Our strange drafting strategy of late

Football Discussion Trade week Duursma head in
41

FFS, I have posted on this topic in 2001 and many times since!!! 

 

EVERY time anyone dares question EFC drafting, we are guaranteed to get some redacted posting with not much more substance in response than mentioning hindsight.

 

Why don't you do some analysis, instead of having a knee-jerk reaction to maintain group-think?

 

You may well find that we have wasted more #1 draft picks than any club that we aspire to better. You may well also find that many here did not consider it great policy in FORESIGHT drafting the skinniest kids (eg Gleeson) or Frankston HBFers (eg van Unen). 

 

While we are at it, Einstein, since you don't like hindsight, why don't you post here you definite predictions about how all these picks will go? We can bookmark it to see how well you go.

You know what - unlike pretty much every other ■■■■■■ on here, i watch a bunch of junior footy and put my preferences and reasons out there well in advance of the draft.  Do you? 

 

And when I see wisdom-in-hindsight bullshit I'll call it as I see it. 

 

Let me tell you (and everyone else on here) a few dirty little secrets about drafting.

 

First - if you have a 60% record as a recruiter, you're doing VERY ■■■■■■■ WELL and probably could be a professional.  I don't have that good a record (nothing near it), and I probably watch more u18s than anyone on here except ant555 and a few mostly-silent types who don't post much any more.  Even the pros at the best-drafting clubs get loads wrong.  Anyone remember Sydney's sainted list management team spending a first rounder on Veszpremi?  Drafting is a terribly inexact science, and because you get so few picks each year you only have to stuff up a couple to make your record look shithouse.  Accept that a lot of draftees are going to be failures.  It happens to everyone.  But you only need a few late picks to come good and you look like a genius and have something you can build a flag side around.

 

Second - the wisdom-in-hindsight phenomenon IS are real thing, and it ■■■■■ me up the walls.  Anyone remember when picking Hurley and overlooking Rich was going to kill us as a club for a decade?  Jesus Christ I argued til I was blue in the face over that one.  But what really steams me is stuff like the Myers argument - I reckon about 2 people on here wanted Rioli pre-draft, everyone else was panting after Rhys Palmer.  Not that it stops them howling for the recruiters' blood for not picking Rioli now though.  And why is it always Rioli, why doesn't anyone ever complain about overlooking Dangerfield?

 

Third - you're complaining about drafting Frankston half-backs now?  When we've drafted a grand total of three in recent year, of which two are best 22 fixtures and one of those missed out on AA by a bee's ■■■■?  Hell, if that's the sort of results we're going to get out of drafting Franga hbs, draft more I say!  From a wider point of view, can you even see how spectacularly successful we've been drafting Frankston half-backs with late picks, when compared the the sort of results you get from picking in the wider draft?

 

Fourth - seriously, panning out on picking Gleeson after one year in which nobody ever expected him to play any senior footy?  WTF?

 

You know what - I wanted Christiansen in 09, instead of Colyer, and I got that right.  I also wanted Carlisle, but didn't think he'd make it to our pick.  I wanted Stevens over Melksham, and it's looking like I'm wrong on that one.  In 2010 I preached the word of Heppell far and near.  I wanted either Hallahan or Parker (slight Hallahan preference) instead of Steinberg, and so I'm calling that one with me slightly in front.  I also wanted Alex Johnson with a late pick, which makes me look pretty smart, but I was big on Michael Mascoulis and Courtney Hylton too, and they went nowhere.  I thought hibberd was a poor pick and Hal Hunter was a bargain.  We all get some wrong.

 

In drafting, you win some and you lose some.  It's a massively inexact science and ALL clubs have a long record of draft failures.  If you're bobbing up now complaining about Kav or whoever (and did you express disappointment about the pick at the time may i ask?), then maybe you should put in some damn work and go see some u18 games so you can offer your own informed opinions, rather than sniping after the fact.

42

 

 

We do seem to have had a tendency over the last decade to go for "may develop into a midfield role" rather than midfielder who may go forward/back.

But does that hold true more recently? Kav, Heppell and Melksham were all first round picks used on out and out midfielders.
Add Colyer and Zaka from the second round as well.

 

While I admire your late attempts at analysis, can I rely on the time-honoured BB response of: HINDSIGHT!

 

Not to mention: cherry picking.

 

Compare the successes against the failures. Just to make it simple for you: how many first rounders since 2000 would be considered great picks? And by great, I mean challenging for "Champion of Essendon" status. To put this in perspective: there were 50 CoEs from the previous 100 years, so at that rate we should expect 5 or 6 since 2000. (Yes, I know). I rate Heppell as the only one who will challenge for that status. Most of the rest have made no impact at all.

