Left Essendon - Alex Morgan

That’s obviously bad reasoning. If someone thinks Matheison would have been a good pickup at 30 you simply can’t make the claim that he was overlooked by everyone as a pick 30 proposition, it means that 7 specific teams did. Maybe more wouldn’t have taken him, but you just don’t know. What other teams did with pick 5 or 10 or 25 says absolutely nothing about whether they rated Mathieson as being worth pick 30.

pick 39 not 30

Never mind, just understood what you were saying.

I disagree though. If he is highly touted then he will get picked up well before 30. As it was Brisbane has 3 picks before then and picked other players instead.

And what we did also doesn’t say whether we rated him with 30. Just that we rated the others higher in terms of what we wanted to get in the list at the time.

But is Mathieson really that much of a miss? He wouldn’t get a game for us with Woosha’s preferred game plan.

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Edited in response to your edit.

Well I guess we’ll agree to disagree because I think you can rate a player as being a great get with pick 30 but think he’d be ridiculous to spend pick 10 on. If someone was saying he was a top 20 pick then I totally concur that every team disagreed.

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eek.

Now my response makes no sense, as I completely misunderstood as well!!

Oh well, I’ll leave it there…

Indeed.

Good post.

Obviously as your list evolves your needs and priorities change. I think in the foundation years of a list build you’d do will to churn through as many guys with footy smarts, skills and toughness as possible while at the same time taking the best kps available where the opportunities present. Once that core is established you can prioritise through trade/fa/draft some flanker/run a carry types.

Geelong never had on overly quick side but was stacked with some of the best/smartest footballers going around. Sydney for the last decade has been regarded as a tough, contested side but the player that transformed their game into something more in 2012 was Jetta as almost the single point of difference in that team.

Over the last decade I feel our list has been overflowing with lightly framed flankers with average skills/smarts and ball winning ability. As hm says we’ve continually favoured upside picks over safe ones. Given our performance over the last decade you have to question that approach surely

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Ben McNeice is better and cheaper.

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He’s leaving for more opportunity. What more opportunity did he deserve? He was lucky to get picked in the VFL every week on form.

Good luck to him. He’ll get more opportunity at NM and could trigger a 2Nd Year if he does ok. He’s doing the right thing for himself.

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Agree with most of your post.

This is the key bit though. Is it accurate? Our list may have had a few of those types, but what was the core of our team? Slow, strong ball winners who (for the most part) could find the ball at will. Watson obviously, but also guys like Hocking and Myers and Stanton (although not quite the same).

The problem that was continually diagnosed over the last decade has been line breaking, dynamic mids. Has the favoritism of “upside picks” been due to the perception that we had the core units in place already? That we were trying to find something specific that took what we had to a different level?

And was last year’s bolstering of “core types” a new approach, or a new build because it was time for some new core pieces?

I don’t know the behind the scenes thinking, but I think we were close in that 2013 era. Circumstance ruined that build, but I feel like the general approach over the last while has been ok.

Sometimes upside is the right decision. Sometimes it’s not.

Hopefully what we have now is a list that only requires tinkering with over the next decade to stay competitive at the top end.

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All of these guys had skill deficiencies though. Some were able to work on the weaknesses, some weren’t. I agree we were close in 2013 and lacking outside speed. We’ll never know how close obviously but i still think Hawthorn had us covered pretty easily.

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Yeah for sure.

But would have been an interesting call spending drafts trying to upgrade those guys while there were bigger, more glaring deficiencies.

He’s just been injured.

How can you question Dodoro’s drafting when he just drafted 3 x 200 gamers with a 1st, 2nd and 3rd round pick.

1st - Stringer
2nd -Saad
3rd - Smith

Pretty good hit rate there :wink:

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Who cares.

He obviously doesn’t back his talent. He looked up and saw McGrath, Saad, McKenna and McNeice all ahead of him and thought he can’t get a game ahead of them.

Good luck to him and hopefully he gets a game because he wouldn’t get one in ours.

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Yep. Although I’m not sure about hoping he gets a game, although it won’t be hard where he is going.

I get it, but being supported through injury by a club and then returning to be gifted games in the VFL only to reject a contract from that same club says a lot.

I don’t think it so much about his lack of opportunity in the past but more about the future.

I reckon we told him that we are happy for him to stay at Essendon but he is way behind a long list of other players before he gets a senior game, so if he wanted to look elsewhere, then we won’t stand in your way.

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Officially now a north player. Ewwwwwww