Did Scott Watters...

[dragit]

I was just correcting Dragit's assertion that Watters did not leave out any decent, experienced players this year.

Cheers BC, but I don't think you really corrected me… Injuries meant that kids had to be played, Watters wasn't holding back many old hands to play kids.

[mr six o'clock]

Think they had similar plans to last year, try and sneak in the 8 whilst blooding kids half baked again! But early losses was what changed the focus. Look at the team rd 1. Not many kids. And to be honest I don't think any knocked the door down hard enough to demand selection anyways. The signals from coach and players were mixed for a 6-8 week period. Not until it was turning into a stinker of a season did the focus change solely to blooding youth whilst trying stay competitive. I guess it was tough for a young coach to shift that amongst the playing group filled with battle scarred veterans. Once it became clear to everyone, playing group included, that there was no clinging to that great generation, I think the public direction/message was a lot clearer. For me this was actually a turning point, and now it's full steam ahead towards building a new nucleus that will take us back to he finals...weather watters or any of the golden age generation are still playing when that happens again, time will tell...but it's begun...early this season, not 24 months ago as watters loves telling people

Rd 1 team had seven players with under 50 games experience
as well as armo , jack , jarryn and reece with under 75 !

[seano1]

when you step out of your under 10`s coaching position and put on hard hat of truth...WTF do you think he would do half the back line out to injury, a bunch of kids who had no game time in them when he got here to judge if they could make it and unlike Geelong who have a VFL side playing a similar game style so their young guys could slip straight into the main side.
Look at Gold Coast -GWS plenty of good kids that needed game time to see how they will go and learn to play in the big league .Our young guys have put in as best they can and he may have thrown them around in positions to see what fits where as many other teams do and it will take time .Nothing wrong in him being honest in his approach he is just the caretaker for the moment trying to make the future brighter for this club.

[bigcarl]

all 3 would be lucky to get a game at about 14 other clubs, so it's not a big call to choose a kid over them.

I disagree with that. All three were regulars in sides that played three consecutive Grand Finals. Only Blake is over 30. One of the aforementioned beat the best player in the competitiion pointless a fortnight ago.

[saintsRrising]

I don't think that he could have anticipated our massive injury run this year. This will have accelerated the number of games for our youth played, but has also meant that we lost more games this year tan we may have otherwise won.

However this year I believe was Pelchen's call, and not SWs/

IMO the moment that we hired Pelchen we have been in rebuild mode. When Watters was hired he will have been told this. Watters did not join us to win a flag straight away, but rather to have be part of the rebuild.

As we were in rebuild mode in the lead up to this season, we were content to let BJ, with is high salary demands, go. Our eye has been on the future, rather than this years win/loss ratio.

If they were really worried about this years results we would have picked up a fullback last year. Instead we were content to wait for the right deal and or player.

[desertsaint]

Thought early on the focus was much more on development and getting a good draft pick. Once we couldn't lose that third pick we went on a winning streak that is likely to last until mid march!