You little beauty!
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Neither had the saga. Neither have had 7 changes in coach since 2007. Have either had our injury issues?
GWS also has been gifted a boat load of picks. Bulldogs had a top 6 priority pick or two as well.
I think youâre also overstating how bad their coaches are/were.
Shouldnât we just sign all of them, bar maybe Snelling?
OUT
McBride (cat B), Montgomerie, Lord, Stewart, Tippa, Phillips
So 5 out from main/rookie list already. 6 if BZT leaves, 7 if we delist Snelling.
Assuming we will leave 3-4 spots for the draft/SPP. I canât see us trading in (or via FA) more than 3 players.
Edit - not necessarily a question for you A-S_B, just a general question.
Might depend on type of player that we bring it. Eg Gresham comes in then a snelling might go.
Also keeps us open for salary dumped players
Just provides the club with some flexibility.
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It does somewhat mirror the ladder though. Just a coincidence you think?
I hope we remove Dodoro so I never have to listen to the classic Dodoro for/against argument again.
Heâs bigger than Ben-Hur.
Imagine a team with Tom Dekoning and Sam Taylor. Jeez
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If James Stewart defended the goals as hard as Ants defends Dodoro, he would have made one hell of a full back
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Well, luckily I have you to condescendingly point out the flaws in my logic. Thanks for that. Please tell me, what am I assuming to be cause and effect here exactly?
I am not saying that AA awards cause success. That would be stupid, AA awards and premierships are both outcomes. What I am suggesting is that both AA awards and premierships are caused by common things: most important is the quality of the players, but then there is also coaching, development, fitness, etc. Weâve had 6 coaches during Dodoâs tenure (Scott is 7th not including Goodwin), several of whom were premiership coaches when they had better quality lists. I am ruling out coaches as the issue. Then there is development and fitness, which I acknowledge as problems also. But they are not the cause of dodoâs failures. They havenât helped, sure, but I believe bad recruiting/drafting is the biggest issue weâve had and it remains the single area the is unaddressed after all this time.
I might have some sympathy if these freakish players were so rare that you could consider them outliers. But they arenât. In fact, I would argue that more than most drafts contain one or more players who are so good that they can be placed in the category of Pendles, Martin, Danger, Selwood etc. Excluding these players I donât believe makes sense.
Also, how do you discern what is luck and what is good recruiting? What is the actual decision-rule you use? To me, it seems to be your own personal belief without any objectivity.
Finally, West coast is probably an outlier out of all of the teams who have won flags over the years. They were strong across the board but didnât have as many stand outs like other premiers. I would put Kennedy in the superstar category, given the number of goals he kicked, but obviously he was traded in.
Since 2006, Geelong have recruited Tom Stewart (4 AAs) and Blicavs (3 AAs), and Taylor (2 AAs) but I actually agree with you that their drafting has not yielded the star talent since that time. What they have done is compliment their drafts with good trades and made solid selections elsewhere to pick up players like Duncan, Guthrie, etc. that netted them the flag last year.
YOU were the one who created the single draft criteria when you noted Dodoâs 2008, 2014 etc. were âvery goodâ drafts. To me, âvery goodâ suggests that we nailed the drafts better than other teams and recruited players to form a nucleus to contend. I donât think we did that. I then suggested Geelongâs 1999 and 2001 as very good drafts, and your response is that they were too good. I then mentioned players taken close together over successive drafts and now your response is this is a bad example because they were not taken in the same draft. Give me a break.
Looking at a single draft in isolation btw is an arbitrary boundary and does not having much meaning because doing well in a single isolated draft here or there is not what matters. Rather, it is attaining enough players over several years who can form a nucleus on which to build a competitive team.
But, if you want single draft yields that would be considered very good, here are some:
Hawthorn 2001: Luke Hodge, Rick Ladson, Campbell Brown, Sam Mitchell (6 AA awards and all premiership players)
Hawthorn 2004: Roughead, Franklin, Lewis (11 AAs between them and all premiership players, and an all time great).
Hawthorn had priority picks but were also smart in trading out players to get a better draft hand, which dodo has not done in a good draft year.
Richmond 2006: Reiwoldt and Edwards (4 AAs between them, both premiership players, and a 3 time coleman winner)
Richmond 2007: Cotchin and Rance (6 AAs between them and a âbrownlowâ).
Richmond 2009: Martin and Astbury. An all time great in Martin and Astbury was a premiership player. what makes this more impressive is that it built on their very good 2006 and 2007
Collingwood 2008: Sidebottom, Beams, and Blair (all premiership players and 2 AA players)
Melbourne 2014: Petracca, Brayshaw, and also neal-bullen (3 AAs, 2 premiership players, and that could be added to this year).
