Coach Simpson’s final years - What went wrong
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The unacceptable, conditional effort/work ethic woes are mostly Simmo. That to me is our biggest problem
As it's in the past I can and will raise a few details.
1. Soft cap change affected the club much more severely than any other. The club was used to spending a certain amount on support staff to get good staff and a lot were overpaid relative to the industry
2. Rule changes. They were brought in to try and open up play but the stand and 5 metre rule in particular greatly closed up space further up field that the gamestyle was reliant upon to be successful.
3.Covid and the playing group. Now a lot is talked negatively about the players and team however when the players went over to the hub they were initially told it would be for a couple of weeks which is what they agreed to. When that changed to 6 weeks they were very pissed off. When the AFL came out and said it could be longer they basically lost the plot. Nisbett to his credit actually said to the AFL if the hub wasn't finished by that time the club was leaving anyway. It was a show of strength by both Nisbett and Simpson but by then the damage had been done. The playing group was fractured
4. There was a stage whereby the club went 15 (1999-2014) straight years of big hits in either the first or early second round (discounting the compromised 2011-2012 drafts). Since then it has been an absolute shitfight. I would like to think 2021 wasn't a bad year considering I didn't have a say in the first pick but our second and third picks were mine. This was when I was the lead scout for Perth and SW WA.
5. The club failed to identify and develop elite kicks out of defence in time to cover for the retirements of Hurn, Lecras and Jetta. (Lecras likely could have played on for 2 years in defence but chose retirement) Jetta was seen as the head of the disenfranchised players and was delisted, I still believe this to be a mistake and even with injuries think he should have had another 1 or 2 years in him. He was worth the list spot even if it was only for 10-12 games a year.
Also some background information. When you draft or trade unless you are trading for the next year or 2 to push for a premiership you are doing so for 5-10 years in the future. When you AFL comes in and moves the goal posts some of those players you've drafted that may well have been success stories are no longer suited to the way the game is being changed.
Now people can blame Simmo all they want however a lot of these changes were completely unheralded, unable to be planned for and Covid hurt. Simpson tried to implement the new game plan going all the way back to late 2021 but the cattle were just never there for it to be refined or succeed. It's not like he didn't try and change or move with the times. He also copped a beating by the media and never put it on anyone other than himself. He showed tremendous courage and grit and stuck fat when the club needed him to.
So to all those who blame Simmo for everything all I can say is get ****ed. Yes it was his time to move on but while i'm still of the opinion that Buckley coached the pies out of the 2018 grand final, the club still had to win it, do so from 5 goals down and got the job done. In reality it should have been a 5 goal+ win and if the game went on longer the pies were falling apart.
So thank you Adam Simpson. It was time to move on but you are a legend at 2 different clubs and should be treated as such.
1. Soft cap change affected the club much more severely than any other. The club was used to spending a certain amount on support staff to get good staff and a lot were overpaid relative to the industry
2. Rule changes. They were brought in to try and open up play but the stand and 5 metre rule in particular greatly closed up space further up field that the gamestyle was reliant upon to be successful.
3.Covid and the playing group. Now a lot is talked negatively about the players and team however when the players went over to the hub they were initially told it would be for a couple of weeks which is what they agreed to. When that changed to 6 weeks they were very pissed off. When the AFL came out and said it could be longer they basically lost the plot. Nisbett to his credit actually said to the AFL if the hub wasn't finished by that time the club was leaving anyway. It was a show of strength by both Nisbett and Simpson but by then the damage had been done. The playing group was fractured
4. There was a stage whereby the club went 15 (1999-2014) straight years of big hits in either the first or early second round (discounting the compromised 2011-2012 drafts). Since then it has been an absolute shitfight. I would like to think 2021 wasn't a bad year considering I didn't have a say in the first pick but our second and third picks were mine. This was when I was the lead scout for Perth and SW WA.
5. The club failed to identify and develop elite kicks out of defence in time to cover for the retirements of Hurn, Lecras and Jetta. (Lecras likely could have played on for 2 years in defence but chose retirement) Jetta was seen as the head of the disenfranchised players and was delisted, I still believe this to be a mistake and even with injuries think he should have had another 1 or 2 years in him. He was worth the list spot even if it was only for 10-12 games a year.
