Play the kids

Yet another interesting article from Robert Shaw.

Who out of our unproven players are 100 game players?

Doedee and Adelaide showed how a year of good development can leave you with a ready made player?

Where are ours?

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Andy McGrath says hi!

…but seriously…

I think the priority fir the club over the next 6+ weeks is to get our best playing well together. as much experience almost that we can put out there.

you can’t play kids at the same time as shooting for finaks unless you have serious quality on every line or forget it, trade out and embark on a rebuild.

[quote]Fremantle Attribute Essendon
186.8cm Height 187.6cm
87.0kg Weight 87.8kg
25yr 1mth Age 24yr 11mth
92.0 Games 86.4
Total Players By Games
Fremantle Games Essendon
10 Less than 50 9
[/quote]
It’s a good point in general, but would have been more relevant last year when it took 22 rounds to get a 2nd kid into the side despite the obvious struggles.

Pesky facts show we’re not light years off the pace in terms of playing kids.

Langford is probably a hundred gamer. McGrath certainly one. Begley a third.
Tippa, Stewart, Hartley and a few others still inexperienced, but not really kids - but if we’re counting Alex Pearce as a kid…

Personally I’d love to see Ridley groomed to take over Dea’s spot. Laverde when fit. Guelfi maybe. Prefer Draper to Leuey.

The 2017 draft was a conscious decision to bulk up our list in the drafts we missed, at the expense of 18yos. Rob knows that.

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Great article.

I guess with already the introduction of 3 new players (traded in) worsfold would be loathe to unsettle the side more and introduce kids but hopefully over the next month he stagnates a few in.

We are FAR from a finished product so we need to see more young untried players in the team.

And if we don’t have any worthy then we’re more fked than we thought, surely we’ve got a few live ones. SURELY.

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McGrath goes without saying.

Begley looks like a 100 gamer. Anyone in the VFL fit that Mould? One of the points of the article is we don’t know.

Injury has potentially stopped Ridley and Mutch making debuts but are others even close in th eyes of selectors?

HAP, Agree on those names and especially Draper. I reckon he’ll get games this year and be clear number 2 by year end.

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I can’t agree with this any less.
You don’t aim for finals.
You aim to build a side that can win finals
We do not have, at present, a side that can win finals. We need to keep building.

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I agree with you but I doubt the majority of supporters would.

The supporters are restless and want immediate results.

The club has also been vocal in its ambition for this year.

Agree. Would much rather spend the season trying to figure out our finals winning combination with a risk of not making the finals, than strain to the limits to squeak into the finals on percentage.

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This is part of the balancing act.
Smith, Stringer, McGrath and Lang basically new faces in midfield. All a fair way off the finished product, in various ways.

Would honestly rather see these new faces lose rather than Watson/Howlett/Stanton go around again.

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I totally agree that the club has stuffed the expectation management this year. Stuffed it.

S/S/S, and Watson/Stanton retiring, should’ve been sold as a “new generation” thing. But hey, this is the club that brought you “oh ■■■■ James Hird has arrived back at work on the exact day his suspension expired, whatever will we do noe??”

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I think they were justified in their ambition based on trade period.

I’m with you on last year though. We should have got more games into Langford and even blooded Mutch and a couple of others.

The saga has unfortunately brought about these high expectations due to the years of discontent.

1 poor loss a season doesn’t make.

We have got some kids on the list, but bugger me why you would want some of.our other guys playing 2s right now to play them.

I’m looking forward to see how we list manage playing pies,demons and hawks in 10 days.

I reckon we will need too

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I’m not and I didn’t think Shaw was suggesting we give up on the season. Agree totally on 3 games in 10 games. It will be interesting to see how they handle that.

On your first bit - we had maybe 1000 (?) games of experience walk, and brought in about 200 - and no early draft pick either. Don’t get me wrong, I think they’re all the right decisions, but we were more than 3 players and a preseason away from success.

As for expectations, as I said early last year, I thought it was ludicrous to treat 2017 as picking up from where 2013-2014 left off. Nothing’s changed my mind. Again, the club’s expectation management (hype) has been odd.

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See it’s this sort of game that makes me question why you’d persist with someone like Dea. He was great in 2016, but really he’s a useful depth / role player for 8 AFL seasons, without ever locking in a spot.

We need to be using spots like his to find our next 100 game player/s.

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Definitely agree with the premise of the article, not sure about your Doedee example though. Didn’t he spend the entirety of last year (and the year before) playing SANFL, with his current spot directly related to Lever going to Melbourne?

Still think we should be looking at rotating/blooding youngsters to the senior team on a regular basis. VFL games are great but the speed, space, and skill changes at AFL level, with players differently suited. Having a process/environment to debut/integrate them with less pressure on their individual performance (i.e. not covering injuries, large skill set deficiencies etc.) would be beneficial to most players development, I would have thought. Obviously that can’t occur 100% of the time.

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I think as soon as Ridley is fully fit he should be straight into the backline to start to reflenish our backline.

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Ridley, Mutch, Francis, Laverde. There is a lot of talent to come in, they just need to be given opportunity.

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fxd

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