limit his ark that he kicks in. You can't deny that Deledio Cotchin Foley Moore Thursfield McGuane Raines Riewoldt Vickery Edwards Tambling White Morton all have talent whether it will come to fruition or not only time will tell but they are all young & not aging the only aging players we have are Richardson Brown Johnson Cousins Simmonds & Bowden of which Brown Cousins Johnson Simmonds & Bowden are 30 to 31 with at least a few years of good footy ahead of them.

Sydney have had an old side for years & have played in 2 grand finals & not missed a finals for a while Brisbane were not spring chickens when they won you need a good mix of youth & experience which we have I'm not saying we will win the flag in 2009 but you would expect us to improve finishing 9th winning 8 of 11 making finals is not a stretch & that is exciting.

Think you need to lighten up a bit!!

And I think you need a reality check (and no offence but I'll pass on your offer of a hug) :-X

Anyhow lust a few points

1. Passion and emotion will only get you so far. Hawthorn and Geelong didn't play off in the grand final because they had more passion and emotion than the other clubs. They had the deepest lists, the best balanced sides and the frankly simply most talent. Structure (especially in terms of a spine), a coherent draft stradegy, refusing to take short-cuts, depth etc - those are the things that will get you into the finals and ultimately win you premierships. Those depending on the power of positive thought to win a premiership (which you seemed to claiming is a posibility - at least in terms of what's left of the playing careers of Brown and Cousins) will have a long wait. You can have the most motivated playing group imaginable, but it doesn't matter in the end, it's about the cattle - and as I have pointed out in my previous post at present we don't have them in too many critical areas. And with the Gold Coast coming in, it could be a very long time before we do.

2. Buddy missed some sitters especially during our first encounter true or false? (to be honest this is all kind of periphera. Again I just found it amazing that you would use Hawthorn as an example that we too could acheive premiership in the near future. The fact is they did the hard yards and went for the full rebuild in 2004, something that we publicly rejected, the reason at the time being we wanted to 'reward our senior player by playing finals football as soon as possible'. We still have significant catching up to do).

3. Not overly critical about about the list of talented youth you have nominated. But are they anything outstanding or simply comparable to a core of talented youngster that many clubs have at the present moment (and that's the problem - to quote everyones favourite whipping boy Dermott Bereton - every club has a sizeable core of young promising players whose fans draw attention to and whose praises they sing - the question though is as a group is there anything about them that makes them standout or special, so they don't just keep pace with the youngsters at the other clubs but actually outstrip them?) Only Deledio and Foley are elite (although Cotchin unless something happens will surely rank beside them). Vickery is too early to tell (as is the case of a number of other players, such as Rance for example), and the rest are for the most part what Jack Dyer would describe as good ordinary footballers (and don't take that as an insult - being a 'good ordinary player' is not a bad thing to be). Just because they aren't obvious duds doesn't mean however they are going to be part of a dynasty.

4. Like it or not Simmonds, Richardson, Brown, Bowden and Cousins are old (as for Johnson he should have retired at the end of last year but that's another story). Again you claim they have at least a few good years not because of any objective reasoning but because you simply want them to have those years. No matter the vast majority of players at other clubs retire around this age or at least have considerably deminished output. Again you could be right on all counts, but it's highly unlikely. And of course if you are wrong they are going to leave a considerable hole, our win/losses last year would have looked very sick without them last year.

5. You are right about the mixture of youth and experience in the case of Brisbane and Sydney however in terms of it's applicability to Richmond see point 1. True we won a lot of matches in the second half, but whenever we played quality (with the exception of that Hawthorn match) we were trounced. Again the glass is still very much half empty and there is no guarantee of finals.

Anyhow not sure how I got into all this (and this is my final contribution on this thread on this subject - life is too short!). Sorry for attempting to rain on your parade - enjoy your optimism. Again hoping you are right and I am wrong...