Yes… he went prematurely
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2004, 2005, 2006 all had the flavour of Sheedy trying to prop up a sinking ship, picking Zantuck, Camporeale and Michael.
Rama was definitely a special case, which was Sheeds at his legendary best, and Heater the exception. Heffernan was another Sheedy welcome back, but since that time we have generally picked at least 1 decent player in the Rookie or PSD who has made a 100 game or at least realised that potential elsewhere, or, in the case of the more recent players, appear to have that potential given their strong attributes which they are already showing (Conor, Walla, Ambrose).
During the post 1996 Sheeds era our rookie and PSD recruiting was a lot more inconsistent in terms of long term players, but given it as also more successful period, when the likes of James Podsiadly didn’t get a look in, and some great players were picked, NLM, Andrew Lovett, Pev, Dean Rioli, Mark Johnson and Gary Moorcroft, perhaps I am being harsh. But those last 3 years had the tint of trying to prop up the side, in contrast to the current longer term view which Dodoro has been succeeding with against the odds.
Why is the PSD even being mentioned? They’re senior listed players, and nobody got delisted and returned via the PSD. I’m also not sure if playing a single game really matters, its if they made an AFL career. For example, Jenkins should really count as he was a great pick, we just couldn’t keep him. If we’re considering the opportunity cost of this approach you really need to know:
a) The players who made it (can be formed from what is written)
b) Our miss rate, so you need the rookie picks where the players failed
c) For re-rookied players, who was the senior listed player their removal made room for
Sorry, it was an interesting read and I appreciate you doing it. But I’m not sure it really helped solve the crux of the debate, is re-rookieing a player actually hurting us?
Excluding contracted players where there are cap considerations, there’s not a lot of analysis that needs to be done of the last decade surely? Who came on to the senior list is irrelevant, they were either going to be delisted or rookied.
In the last decade we’ve taken 24 new rookies. Howlett, Crameri, Jenkins, Baguley, Ambrose, Tippa gives us a strike rate of 25% (with Draper and Long undecided). Zero of the seven uncontracted re-rookies have had a meaningful career (with McKernan undecided) which, you might have to check my maths, is a strike rate of 0%.
So even if McKernan carves out a decent career from here, our re-rookie success rate is lower than our regular rookie rate (15% vs 25%). It’s lower if you include contracted players, but there’s other considerations there.
And for completeness, here are the rookies of note taken after our re-rookies (excluding zone picks, recycles, rookie B, NSW scholarship) for some indication on whether we missed out on anybody. After all, re-rookieing a player if there was no talent left is hardly a miss.
2007 - Didn’t re-rookie
2008 - Didn’t re-rookie
2009 - None
2010 - Jason Johannissen, Jeremy McGovern
2011 - Harry Cunningham
2012 - Taberner, Sinclair, Jake Lloyd, Hartigan, Rampe
2013 - Didn’t re-rookie
2014 - Melican (just wanted to list the Pelican)
2015 - None yet
2016 - None yet
The original task was to give an idea of “3rd+ round rookie picks to even play 1 game”, I gave an idea of that from showing which round rookie picks were taken from. The rest was more or less out of interest as I went along. I included PSD’s because they are often mixed up with the rookies, so at least I separated them out, but I take your point that they are on the senior list and historically are more akin to the modern delisted free agent where the player and club can directly negotiate now. So I take your point, it wasn’t a perfect analysis, but at least it was an “interesting read”.
Thanks to @SplitRound for his adding clarity to the strike rates and what we “missed out on”.
I think Dodoro is pretty much nailing it these days with re rookie-ing for only very specific purposes, like ruck depth and honouring contracts to senior listed players while not taking up a senior list spot. It is one thing to miss out on a random player, another to meet an actual list need and another again to treat people well and give them a reasonable opportunity to reach their potential. Eades was a bust, but at least they tried, and we don’t seem to be giving too many Aboriginal players a chance these days. Hopefully we will go there again in the near future and try and get some more mid field x-factor.
That seems to me to be a pretty big assumption. You’re assuming that the clubs didn’t actually rate the players enough that if the choice was delistment or retainment without the rookie list, that they wouldn’t have been retained. You just have to look at players like NOB, KAV, Slattery and a host of others who kept staying on the list for years even though most here had major question marks on them.
This discussion began in the context of Morgan. I could easily see that the decision isn’t whether or not to keep him (after all, he’s been majorly injury prone and two years ago we rated him the 29th best prospect), but simply whether if we moved him to the rookie list will anyone else nab him? Since doing so frees up a senior spot for a higher draft pick and saves salary cap. And hell, next year he’ll even be able to play anytime if he comes on.
Finally, your list above is pretty skewed. For example, in 2010 the senior spots opened up via re-rookieing allowed us to nab Hibberd in the PSD. That seems like a win to me.
If the choice was delisting or re-rookie, and the re-rookies were (without exception) our last rookie picks, then the only available spots at that point were rookie spots. If you reject that assumption then the entire rest of the post is invalid, and I’m not going to bother defending it in the context of the assumption being wrong.
Fair.
The problem is of course we have no idea if that assumption is true or not. And short of inside knowledge, won’t be getting one.
Yeah, but at that point it’s completely impossible to discuss whether it’s a good idea or not. Was Hams re-rookied to free up a ND spot because we didn’t think Hartley would last, or was it to bring in Gwilt as a DFA onto the main list, or was it because we didn’t think there was any better rookie talent, or that he was the best player nobody else would pick up, or because he was the player willing to take a pay cut, or because of his personal situation, or because we really wanted to upgrade Ambrose, or because we didn’t expect him to carve a spot out the next year anyway, or because we figured if we copped suspensions our rookies would play anyway, or or or.
Is it hurting us? Who knows because every choice is completely different to every other choice and made for completely unknown reasons in unique circumstances so why bother even mentioning it, and why suggest it might be a good idea for a player this year having no idea why it was done in the past?
For the record, I think it’ll become more common now that there’s no playing restrictions on rookies, so why not do it?
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Yes, but also, and more importantly, no.
Eades would’ve had a 2 year standard first contract, unlikely he would’ve been delisted.
It’s not a decision made in isolation so you can’t view it in isolation.
No rookie-ing of Eades and McKernan means 2 fewer main list spots. Effectively means no (I can’t remember exactly who signed last but from memory) Stewart and Green - but we could take 2nd and 3rd round rookies*
*Quite likely exciting young talent like Brett Eddy, Alex Silvagni or Drew Petrie - only 4 new players have played a game, who were taken from the 2nd round of rookie draft onwards, it’s retread central.
I will point out my post started
Edit: I should have added after the list of “missed” rookies my opinion that it shows that in most years that we haven’t really missed out on anyone in the rookie draft. 10 and 12 maybe, if they’re the guys we would have taken.
But my overall opinion remains that, in the case of uncontracted players, it doesn’t achieve anything even if the alternative is something that achieves very little.
Edit edit: I should also apologise for my little hissy fit at @Ants.
Rule no 1: Fark Carlton
Rule no 2: Never apologise
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No fking wonder you’ve clocked up so many wives.
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Hey, I apologise all the time… it didn’t work for me!
(sorry)
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Rule No 3: Never admit anything
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