Geelong, cough,

Geelong IMO are no question the best team in the SEABL. There must be however some big issues. I don't get the Theron Wilson bit - he seems out of favour, but the public offering is he is an NBL level import.

Last year G-Town will say the Kimmani Barrett injury cost them a Championship, what is it this year?

You have to look at the coach. The Geelong coach was out-coached last night by a superior coach. The Geelong coach is fortunate in that his club cqan recruit players. He is an average coach for that league

Yeah but outside of their "Big 3" of Mercer, Wilson and Herbert they are really rounded out by role players anyhow. Perhaps the mix of Mercer and Wilson doesn't work which seems likely. Geelong does need to retire Loader and find a more genuine quality big.

I second the comment above. Representing your country multiple times in World Championships and being on a SILVER MEDAL winning staff outweighs and pales anything that he will ever achieve within the SEABL competition.

Even then, as stated above, he already has a championship ring !!

Because he was an assistant coach once at the junior worlds, it means for the rest of his life - he officially cannot be outcoached

Well let's look at some SEABL East facts from last weekend shall we?

Dandenong played very well and are an excellent side, they did win the conference last year after all. They shot well and worked to their strengths.

Geelong came together with a very new team this year and although would be shattered losing at home, they will be better next year. All season it has been consistency with this team, something that ultimately hurt them in the end IMO!

Both coaches are first rate coaches, they are tactically very, very good and put together enormous pre-game efforts in careful preparation, one has to lose and one goes on next week. Sometimes your plan works and sometimes it doesn't, that's sport isn't it?

No need to throw any babies out with the bath water here, the Supercats will bounce back and I am sure will be there abouts again next year, good luck to the Braves and Rangers next week...

Jamie O'Loughlin's team won the All-SEABL Championship in his first year as head coach, and made the conference grand final in 2011 and 2012. He and his coaching staff are responsible for the recruitment of players, so I would think all credit for that needs to go to him, not the club - especially on the very tight budget that is set. Geelong have had a history of recruiting some great players to the league the last few years - Muhammad, Bullock, Pichon, Mercer.

The game on Saturday night wasn't pretty, Geelong didn't seem to play their normal game and could not get a shot to drop - Dandenong on the other hand played extremely well and were hitting everything.

Players get the glory when they win, coaches get the blame when they lose! Finishing the season on three losses is certainly not what was expected but to think that the head coach should be let go because of the way they bowed out of the finals is a pretty ridiculous statement.

Great game by Montreal and the rest of the Rangers and should be an exciting match up next week against Bendigo.

Geelong choked and got beat...it happens and Dandy have been a sleeper all year for mine. If Bendigo don't bring it they will get them too!...but if DQ/Lewis combo misfires they will struggle.

On Jamie, he is an arrogant bloke/coach who isn't great at some of the relationship and peer engagement mentioned and he needs to get better there for sure..thats part of his growth as a coach. He has been very lucky with his teams and the depth of talent and financial resources at his disposal compared to most of the comp, but in saying this as a coach he still gets them to compete every year, so he does a good job...I would like to see him coach a struggling team though to see how he would go..I would think he would do ok...just OK!

To call to sack him though would be dumb...the players lost the game and were outplayed on the last few games, perhaps they got ahead of themselves a fraction...and this is a coaches nightmare and job to manage.
The Cats were always in trouble for a finals run given their spread of P/T over the season was great and all carried the load, BUT many never were able to get WEEKLY reps at being in takover mode in big games to build confidence in their individual games..The coaching staff probably needed to shorten the rotation coming into finals...not sure why Friend or Loader played as much and Wilson off the bench??..they could have gone much more with the smaller lineup with Wilson and Cannon and this would have been the lineup to beat...with Medhead/Loads/Friend off the pine.

Dont feel sorry for them, they will re-load and be a threat again..the cheque book will come out.

I do also love though that Beth Davis can't carry on anymore about Geelong (they are out Beth..NO TITLES!)...I still see she had her two bobs worth as per usual here. She loves hanging it on other teams and comments strongly and wrongly at times in her posts and articles..lol, so she needs to take her lumb here from people who are allowed opinions as well...she isn't the only one with permission to critique the league.

Happy holidays Supercats!!

I definitely have a bias towards Geelong, that's no secret, but my opinions are just that - my opinions! I feel I've been quite fair to most teams this year. My "two bobs worth" was pretty much saying exactly what you did - that the players lost the game and calling for Coach O'Loughlin to be sacked is ridiculous.

I've had one foot on the Bendigo bandwagon all year (believe me, not an easy thing for a Geelong supporter to admit! :)) and will say that now Geelong are out of contention I'm hoping for a Braves win.

I don't think that I carry on about Geelong too much, I just like to correct facts where possible, some facts are correctable, and some are just opinion that no matter how much you argue about it you're never going to get anywhere, so there's not really much point!

The one thing that always amuses me though is that people seem to think Geelong have all these financial resources at their disposal - simply not the case.

Spot on Beth, I would ignore most of the pointless rants from an anon post.

Geelong,Mt Gambier and Bendigo have the most talent in SEABL but unfortunately Geelong didnt fire in the last two weeks. They have done very well in the playoffs previously so i dont think Jamie would be losing any sleep.I find it very surprising that Geelong only pay their imports.Role players at other clubs get at least 3k which covers there expenses so i would very surprised if they didnt get paid something.

So The facts have we learnt from
This post ?

- Jamie is arrogant, but has proven he can coach talent and ego's (which is definitely hard to do)
- Beth loves Geelong

What are people's genuine thoughts on mt gambier ? Can they get the job done? They seem to be the lucky team that is flying under the radar

Anon you just answered your own question as to why they are lucky..

Geelong (and bendigo) clearly had/have weight on their shoulders to perform well this year.
Pioneers have spent big - yet still fly under the radar. The under dog tag is a great thing to have come finals

I'm not a SEABL representative, nor do I claim to be a journalist - which is why I can pretty much say whatever I want! Lol

I'm just an occasional blog writer, trying to get some more exposure for the league and I'm very appreciative of AndTheFoul.Net for allowing me to publish what is essentially my opinions of the SEABL this year. I don't vote on the formal league players of the week, I don't vote on the players of the month - so any time I suggest MY player of the week, it's purely my own opinion.

And I do always post as myself, under my own name, so my opinions and comments are well documented and never hidden behind an anonymous alias!

I wish I had a dollar for every time I read that someone's opinion was that a coach/player was arrogant!

So often arrogance is confused or mistaken for confidence...

Basketball coaches at the highest levels need one thing above all else, that is confidence, please don't confuse yourself any longer anon posters with misguided judgements, it's poor behaviour (Trolling).

Journalists get paid don't they? When I start selling my articles, I'll add journalist to my resume :)

Christ, can't we just be happy that we've got someone who cares enough about the league to feed followers interesting match write-ups and comments, whatever the bias entailed? Talk about being precious Anonymous..

Perhaps we should make sure that no one with an affiliation to any SEABL clubs posts on this site to avoid comments with bias. Otherwise, get over it! Beth has declared that she's not representing an official SEABL opinion - so let it slide!

You do a really good job Beth and you do your bit for the love of the game.Done many years of media and never been paid a cent.Lots of freebies though :)

Write up after a loss like that on the Supercats web site says a fair bit about the character of the coach and the status of the team IMO...

No arrogance there, very down to earth and fair on all sides I would think!