I hate these kinds of perfect view revisionist responses. They’re rubbish. Every club in the land could go back and re-take their picks with hindsight and put a team on the park that would make GWS green with envy. You can’t replace those picks with individual picks sometimes taken much later.
What you need to do is look at groups of players. I criticised those three drafts because two we just didn’t get any players from at all (except the father son), and for 2013 the decision to trade out looks a terrible decision given there were 16 players I listed who went late who vary between “have potential” and “are dead certainty guns”. The issue there was that there was plenty of quality on offer.
But criticising picks like Melksham’s when Fyfe went multiple picks later, and generally a set of Melksham/Colyer/Carlisle out of those 4 picks is pretty decent, is not particularly fair.
Melksham went 10, Talia was 13 and Fyfe 20. I remember at the time thinking Melksham didn’t look right for our first pick.
You are correct though that the hindsight picks are not a great guide and most clubs would have similar tales of woe and yes the period you highlighted doesn’t look great now
One element I would query with this (and we’re talking Woosh so I’ve moved to this thread). He has had a pretty crappy hand dealt to him. But he fundamentally has the team he ended 2016 with, plus the returning players. It was his choice how to integrate those.
I think a number of the players he had playing well at the end of 2016 have gone backwards, and few of the returning players have really slot in well. That is worrying. Especially down back, arguably Hartley, Dea and McKenna who were all playing well have gone backwards, and Gleeson has also not performed even as well as he did in 2016. The midfield is better than last year, but only marginally.
The forward line is the one area that has improved.
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Ahhh, … the seemingly mandatory 20/20 hindsight draft revisionism segment of the post loss ■■■■■ session, … please go on,. . just can’t get enough of this stuff…
If Dodorro had taken a tall with our first pick, Blitz would have burnt the place down. And if it wasn’t for the saga and the defections of Ryder, Carlisle and Crameri we would have no need for Talia (and also Darcy Daniher retiring early). Taking a small was the right decision, we only needed one tall from the 2009 draft and they nailed the Carlisle pick. Melksham has performed better as a midfielder than any following pick other than Fyfe (taken 10 spots later) until pick #28, Duncan. The top 30 was pretty crap for pure midfielders outside the top 3 or so. There were a few flankers we could have taken (Pittard, Menzel), how does Blitz usually like those?
I agree, I think the choice in strategy was the issue not who was taken.
Trying to get experienced players (after goddard), so your chappy types was a huge mistake. cooney was idiocy (even though i loved the media content he was putting out). should’ve used those picks on players.
There was 3 picks between Myers and Danger.
20 picks between Zac and Sloane
9 picks between Melks and Fyfe
8 picks between Berg and Parker
5 picks between Kav and Seb
6 picks between Asnby and Wood
Chappy was what, pick 83ish? And we bought him in because we rightfully thought we could win a final or two that year.
The fact that we didn’t, had nothing to do with him. He did his job.
It was after that horrible final where we gave up a five goal lead against a soft opposition (which I’m still not over), that the reality of this lists capabilities should have been faced. Using draft picks then on Cooney and Giles was shockingly short-sighted.
I think it’s easy to see the potential and the reasons for drafting most of those players. Maybe our development team/program isn’t as good as it should be.
Cheers! Although I shouldn’t laugh too hard because I was singing it sat night lol but fortunately the loudness of the music drowns out my horrible voice.
Firstly you are talking about two very good players, it is hard to keep them down for a whole game. Second, he had players on them as shown by what happened in the first half so it is not like he was just letting them run around gathering possessions for the fun of it. Third he did move players around but nothing worked.
He has limited stock to work with.
As you and a bunch of others keep pointing out we have a crap midfield and desperately need to get in some better midfield players come draft/trade time. Yet somehow you expect him to pick better players to play the midfield role. How can he pick what he doesn’t have?
