Completely different situation. Gotch never had to start a club from scratch. He had ready made VFL players who knew each other, and Gotch never even had to be there at the teething stages of the Collingwood/Williamstown allignment which if my memory serves me correct went to the then Williamstown coach Andrew Bews.jack_spain wrote:Don't get me wrong, I would never criticise Gavin Brown as a person who has the best interests of Collingwood at heart. We all know he bleeds black and white! If the players could take a leaf out of his playing book they would be a VFL powerhouse. Rowdy has a heart as big as the MCG. I am just not sure that Browny at this stage in his coaching career is capable of doing the job that Brad Gotch did so successfully (for us) at Williamstown.Johnson#26 wrote:I was more or less referring to the criticism of Brown and the structure/direction of the VFL side, not so much players in particular.
Still, I hope he and the boys (and most of them are just that, kids) all learn through the struggles this year. As I've said before, I don't mind us losing the VFL games if the boys are showing real development. It's just at the moment, that development (for Reid and Dawes especially) seems to be taking a lot longer than we expected.
At this stage i'm not worried about Dawes, is he a world beater, no, is he showing signs of improvement in all areas of his game, i'd say yes, not speedy but it's there. As i've said a million times, after the knee reco last year it's his first full season at even VFL level.
This has been said ad nauseum also but I look at Brown last year who played in the Gotch led Williamstown side and he showed no visible signs of improving on his deficiencies as the year went on. Comparing those two and there starts in their first full VFL seasons i'd have Dawes ahead of Nathan Brown at the same stage. And we know what happened this year.
He's not setting the world alight at this stage, but I certainly wouldn't put him in the same bracket as Billy Morrison and/or Tristan Walker just yet. And to say he would have done better at Williamstown under brad Gotch is a fruitless argument, because the fact of the matter is we will never know and I could just as easily say he wouldn't have done any better and could be just as right as you because essentially we are taking a guess.