Also some background information. When you draft or trade unless you are trading for the next year or 2 to push for a premiership you are doing so for 5-10 years in the future. When you AFL comes in and moves the goal posts some of those players you've drafted that may well have been success stories are no longer suited to the way the game is being changed.
Now people can blame Simmo all they want however a lot of these changes were completely unheralded, unable to be planned for and Covid hurt. Simpson tried to implement the new game plan going all the way back to late 2021 but the cattle were just never there for it to be refined or succeed. It's not like he didn't try and change or move with the times. He also copped a beating by the media and never put it on anyone other than himself. He showed tremendous courage and grit and stuck fat when the club needed him to.
So to all those who blame Simmo for everything all I can say is get ****ed. Yes it was his time to move on but while i'm still of the opinion that Buckley coached the pies out of the 2018 grand final, the club still had to win it, do so from 5 goals down and got the job done. In reality it should have been a 5 goal+ win and if the game went on longer the pies were falling apart.
So thank you Adam Simpson. It was time to move on but you are a legend at 2 different clubs and should be treated as such.
You're so full of shit
DorothyG
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100% agree but the 2022/2023 he just literally did not have the availability of players to drop underperforming older stars.
Remember Aaron Black getting a call up from the Falcons?
Again, I'm not saying Simmo is blame free, every single person at the club needs to take responsibility, but you can't pin it all 100% on Simmo
Definitely not 100% blame
I've posted this previously. At the end of a pregame presser, I think before the Melbourne away game, Simpson was asked about list management and I am sure he said something like he couldn't say too much because he was on the list management committee. If thats true well, he has a lot to answer for.
You can't take 2018 away, ---I was at the GF and it was awesome and I am forever thankful to Simmo for that. The flipside is that, IMHO, I think Simmo has had a huge part to play in the demise of the club incluing inability to move on from a redundant game plan, repeated mistakes in team selection, lack of exposing the list, lack of player development, dropping young players after good performances and the constant selection of underperforming players.
What isn't Simpson's fault is the stand alone WAFL team experiment which has been and continues to be a complete and utter failure for player development.
You can't take 2018 away, ---I was at the GF and it was awesome and I am forever thankful to Simmo for that. The flipside is that, IMHO, I think Simmo has had a huge part to play in the demise of the club incluing inability to move on from a redundant game plan, repeated mistakes in team selection, lack of exposing the list, lack of player development, dropping young players after good performances and the constant selection of underperforming players.
What isn't Simpson's fault is the stand alone WAFL team experiment which has been and continues to be a complete and utter failure for player development.
Carbine Chaos
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From what I've heard, his mentality post-2018 was very much the top end of our list was going to carry the club forward, leading to a fair neglection of the fringes of the list.
Think we saw the impact of that complete lack of depth when the injuries hit. But the level that we suffered would have broken basically any club, let's be real.
With that in mind, the perfect storm we've witnessed can't come down on the shoulders of Simmo alone. It's taken everyone working together to achieve the historic lows of the last few seasons. And it's going to take everyone to get us back up.
Think we saw the impact of that complete lack of depth when the injuries hit. But the level that we suffered would have broken basically any club, let's be real.
With that in mind, the perfect storm we've witnessed can't come down on the shoulders of Simmo alone. It's taken everyone working together to achieve the historic lows of the last few seasons. And it's going to take everyone to get us back up.
thebutterflyeffect
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Lolol can't believe this thread exists. Simmo bloody won us our fourth flag...and we were not the best team that year. It's bloody hard to win a premiership, especially from the West...just ask Freo.
And left us in tatters lolol...teams like Essendon and St Kilda are in tatters...not good enough to challenge, not bad enough to draft list changers.
Simmo won us a premiership and netted us Harley Reid. Add that to Ginbey, Hewett, Long, Hough and whoever we draft this year and we are stockpiling some pretty good talent. If Elijah and Ginbey come on, Reid continues his trajectory and we secure a few decent trades / free agents we might bounce back quicker than most think.
And left us in tatters lolol...teams like Essendon and St Kilda are in tatters...not good enough to challenge, not bad enough to draft list changers.