These are all very good drafts. And please, stop with the hypotheticals. Gumby got injured, we have to deal with it. Other players have careers that are cut short as well. We didnât get a PP in 2006 that was top 5. We got one at the end of the first round and we blew that.
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What you are doing is saying that drafting is the key factor. Given the saga on its own wiped out about 5 years of opportunity, its a patently ridiculous statement. I also think the fact youâre ruling out coaches also shows a major flaw, as most would consider coach churn a major impediment to success and a stable list strategy.
But youâre agreeing with me that recruitment isnât the only factor. So, surely now you agree that if weâre going to evaluate past recruitment, we need to focus on factors that strip out the other elements as much as possible, no?
That is why achieving an AA versus multiple AAs is a better criteria for evaluating the success of recruiting talent.
Um, you donât consider odds of about 1 in 80 incredibly low probabilities and outliers??? Especially if you strip out the top 5 picks or so, since the reality is if you donât have access to those picks you canât get the player anyway.
And to be clear, Iâm saying exclude them from the analysis of AA if using multiple AAs. Iâve already said Iâm all for analysis specifically looking at these types of players and how EFC have performed.
My main criteria is threefold.
(1) Did they select someone else first? Because if so, it indicates they didnât really think the odds of that player becoming elite were that high.
(2) Did they do anything to move up the order? Because if they really thought the player was that good, did they really want to risk the player not being drafted by someone else?
(3) For top 5 picks, was the player materially better than other players normally available at that pick? This isnât luck perse with recruiting, but does identify the luck with drafts. E.g. in respect of getting a superstar, it doesnât matter who we took of McCluggage, McGrath and Tarranto since the 2016 draft didnât have any rated that highly.
The above is nowhere near perfect, because teams may have been sure a player would slip and they could have their cake and eat it too. Or maybe they thought both players would be elite. But it is a broadbrush view.
I should also caveat that if a team outperforms over time getting these players from later picks, then that offsets the above. Because that indicates the recruiters can identify characteristics more likely to lead to a top player, and indicates it isnât luck.
It seems weâre generally in agreement on these bits. What it does show, is that teams rated very highly for drafting can go a long time without getting one of these elites. But you can win without that (although, I suppose you could argue WCE only had Kennedy due to originally drafting Judd, similar to Bulldogs getting benefit from their top 6 priority pick due to Griffen leaving or Deledio from Richmond).
I was responding to your line âAlso, heâs been there 26 years. Weâve had plenty of very good draft hands in that time that most other clubs would have eaten up.â. If you meant multiple periods, thats very different from a draft hand.
And I totally agree looking at individual drafts are arbitrary. You need to look at a period of time.
Which is why I reference statistics like the performance of our picks versus the next 5, and number of players getting AAs.
If youâre using two quality players out of a draft, then weâve had plenty as well. I would note a number of those drafts how high the picks were with available superstars, which we generally havenât had. Including premierships is also a pretty ridiculous method of ascertaining player quality.
On the hypotheticals, youâre including drafts where teams got top 6 priority picks. Hardly relevant to us if youâre going to do that.
Are you suggesting that drafting isnât a key factor in a clubâs success? Given that a substantial portion of most clubâs lists comes from the draft, I donât think Iâm the one making patently ridiculous statements. The saga wiped us out of the 1st 2 rounds in 2013 and 2014, but we also got a compensation pick and then landed pick 1 in 2016, which was a direct result of the saga. So we lost opportunities but also gained some, which we wasted.
And I see it the other way around. All of those coaches, and I mean every single one of them, were handed shyte lists that had no hope of competing. Scott is the latest one and I expect he will unfortunately suffer the same fate when the EFC fans get restless, which wonât take long. I highly doubt weâre going to win a final in the next year or two, and I think other clubs have better young talent than we do.
No I donât agree that AA players are a better indicator of talent. There is variation in talent that is not captured when you exclude the multiple AA players, and I believe this matters. I just donât see the logic about why AA players accounts for these issues and AA awards doesnât, no matter how much you try and explain it. I guess Iâm too stupid, sorry.
Thereâs a couple of problems with this statement. First, no I donât actually see them as outliers. Every dataset will have naturally occurring extreme values (which I donât think these are). They just exist at the top end of the distribution. Second, weâre not debating these players being excluded amongst 80 players - I just mentioned they are recruited each year to highlight the point out that they come into the AFL almost every year and are therefore not that unusual. What we ARE debating is them being left out of the AA teams of 22 players. So that narrows the number exceedingly and makes them less outlierish.
