Kelly should be plan A, throw the kitchen sink at - Hawthorn O’Meara level. Rockliff might be handy if Jobe does retire.
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Get them both
Well, basic math dictates that it’s harder to win a flag in an 18-team competition compared to a 16-team competition. When talking about the last 17 years, remember that two of the dominant sides during that 17-year period - Brisbane and Sydney - were created directly as a result of AFL subsidisation (i.e. huge salary cap advantages), and i think it’s pretty fair to say that Hawthorn’s 3-peat was an indirect result of the introduction of GWS/GCS (the expansion clubs raided the draft for about 5 years which made it almost impossible for low-to-middle teams to rebuild and challenge the incumbents).
Now that all the salary cap subsidies have been removed (as far as i know - i think GWS’ is now gone?), and the draft is doing what it’s supposed to do (i.e. provide lower ranked clubs with access to the better talent, instead of just feeding the expansion clubs), the competition is the most even it’s been in 20+ years. Given it’s incredibly even, it’s now easier than it has previously been to move up and down the ladder rapidly.
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Thats exactly right.
Since 2000 it has been a very uneven playing field and as you suggested Hawks were a huge beneficiary of it.
We were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time in that regard.
We were at our peak in 2000 and it wasn’t until around 2004 that we started to go into the lower depths of the ladder to get access to high end talent. We have been in fact a victim of our own success you could say. Somebody like Carlton or Brisbane have been perennial cellar dwellers and still haven’t capitalized tells you a lot.
I think people need to accept that the past is the past and this club has been transformed into a professional(saga aside) outfit in the past five years and have made considerable moves to improve.
I think the TVSC, our own standalone VFL side, our List Management and our medical/fitness departments have shown a lot of improvement.
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How much say do you think Woosha will have in trading/drafting?
Priority picks and F/S are a great example of that. For years we had our draft picks pushed back due to other teams getting top 5 picks via priority picks. We finish second last in 2006 and suddenly only get pick #20. For years teams took F/S picks with a third rounder. I think the new rules were only in 1 or 2 seasons when we had to pay for JD with a first rounder.
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Woah, long post 
. I’ve tried to split into multiple sections. So it is now several replies. Sorry everyone about that. I hope you all enjoy the discussion!
I simply can’t accept that you can say the saga isn’t the only reason we’re missing finals, when we’re only missing finals by one game. I get you’re saying if we’d also done a, b and c with regards to drafting/trading we’d be better, but the simple reality is that if the Saga has cost us a single win this year, its cost us finals.
So why were the 2012/13 teams so successful for the early parts of the seasons? In 2012 we were 11:4, in 2013 we were 13:3. Talent just doesn’t appear/disappear, and the list manager has nothing to do with fitness, team morale or keeping the players in the zone. Those two stretches indicate to me we had the talent to push top 4, and that is what Dodoro’s job was to provide.
So I ask again, how did the team do that? It certainly wasn’t the forward line. Crameri won the goal kicking both years with 32 and 30 goals. I don’t know how to pull out the stats for only the rounds we were ‘up’, but on I50 count for the whole season we were fourth in 2013 and third in 2012. Unless our backline was the best backline that ever backlined, the midfield must have been doing a lot ■■■■■■ right that even with the fall off at the end of the season, we finished top 4 for I50 both years.
The irony is a little bit that I don’t care about how it was driven. Dodoro’s job was to get a team capable of challenging. If that involves a weaker midfield but stronger elsewhere, fine. But with the forward line so impotent, I’ll stick with my memory that the midfield did just fine.
You make the argument about midfield depth possibly causing the late-season declines, and say relying on the same mids week after week might take a toll. Sorry, but that is what most premiership teams do. The correlation between winning a premiership and utilising a small, stable pool of players is pretty well known. Sure, most can cover an injury or two, but not to key players. Possibly our depth could have improved, but it was probably the easiest thing to improve. Maybe without the saga Dal Santo chooses us at the end of 2013 instead of North. If the target was 2014/15, getting pieces of the puzzle like that at the end makes sense.
I think you also have a different view of some players (Dyson & Myers in particular) to me, as I rate/rated both in those years. As to Lonergan getting games, many top 4 sides have a poorer player or two getting some games. I’d be interested how many of the games were in 2012 after the team fell apart from injuries.
I’ve noted before that it is very hard to distinguish between talent identification and development. One of the ways I’ve pointed out to measure it is to review to what degree other clubs poach our unproven players. That indicates they rated the talent, but not the development, as they think they can do better. Of the group you mentioned, Hislop was taken on by Richmond, Melksham by Melbourne, and Sydney wanted Kav before the AFL banned them from trading. So unlike you, those clubs rated the talent and thought they could develop it.
So you listed 5 players, and I’ve shown 3 would seem to be successes talent wise, failures development wise. Given other clubs took (or wanted to take) them, that indicates they weren’t failures of Dodoro’s.
As to injuries, I think they clearly often have an impact. Many players are shadows of themselves if they hit frequently and often enough. Winderlich (lol at him being developing in 2012 BTW) and Pears would be good cases in point, where we saw enough to know what could have been. How much Dempsey and Myers were impacted is of course a complete unknown. I do not doubt they’ve been impacted, especially Myers with his years of interruptions.