Simmo won us a premiership and netted us Harley Reid. Add that to Ginbey, Hewett, Long, Hough and whoever we draft this year and we are stockpiling some pretty good talent. If Elijah and Ginbey come on, Reid continues his trajectory and we secure a few decent trades / free agents we might bounce back quicker than most think.
Bender_
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Let them have their vent right now.
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The single biggest problem the club is currently facing is the structure of our reserves side.
People will come and go, they’ll make good bad and indifferent decisions, but until we get a solid structure in place for a competitive reserves team, we’ll be a revolving door for player development.
People will come and go, they’ll make good bad and indifferent decisions, but until we get a solid structure in place for a competitive reserves team, we’ll be a revolving door for player development.
Thank you for all that information. It is very helpful in trying to understand what has happened and is still affecting the club and team today.
One thing I don’t understand is why the stand rule had such a strong effect on the team’s method of play.
Other clubs all seemed to be able to adapt and adjust.
The Covid information is very useful. Typical AFL to make demands on the run that most adversely affect the WA teams, probably without first consulting them.
Covid was obviously difficult for everyone, we were all in uncharted waters.
Fremantle did appear to cope with it better. Was that because they were younger?
Was there were no way of restoring group harmony after the fracture? It was good that Nisbett put his foot down.
I wondered why Jetta just disappeared off the scene when he seemed to have more left.
There were a lot of stresses and strains in the Covid period but other clubs seemed to cope with it better.
In fact, WCE seemed to be most adversely hit by it all, even worse than Fremantle.
How was it we were playing WAFL players and they weren’t?
We seemed to be doing a lot of whinging whereas they just got on with the job?
DorothyG
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My completely non factual observations were:
- the playing group had a very large number of young families (a lot more than Freo/other clubs). This complicates things, added to the uncertainty of COVID at the time.
-as others have said already, the AFL asked WC and Freo to up root for a couple weeks only originally, which increased after they got there and the AFL wouldn't give a difinative timeline either.
We actually ballsed up to the AFL and said, nope we are leaving after a certain time however.
-Lets also not forget Nissy asking the members to donate there memberships back to the club (what a slap in the face)
-Some players took pay cuts, and was actually a financial disadvantage for them to be over there
So if you have say, half of the group who really did not want to be there (most likely the older plays with young families at home), there minds/attitudes were not in it from day one, which showed in their game performances, it's easy to see how others in the group would feel a bit pissed off and resentful towards the other group.
I also thing the whole Rioli situation might have added to some animosity amongst some.
I can't blame those who left their young families, just so the AFL wouldn't go broke and we got to watch footy at home. It was majorly uncertain times, no one knew what COVID could become.
But you can also see the other sides point aswell. Like if you were say a 19/20 year old O'Neil who goes over with the right attitude, and doesn't get a game, yet you see senior plays not putting in efforts and getting games. You can understand that too. Footy is a game of trust as well, you need to trust that the other lads on the team are going to do there role/job. If they don't, you lose trust in them and that is a hard thing to gain back.
Also WC COVID crisis game came in the 2022 season, remember WA really didn't have any COVID cases in the initial years until it ripped through the WA population in early 2022, so we whether the storm well for the first interrupted seasons unlike other clubs. When it did it hit hard and took alot of players out at once (something like 14 changes from our round 1 game to 2)
But this is all in the past, we need to own it and move on. I think anyone associated with that period needs to go before we are a threat again. We are on our way, but will take time.
Enjoy the ride, it's just footy after all
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IIRC, there was also a period of time post-2018 where the players became unhappy that they weren't receiving a direct line of communication to the head coach and had to go through line coaches to provide feedback about certain things. Senior players especially became disgruntled by that.
Also, on top of that, there was some internal dissatisfaction post-2018 by assistant coaches who felt they weren't getting enough creative freedom as Simpson wanted to be in control of all areas and wasn't letting go.
Simpson himself spoke about both of these things in a pre-season interview (I think it was a couple of years back) and how he was trying to rectify both issues. Not sure if both were effectively addressed in the end.