 

And before those who try to argue against some of those selections, I play the HINDSIGHT card, because very few on BB at the time criticised the selection of Davies, Harvey etc etc.

43

Hird came into the club and kept saying we needed to draft midfielders. We needed to get fit.

We get lucky with Heppell. Then Parker is just there for the taking. His draft camp results showed he was ready to compete straight away. It was really an easy call.

We go for completely left field pick for a guy who was not even playing AFL for long. That was a terrible call.

Dodoro’s way of getting around it was that he can play midfield too. Bugger me.

Anyways, he might survive the cull this year. Likely to go next year.

Three years on the list and I don’t think he has even been named as an emergency. Which is very poor really. I was fuming on the draft day.

44

 

 

 

We do seem to have had a tendency over the last decade to go for "may develop into a midfield role" rather than midfielder who may go forward/back.

But does that hold true more recently? Kav, Heppell and Melksham were all first round picks used on out and out midfielders.
Add Colyer and Zaka from the second round as well.

 

While I admire your late attempts at analysis, can I rely on the time-honoured BB response of: HINDSIGHT!

 

Not to mention: cherry picking.

 

Compare the successes against the failures. Just to make it simple for you: how many first rounders since 2000 would be considered great picks? And by great, I mean challenging for "Champion of Essendon" status. To put this in perspective: there were 50 CoEs from the previous 100 years, so at that rate we should expect 5 or 6 since 2000. (Yes, I know). I rate Heppell as the only one who will challenge for that status. Most of the rest have made no impact at all.

 

And before those who try to argue against some of those selections, I play the HINDSIGHT card, because very few on BB at the timecriticised the selection of Davies, Harvey etc etc.

 

Just a ridiculous argument. Seriously don't know where to start. 

45

We do seem to have had a tendency over the last decade to go for "may develop into a midfield role" rather than midfielder who may go forward/back.

But does that hold true more recently? Kav, Heppell and Melksham were all first round picks used on out and out midfielders.
Add Colyer and Zaka from the second round as well.
While I admire your late attempts at analysis, can I rely on the time-honoured BB response of: HINDSIGHT!
 
Not to mention: cherry picking.
 
Compare the successes against the failures. Just to make it simple for you: how many first rounders since 2000 would be considered great picks? And by great, I mean challenging for "Champion of Essendon" status. To put this in perspective: there were 50 CoEs from the previous 100 years, so at that rate we should expect 5 or 6 since 2000. (Yes, I know). I rate Heppell as the only one who will challenge for that status. Most of the rest have made no impact at all.
 
And before those who try to argue against some of those selections, I play the HINDSIGHT card, because very few on BB at the timecriticised the selection of Davies, Harvey etc etc.

So I mentioned some other mids we drafted. Just mentioning we have drafted mids early on. I'll admit varying success.
Name the other clubs who picked their champions with first round selections?
And I reckon Heppell will be an all time great. Stanton is going to be one of our best 100 ever.
Can I mention JD? ;)
46

Hey Albert.

Just for giggles, which club/s do you think have drafted well over the last 7 or 8 years?

47

It's so interesting to note how people talk about our "top picks". And other fans like to use Geelong's drafting as an example of perfection (not necessarily in this thread). Take the 99 draft, which produced 4 of Geelong's premiership stars in Corey, Chapman, Ling and Enright. Now look at their picks in between Corey at 8, and Chapman at 31. 
 

15 - David Spriggs

17 - Ezra Bray

23 - Daniel Foster

 

Teams get it wrong all the time, not just at Essendon. We've done fairly well in the past decade, overall.

48

HM is right.

 

For what its worth I think Dodoro has gone really well over the last 4 or 5 years.

 

In terms of some of the players mentioned. Gleeson looks to be a natural footballer. He's an ok height at 186cm and should fill out in time. Dalgleish looks to be a good smokey too. I quite liked his contribution when he got his go.

 

My only knock on Dodoro and I'd be interested in the opinion of those more in the know is that he seems to take some left field choices using  higher picks than he needs to. Eg would Van Unen have been on anyone's radar?

49

Heppel is the only one of those who has justified his first round status.
 
Melksham has been around for how long now and may be getting better, but does not rank among AFL midfielders as an "out and out midfielder", and is not causing any sleepless nights for opposition coaches.
 
