Is Buckley coaching better than we think...?

[Mugwump]

^ actually Daffy, we’re not a million miles apart. He has improved, and some of the trade recruiting has been poor, which I put down to him learning the caper. But his big calls - on Daisy, Cloke and Didak - were hard but right when they were made (with Shaw probably poor, on the evidence). And judging from the attitude of his players, there is respect and affection there, which would not be the case if there was a major empathy issue.

The really key thing is that as long as you have the playing group’s belief and loyalty, and a good culture, coaching success is probably 85% talent and 10% tactics, and 5% dumb luck. That’s what Malthouse and Pagan both showed at Carlton.

Buckley’s list is improving. But it needs another couple of A graders either by injection or growth, before Sidebottom and Pendlebury decline.

When the talent is right, the coach will look fine.

[BazBoy]

Hopefully the new assistant,s are contributing to see moves that will work
And suspect NB takes advise on board more readily—that was spoken of when review was tabled

[The Boy Who Cried Wolf]

Maybe @ Mugwump, he certainly has improved but... as long as he's listening to options and exploring them as best he can tactically, although I still have doubts personally. What's also important, as a leader of men (and specially young men), he MUST take on personal responsibility - the buck stops with him (I'll use Jocko Willink @jockowillink ‏on twitter as an example of true leadership and really owning personal responsibility).

A couple of things you mentioned though 1. Daisy - he made his own call, & clearly didn't want to play under Bucks, in hindsight due to the injuries we can say we ended up winning on that one.. but it could have been otherwise - he was a gun and played a brilliant 2010 finals series. As for Malthouse, tactically - I think the difference was he knew our lists limitations and exploited them to the best of his ability - I think we can all agree that by the time he got to Carlton, he had nothing at his disposal and was a burnt out angry man (with some fair reason).

[MatthewBoydFanClub]

[K]

[eddiesmith]

We are 1-2, about to be 1-3 with the 1 being quite possibly the worst team the AFL has seen in a long time and we only beat them by a few goals and people are going to pretend everything is rosy again?

Please, any game plan that involves forwards playing behind their men is not a good one

[Magpietothemax]

Qld, thanks for bringing to our attention this highly interesting analysis from Lyon. I think all supporters are in agreement that the Carlton game did represent a sharp improvement in Bucks' coaching: we saw flexibility and creativity in the forward structure, with different midfielders rotating through there, and Lyon has added to this by pointing out that at the same time Bucks had Reid and Cox on the bench to maximise pace and speed. Everyone observed this, and applaud it. But it has taken Bucks a long time to to achieve this, and in the last few years his coaching has not been characterised by such imagination and daring.
I raised in a previous post that an acquaintance of mine had suggested that Buckley's coaching over the years suggested to him that Bucks was unable to motivate the team, but that the players had to self-motivate instead. Inkling has opposed this by suggesting that in fact we have been extremely competitive under Bucks' tenure, being "in" most of our games. That may be what the stats often indicated, but I think that the enormous gulf between our best play and our worst performances in quality of play and endeavour is what this guy was referring to. Our worst performances were often reserved for games against teams where we were expected to win or at least be very close.
I also don't understand those who are willing to accept poor results "because of the quality of our list". Often, these supporters were a few years back praising the quality of our list. The coach has an enormous hand in selecting the players on the list. If our list is not up to speed, surely Buckley must have some responsibility for this.
While I have definitely observed improvements in the coaching, I am with Wolfie on this. I still harbour major doubts about Bucks' coaching abilities, and I will not be casting them off due to one win against Carlton. I definitely don't believe that Bucks has been coaching well over his entire tenure. He is currently now coaching at his best, but he has had a long time to get there.

[Magpietothemax]

Oh, and also, I agree with Wolfie regarding his emphasis on the necessity for Bucks to accept a common responsibility with his team.
If you watch great coaches like Clarkson, and in my opinion Luke Bevridge is also a great coach, they are willing to accept their own responsibility for the team's performance and back up totally their players in the media. There was one coach fairly recently who, when fronting up to the media after a poor loss by his team, openly acknowledged that his responsibility was to get his team ready for this contest, and he had failed, so he would be reflecting on that as well as analysing the team performance. Unfortunately, I can't remember who said it ( I don't think it was either of the two coaches above), but when I heard it, it stood out so glaringly for me as a contrast from how Bucks responds to the media after losses.
I think that this element, of mutual responsiblity between coaches and team, is as Wolfie says, crucial for steeling the team.

[Magpietothemax]

[K]

[Pep]

To those who say Bucks doesn't take responsibility when we lose when fronting the media, do you not think behind closed doors the coaches say "yep, we set up poorly tonight", or "we got the game plan wrong". And try and fix it for next time we play them, I would say an intelligent coach/coaching team would do this...

We know teams must have plan b and c but normally they are a few positional changes to disrupt the oppositions game plan, by which we have to set up differently from our natural game plan which could do more harm than good...

Coaching these days rely heavily on what plans are in fashion and if you have the players at the time to carry it out...

I think what hurts us the most is that our b grade players who need to carry 1 or 2 tasks a game aren't helping as much as just say the hawks or tigers players are, this could be due to all the injuries or suspensions we seem to have every season or haven't developed as we would of wanted.

[MatthewBoydFanClub]

Basically it's like this. If the team wins then it's the players out on the field who deserve all the credit. The coach just turned up to enjoy the ride.

If the side loses then the coach has to weather all the blame for poor preparation, poor selection, poor game plan, failure to tag, failure to close the game down when up by a small margin, poor ............

That's what leadership is all about.

[think positive]

[K]

^ I fear Carlton will win the Lukosius Cup.

[Presti35]

If, last Friday night, we lost.... They'd be calling for his head. In the press and on here.

This week the focus is on Woosha and on Essendon. Until we stooge up a couple of games we should be winning that is.

So with a win against an opponent that, quite honestly sucks, the heat has come off a little. A win in Adelaide and on Anzac Day would really release some heat.

Buckley hasn't had a lot of luck with injuries in his time as coach. This is true and even the most passionate Bucks hater has to admit this.

I like Bucks. I want him to succeed. But right now he is 71-1-67 from 139 games i charge. I do believe he's become a better mentor and coach since he first took over, and I do believe that the players are behind him now more so then when he came in in 2012.

But the thing is we really need to stop with the honourable losses and start putting the convincing wins on the board.

Until he leads us to the ultimate glory, they'll be doubters.