Some seriously rose tinted glasses in here right now
If you can’t be bothered contributing or a least misrepresenting what I was saying and arguing with that, just put a pipe in your mouth and play the group sage I guess…
Ten or eleven years and not a win post season. How’s your explanation for that?
I mean christ back in the day you could have been forgiven for thinking half of the league was playing rugby the way they were defending. The skills of the average player was so low that players like Daniel would shine.
You need only look at the blooper reels from back then, they were something else. Do you remember bloody Kevin Muscat damn near killing a guy in an attempted tackle? These days we get far less of these comical bloopers because the league is improving significantly in technical skill.
Oh and don't for a second think that I'm ragging on the old days. There was a certain uniqueness to the league before it started to improve. I thought it was uniquely kiwi/aussie and a bit scuffed, it was a fun watch with some occasionally good football. Now a days its far easier to enjoy the good football because there is a lot more of it.
While I am not even an armchair expert, my own observation regarding ALM league quality improvement is based on these two factors:
- slow, uneven, but overall noticeable improvement in refereeing quality (we still get howlers, from time to time, but fewer than even just five six years ago); this allows the team with better skills to prevail and not be hacked to death;
- gradual improvement in quality of imports to all ALM teams; and I am not talking about the few big name ones like Del Piero or Fowler who were relatively late in their career but the presence of more numerous solid dependable performers who stayed on for at least several seasons. My list would include our own Taylor, and of course Davila, but also guys like Fornaroli, Thomas Broich, Isaias, and Diego Castro. I will argue that the quality of other players in their teams' first XI will lift either through improvement or through swift replacement.
I am not including factors like "are the game attendances falling" etc because covid, inflation etc are likely to be temporary events, while the quality of the game on the field has progressively improved in my opinion despite these events. Looking forward to others' views on this.
Finally, as an aside, for a different discussion somewhere else:
I see a lot of parallels between Broich and Zawada. Broich spent a few years at Brisbane; Zawada only had a year here so far, so it may be early days to draw that comparison.
Both had very promising early careers, but neither made it to their respective senior national team, yet both produced some exceptional football after arriving here while still very much in their prime. Does it mean that ALM is so poor that they were bound to shine? I for one do not think that way; it may have more to do with less pressure on their place in the team, or perhaps less grueling / shorter / season? I do not know. For some players, ALM may just be the answer, and I hope to see more of them here. Young local players will get better by being around them and we will get better value for our viewing dollar.