I doubt Kav is causing any sleepless nights for opposition VFL coaches, and doesn't show much evidence of being an "out and out midfielder" in the couple of years he has been on the list.


The three players drafted after Melksham were Jordan Gysberts, Kane Lucas and Daniel Talia. The three selected after Kav (excluding Tom Mitchell who was a FS pre-selection) were Hayden Crozier, Josh Bootsma and Murray Newman. So even with the power of hindsight, who should we have gone with from that lot?
50

Hird came into the club and kept saying we needed to draft midfielders. We needed to get fit.
We get lucky with Heppell. Then Parker is just there for the taking. His draft camp results showed he was ready to compete straight away. It was really an easy call.
We go for completely left field pick for a guy who was not even playing AFL for long. That was a terrible call.
Dodoro's way of getting around it was that he can play midfield too. Bugger me.
Anyways, he might survive the cull this year. Likely to go next year.
Three years on the list and I don't think he has even been named as an emergency. Which is very poor really. I was fuming on the draft day.

I assume you're talking about Steinberg. I'm almost certain he was something of a panic pick. I watched that draft, we asked for our extra time on that pick and then eventually blurted out Steinberg. I imagine we were going to go for Batchelor who Richmond took the pick before. If that was the case I think he was strategically a bad pick. That we didn't have a clear unequivocal next best midfielder lined up is pretty poor. Hardly unusual for any club, if you watch them scramble during the draft broadcast, but still not good. I certainly agree that at the time our priority should have been midfielders, 

 

That aside: Steinberg had not barely played football before. He spent his 17yo year in Canada, but prior to that was a footballer, and was again in his draft year. He didn't play the full year with the Pioneers because he was playing in Mildura, but he was playing every week. This story that we basically drafted a completely inexperienced rookie is crap. In the 2011 pre-season he got injured a few weeks before the NAB Cup so didn't play. You might remember as the year that one of our HBF/midfielder mature age rookies became a revelation as a 190cm marking forward, and the spot that Steinberg was drafted to play got comprehensively and permanently filled by Crameri.

 

He was drafted on exposed form (albeit optimistically) to fill a position that we needed and then accidentally filled with a rookie. I don't think it was a good strategy but it wasn't insane.

51

I'm calling it from now, Gleeson will be our next Winderlich. 

52

I'm calling it from now, Gleeson will be our next Winderlich. 

Hopefully without being perennially injured....

53

I'm calling it from now, Gleeson will be our next Winderlich.

Our best forward?
Fark that. Hams is the next Gary Ablett Jnr, but less selfish.
54

My knock on Dodorro/Keane is that I think they are regularly better than average in their drafting (IMO), but I think the ratio of out and out champs that they have produced is less than we need. But those are ■■■■■■ tough to get and there is a lot of luck involved. The surest way to get them is with top 5 picks and we've only had two top 5 picks in donkeys years. Those two have not yet impressed, but they have also had some bad injuries.

55

 

Hird came into the club and kept saying we needed to draft midfielders. We needed to get fit.
We get lucky with Heppell. Then Parker is just there for the taking. His draft camp results showed he was ready to compete straight away. It was really an easy call.
We go for completely left field pick for a guy who was not even playing AFL for long. That was a terrible call.
Dodoro's way of getting around it was that he can play midfield too. Bugger me.
Anyways, he might survive the cull this year. Likely to go next year.
Three years on the list and I don't think he has even been named as an emergency. Which is very poor really. I was fuming on the draft day.

I assume you're talking about Steinberg. I'm almost certain he was something of a panic pick. I watched that draft, we asked for our extra time on that pick and then eventually blurted out Steinberg. I imagine we were going to go for Batchelor who Richmond took the pick before. If that was the case I think he was strategically a bad pick. That we didn't have a clear unequivocal next best midfielder lined up is pretty poor. Hardly unusual for any club, if you watch them scramble during the draft broadcast, but still not good. I certainly agree that at the time our priority should have been midfielders, 

 

That aside: Steinberg had not barely played football before. He spent his 17yo year in Canada, but prior to that was a footballer, and was again in his draft year. He didn't play the full year with the Pioneers because he was playing in Mildura, but he was playing every week. This story that we basically drafted a completely inexperienced rookie is crap. In the 2011 pre-season he got injured a few weeks before the NAB Cup so didn't play. You might remember as the year that one of our HBF/midfielder mature age rookies became a revelation as a 190cm marking forward, and the spot that Steinberg was drafted to play got comprehensively and permanently filled by Crameri.

