I wrote a very long post in the draft strategy thread yesterday, but thought I would update to include all of the post Sheedy recruiting and summarise it here, given it shows a very clear pattern which is relevant to our draft picks.
At what draft pick do TAC Cup only players stop paying off compared to players with experience in state leagues?
Going by the AFL draft history (from Wiki) which indicates which club players were drafted from:
ie: recruited from TAC Cup vs Senior Competitions from various State Leagues
(not including players drafted/traded directly from another AFL club)
This lead to the following division:
Out of 65 EFC draft picks from 2007 to 2015:
31 listed as TAC Cup recruits
and
34 from various senior competitions around the country not including the AFL.
Out of these 65 players recruited by EFC since the end of the 2007 season, there are 30 remaining on an AFL list currently:
13 out of 31 listed as coming from the TAC
17 out of 34 from the various State Leagues
I have not included non drafted players or players drafted directly from an AFL club like Goddard, Leuey, Bird and McKernan
13 TAC recruits - all picks were below 30 except the 2 bolded
Parish
Morgan
Langford
Laverde
Zerrett
Daniher
Gleeson Pick 53
Jerrett Pick 31
Heppell
Melksham
Carlisle
Hurley
Zaka
17 State League Recruits - all were 30 or above except the 3 bolded
Francis pick 6
Redman
Brown
Hartley
Walla
Long
Fantasia
Ambrose
Baguley
Hibberd
Jenkins
Colyer pick 26
Howlett
Crameri
Myers pick 6
Hooker
Bellchambers
While it looks a little artificial separating Parish and Francis in this way, I think it becomes much more striking way of looking at TAC picks above 30, being Jerrett and Gleeson, compared to the 14 players who had state league experience who came from picks 30 and above.
While it is quite clear the cream comes from the TAC below pick 30 in general, above pick 30 the pendulum swings firmly in favour of players with Senior State league experience.
Things were obviously a bit more erratic under the later reign of Kevin Sheedy, so I decided not to go back further than 10 years, which misses Jobe (p 40 FS) , Stants (p 13), Heater (rookie p 20), Houli (p 42) (all TAC) , and Ryder (p 7) and Monfries (p 14) (WAFL and SANFL respectively) - perhaps unsurprisingly, everything was upside down when Sheedy was involved, however the trend to concentrating on senior experience at state league level holds up if you discount Jobe as a 3rd round Father son pick, leaving only Heater and Houli as pick 30 + anomolies.
I would argue that out of all the players in our best 22 which came from 30+ draft picks, all had state league experience, bar arguably Heater and Gleeson (not counting Jobe as a F/S 3rd round free hit).