Yeh I’m just mucking around, I do agree that our recent drafting has been very good.
Don’t think we should have given Fiorini 4 years personally but that’s just me and hopefully I’m proved wrong.
what if we don’t win another game ? or revert to the style from the first 2 weeks ?
Yes, I agree with this wholeheartedly. The development of young players is absolutely critical for the future of the club. In the past, many these young players just don’t kick on as one would expect and others leave. I don’t really know the reason for this, but I guess these young guys were not seen as a priority (whereas they should be).
IMO, Assistant Coaches should be fine tuning the skills in the Development Coach program. The whole process should be seamless.
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Lets see if that happens first. Last 6 Qtrs of footy suggests a few more wins coming to me
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Its the effort that does me, where was this the previous weeks.
Change of personnel not that much. Obviously Ridley helps. But it was like something switched on and we wanted to compete. And then alternatively it got to hard for Melbourne and they didn;t want it as much.
Brings me back to the bruising match with the swans, papley had a whinge as we were too tough and roughing him up he didn’t like it.
Senior bodies helps. And having draftees that look like Sharp, Robey and Farrow i.e the size to compete at AFL level, also add in recent recruits Day-Wicks and May. They both don’t take a backwards step, or let other players push them around. Little things like that can lift us, but they also need to be able to play footy, which they can do.
That Roost from May was team lifting. We seemed able to take the game on more and actually hit a target, so when players worked hard they were rewarded.
There are some signs there.
The senior players though - Merrett had a crack, McGrath did his role, Parish and Wright both played their best games for the year. Now they need to back it up.
Durham and Caldwell and at times Merrett startin forward and pushing up to midfield. With main mids of Parish, Tsatas and McGrath seemed to work well.
Keep Wright and McGrath around the midfield.
Wright v Witts and Mcgrath v Rowell.
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Infuriating article. I pretty much totally agree with what @Tagger said, but here are my views (some crossover with Tagger):
Jay Clark and Welsh are just full of it. Draft first, then top up? Not rebuilding, but they really are? The club expected pain, while telling members at the AGM that we expect to play finals? Selecting a coach to play finals who focuses on wins over developing kids. Draper is near-elite, but we got Band 2 compo?
Absolutely infuriating. Either Welsh is flat out lying or he is ignorant about what is going on at the club. They want it both ways. We are and aren’t rebuilding. We expect finals and pain. We’re focused on development and wins. It’s just ass covering bullshit.
To argue they expected pain, are draft first, then not trade Merrett? Delusional.
The comments on Fiorini, Draper, baby steps after the Melbourne win, etc.
It was nice they admitted we’re not a destination club, but you wonder if that is really why we’re officially “draft first”.
Oh, and will the Blitzers who hated character being a draftable trait under Dodorro be angry it still is?
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Silly. It was apparently referred to on Saturday morning that the bombers had already organised this sit down with the media. The win was nicely timed but nothing else.
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I’m not sure what is worse: either the club is pushing BS about a clear strategy to take pressure of them, or the club has a dumb strategy in the first place.
If the strategy is indeed to hit the draft hard, then you have to make efforts to (a) try to hit the actual pointy end of the draft and (b) move on players with value to improve the draft hand.
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For better or worse, there is a clearly outlined path
And just to be clear, is that path:
- Take top draft picks to the draft
- Use later picks on kids OR topping up
- Willing to bring in free agents don’t need picks on
- Target finals and as many wins as possible
- Refuse to trade any player we deem best 23 and want to keep, no matter the offer.
Because from the outside, that seems to be it. Which can be summed up as “keep the current players, use our first pick, then try and bolster elsewhere cheaply”.
Which, is not much of a strategy. It is really saying “we need to trade and draft better than anyone else from a mediocre position”.
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if you have the specifics lay it on us
Does the club know that it actually needs to win a final before it can win a premiership or multiple premierships?
Up until last week, I wasn’t even sure we’d win another game, yet alone a final.
Well, the actual Melbourne trade was #9 and our F3 for #28, #40, #46, #54, #65 and Melbourne’s F1.
The problem is with tracking exactly what the outcome is:
- Melbourne and Brisbane did a trade for Sharp that included multiple picks, including our F3.
- We did two pick trades to change our picks (with Brisbane & St Kilda). In that we traded #40, #46, the pick we got for Stringer, for a different set of picks.
- We then used #28 and our existing second rounder on Kako.
- We then used some of those picks from Brisbane to take Gerreyn, Clarke, a pick from Melbourne on Unwin, and traded another pick we had plus a F4 for St Kilda’s F2.
- In 2025 we then used the St Kilda F2 plus Draper compo and our 2nd rounder to get the Sharp pick.
- In 2025 we used Melbourne’s F1 on Farrow.
So, after the initial trade its a real mess. And we matched Kako partly with the 2024 second rounder we never traded. The following is about as accurate as it gets, but is still very messy:
“After multiple trades Essendon traded Lindsay, Stringer, our 2024 second rounder, our F3 and F4 to receive Farrow, Kako, Gerreyn, Clarke, Unwin and one pick of three to get Dyson Sharp and Kondo”
or
“After multiple trades Essendon traded Lindsay, Stringer, Draper, our 2024 second rounder, our F2, F3 and F4 to receive Farrow, Kako, Gerreyn, Clarke, Unwin, Sharp and Kondo”
But the Melbourne trade from their perspective would look very different, nowhere near a ‘reverse’ of this.
You tend to draw very hard conclusions from soft messaging content that comes out of the club. These media bits and ‘presidential quotes’ are intentionally loose fitting and designed to engage the rank and file Essendon fan, not for consumption and hyper-analysis on footy forums.
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Do you know if Jobe Shanahan was ever considered in all this? Him and Caddy playing together would have been a brilliant result.
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So, you’re saying its ok for the club to lie to members?
On the post you actually quoted, I was more trying to show that the club hasn’t articulated a clear plan at all, and if you take what they’ve said + what they’ve done, it doesn’t boil down into a particularly good plan. Recognising we don’t have the full picture, but that its also possible the club doesn’t have a good plan.
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Have a look at what North had to give up for the pick to get Whitlock. Their 2025 first, to get pick #27 and Richmond’s 2025 second. Given North probably looked worse than us in 2024 (finished 6 spots lower), we likely would have got a worse deal. Maybe a Richmond F3 instead of F2 back. Especially as we need to outbid North.
Obviously we don’t know quite what it would have been, but Whitlock was #27 and Shanahan #30. So, this deal is presumably in the right kind of range. Of course, maybe nobody other than Richmond would do a deal. North had their deal on the table for multiple clubs and only Richmond took it.
So, trading that deal means we don’t get Robey, but get Shanahan.
And to be clear, I have no idea if the club ever considered dealing into the 2024 draft to get Shanahan (or anyone else).
I’m not trying to have a go at you, I just reckon people grab onto all sorts of dispatches/ messaging through media and interviews over different administrations and time periods- and they are not all equal in credibility or currency.
If you add all of them into the mix and earnestly consider them as formal club messaging to supporters, well I think that is going to be inherently messy and create confusion.
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Does everything have to be so black and white? We signed Fiorini for a third round pick! Does that mean our priority wasn’t drafting? No it doesn’t!
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I didn’t think you were. And I’m not trying to have a go at you.
But I’m honestly confused. I agree these comments aren’t necessarily designed to be analysed to death. But, if their full of contradictory statements, I think its valid to question them. I think the club is years past getting any benefit of the doubt, and I think Welsh blew his benefit of the doubt when he (reputedly) sunk the Merrett trade.
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