I’m sorry, but this is classic hindsight drafting. There’s plenty to criticise Dodoro over, but picking out some guy (Freijah) taken late that every single team passed over a couple of times and suggesting Dodoro uniquely screwed up by not drafting him is just silly.
Any picks outside of the first couple of rounds in the draft have a vanishingly small chance of making it at AFL level. Congrats to the Dogs for Freijah. He had his issues as a prospect last year but he’s thrived in a professional environment. As has Archie Roberts.
Again picking out Lawson Humphries and Arie Schoenmaker is hindsight drafting. Humphries was a mature age kid plucked from relative obscurity. Great work by the Cats. Schoenmaker was suspended from Talent League play for 10 weeks for buying his underage teammates alcohol on an away trip, among many other rumours of misbehaviour. It wasn’t lack of talent that saw him slide that late.
This isn’t the way drafting works. You make choices with the information that you have. Sometimes they work out. Sometimes you strike it lucky like we did with Archie Roberts, but much more often than not your late round picks don’t hit.
I interpreted it as saying Dodoro shat the bed by taking Lual over the likes of Roberts and others only to then mortgage our 2024 picks to make up for the original ■■■■ up.
The names suggested and the reasons they were over looked are kind of irrelevant to the argument.
Well that makes even less sense. You think that Dodoro picked Lual, then thought “Oh ■■■■ I’ve made a mistake here, must get another pick to select Roberts!” - that’s pure nonsense to me.
Not at all. I think he was talked into taking Roberts when if he had any idea about forming a draft strategy he wouldn’t have needed to trade back in to take him.
One of my biggest gripes of the Dodoro era is his perceived inability to forecast draft talent and position our picks to maximise our hand for future drafts and trades.
Always comes across as impulsive and emotional in all his dealings. Which has often resulted in missed opportunities whether it be players getting nabbed before us or holding inadequate picks in quality drafts.
How does that work exactly? Because none of this logic is making any sense.
You think that dodoro went into the draft with no idea of our list needs? He clearly wanted Caddy to fill our gaping hole at key forward. He was prepared to give up another pick to secure his guy. We can all second guess his move and say that Geelong wouldn’t have picked Caddy anyway, but we only have the post draft rumours to go on which Dodo wouldn’t have known. With Hawkins close to retirement I think there’s every chance the Cats go for Caddy, especially given his uncles ties to the club. I have a cat supporting mate who’s livid to this day that they didn’t. We and Dodoro also have no idea if another club would have swooped into claim that pick with another offer if we hadn’t moved first.
The other thing to be aware of here is the cliff that the talent dropped off rapidly through the late first round. Picks in the 30 and later simply weren’t worth that much last draft.
Dodoro clearly also was aware that we needed to try and fill a list need at half back with rebounding defenders. There were a cluster of them all considered to be of a similar level of potential. Dodoro’s choice was Lual, which was fine at the time although he certainly hasn’t come on. Clearly he wasn’t expecting Roberts to still be there later in the draft, and so he decided to double up, trade back in and take a second rebounding defender. A decision which I think has been paid off by how Roberts has started his career.
He was still there, we probably thought someone would take him before 61, we could do a deal with a club that didn’t want to take another pick so we could take him before that other club (likely hawks). Seemed entirely opportunistic
I just mentioned - we had no idea this draft was going to be this deep. Its developed into an incredibly deep draft over the course of this season and more as more kids have emerged.
I’m on record as being extremely critical of the events around Mass leaving. No matter which of them, Dodo or Brad or both, are ultimately responsible it was awful all round.
yeah, the hindsight drafting criticism is perfectly valid when you read that post in isolation.
But, if you read my previous posts my focus is really that we didn’t take roberts ahead of lual, burned 2024 draft currency because of it, and didn’t have a later pick available which could have been used on schoenmakers or humphries.
Who we would actually of taken at that pick is an unknown and yes it’s hindsight drafting by me to pick out those two guys. That said Schoenmakers slid a mile so it would have been a no brainer to take a talent like him at 61 (which we lost by using the list spot on one of lual or roberts)
Further, in general, i’m frustrated that we don’t seem to be placing enough stock on players with elite kicking skills (which lual plainly doesn’t have).
if essendon made elite kicking and composure a priority in our draft rankings you would probably start to see us taking guys like humphries, schoenmakers, garcia, roberts and frejah ahead of guys like Lual. WE don’t and haven’t for a long time.
Certainly if kicking was a priority we’d have taken roberts ahead of lual at 39, we’d have banked a pick in the 60s in the 2024 draft instead of trading it into 2023 for roberts and we’d have had the opportunity to bid on lual at 61 or taken schoenmakers (or someone else).
i think it’s perfectly legit to critise disco for the way he handled that and that’s not based on hindsight drafting at all.
At the risk of turning this thread into another relitigation of Dodo’s tenure, I do think there are many things to criticise him for. His awful record at picking first round talent and his short termism in list management. His ability to continually leave us with gaping holes in key areas. Those are some.
Yeah let’s not - he’s gone, there’s plenty of other threads out there for it
I’d rather go into wild speculation about our first pick
edit: @KingDon last thing I’ll say on this but I’m not refuting criticism and I literally never have of Dodoro, you just think I am because I’m not blindly agreeing with your take
Not true. Many teams would never have taken him at any pick given his off field history.
Mostly fair I think, although when you look at recent drafts all three of the 2020 first rounders were touted as excellent kicks of the footy, so we’re only really talking Hobbs and Tsatas. Of those two I think Tsatas was kind of a no brainer pick at that spot myself (I know others dont agree), so its mainly the Hobbs pick which I think has looked increasingly bad as time has passed.
Making the choice to pick Roberts over Lual at 39 may be justified (I had them both about the same as prospects) but its not like any other teams were jumping out of the woodwork to take Roberts themselves - he slid another 15 picks or whatever. As I said before, the odds of any of these kids taken at that point in the draft making it at AFL level is extremely small and the fact that Roberts seemingly may do so is a huge win.
And I think this is hindsight drafting. Its fair enough that you have this opinion yourself, but its not the opinion that the majority of draft watchers had. Kids taken that late are extremely hit and miss (much more miss than hit).
Are you saying most draft watchers had Lual ahead of Roberts? if so fair enough. and yeah i’m really basing my view on what i’ve seen post draft but if i were picking them on u18 highlights alone given the choice of two i’d have taken Roberts at 39 because he uses the ball better and we desperately need guys who can kick in our backline. Lual compounds that list issue for mine and it was evident on their u18 highlights.
Recruiters and List Managers live and die by their calls and it’s absolutely in hindsight that you review whether they were good bad or indifferent. I mean, how else are you to fkg judge them.
To me, it’s absolutely fair to say that the drafting of Lual at 39 is looking like an error given how off the pace he’s looked and for the reasons expressed by Ivan and others.