2000+: The Humiliation and Significance of the Wooden Spoon

[matrix]

It's hard trying to win a flag the honest way.

It's now just bloody hard to win a flag, period. The odds are really stacked up against us now with more teams in the comp. And considering we have just one solitary flag after 120 years in the VFL/AFL comp, the odds will always seem to be stacked up againsr us getting one. It has been such a difficult thing to let go of the disappointment of 2009 and 2010, but I think we are finally laying that to rest. Cannot wait for the next opportunity. The smell of the new optimism is starting to permeate. Can't be all that far away now!

??

in the good old days Flags were bought and paid for...we have a much fairer system now...but every now and again we come up against cheats....I still wonder about the second Granny against the Skunks.

i dont need to wonder
im convinced they had help in the recovery process

couldnt give a s*** about spoons
would diff would two or ten more make when you hold the record anyway
id have another ten if it meant getting a flag
we all would

[Austinnn]

Frankly, I'm surprised at the number of people able to deal with more spoons here. Just a reminder, and I'm not trolling: We have 27.

27 frigging wooden spoons. More than double the next team, North Melbourne. What's one more? I'll tell you. 28 wooden spoons. I can accept that after you have failed, you need to rationalise failure or find a silver lining, (by the way Matrix: I would want more than one bloody flag for 10 more spoons!), but we shouldn't deny, rationalise or minimise our failure, we should learn from it. Those 27 spoons should be hung in the dressing rooms at each game to remind our players what is waiting for us without total commitment, ditto the boardroom, CEO's and coaches offices. We've got enough to spread around.

Also, far worse than one wooden spoon, which is more or less expected these days, is the shame of back to back spoons, which we would have this year if we finish on the bottom.

*STAT ALERT*

Did you know that 3 teams have had back to back spoons in the last 10 years? And did it increase the odds of Carlton, Melbourne or GWS winning a flag? GWS have been helped out with priority picks anyway, not sure you can put it all down to the spoon picks. Melbourne... have been discussed, and Carlton won back to back spoons in 05 and 06. What did they do after that? Nothing.

Our last back to back spoons came in the widely accepted era of failure in the 80s where we won 5 in 6 years. In the 5 years after that, we entered the finals series twice, not making it past the 2nd week in either year. Our next finals and GF were 9 years after that last spoon in 88. Our other back to back spoon periods were 54-55, 47-48, 1909-1910, and 7 in our first 8 years. Without those periods, North would be the leading spooner with 13.

By the way, we aren't the only team to collect a drawer full of spoons upon entry to the big league, North Melbourne collected 8 in their first 15 VFL years, and even the mighty Hawthorn collected 4 in their first 9.

In general, without those terrible periods, it's hard to make a case that we were any more of a spooner/bad team than the average.

8 different teams had collected the spoon since our last spoon, (of course I mean our 2nd last one, the one before last year), including the 3 aforementioned back to backs, and 12 of the 19 teams including Fitzroy have won at least one since 94.

The Saints have only won 2 spoons in the AFL era, including last year's. In the same period we've been in 11 finals series, and 3 GFs not including the 2010 replay. You could say that in the modern era we've been a decent team. Yes, however successful we become we'll never escape our past, but we should at all costs avoid emulating it.







On the other hand, history doesn't record the 2nd worst teams, so I'd be ok with finishing 17th for a couple of years (joke). But we are DONE with back to back spoons, or multiple spoon periods. No more thanks, not even for a flag afterwards.

Also, I totally agree with those saying that one should not link your sense of pride and self esteem with how well one's football team is doing. Nothing more annoying than the arrogant Blues supporters I knew in the Elliott years, how false was their sense of self worth? Built on the shady dealings of a few crims. Nothing more depressing than the lack of self-worth of a beautiful Saints supporter, soaking up the slings and arrows of their club's misfortune taking on a loser mentality, rather than enduring like a soldier and rising above it.