Hindsight is a wonderful thing
"Itâs also believed player agents have, on occasions, steered prospective players to other clubs because they werenât confident Essendon would get a deal done if their clients nominated the Bombers as their preferred home. "
I hope there isnât any truth to that or at least its something the clubâs looking at changing.
If thatâs true (doubt it is) then dodoro should be sacked by 12pm today.
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If he canât bring in at least 2-3 good mids this trade period he should be sacked
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It depends who said no to the deal.
Itâs hard to imagine it was Melbourneâs idea.
Yeah, read that part again and it comes straight after the part about us being hard to deal with which suggests that we were stupid enough to think those two players would give us pick 2.
What the article said was âDavid Myers and Travis Colyer were linked as a swap for Melbourneâs pick No.2 in 2013â. It doesnât say who did the linking (a journalist), it doesnât say who initiated (if its real). For example, maybe Essendon offered those two for pick #2, and Melbourne laughed it off. Or maybe Melbourne asked about what it would cost to get those two, Essendon said #2, and Melbourne laughed it off.
Without more details, its a nothing phrase.
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What a disgraceful thread. This place is a joke
Attendance isnât compulsory.
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cgates is discos #1 fan.
I reckon Neeld should take Dodos job.
What dya reckon?
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Sorry been slow to reply, it takes a long time and there are a lot of threads going ape at the moment. Also, I do have some life outside of Blitz! 
Look, I think its pretty fundamentally clear that we have some pretty different views on some things. Some of that neither are in a position to truly know, so it will always be an opinion. An example is that weâve both heard the stories on Sheedy, how much credence we give them is going to up to the individual. Neither of us have any proof on Sheedy & Davies, beyond the stories. So we both give it a weight based on our individual opinions.
But a few points I think are worth arguing, or clarifying my position on.
On Sheedy, Iâd clarify Iâm not saying he did all the list management and the recruiting team did nothing. Iâm saying that Sheeds would occasionally over-rule the list manager. Itâs why Judkins left, he got angry about it. A question for you - given it caused Judkins to leave, why do you think it suddenly stopped happening with Dodoro? If they had been willing to cut Sheedy out of the process at that time, Judkins would presumably (Iâm guessing) have stayed.
I just donât get this. If a club brings in a player, they must rate them. Nobody brings in a player expecting them to be rubbish (unless its part of a salary dump, or a Veale deal). So they must have rated the talent and thought they could get an AFL player out of them. How is that not vindication of Dodoroâs picks? A second teamâs manager rated them enough to recruit them even after theyâd done little (often) for Essendon.
And the reference to the top clubs matches my points. People target the fringe players of successful clubs because they rate the drafting and development.
On Milne, I did put a (?) after him. I wasnât sure of him.
On Houli, you donât get much for players the coach wouldnât select whoâve played VFL. The reasons we didnât ask for anything and sent him via the PSD is well documented.
Iâve debated before on the definition of rebuild. In my mind a rebuild is not finishing mid-table or higher and taking your 4-5 picks in the draft. Thatâs just a regeneration (as I called it in the original post). A rebuild is spending time down the bottom of the ladder, clearing out average players even if theyâre best 22, and often trading out some assets for additional picks. Its having the intent to focus on development and the future over the here and now. That is at least my definition of a rebuild.
It is something we never did. Just drafting 4-5 players a year doesnât make it a rebuild IMO. A regeneration is by its nature usually a slow process, and for us it was also extremely slow.
But we didnât have elite draft picks. Of those top 20 picks, only 5 were top 10 picks. Four more were in the 17+ range. And then to exacerbate our lack of access to good picks, a #2, #10 and #11 picks (Winders, Gumby and Laycock) all had major injury issues. It was a combination of bad luck, bad timing and insufficient picks.
I can only think of two clubs with less access and better recruiting - Sydney and Adelaide. If we can poach the main guy from one of them, Iâm all for showing Dodoro the door. So unless there are a raft of clubs Iâve missed, other clubs havenât really challenged with more success than EFC off lower pick quality.
On fixing the issue of lack of picks, this is where I think the Board/EFC goals got in the way. You canât get more/better picks without finishing low or trading good players out. In both situations the Board was against this philosophy (I talk about this more below).