I agree with your comment we have no way of knowing who we would have picked up or not. The problem is different elements have different flow on effects. No Saga, and we get 2 additional good picks in 2013, one of which we were reputedly going to use on Bontempelli. Get him, do we get Lobb instead of Zerrett? Who knows. Do we trade the second round for a mid? I very much doubt we get the Edwards/Aylett combo, but possibly pick up a Dal Santo or Higgins in 2014.
Without Crameri, Carlisle and Ryder defecting, we may not go for a Langford/Laverde type. We almost certainly don’t pick up Brown or Hartley. If those picks are instead used on mids, are they later draft flops or guns?
I don’t think pre-saga we were only taking mids, but I think it would have been an emphasis. We were probably always into Lobb because our forward line was so rubbish, he would be around for a second rounder, and then we lost Crameri.
The simple fact is that we do know the saga cost us draft picks, it cost us developed, proven players frequently for limited value (Crameri & Ryder), and it likely meant some players got better treatment in being moved on that they otherwise would. So hopefully we can agree it was almost certainly a net negative, but the degree is uncertain.
More posts to follow, probably tomorrow.
Agree.
My personal view is that our terrible list management strategy, particularly through the last of the Sheedy years, was partly due to the rules changing but the club not changing its philosophy. The AFL did two things through the 1990s which required a significant change in list management: 1) interchange went from 20 to 22 from 1993 to 1998, and 2) list sizes reduced a number of times - i can’t remember the exact amount, but list sizes were once 50+ and were gradually reduced to around 40.
So, in the “good old days”, you needed say 20 guys out of 50 on the list to make your senior side - only 40%. By the late 1990s, you needed 22 guys out of roughly 40 - more than 50% of your list. These changes made each senior list spot much more valuable, meaning it became increasingly difficult to warehouse ‘project players’ or ‘coach’s favorites’ on the list for years without them contributing anything. Despite these changes, i don’t think we adapted to the new reality - we continued to warehouse project players and players of obviously marginal value on the senior list for years for no return. Even now i still think we are too timid in hanging onto marginal players for far too long - i call it “the ghost of Sheedy” - but we have obviously improved quite a bit.
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People bang on about Dodoro but the fact of the matter is that we haven’t won a final in 10 years.
Supplement Saga included that is just unacceptable.
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He would be part of the list management committee like any other coach I would imagine.
How much power he would have I would like to think is minimal.
Using Buckley as an example, he came in and made major changes to the Collingwood list to suit what he thought should be the direction.
My personal thoughts are that a coach should definitely get a say in the list but not make wholesale changes or otherwise you get whats happened at the Pies.
I actually think Woosha has done good job of utilizing our strengths and built a gameplan around fast attacking football.
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The AFL stitched us up when they changed the priority pick.
First time we had been down for over a decade and they changed rules on us.
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True, but the change to priority picks in 2006 screwed FCFC as well, so that was good.
The 2006 draft was a killer. All the chatter from the draft scouts was that it was a “super draft”, we duly loaded up with 6 picks in the top 50, and we got a combined 321 games out of them, and perhaps 75 of those in aggregate were of any quality. Absolute disaster.
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We have had some stinkers in the past.
I think we have had some pretty inspired picks also.
Im a massive fan of the current list. Not everyone thinks its great but I think we can be top four from as early as next year.
The young guys we have playing seniors now are as good as I have seen for 20 years. In the 8 or so VFL games I have seen this year I believe still have quality to come in.
I’m excited for the future so I’m loving this year.
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It turned out to be disastrous, but that wasn’t really Dodoro’s fault:
- No way of predicting Gumby’s injuries, and when you’re #2 pick plays 35 games due to injury, that is a huge blow.
- Davey’s injuries hurt him, although how much that was predictable given his size is contentious.
- Add Bachar Houli into the list and the games played goes up to 480 and growing. Dodoro obviously had no say over the elements that led to Houli wanting out (not being played, being mucked around).
So if you ignore Gumby due to injury, Dodoro has picks 18, 20, 36, 42 and 48. He got a 150+ game player, a 100 game player and a 93 game player. That isn’t horrible.
I’d also note 2006 was a pretty super draft, but only for talls, and more on quantity than necessarily outright quality.
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That was so convenient wasn’t it? Couldn’t believe that. No tinfoil hat required.
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Why are you blaming Dodoro. What about coaches, development coaches, fitness staff etc. You can bring players in but if they’re not being developed properly that has nothing to do with recruiting.
The rule change to F/S picks was made in 2007 (I think as a reaction to Tom Hawkins?). Darcy Daniher was the first player taken with those bidding rules, but it was a 3rd round bid so we didn’t lose anything there.
Joe’s talent and our ladder position mid season in 2012 is on the record from the AFL’s head of talent as the reason they started working on the points system introduced in 2014. I like to bring this up because apparently two years earlier it wasn’t an issue when the dogs, in their third consecutive top 4 finish, got two 1st round F/S picks with picks 22 and 41, but Essendon having half a good season and one good player was apparently enough cause to sit down and overhaul the entire system.
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