just more waffle, If our club was in top 4, I would advocate trading. We are not! I would suggest we concentrate on building a good base. Make sure our recruiting team has the best people and plenty of resource’s. Same with our player development team/programs. Make the most of our drafting opportunities. Sure, if a trading bargain comes our way, grab it. But please ffs let’s at least get a strong sustainable base of successful programs and personnel that will last many years in the future before we sell the farm to get some snake oil seller"s idea of instant success.
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The recruitment team is given a ‘shopping list’ of the type of player required. They choose draftees based on those requirements. They do not arbitrarily select whoever they fancy. So putting your draft vs recruit argument aside, you really should not be pointing accountability at the recruitment team for deficiencies in the list make up.
Lol, so the quality of the picks that lead to holes in the list, is that the responsibility of the recruiters? Seriously is Dodoro responsible for anything? I understand that the recruiters work with the coaching staff to try to get the type of players the coach wants but I think it’s fair to say that drafting duds wasn’t an instruction. We were going to draft lobb we changed at the last moment. History should show we should have been looking for a mid all along and hoping another Zerret falls in our lap is not a good plan.
I get it, you want to do the same thing and expect a different outcome. As others have said that is the definition of insanity. There is a very unique opportunity right now where we have expansion clubs with a glut of talent and are struggling to keep it. Hoping we somehow managed to just become a top 4 side and only then somehow use a far worse trading position to add top talent is fanciful. We only have a few years left of Hooker and even Hurley is about to turn 27. If we have the opportunity to add a player like Kelly right now it would be moronic to not try
You’re probably forgetting that Hawthorn gave up 2 1st rounders for Burgoyne and like I said Geelong did the same for Ottens. I’m not suggesting it’s a cure all and it of course has massive risks but I believe it’s better than the risks of drafting particularly to fill a defined need
I thought is was pick 9 and Mark “shotgun” Williams?
Of that list you have only Langford (currently more suited forward) and Clark (unproven with kicking issues) are true inside mid potential.
We are severely lacking a pipeline of inside mids.
Once you loose Watson, Hocking, Bird, Howlett we are left with.
Hepp, Myers and those two. No exactly brimming with contested ball winners for the future.
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No I didn’t forget, they were massive trades, but not franchise trades. Both were chosen to fill clear holes in the respective lists, rather than be the “fix” for a list that has holes everywhere. (Hmm, probably I’m speaking rubbish and i should just count them and accept that it is sometimes necessary)
I guess the question is what our “hole” is? I could completely understand a massive play for a Johannisen or similar to fill a gap that is clearly there. But whether a massive play for a gun mid (especially a Rockliff type who I’d have serious questions about given he’s been a “gun” for years, and his team has been rubbish the while time) actually helps, given that depth of quality and well defined midfield structures are what makes for a strong midfield, I don’t know.
I mean we have (say) 3 or 4 genuine A grade mids (at various stages of their careers), but that hasn’t helped. We need the right extra mids via trade. Those players may not necessarily be the same as the “best”
Oh, I don’t know. At this point I want our current batch to improve. In the meantime I hope we have irons in a few fires with a view to bringing in some additional quality.
Setterfield, Z Jones, Johannisen, Grundy whoever. I hope we have 10 identified, and maybe we can make 1 or 2 happen.
Even over the last 5 years we have made some trades happen, so hopefully we can up the level that we can get in.
I’ve seen Begley a couple of times and I think he is an inside mid.
I think its more important to have balanced midfielders to compliment the big beasts not just all contested ball winners.
In that department we have Colyer, McKenna, Mutch, Laverde, Walla, Fantasia, Parish and McGrath.
They all need time to develop though.
Yeah unfortunately we helped Hawks get the trade done by giving up pick 16 in the trade for Williams. Port still got 2 1st round picks
What you need is guys that can do it all. Having those dedicated insiders has meant we’ve been smashed on the spread for 10+ years. Replacing them doesn’t help. Just recruit guys who go when it’s their time, and have a good system.
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Crows midfield is killing it.
Their guns are Sloane (Heppell), and Matt Crouch (Watson) has been superb also this year as inside mid. Brad Crouch (Zerrett) when on park is a very classy ball winner.
The rest of mids they basically have are just hard working outside type role players who just run and run and run. Both to pressure but also to spread to provide options/overlap. None of them have any star factor/ego really, they are there to play their role for the team.
Then they have two elite HBF’rs who create all the drive from defence and push up to the wings. Laird runs at unbelievable disposal efficiency and constantly gets 30+, Smith doesn’t get as much ball but his long kicking is a weapon.
