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".
Shut up. I don't take notes.
There's a reason I nominate myself for flanks in our forum footy matches.My thoughts of drafting for flanks is pretty simple - you draft midfielders because thats where the best players play at lower levels.
how mmany champions of essendon in the past 100 years as a ratio of how many we've drafted with number one picks?
holy ****.
how many of the 50 champions were #1 picks?
what was the salary cap when they played?
how was players scientifficly measuered ais draft testing results disseminated equally to all the teams in 1937? how ******* many teams were there?
Who finished stronger in their 25km a runs? Hirdy or Albert moustachioed knickerbocker wearing 7 points a grand final Thurgood?
Holy ****.
Logic.
■■■■ champs of essendon. We must be ddue another Champion of the Colonies at the rate of 1 every 115 years.
how mmany champions of essendon in the past 100 years as a ratio of how many we've drafted with number one picks?
holy ****.
how many of the 50 champions were #1 picks?
what was the salary cap when they played?
how was players scientifficly measuered ais draft testing results disseminated equally to all the teams in 1937? how ******* many teams were there?
Who finished stronger in their 25km a runs? Hirdy or Albert moustachioed knickerbocker wearing 7 points a grand final Thurgood?
Holy ****.
Logic.
fark champs of essendon. We must be ddue another Champion of the Colonies at the rate of 1 every 115 years.
LOL
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.
I disagree - I think it often goes the other way. SJ, Chapman, Ablett, Bewick, Mercuri, Didak, Rockliff, O'Keefe and a host of others were dominant forwards who then went into and contributed to the midfield.
I don't think as many midfielders have switched into a medium forward role as have gone the other way.
How long till the footy starts?
Dodoro's doing a ripping job, and he used swear words when we last spoke. He's cool.
I think whether you’re critical/complimentary of our drafting we do select as our default position skinny and/or half-back flankers. I think the reasoning for this is that any player we draft is going to have strengths and weaknesses that they need to improve on. Our recruiters believe that the easier weakness to fix is building strength, whilst believing that its far more difficult to teach a player defensive structures, running both ways and good foot skills, which can usually be attributed to a player who plays half-back flank. I guess the problem with picking skinny types is that they take longer to develop and more patience is needed to wait for them to both bulk up and adjust to that weight gain, you only have to imagine this debate happening this time last year how much derision Melksham would have copped. On the skinny players we drafted last year I’m most interested in how Gregory develops as he has speed, an ability as good as a small to go after the loose ball and the potential to play on talls and smalls.
I remember when my Nan went through Alzheimer’s. Cute for a bit then just tragically sad.
You can only ever look at the drafting when compared to success rates of the industry. How many do clubs pick in the last ten years, how’s many we’re guns, how many average, how many injured players, how many duds. Then compare our to that over time. I think you will find we’re doing ok and improving from early 2000
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.
I disagree - I think it often goes the other way. SJ, Chapman, Ablett, Bewick, Mercuri, Didak, Rockliff, O'Keefe and a host of others were dominant forwards who then went into and contributed to the midfield.
I don't think as many midfielders have switched into a medium forward role as have gone the other way.
How many of those guys you reckon were drafted to be medium forwards? How many would have been playing that role at junior level? Like I said you play your best players in the middle & I would be pretty certain that most if not all of those examples would have been drafted as mids. Mercs for example (whom I played against as an under 16) was absolutely a midfielder. Average skilled hacks like myself were on the flanks but jets were in the middle where they could dominate the games.
Obvioulsy there are not many 18 year old who come into the AFL with a body & tank ready to play mid from day 1. This is why most are developed early off the half back or half forward line just as we did with guys like Heppel.
I’ve a feeling there was a bloke we drafted about 1991 as a medium forward who went into midfield with some small success.
Very skinny though, and injured.
Don’t think it matters how big you are, if you’re no good.
I agree that you can’t hold an individual recruiter accountable for the failure or success of a single player.
You can however hold an entire club accountable for a decade of onfield mediocrity.
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.
This is what I was getting at before being howled down.
I agree that you can't hold an individual recruiter accountable for the failure or success of a single player.
You can however hold an entire club accountable for a decade of onfield mediocrity.
Yes!
how mmany champions of essendon in the past 100 years as a ratio of how many we've drafted with number one picks?
holy ****.
how many of the 50 champions were #1 picks?
what was the salary cap when they played?
how was players scientifficly measuered ais draft testing results disseminated equally to all the teams in 1937? how ******* many teams were there?
Who finished stronger in their 25km a runs? Hirdy or Albert moustachioed knickerbocker wearing 7 points a grand final Thurgood?
Holy ****.
Logic.
fark champs of essendon. We must be ddue another Champion of the Colonies at the rate of 1 every 115 years.
This is the stupidest post I have seen on the new incarnation of BB. In fact it is even more stupid than the posts you made over 10 years on the old incarnation of BB.
And that is an impressive achievement.
I find it interesting that so often the Heppell pick is dismissed as just luck. The bottom line is that a number of clubs overlooked him. From that draft it was clear (given the web site gaff) that we were also pretty interested in Atley - a player that seems a pretty astute pick up by the roos. I also suspect that if you gave Heppell a hair cut he would look like another skinny half back flanker. That or a shawn sheep. I too think that if you ignore all the good decisions that the recruiting team have made (Heppell, Zaharakis, Carlisle.....) then the recruiting looks pretty poor.
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.
This is what I was getting at before being howled down.
Well, if so you didn't express yourself pretty well since it certainly came across that you thought they were worse than average.
And just to be clear, I think a lot of times whether someone is just very good, versus a lot more, is down to luck and development. And they don't control either of those things.
We might not have smashed the draft like people whine about. But we have been geniuses at picking up mature age gems:
Hibberd
Kommer
Bellcho
Crameri
Howlett
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.
I disagree - I think it often goes the other way. SJ, Chapman, Ablett, Bewick, Mercuri, Didak, Rockliff, O'Keefe and a host of others were dominant forwards who then went into and contributed to the midfield.
I don't think as many midfielders have switched into a medium forward role as have gone the other way.
How many of those guys you reckon were drafted to be medium forwards? How many would have been playing that role at junior level? Like I said you play your best players in the middle & I would be pretty certain that most if not all of those examples would have been drafted as mids. Mercs for example (whom I played against as an under 16) was absolutely a midfielder. Average skilled hacks like myself were on the flanks but jets were in the middle where they could dominate the games.
Obvioulsy there are not many 18 year old who come into the AFL with a body & tank ready to play mid from day 1. This is why most are developed early off the half back or half forward line just as we did with guys like Heppel.
Well, I thought all of those particular players were recruited as forwards. I know a number of them were. I'm interested that Mercuri wasn't - I didn't know that. Bit before the time I started being interested in drafts.