Adrian Dodoro - Flankers into Mids since 2000 (Part 1)

Concerns me that none of our mids are strong overhead along the lines of Parker, Danger, Selwood, etc
I think Heppell is our only mid who can take a contested overhead mark. It would add an extra dimension to our midfield. Are there any in the VFL?

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Begley, Mutch, Clarke, Jok possibly. They’re big strong boys but i dont know how good a mark they are

Outside of Hooker do we have anyone like that in the backline either?

Zaharakis used to be a proficient mark but that has taken a nose dive too.

Laverde may he Rest in Peace was also good above his head.

Langford and Myers should both be better considering their height, and it is a problem in our midfield that is compounded when Bellchambers doesn’t get himself in the right spots 90% of the time.

Langford is weird, because he’s a good contested mark up forward (as long as he’s not double teamed or on a true KP player). He should be a target in our midfield, as he should be able to dominate some of the opposition mids in the air.

Of course, that would require a game plan to utilise that advantage …

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Would like to see how this would go:

FF - Tippa Stringer Mozzie
HF - Langford JOE Fantasia

our ability to develop the talent we have is complete trash. He can only bring the guys in, after that it’s up to others to develop and harness that talent

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Like who??? Richards who most on Blitz knew was far too good to be rotting in the VFL is the only player I can think of that wasn’t getting a game for us but lived up to their potential elsewhere. Guys like Hislop and Morgan failing at another club actually further highlights how poor their original drafting was.

It’s moronic to excuse poor recruitment as a development issue. The same club that developed plenty of great players when Judkins was recruiter suddenly stopped all development the day Dodoro took over??? Our talent level patently declined from the minute Dodoro started. Look at the names recruited during the early to mid 90’s then look at our drafting from 98. It’s pretty obvious when the rot started.

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Fact is, he is been there so long that there have been too many head coaches, too many assistants, too many developers, too many fitness staff members to continually fail with what he has been responsible for providing to even suggest this is close to correct.

15 years without a finals win is just as utterly damning as you can get for a head recruiter who has been there for all of this time.

Not sure how anyone could argue otherwise.

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While nobody is suggesting he is the only issue plauging the club he is to the off field what Myers is to the on field malaise. Far too long for far too little. People can hang onto the 1 or 2 good trade periods and cherry pick a few draft picks that exceeded expectations, just as some point to the odd good game from Myers. The reality is the club have had huge list issues just as certainly as they have had development and coaching issues. Change won’t guarantee success but 22 years in the one role is too long for anyone with absolutely zero success you could associate with their tenure.

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I think Dodoro has many faults, but picking talented players isn’t one of them. There is no doubt about the talent in our list. Turning that talent into another premiership side is a big problem. Our player development has been poor for over a decade.

His list build strategy was behind the times and has lagged the competition considerably. And with the rule changes I hope we don’t get caught napping again. He has a big focus on talls, but has often done so at the expense of a quality midfield. And it has hurt us.

I think he is waay to generous to players with injury histories. Keeping them for far too long. Myers should have gone with Tayte Pears, both are failed picks because their bodies failed. Football talent is there.

I think he overvalues leadership too much in his assessment.

We need to get more rapid turnover of our players, get them in, year in the twos throw them to the wolves in the AFL for a stint and find out if they are up to it. Then you can make an assessment whether to keep, trade, delist.

We have this notion to never trade players out and only delist once all opportunities are exhausted. We should be making these assessment earlier and getting some return value at the trade table or accepting the sunk cost and moving earlier.

The coaches are pretty good knowing which players are capable or not and have a good chance of making it. But sometimes the list manager has to step in and say enough is enough, I know he looks the goods and says the right think in the meetings, but 5 years of minimal footy is too much and send them off.

We could have easily got good trade value for Myers, Colyer etc in 2016/17 and should have.

Meanwhile we are 2/3 years down in Mutch, Clarke, Redman, Draper and have almost no idea whether they are capable of making it or not.

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Just curious do you believe we currently have a top 4 list talentwise? Do you think we have as much talent as WC, Richmond, Collingwood, GWS , Melb? I think our list is the best list Dodoro has assembled but again that’s not a high standard to surpass. I still believed even during pre JLT hype that we would severely miss the talent of Goddard, haven’t had a decent settled wingman since forever and were always going to be undersized in the middle.

This is a good assessment.
I feel one of the other issues with Dodoro is (and as the thread name suggests) he tries to be too clever by half.

Adelaide has the cracking story of getting geelong falcons to play a back pocket / flanker in the middle for 1 quarter. They loved the 14 possessions they saw and they got Dangerfield on the cheap.

Dodoro wants to be smarter than the other list mangers. He’s not. He’s constantly trying to see something others have missed.

I have written elsewhere in this thread but it’s hard to know how good anyone is unless we know where every team would have chosen every player.

A pick like Merrett might not be an especially clever pick if everyone had him going at around that pick or slightly better. But if everyone had him going from 25-45 then it’s an amazing pick.

If it turns out Mccluggage and Taranto are the 2 superstar picks from that draft year… but that everyone would have chosen McGrath if they had the top pick then our number one pick was neither good nor bad.

If most clubs had McGrath at 3-6 and it turns out he has a few players better than him when the careers are over then it was a bad pick (I hope this isn’t the case obviously)

The Point is that it is all relative and we don’t know the complete story and never will but it is hard to make the case that Dodoro is any better than average.

The Merrett and Fantasia picks which are often pointed to as evidence of skill seemed to have huge input from Bomber (watch the draft video) for Merrett and Fantasia was a Nathan Bassett special when he joined us.

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I would have thought we played 3-6 players on the weekend who would get games in those 4 sides.

Our younger players are unknown, Clarke, Mutch, Redman… even Laverde. I think he will be a player… but who knows.

It feels like we have depth, but those other teams look quite a lot more talented.

It can be so hard to tell though. StKilda gets rid of Weller and he slots straight in at the tigers. Maybe Parish would be a gun alongside Cotchin and Martin?

Does he really?

He did focus on talls. Got them, and then went after mids.

Plenty on here lamenting that we currently have no decent back-up talls as evidence that his list management is poor.

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Myers is still being selected for pretty much every game he is fit. Why on earth would Dodoro move him on?

They dropped Ridley last week. Are you sure of your assessment.

I think we just lost the “Destination Club” attribute.

Not so bad, we have traded away all the picks that would get a good player to our club for next year anyway.

It’s hard to say, talent and performance are different measures. I think talent wise we are top 4, but performance wise of that talent is very poor. We have a number of players who have quite amazing tools sets at afl level.

I think we have definitely burnt allot of top picks chasing top quality talls when we should have used them on mids and taken talls later in the draft.