And Charlie Cameron (Fantasia) as an extra mid/HFF being that pacy x-factor.
What are we lacking compared to them.
The HBF’rs, and the hard working outside role players. And our main contested ball player on his last legs.
Hence JJ, Jones, Hopper - don’t make plans.
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I reckon we’d be lucky to have drafted a dozen pure mids over the last decade.
- hislop
- zaharakis
- Myers (debatable)
- howlett
- melk
- hepp
- hams ?
- kav
- lee
- zerret
- parish
- mutch
- Clarke
That’s out of a crop of about what, 70ish? There are plenty of names to fill the “potential midfielder” list and even more on the skinny half back flank list.
I think it is fair to say we have been reluctant to use mid to late round picks on pure mids and have preferred “upside/potential mid” picks.
Over to you jackets.
Lee? Am I thinking of the wrong guy, I thought he was a tall defender??
You are spot on with the assessment. We just don’t seem to have valued mids anywhere near what most other teams have or what it seems obvious that we needed to.
Brendan not Andrew.
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I agree with JBomber in that trading is neccessary, but i think we’re atleast 2 years from doing that headhunting.
you don’t trade to make finals you trade to go from a top 8 to a contender. I’d be stocking up on picks the next 2 years and going mid crazy with the first 2 round picks we have and going for talls with the rest. rookie some absolute gambles to see how it goes. I reckon dodoro has it wrong with the strategy to go risky with 2nd round picks and safe with 3rd. You can get good players with flaws in the 2nd round (look at sam powell-pepper) supreme physical athlete but questions about his skills. will improve imo. Zach merrett (supreme skills, and more than decent speed, but questions on his ability translating to afl- size and fitness).
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I’m interested in whether others take pure mids or whether they’re better at turning those flanked into part of the midfield rotations?
I genuinely don’t know the answer, but my suspicion is they’re better at getting a wider mix into rotations, whereas we have had fewer options (possibly due to Watson types being “mid-only”) running through there?
Examples from elsewhere…
Rockliff was recruited as a slow HFF
Fyfe was a HFF
Etc etc
If we recruited these guys I feel like we’d be lamenting them as yet more flankers that weren’t pure mids that we drafted
Lets say there are 90 clearances up for grabs in game. Typical results are that we get 40 and our opponents get 50.
Blitzers say, we lost clearances “badly” and in fact that can mean the difference between winning and losing a game.
But in reality, we are but 5 clearances away from breaking even. We are only one major clearance winner away from winning the clearance count in games. For example. In Jobes brownlow year, he averaged 7 clearances. This year he is averaging 4.8 , thats 2 down.
Goddard has increased by 2, which takes up the difference. Hepp is down 2 on his best year, Parish is down 1 on last year. Zac is 1 up on last year. Bird averaged 4 clearances last year, which was his best clearance performance.
A really good clearance player should win 6-10 clearances a a game .
So, in order to gain more clearances, we need to get Bird in the team, Get Hepp and Jobe up by 1 or 2 each and get Parish up by 1-2 by playing him in the middle more.
An improvement of 5 clearance per game will get us to break even, and improvement of 10 will completely reverse the current situation, but will require an additional clearance specialist in 2018,
In addition there are other factors like tackling and defending lost clearances, but in terms of numbers, its quite finely tuned.
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Lol all you like.
FWIW, I totally agree with your argument that in today’s game, you can’t realistically get to the top solely through the draft. Even if a club were extremely lucky including injuries, at best you may pluck an A+ and a few other good players a year. That’s not enough for a flag window. Starting from scratch, you’d end up with about 6 or 7 good players and 2 or 3 elites. I’d say you’d need almost double that to be a genuine contender.
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But regarding you lol-ing and your insistence on laying list issues at the feet of one person - you are deluded. Dodoro doesn’t run EFC, and neither do any of the other list managers at any other team. I’ve heard enough of your opinion on Dodoro to realise that you won’t be changing your mind about him, and frankly, I don’t really care. But it is, in my opinion, a naive way of looking at it at best and in my opinion, severely weakens your arguments.
Who else is as much or possibly more responsible for the list the way it is if not the list manager? I have asked it here before and I will ask again now - what is he actually responsible for then? If there’s somebody else who has made the decisions then let me know who it is. When we get a pick right everyone lines up to tongue his nuts so is that also misplaced? I’m happy if we establish some perameters for Dodoro but so far it just seems like he’s teflon round here.