So in 2022, as an example, we have to exclude AAs won by Hawkins, Stewart, Oliver, Petracca, Neale, Gawn, Cameron, Blicavs, and Cripps, whoâve all won at least 3 and by the end of their careers, most of them will probably achieve 5 or more. That accounts for 40% of the AA team that year!
In 2021, we have to exclude AAs won by Stewart, Petracca, Oliver, Hawkins, Bontempelli, and even Merrett, accounting 27% of the data points that year.
The same issue applies basically every year because these multiple AA players/stars are not that unusual and form a good chunk of the AA team.
Can you point out the drafts we we achieved comparable quality to those I listed, considering the number of picks available? Where we got 2 x players in a draft that went on to forge solid careers, have they achieved anything even remotely close to those players I listed? And bearing in mind, that a lot of the drafts hands/yields i listed were backed up in other drafts as well.
Finally, I find it very odd that you consider 100 games played (regardless of their quality) as a very suitable metric to evaluate recruiting but you consider whether the player played in a premiership side âpretty ridiculousâ method of evaluating player quality. Perhaps I should also point out that all of those players I mentioned also played well over 100 games, which might impress you more.
Drafting is a key factor, but it doesnât have the singular weight you seem to be giving it. It canât sustain success under a pile of failures in other positions.
The saga had far more effects than just the draft penalties. We lost our leading goal scorer for a second round pick. A (future) AA ruck for peanuts. Other key players. It impacted the mental health of our entire list. It meant we struggles to attract players who werenât fringe or their careers were done. It took a team who was top 4 before injuries hit in 2012, and despite the saga was top 4 in 2013 before we got banned from finals, and gutted it emotionally and physically.
Or do you think the Hird => Thompson => Hird process was managed well? Do you think not training prior to 2016 as the club âsuspendedâ them voluntarily to get an additional 12 months out-of-the-way in case they got suspended for real had no development, fitness or mental health implications?
If all these coaches we got in all thought the list was shyte, why werenât they saying so? Why werenât they culling players and saying âheh, our recruiting is rubbish!â? Either they were all fools, completely spineless, or their opinions didnât match yours. And that goes with a lot of the assistant coaches too.
Youâre also ignoring that changing coaches is bad for list management. Part of the reason Geelong, Sydney, Richmond and Hawthorn had their success was they had a sustained period with a single coach with a single playing vision. That allowed the recruiting team to build for that preferred structure. You chop and change coaches, you chop and change game plans, that then impacts how cohesive a list you will have.
And you donât think if that happens thatâs a problem that is outside the scope of the list management??? Either chopping and changing coaches is bad, or it isnât.
Unfortuantely, given you canât seem to follow the logic of the argument so havenât argued against it, that might be right.
Which neatly ignores I donât say exclude them. I say count them once.
And then for evaluation of top-end talent drafting use different metrics than simply number over time.
Iâve already pointed them out to you.
100 games is an individual achievement, and is an objective measure.
Premierships depends on the team around you, which as Iâve already pointed out depends a lot more on team success. Which then depends on getting lots of things right in addition to drafting.
Premeirships are a terrible mechanism to measure individual quality. There are greats of the game who have never won a flag, while every year there are role-players who walk away with a premiership medalion. It doesnât measure individual talent at all.
Unless you consider Tom Atkins to be as good a player as Dangerfield?
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our contempories
2006 Gumbleton & Jetta
But we nailed did ok with Davey & Houli late.
2007
Myers & Pears - should have been Rioli
But did ok with Hooker late + Bellchamebrs PSD
2008
Hurley + Zaka did pretty well.
(traded in Prismall Cats selected Steven Motlop, would have been better to keep the pick)
2009
Melksham, Carlisle, Crameri, Colyer + Howlett all over 100 games
wasted pick getting Williams from Hawks though.
I guess us trying to improve quicker adding Prismall + Williams
liekly costs us a couple of handy players - Motlop + lets say Fyfe for sake of argument although Port Took Moore. Rushing to get success and improvement should ahve went solely draft.
Hmm, I thought Menzie was a 2021 draft cohort. Learn something new every day.
Turns 21 in a month 
Why is Cox a different colour, and why does he get a *?
Did that to indicate his role was completely unknown!
Cox is listed as a mid defender and an outside mid
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Not sure where to post thisâŚ
And I donât think we have a WSPHU threadâŚ
I am surprised the Saints delisted Bytel.
After lengthy injuries, heâs finally gotten on the park this year and performed very well at VFL level and was good in his full games at AFL level.
He definitely can tackle and provide a defensive element to our midfield.
I donât think we will have a senior list spot but would love to give him a rookie spot.
We were looking at him last year and decided to go for setterfield instead. Was the right call.