Also, on top of that, there was some internal dissatisfaction post-2018 by assistant coaches who felt they weren't getting enough creative freedom as Simpson wanted to be in control of all areas and wasn't letting go.
Simpson himself spoke about both of these things in a pre-season interview (I think it was a couple of years back) and how he was trying to rectify both issues. Not sure if both were effectively addressed in the end.
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That article is trash.
"There were four or five opportunities at the weekend where they could have scored goals and he just wanted to showcase his don't argue."
What a load of hyperbolic rubbish. There were 2 occasions I recall and then another 2 where he made something out of nothing and we did get a goal from it.
It's his first year, he just won the award for best first year player.
I also call bullshit on the "they're not fit enough" claims. This year I would say that's probably not true, seasons gone past yes that was an issue that was made worse by the injury crisis.
Which meant we had guys come back sooner than we wanted and others had to work harder to cover for them and then broke down themselves. It was a horrible cycle.
This year our fitness was reasonable, we stayed in games late or held our own far better than years gone by (somehow no 100 point losses).
We have some shit players but I think they were physically fit enough, I believe it is more of a concentration thing and having players be in the game at every moment, not caught switched off which makes us look slow. All it takes is one player not paying attention for 2 seconds and the game can open up with the overlap.
We're shit, but we were not as bad as North or the Tigers. We probably should have even had another two wins (Kangaroos and Bombers) but 5 wins is a better reflection of how poor we are.
"There were four or five opportunities at the weekend where they could have scored goals and he just wanted to showcase his don't argue."
What a load of hyperbolic rubbish. There were 2 occasions I recall and then another 2 where he made something out of nothing and we did get a goal from it.
It's his first year, he just won the award for best first year player.
I also call bullshit on the "they're not fit enough" claims. This year I would say that's probably not true, seasons gone past yes that was an issue that was made worse by the injury crisis.
Which meant we had guys come back sooner than we wanted and others had to work harder to cover for them and then broke down themselves. It was a horrible cycle.
This year our fitness was reasonable, we stayed in games late or held our own far better than years gone by (somehow no 100 point losses).
We have some shit players but I think they were physically fit enough, I believe it is more of a concentration thing and having players be in the game at every moment, not caught switched off which makes us look slow. All it takes is one player not paying attention for 2 seconds and the game can open up with the overlap.
We're shit, but we were not as bad as North or the Tigers. We probably should have even had another two wins (Kangaroos and Bombers) but 5 wins is a better reflection of how poor we are.
Would love eade and sumich to comment games on their own, without holding back.
Tourette syndrome central! It would be awesome.
Tourette syndrome central! It would be awesome.
No. Soft cap didn’t affect north, who were already broke. That was a pay rise for them.
Rule change - depends where you are in cycle. To say it affects every club lacks depth in analysis.
Half back flanker- oh my god, we tried. Every draft.
kaiserchief13
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He excused poor performances by not dropping players who didn't perform, provided they had credits i.e. not a young player. He ran the list into the ground by not developing any players. He refused to quit as he's a selfish pos and the club wasted the last 2 years because of it.
Yeah was always impressed by Simmo's self sacrifice of not upping stumps and walking away from an extremely lucrative contract.
Actually has inspired me to have a chat to my CEO ......... about how as a manager on a fixed term Contract, I should be applauding me for sticking thick whilst my department metrics show a 90% decline in overall business performance, my staff's performance and morale has plummeted as shown by an engagement survey of 41%, my direct reports seemingly can't do the basics of their jobs and I struggle to attract any seriously talented people to join 'my team' whilst the 'dead wood' just keeps on keeping on, collecting their pay cheques.
I'll let you know how I go, particularly when I also point out that my friends tell me that most of the blame for my department's performance should rest with in order, the CEO's, shareholders, cleaners, bikkie
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Gotta wonder why your CEO would even give you a fixed term contract.
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Do you rely on staff who need to be top 1% in physical performance and you can’t get anyone in until all other companies, who performed worse pick off the talent first. You are left with scraps and you have 30 year old staff members who are retiring, on sick leave and physically no longer can be as productive
Oh and all you can bring in 18 year olds and only a limited number per year.
Let’s see how you go with that in a normal workplace.
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