It was Woosh insisted
I agree
And you also know that Eyre and Brand were academy players who we knew weâd be taking.
I donât agree with Nino, that we took too many talls (so long as we arenât taking any this year). But your point is moot.
If your going to time a coming together of a list at the same time, makes sense to get your talls 1stâŚthey take a bit longer
2 Likes
We knew weâd take them if they werenât bid on earlier then we expected. There were no guarantees
2 Likes
Of course, but they were in our planning. So your point is no less moot.
The Richmond bid threw a spanner in the works. There was another player we wanted but had to make the call on whether to match and that took us off the (our) ideal pathway.
I imagine Erye was bid on earlier than we expected, but still happy to take him there. He was a bit of a bolter coming into the draft. Brand was our higher rated academy player 12 months out.
We wanted to bid on Walker (FREO NGA) & Maurice Rioli Jnr (RICH f/S), and we did but could have bid earlier if Tigers didnt force our hand with Eyre.
Also, we were rapidly approaching a cliff with basically all our mature talls retiring.
Imagine going into this draft with a talls contingent of:
Draper
Stewart
Ridley
BZT
Hurley (injured)
Wright
We critically needed to go hard on talls early enough for them to bulk up enough to take to the field in 2022/23.
6 Likes
Youâre missing a few talls in Bryan, Phillips, Laverde and Francis, but your point still stands. Cox is clearly going to be a superstar and if Reid is somehow a better prospect than what Cox is - you cant not take them.
However I donât think our list position warranted us grabbing 6 talls in one offseason. Seems to be a bit overkill and limits our ability to acquire other talls we rate later in the draft in the coming years.
But these are all minor points that are fun to discuss between us Essendon diehards and I think all of us are thrilled with how our list is looking at the moment overall.
2 Likes
Yeah. I rushed that. Laverde and Francis can go on the list. Phillips gets a (one more year) comment. And Bryan is in the Jones draft year, so is excluded.
The main reason Iâm happy we took so many talls is we donât need every single one of them to succeed. Get an injury or a lack of development and we have a bunch of other options.
Say half of the young talls fail, we are still solid. If we had fewer talls, we could end up in that awkward no manâs land of playing crap key position players due to lack of options.
1 Like
Also thereâs McBride too I just remembered.
(Just playing devilâs advocate below for the sake of discussion)
Yes weâre in a great position weâre we have a lot of talls and some can fail. But thatâs come at the cost of pretty much every other aspect of the ground.
Weâve got what 8 key defenders on our list at the moment? Thatâs too many for a balanced list imo as itâs even too many to all play in both our AFL and VFL teams. Itâs going to be hard to develop Brand for example, when you are going to be giving Reid and Zerk-Thatcher the 2 key posts in the VFL, let alone how is McBride meant to develop.
To be really successful we need Caldwell and Perkins to come on as midfield prospects as thereâs no young mids coming up below them (if Caldwell stays fit, then it looks like they clearly will).
We had Cahill, Ham and Johnson play as inside mids for us in the VFL, which shows how shallow our midfield depth is. Due to this lack of small depth, Cahill, Zaka and Gleeson got AFL games for us who we have just delisted.
3 Likes
Not picking up another couple of mids and getting flogged in the reserves also impacted our VFL development of Eyre, Brand Reid etc for example. I looked at Eyre and felt he was more physically ready than others we picked up.
If he kicked 20 goals in the VFL, it would have been a nice development year. Instead we hardly went forward in so many of the games which meant Eyre was just running around.
1 Like
We definitely made a short term sacrifice to the medium and small depth by going all in on talls. The list size reductions probably didnât help.
Realistically we are talking about Brand or Eyre being replaced by a late pick small. I really doubt that is going to change out 2021/2022 results.
The reason we could do that imbalance was our midfield is by and large sorted. We can take a pause for a couple of years and get the manufacturing line going for our next batch of talls.
21/22 drafts will focus on smalls. The Davey twins next year get the small forward role covered. Likely we get a utility or a wing this year. Those types should develop very quickly, so I donât see a big hole in the types of afl ready players.
4 Likes
We also got more injury-hit to our smalls rather than our talls. Shiel, McGrath, Clarke, Mozzie, Zaka, Langford, Caldwell all missed big chunks of the year. Reid was the only tall I can immediately think of who spent the majority of the season unavailable, though Draper started slow.
We maybe had a mild overrepresentation of talls on the list as a whole, but it was really magnified by all the midfield injuries we had.
5 Likes
Yeah. I think we were 1-2 heavy on talls compared to the ideal list balance.
That will sort itself out by the end of next year.
1 Like
Youâd have to say that weâd expect one of Zerk-Thatcher and Francis to likely be traded next year (more likely Zerk-Thatcher). And potentially one of Brand and McBride to go as well.
Weâre in a great list position now where there arenât many obvious delistings anymore, except for probably Gleeson. I personally like Clarke, Guelfi and Ham as depth players and think theyâll be stiff to go next year (and if they do go, theyâll all likely be picked up by another club which will be ok as we will at least land us late picks to match Davey bids).
So very good signs that our list is developing very nicely with some solid depth players out of the best 22.
No longer the days of us all wondering how players like McNiece, J Merrett and Long remained on the list.
1 Like
Yep
And I said that this time last year, and following last yearâs draft. We were a little tall, but was always going to sort itself out.
Has balanced out now with Hooker & Ambo retiring, and Hurley likely out for the year.
You donât just draft for now, you draft for 3 & 8 years down the track as well.
2 Likes
Iâd suggest if any club wanted Clarke, they wouldâve taken him last year when he was delisted or this year when he was out of contract.
2 Likes
Yep not Clarke, that is right.
I think clubs would look at Guelfi and Ham if they didnât have to trade for them