Because he has performed poorly in those games and moving him in years ago would have allowed us to find somebody who performs better.
Better off handing you competition an injury prone player who struggles to reach his best performance than keep them for yourself.
No, we donât have top 4 talent. Weâre not even going to finish in the 8 for consecutive years. Having the right mentality and toughness to carry out whatâs asked of you on gameday is half the battle. Richmond might not have had as many âflashyâ players as us, but they had the right balance of flash and grit. Sure, some of this is the coachâs fault, but the players arenât even trying. Theyâre constantly waiting for one moment or game where everything just âclicksâ and the game will be on easy mode for them.
Richmondâs list gets downplayed. But the year they won it they had easily the best player in the league(Martin) and probably another guy who was top 5(Rance). Their pressure gameplan worked becuase those two guys had roles within it that allowed them to be the match winners. We have no one near the class of those two.
Yep, so I understand your philosophy, and I donât disagree with it.
However since we are in the Dodoro thread, and he is copping a pummelling, I want you to ask yourself whether he could reasonably have made that call. Was it even his call to make?
The guy we are talking about just won the most improved, and is in the current reduced size leadership group. This is the leadership group of a club that is getting hammered for not having sufficient leadership.
I donât think it is reasonable to expect Dodoro to have moved him on when the internal opinion of him is so high. I think the senior coach has a significant say in these sort of matters. Or at least did up until recently.
It certainly seems that way, and part of the problem might be an expectation for others to make it click, so they can join in, or an overestimation of team mates ability to make the team click.
It might be the reason why Worsfold keeps banging on about âhard workâ; to get the team going all 22 have to crack in and give it 100%, then it clicks.
But it relies on the best players being match fit. Right now Merret in particular still appears to be slow and is yet to reach match fitness.
No man is an island.
Any meaningful discussion on list management/drafting also needs to account for the state of the club at the time.
I mean, as a tiny example, just look at the opinions and vitriol in the coaches threads.
Weâve been a pretty â â â â club overall for quite a long time. Itâd take a while to set it all out, but it all feeds back into where we are now.
I think he has been ok with drafting and trading.
Itâs the overall list management thatâs sucked for a long time. Either not stockpiling enough talent, overrating the list and not having the right balance. This is a club wide issue, but Dodorro has a big role to play in it.
We have also been conservative rather than innovative. Didnât participate in the mini drafts, didnât pick up any of the mature ages the expansion teams could trade. Havenât traded picks. Etc, etc.
Sorry, but this is ridiculous logic. So another club after a player has had two or more years in the system, so more is known about them, still rates that playerâs talent sufficiently to recruit them, and that is a knock on the original drafting? Iâll agree it doesnât say anything one iota about whether the playerâs talent justified their original drafting position, but the fact that other clubs still rate their talent clearly (IMO) indicates that giving them a list spot originally was justified.
And in addition to Richards you can add Houli, Jenkins and Melksham from recent times, who would meet your criteria of success (ignoring established players like Ryder).
You think its moronic to say it could be development? Why? I would have thought development was absolutely critical (and potentially moreso than talent).
Secondly, given the coaches change the idea that our development ability could have changed is also not exactly fanciful. And its funny how the drafting of guys like Lloyd, Lucas, Misiti, Mercuri, Hird, is so different, when half of those guys were special circumstances (Freo) or due to our zone (or knowing the family).
You indicate he had nothing to do with the 2000/2001 sides, but I mean, look at his first two drafts. McVeigh, Ramanaskus, Hille, Jacobs, Podsiadly and Barnes was actually a pretty damn good crop (remembering we were banned from the 1999 first round due to salary cap breaches). Obviously several of those guys were pretty critical, pretty quickly.
I think its incredibly close on talent between about 7-8 sides. And yes, I put us in that group. I pointed out above how many so-so players WCE had in their team for the Grand Final and finals series.
The problem for mine is that a team should be better than the sum of its talent, but I think weâre a lot less at the moment. You only have to see our team at the start/end of last year to see how much difference the players with the same talent can play depending on game plan, commitment, and teamwork.
Well, I did argue otherwise up above, and showed how flawed this logic is. But nobody appears to have responded to that postâŚ
One of the big issues with this whole debate is that we simply donât know enough about EFC processes. Some examples of this that would significantly impact how Dodoro should be rated:
A few other arguments:
Which ones? The main ones I can think of that we âburntâ were Gumby, Pears and Laycock, all of whom failed to make it due to injuries.
To be fair, youâve been running the âspill the boardâ agenda for so long, I canât remember it any other way. Agendas - funny things.
No, thatâs the opposite of a âvery good pointerâ.
Footy-maths is rubbish-talk.
Begs & Jok are very good marks. As is Langford. And Laverde.
Agree with all of that.
Oh Yeah, huge agenda here.
I am simply at the point of accceptance, and when you get past the river in egypt it is all so clear.
If asking for a GENUINE process to get the best possible CEO/Administrator, Coach and Recruiter after 15 years of misery, then I have an agenda.
I am not here to perform all sorts of mental gymnastics to attempt to defend a recruiter who has had near 2 decades with what can only be described as poor results. I am not here to defend a cherry picked marketer as our CEO - and Im sure the coaching situation will take care of itself in time.
