One COULD argue that at present McGrath, Saad, Fanta have indigenous like spped and evasiveness so that we are filling other needs atm
Better shut the whole site down then.
Silly thing to say, particularly from a regular and passionate poster such as yourself.
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Seems a sensible approach and application of resources… higher percentage than scatter-gun plucking kids from relative obscurity via the rookie draft…
Man disagrees with draft selection, cries “racist”.
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When Eades was drafted I remember feeling like the club was getting back to its authentic self.
I care that Eades didnt succeed as a player and that he’s in trouble as a young man. But I care more that we gave him the opportunity in the first place.
Whether or not there’s a systemic or people lead issue at the club in relation to recruiting Indigenous players, the fact is that we’re poorer for not having more on the list.
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No one is saying you’re ■■■■, but there has to be more to it than just not picking a player because he is aboriginal. I just cant believe that the club would say “don’t pick any indigenous players”.
Were there any aboriginal kids who were HBF who can play through the midfield back in 2008-2010?
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I was glad we took the risk with Eades in the end it backfired but it was a risk at the end of the draft.
Same as GAch Nyuon was a risk, but he was next best u18 ruck at the time, just didnt translate to vfl level
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Having a discussion is fine but this is not what this is about. Ben started this because he allegedly has inside info that he and HM and some others allegedly know. They want to change the culture of the club, not discuss what that culture is. Starting a thread in this forum isn’t going to change diddly-squat.
I have no issue with ranting about stuff in general but this isn’t what they are trying to do.
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I’m not claiming to have any inside info. I DON’T have any inside info, or any well-connected contacts in the club, or anything like that. All I have is a pretty solid understanding of the past decade or so of drafts and the ability to do some basic maths.
The inferences I’ve drawn are entirely my own.
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Fair enough, that’s not how your earlier posts sound to me but maybe i just read it that way because of some things Ben said.
I agree we haven’t been strong on drafting Indigenous kids but i don’t see a conspiracy around it.
In fact what I am seeing is the club realising something isn’t working there and taking steps to remedy that with the whole Tiwi Bombers setup.
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I agree with Humble and Benfti we have been a bit risk averse in picking indigenous talent. Which is surprising given how supporters have got behind Tippa.
Maybe we need to see what Port Adelaide are doing?
No disrespect, as I don’t know you, but diversity can become tokenism. What the goal should be is offering opportunity and not filling quotas.
Talent needs to be nurtured and developed, but the Footy club is about winning games and putting the best boys on the park. Develop a strong Tiwi Academy
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using tippas story as a negative in any way is just fkg sad.
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FWIW I was thoroughly unimpressed with the eades pick simply because I didn’t think he was a particularly good player and I thought picking him up meant we’d bypass Tippa again.
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And great leadership skills
I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record on this, but I wish people would stop with the ‘we should be picking best available’ or ‘put the best players on the park’ or ‘its about winning games’ line as an argument that Ben etc is overreacting or I’m just being politically correct or whatever.
I WANT us to pick ‘best available’ and all that stuff. And I don’t think we’re doing that, because (for whatever reason) we consistently overlook talented indigenous kids. There is no binary choice between ‘pick indigenous’ and ‘pick best available’, as I’ve talked about several times in this thread already. It’s all about risk profiling.
Also, when it comes to ‘best available’ and the club being about winning games, do I need to point out how much more successful we were as a club under Sheedy when we were routinely giving these blokes a chance? Of course other factors were involved too, but you can’t deny the correlation…
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Need to do more than that.
Need to develop an holistic Tiwi academy that provides prospects and their families with an education that is culturally sensitive and also prepares them for life away from home.
It needs to provide education, cultural support, transition planning, high performance education (diet, lifestyle, etc.), leadership development. Prepare the family for life with their son / daughter? in the city playing footy or dor a leadership role in their community.
Not only would we be making the best use of our zone, we would also be genuinely contributing to the development of the Tiwi community.
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How about the period of time from 2001- Pre whenever our white only policy started and we had NLM, Jetta, Ryder, Dempsey, Lovett, Anthony Long, Davey, Dean Rioli getting constant game time and we sucked absolute donkeys balls?
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I didn’t say anything about filling quotas or having x amount of indigenous players on our list.
And if you think that diversity is tokenist then you truely don’t understand its meaning.
I’ll tell you about tokenism; it’s playing in an indigenous blockbuster match and having 1 indigenous player in your team.
It’s entitled people born into privileged families, using one person, they took a chance on, as an example of how they don’t segregate against minority’s.
Tokenism is getting defensive when someone questions your practices and policies of being more inclusive.
I am literally shocked that something as simple as asking the question about inclusiveness and diversity can lead to such defensiveness. This includes club, supporters and Board members. This should be common practice.
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Also Bacchus, you mention “filling quotas”, as far as I can recall neither HM or Benfti have alluded to anything like quotas. That’s a rhetorical tactic most often employed by your nemeses on the right, unbefitting a solid Labor man. Stark shortfall in percentages over an estimable period in contrast with other clubs, yes, quotas I don’t think so.
FWIW, which is very little, I’d give the club another couple of years to see where they’re truly at. The saga can’t be discounted, it’s a massive anomaly.