I said 2002 and 2003 were weak drafts. Iâm not sure how Dodoro is responsible for Jackson stuffing the salary cap in 2002, or Jacobs requesting to leave in 2003. Or that the 2005 draft when Richards insisted on leaving was so weak in the late teens/twenties as well.
I believe it played out in several ways. It meant we kept average players as they boosted the strength of our bottom 12, even if the overall best 22 wasnât good enough to win. It meant we went for recycled players who could (potentially) have an immediate impact. So guys like Zantuck, McPhee, Cupido, Alan, Murphy, Salmon, Heffernen, Camporeale, Michael. It meant we didnât trade out anyone unless our hand was forced (either by their request or salary cap). It meant less development time to kids as the focus was on winning finals.
Now, maybe Dodoro was a huge fan of this approach. I have no idea. What I do know is that the Board set clear goals which were known, and our approach aligned with those goals. And that those goals are ones likely to help the now over the option to do a full rebuild.
These are poor logic. They are mixing causation and correlation. If Dodoroâs hands were often tied, if our development was rubbish, if our injury management was rubbish, if the salary cap (early 00âs) or saga (recently) restricted the ability to do trades, if it wasnât list management that meant Richards, Jacobs, Houli, Jenkins, Crameri left, if a saga impacted team performance as we were peaking, then it is quite possible Dodoro and Keane could be good list managers and we still not win a final in 13 years. All of those things impact how well players develop, stay, and stay on the park, which impact success.
To want to simplify it down to âwe havenât won in 13 years, this guyâs been here 13 years in an area that has an impact, therefore he automatically isnât any goodâ is bad logic.
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Is that you Disco? Get us a midfield bull. Cheers.
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Extinction? Hmmmm.
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Sydney so smart they gave Shaunye a third chance.
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I disagree strongly with the comment that Geelong is the blueprint. Theyâve gone way overboard and are heading for a big fall soon
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I think the way the cats actually conduct trades is good (albeit theyâve had some advantages), but yeah I wouldnât be going the âtrade in all the playersâ route.
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The Cats model and the Hawthorn models are partly furphies. Ahead of their first premierships both sides only really made small trades, with one or two exceptions (Ottens, Croad kind of).
They then went on trading sprees to stay up the top. Hawthorn was very good at identifying players about to develop (contrary to the article, Gibson and Gunston were not big trades at the time of the trade), but both teams stayed in finals due to the trades.
None of that necessarily holds for teams who do not have the cachet of being a premiership team.
That said, I do think EFC needs to improve at identifying under-valued players. Hopefully Stewart was a step in the right direction.
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Their methods good.
their plans stupid.
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An interesting analysis on The Drill podcast is that Sydneyâs main gameplan is to win 1:1 contests. All they need to do is get a player to win contested marks, win contested ball, then tell them to man up an opponent. Thatâs a relatively easy thing to teach a new player. Itâs probably why they are so successful at bringing in fringe players from other clubs, they donât over complicate things. End result is they win an absurd majority of 1:1 contests.
They can recruit a Shaun Edwards who struggles to fit into a large complex gameplan. All theyâd need from Shawney is to win his own contests. Chances are he wonât get there, but itâs a better chance than. Him learning all the details of our gameplan.
Compare that to our attacking gameplan this year. Weâve been great at team attack, but below average in contests around the ground. If the team gameplan works well, itâs probably superior to Sydney. The problem is we arenât competing 1:1 well enough when we screw up the gameplan. And we tend to screw up the gameplan at least 1 quarter each game.
So hereâs the question. If Sydney can teach strong 1:1 skills and make below average players look great, why canât we? I donât see that element of our game as drafting, itâs development and culture.
Hooker is one of the best contested marks in the game, but is famous for not being an elite athlete such as Buddy. He does it through smarts, experience and attitude. Thatâs all coachable. If weâd traded him out for 2 x 2nd round picks before he broke out, heâd look like a failed draft pick. Itâs because heâs developed successfully that Dodoro looks to have drafted well.
Iâve only focused on a small piece of the puzzle, but itâs a piece I think was critical in our finals loss. Itâs a piece I think can be remedied in coaching, not at the draft table.
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