 

He was drafted on exposed form (albeit optimistically) to fill a position that we needed and then accidentally filled with a rookie. I don't think it was a good strategy but it wasn't insane.

People forget we were desperate about then for another medium forward. We'd lost McPhee, rolled the dice on Williams, and it was considered a pretty big hole along side the midfield. Of course, as you say we then found that guy when we converted a rookie who was a midfielder into a medium forward. 

56

 

I'm calling it from now, Gleeson will be our next Winderlich.

Our best forward?
Fark that. Hams is the next Gary Ablett Jnr, but less selfish.

 

Sarcastic font? Lol, I was being serious about Gleeson but of course hopefully without the injuries.

Is Hams going to be that good? 

57

 

We do seem to have had a tendency over the last decade to go for "may develop into a midfield role" rather than midfielder who may go forward/back. 

But does that hold true more recently? Kav, Heppell and Melksham were all first round picks used on out and out midfielders. 

 

As I've said previously, Hird definately agreed with me that midfielders were our most pressing need & our drafting improved a lot once Keane was introduced. 

58

 

 

Hird came into the club and kept saying we needed to draft midfielders. We needed to get fit.
We get lucky with Heppell. Then Parker is just there for the taking. His draft camp results showed he was ready to compete straight away. It was really an easy call.
We go for completely left field pick for a guy who was not even playing AFL for long. That was a terrible call.
Dodoro's way of getting around it was that he can play midfield too. Bugger me.
Anyways, he might survive the cull this year. Likely to go next year.
Three years on the list and I don't think he has even been named as an emergency. Which is very poor really. I was fuming on the draft day.

I assume you're talking about Steinberg. I'm almost certain he was something of a panic pick. I watched that draft, we asked for our extra time on that pick and then eventually blurted out Steinberg. I imagine we were going to go for Batchelor who Richmond took the pick before. If that was the case I think he was strategically a bad pick. That we didn't have a clear unequivocal next best midfielder lined up is pretty poor. Hardly unusual for any club, if you watch them scramble during the draft broadcast, but still not good. I certainly agree that at the time our priority should have been midfielders, 

 

That aside: Steinberg had not barely played football before. He spent his 17yo year in Canada, but prior to that was a footballer, and was again in his draft year. He didn't play the full year with the Pioneers because he was playing in Mildura, but he was playing every week. This story that we basically drafted a completely inexperienced rookie is crap. In the 2011 pre-season he got injured a few weeks before the NAB Cup so didn't play. You might remember as the year that one of our HBF/midfielder mature age rookies became a revelation as a 190cm marking forward, and the spot that Steinberg was drafted to play got comprehensively and permanently filled by Crameri.

 

He was drafted on exposed form (albeit optimistically) to fill a position that we needed and then accidentally filled with a rookie. I don't think it was a good strategy but it wasn't insane.

People forget we were desperate about then for another medium forward. We'd lost McPhee, rolled the dice on Williams, and it was considered a pretty big hole along side the midfield. Of course, as you say we then found that guy when we converted a rookie who was a midfielder into a medium forward. 

 

See this is where I have to dissagree. You are never desperate for a medium forward when you have weaknesses in the midfield. My thoughts of drafting for flanks is pretty simple - you draft midfielders because thats where the best players play at lower levels. The guys who are not up to holding down a fulltime midfield spot can fill your flanks because the skillset to play modern midfield transfers to the flanks & pockets.  Flashy forward pocket (Betts type - which is rare) is really the only specialised forward possition for smaller players.  I'd also say that in Monfries (again, drafted as a mid but fell into a flanker) we already had 1 of the better medium forwards in the game but with a weak midfield, his opportunities were limited.

59

Good teams get their steals focused on, bad teams get their blunders focused on. People forget they each have a lot of the other sort.

 

My favourite Blitz-ism is when people howl down the selection of a player who hasn't played league footy based on a negative reception of a blitzer's response to a blitzer's report of one VFL game where a kid got one sentence on him as a "quiet game". That gets extrapolated to a whole season and all of a sudden we've farked it up.

60

I'm calling it from now, Gleeson will be our next Winderlich.

Our best forward?
Fark that. Hams is the next Gary Ablett Jnr, but less selfish.
Sarcastic font? Lol, I was being serious about Gleeson but of course hopefully without the injuries.
Is Hams going to be that good?
Obviously depends on his ability to stack on the endurance (some never do). But is there anything he can't do?
 
Next year he'll pass Luke Dahlhaus. The year after that, a few injuries, so will play the Cyril Rioli role. Hopefully won't take five years to warm up to the midfield, like Ablett did.