That was when there was the carrot of playing AFL. I’m sure he took a couple of years to settle in there, then the jump from a smaller city like Adelaide and non professional environment, to a big city like Melbourne and the biggest sports league in the country, would have been another significant change. It would have taken a few years to acclimatize.
We’ll never know though because ‘the most talented player we have drafted in the modem era’ wasn’t given much time to settle in, despite being a category B rookie, so effectively not taking a list spot anyway.
Other than that, i like brad as a coach but don’t trust his eye for talent, the d’ambrosio situation and team selections are enough to tell you that.
I’m the opposite, i wanted Scott, i think he’s a good coach, i do however think his fingerprints are all over a lot of the recent list management decisions. You can tell what types of players he likes by the way he selects his teams, certain guys that get ostracized, others that get played despite terrible form and how they correlate to the guys that are delisted come years end.
I’m pretty stoked with the Weideman Stringer Heppel Hind Kelly delistings and the Davey Wanganeen ones show he can make the “tough” easy decisions quickly.
Gutted about Hunter. Even a premiership next year wouldn’t console me.
The issue for me. (And I’ve missed a lot of discussion here this week due to being crazy busy at work) is that we seem to be developing a habit of drafting guys that we know are going to take time, but who we think have high upside, and then not giving them the time we always knew they needed.
Whereas with a low upside guy coming in already close to their top level then you only have to make small gains and you can bank a couple of contracts while not looking anything like a player who will take us to the top.
It’s our list management strategy writ large. We have no patience, and desperately want to be passably competitive quickly, but we refuse to have the patience to properly rebuild and develop because it takes too long.
I’d be more comfortable with “making the hard calls” if it wasn’t exactly in line with the lack of patience that club management have show for the last 8 years.
I reckon every supporter loves to assume that these speculative picks like Jayden and Munkara have an incredible untapped ‘up-side’ if we just pump enough ‘time’ into them. I mean it’s a lovely, hopeful thought isn’t it when a fresh draft pick is unwrapped under the tree.
PR for the club will of course assume this posture for these type of picks - ‘raw’ ‘talented’ …‘will take time to build up…’ etc
How many players delisted before playing a game end up making it at the level?
While you make some reasonable points, I think it’s fair for us, as supporters, to assume that these guys who were selected as long term projects were considered high upside, both due to the media coming from the club, and also due to there being very little sense in taking guys who we think need 6 months or a year before they’re even playing in the 2s, of we didn’t think there was some payoff.
I mean not even Essendon could make a case that they should draft long term projects with borderline AFL upside, could they?
This sort of thing makes no logical sense. Guys who need development, by definition need development. Judging their outcomes when they haven’t received that development doesn’t prove anything. The only thing we can say is that the club thought it wasn’t going to be worth their investment. Anything beyond that is “we can never know”.
Anyway, we have seen what this club thinks is the way forward. They think they can reduce risk inherent in drafting with a changed focus over the last couple of years. Time will tell whether they are right.
Once these players have been exposed to AFL training standards, and worked along side Zack & co, they get a clear view of what is required to play AFL.
Being delisted doesn’t stop development. They can play lower levels under quality coaches and commit to getting fit like they never have before. The later-drafted players show how this is feasible.
The players we delist haven’t done this as AFL takes a personality driven to the extreme. A relevant criticism of us is not that we delist too soon.
