Okay. I get what your saying, but how do you identify the traits?
What Beatson mentioned is something that isn’t measurable. It’s guess work.
Take a look at 18 year olds. How can you tell that one will make it and the other won’t? I’ve seen some that have great skills, but very little application or intent. The guy looks great at lower levels because he’s just that much better than the rest, but put him up against seasoned players and they don’t have the inner resistance to battle for a prolonged period of time and they can’t rely solely on their talent.
Sydney do definitely lean towards players with some form of grit though. They also throw them into the VFL for an extended period of time. Tom Mitchell had to spend a lot of time there whilst racking up 40+ possessions weekly. We want our VFL players in after they reach 30 the first time.
Angus Sheldrick is a typical Sydney type recruit. He went one on one with Horne-Francis through his junior years. It’s safe to say, he’s already defensive minded. Yet he’s played pretty much a year and a half at VFL level (he’s also had a few injury setbacks) racking up possessions and waiting for his opportunity.
Chad Warner was the same.
Do we have the patience to do something like that with our draftees?
Did you see how quickly we wanted Voss into the team after his pre-season and start to the season? Baldwin? I get the thirst to see the next shiny new thing, but holding them back and building some level of resistance against competition can be just as valuable as giving them an opportunity.
I agree with what Beatson says. But that club has a system set up to train the players a particular way. It was established when Paul Roos was there. He felt all rookies should be playing VFL their first year because they lacked the fitness and defensive mentality that was needed at AFL level. They get more out of the players they draft than any other team.
Players like Howlett, Crameri, Baguley and Heath Hocking show those traits. Yet once those skills struggle to keep up with their ‘intent’, we as fans want to move on to the next shiny thing. Those guys would have played far more AFL games and be more primed at Sydney.
I think we should do an exercise here. Everyone view the video footage of the upcoming draftees and identify what the traits are that Beatson talks about. Lock it away in a thread and see what comes about from those players after 5 years.
Harley Reid is the easy one this year. He’s every bit as powerful and driven as Horne-Francis. The rest would be an interesting observation.
BTW…
None of the above is in defence of Dodoro or how he rates talent. It’s just general commentary.
Not for our bloke - Dodoro thinks being a good bloke and an athlete (skinny) is most important……he doesn’t rate the competitive/desire to get better-win traits
Like an old man who stays in his warm slippers all day. With all the guys who get to our pick that he expects to go 10 spots earlier, he should be known as Slippers Dodoro.
Sydney has always picked competitive players in and around the ball. Parker vs Sheil springs to mind as an example of where we are at compared to Sydney.
Their development is exceptional, as is their culture.
This was just posted on Twitter by Robert Shaw - someone who’s thoughts I have immense respect for
Sometimes it’s really worth considering that….
Different voices spark different conversations, and produce creative and alternative ideas. A change of personnel, philosophy and strategy, challenging existing templates = Different results.
Not sure what he is referencing; but, it is so appropriate to this thread.
They have also taken their fair share of spuds and wasted some first round picks on ‘nice players but not great’.
Florent was a nice pick at 11.
Matthew Ling at 14 was spat out of the competition pretty quickly. Was ‘rated’ in his draft year.
Nick Blakey was a father son. He looks the goods.
Dylan Stephens at pick 5 hasn’t come on as expected but still has time.
Logan McDonald and Braedon Campbell at 4 and 5. Logan still needs time (amazing how often that work pops up) and Campbell looks like a poor mans Dan Hannebery.
They got Sheldrick who is finding his way through reserves and will come good eventually.
In the same period of time we’ve gone with McGrath, Cox, Perkins, Reid, Hobbs and Tsatas. And the talk around Tsatas has been quite astonishing. I wonder if we would have been just as forgiving with Campbell or Stephens at similar picks.
It means having an open mind. Not being fixed into one set position.
To be willing to have your own biases and understanding of how to do things be critically taken apart and analysed for any weaknesses. Then you build from there.
This could be applied to any person. Not just Dodoro. Brad Scott, Blake, Gia, Barham, etc.
IMO you build your club around players who always give their all to the contest, and an absolute desire to win.
With a rebuild, that should be your starting point. Contested football. Players who will give their all, no matter what.
Once this has become your culture. You then add to the fringes the shiny classy players.
This is exactly what Melbourne did. 2-3 years before Melbourne won the premiership, their supporters were complaining that they have too many contested players…… they were too slow, and getting beaten on the outside to easily.
That’s why players like Chance Bateman, Lance Picioane, Richie Vandenberg, Brad Sewell and Campbell Brown are more important than the stars for where we’re at.
But how do you think drafting those kind of players would be received here on Blitz?
They have limited skill set, need a good solid system to work within but work their nut off whenever possible.
The high majority of us only see what occurs on gameday so the hard work away from gameday is lost. So we be exposed to the terrible skills they apply as the system won’t be refined enough for them to thrive in. But they will set standards.
These are players that are picked up pretty late in the draft.
Would we accept that? Or would we point to missing out on that pick 45 player that no one else considered and look at it as another missed opportunity?
Personally, I have no problems with that direction. But we are just as likely to miss out on a player who makes it at another club and be right back here in 3 years time ■■■■■■■ and moaning how farked we are (and that’s regardless of whether Dodoro, Vozzo or any other person is making list list decisions).
For all we know, Hobbs and Tsatas could be those kinds of players. But we only see their flaws on gameday.
i’m gonna risk sounding like a moron here but i’ll give it a go
yes it’s guesswork, but it’s educated guesswork
i work in high performance (among other things) in a sport i won’t name, and have been a high level coach for 10ish years. i can watch most players in any competitive game and tell you pretty quickly what their ceiling is with probably a 2/3 strike rate. you spend enough time watching anyone do anything and you can just tell (<-- moron statement)
having a go at thinking about what’s observable about it, i would say body language pre/post involvement in active play, interactions with teammates and opponents, response to things going their way or against them, proprioception and “smoothness” of body movement, response to opposition (do they ever change what they’re doing, or just try and brute-force it). plus a bunch of other stuff i can’t really articulate well. skills are about 17th on the list because if they have all the other qualities you want you’ll easily find ways to improve the skills.
what separates out recruiters/coaches/whoever else in talent id processes is the ability to recognise their own biases and cope with being wrong. as i said before, for every 2 i pick, there’s 1 i’m wrong about (either better than i thought, or worse than i thought). i could just say “well they’re different because of x, y or z” or i could go “maybe i should start watching for a, b, or c traits instead”.
Hobbs will be a beauty.
With off field support, he will be our best midfielder - along with Merrett - next year and being talked about as a future brownlow winner.