He also held a team together when no one wanted to stay or come to Essendon. He was handed a â â â â storm. Another club wouldâve folded. You have no â â â â â â â idea what people had to do to keep the place afloat.
The thing is, if you were to post more regularly on issues other than just saying âreplace everyoneâ some of what you say might provide a better discussion point. But you donât and you tend to go very quiet when we occasionally win.
Thatâs not to say that some of what you say isnât correct, it is just that it is so slanted in one direction that it makes it hard to constantly listen to you.
One could almost wonder what the point of being here is.
The fact a player failed at 2 clubs destroys your logic that our development was the significant reason they were not good enough. If our development was that poor then no players would become top performers & you would have examples of guys like Morgan & Hislop becoming good players elsewhere. Morgan was a bad pick - end of story. North throwing him a lifeline as as delisted player doesnât change the fact that Dodoro wasted pick 29 on him. Again IF North had have turned him into a player worthy of pick 29 then you could argue that his selection by Dodoro was correct & it was our development that devalued him BUT once again - that didnât happen so 2 lots of development teams couldnât get him to a decent level - that doubly supports that position that he was a poor selection. 2 mistakes doesnât make a right!!! Does Adelaide giving Tambling a second chance in any way shape or form change that fact that picking him before Buddy was a mistake?
Jenkins was NEVER on our senior list. You should know this. Are you trying to pad out the numbers? Houli & Melksham were offered contracts & decided to leave. Like Richards you will find that many on Blitz could see Houli had talent but by the time we had a new coach it was too late. Melksham was pick 10 - I still donât rate him worthy of that pick. He was absolutely getting plenty of opportunities & unlike Richards & Houli the general consensus was that he was being gifted games. I think youâll find that his best footy now is similar to his best footy for us - playing mainly forward but the difference is that our midfield was far weaker & he like a generation of mid-sized forwards for us struggled to overcome poor delivery.
OK now I have never ever said that development is not important but its baseless & fanciful to suggest that for example the difference between Myers & Dangerfield is development. You cannot shine a turd & if you want to believe development is more important than talent then simply add it to the list of reasons why I think your opinions are bunk. If you actually believe talent isnât as critical then why are you so determined to retain a guy whoâs job it is to find something you donât rate - at least be consistent with yourself.
Judkins wasnât gifted the picks from Freo - he was good enough to get that trade done when every other club had the same opportunity. Again you seem to either be ignorant to what happened or trying to feign ignorance in order to support a position youâre struggling with. Judkins was at EFC, left a list with 20 of the 2000 GF side all ready to go. Then went to Collingwood for 15 years & they made 4 grand finals & multiple other finals - isnât it possible he was just a lot better than Dodoro?
Now if you believe that the 1998 draft crop was good work from Dodoro how exactly do you come to that conclusion given your position that development not talent was the deciding factor? Maybe, using your logic, that was a poor draft from Dodoro but the development of them was outstanding. You see, the ambiguity that you rely on to defend Dodoro can just as easily be turned around. Of course development canât be actually measured just as certainly as talent canât be measured. All we can do is look at the body of evidence which very clearly supports the position that we have not had a talented enough list to be successful or even consistently competitive for 15 years. This trend emerged at the exact same time as Dodoroâs influence on the list emerged so again its logical that it is the significant factor. Exactly how much is impossible to gauge but for anyone to think we have had these results somehow in-spite of great list management is illogical.
Development isnât the reason Shane Harvey wasnât a fraction of the player his brother was. Development isnât the reason why Monfries was a pretty good half forward but never the mid weâd hoped for (similar to Melksham). Development wasnât the reason why Mark Bolton wasnât a very good pick 4 even though that was not Dodoro. All recruiters have & will continue to make those mistakes. What sets the best apart is the ability to make less mistakes & find more top end players with later picks or through value trade. If you canât judge Dodoro on his record then how exactly can you or anyone else for that matter judge him at all? If you are so sure heâs been doing a good job for 22 years then what is that based on if not the performance of the players heâs brought to the club?
OK lets assume we are in the top 7-8 clubs talentwise right now as like Iâve said I think this is the best list dodoro has assembled. Would it be fair to say we havenât been as close to those top sides for talent for much of the last 15 years? Do you really believe that was all down to development? If so then why havenât you been screaming for all the development coaches/staff to be sacked every year? Do you think its all important but donât care enough to really comment much about it except to defend Dodoro - seems a strange position to take.
The midfield is sorely lacking in size and inside grunt:
McGrath - 178cm 83kgs
Parish - 181/77
Langford - 191/87
Smith - 174/77
Merrett - 180/83
Shiel - 182/83
Zaharakis - 180/79
Heppell - 189/84
Myers - 191/89
They are guys that I consider to be, or are, in our best 22 as midfielders. Only 3 players over the 6ft mark, none weigh over 90kgs. Thatâs why we are trying to turn Stringer (192/95) into an impact player in there because he has the physical attributes of a modern midfielder. Problem is heâs a forward. Even guys we could rotate through there on occasion such as Raz (178/77) and Walla (171/77) are well under 6ft. We are seriously lacking in that department. You watch Clayton Oliver bully us tomorrow night. We wonât lay a finger on him.