its mabo
Should be in the BENFTI thread...
Certainly my feeling is that this will be a weak but spread out draft. Makes me think of 2003. A lot of people wanted Dyson as our 2nd pick, but we were able to get him with our 3rd. Players went all over the place, but over-all hindsight says it was an incredibly weak draft.
I would be more suspect about the smalls than the talls in this one as well.
Marcuz wanted Dyson at the #6 while pazza was prepared to aim at the certainty in Simon Rosa.
Great read. I particularly liked the bit where you prefaced the post that you have nfi about everyone, and then went on to speak like you had an intricate knowledge of every player in the draft.OK, I‘m going to put this out there, but please take note of the following
1. I have no knowledge of any of the players available to be drafted this year
2. My entire assessment is based on a ‘vibe‘
3. Everything can change between now and draft day (in terms of the information available to those of us on the outside), which can change the vibe entirely.
That being said, I reckon this is going to be a draft that is all over the place, and which is looked back on in 5 years with either a lot of ‘wow, how did they miss X, Y and Z‘, or in the worst case with ‘wow, what a terrible draft‘.
I‘ve watched a number of highlights vids recently (both ‘draft machine‘ and the more meaningful yt ones with both positive and negative contributions). Very very few have made me think that the players being highlighted have the tools required for the AFL. I understand that these videos are meaningless and don‘t even give you the tiniest glimpse into what the players are like on the field, let alone all of the other stuff that makes up the person and which ultimately makes the difference between a superstar and a Damien Cupido. But given the limitations there are things you expect to see in highlights videos that aren‘t there in a lot of them.
Add to this a few other things and I start to question whether :
a. The “internet gurus†have it wrong, or
b. Is it just a weak pool?
Things that bother me:
I‘m seeing a lot of midfielders spoken highly about who just aren‘t racking up the amount of ball you expect from the top guys at this level. If you managed 19 disposals a game at the champs then that‘s enough. This feels unusual to me. I know the days of Jobe racking up 45 disposals a game across half a dozen TAC Cup games are gone, but where are the guys who were getting the ball 25 or 30 times a game? They‘re generally not amongst the guys getting talked up as early draft picks. Not being able to find the football hurts your chances of making it at AFL level badly as a midfielder.
I‘m seeing a lot of talls who are rated very highly, but I‘m not seeing much in their games that projects what someone called “key-position-y-ness†earlier this week. If they lack KPYN, then what is their role? Maybe some will be versatile guns, but I‘d gamble against there being 5 Pavlichs in the draft. (and Pav has KPYN anyway…)
South Australia won the champs, but players from there are barely mentioned in dispatches. Surely it wasn‘t all vanilla midgets driving them to championship victory?
Who is pick #3, 4 or 5? It seems that once the first couple of picks are done that anyone from a bunch of about 15 could legitimately end up in the top 5. In one draft Ahern is 7, in the next he‘s 20. Someone will have Langford at 5, someone else at 17. When people have such wildly differing opinions it doesn‘t generally mean that there‘s 20 guns. History suggests it means there‘s 3 guns and 17 NQRs , some of which will make it, but the majority of which won‘t. Maybe teams have got smarter over the years, but 10 years ago this would have led to a complete wipe of the 2nd half of the first round as teams got blinded by a couple of AFL qualities and ignored things that really mattered. I think that teams are smarter, and it will probably mean they are drafting for their particular requirements (in terms of ‘qualities‘) rather than for things that those a couple of steps away might be looking for. I guess we‘ll find out in a few years, but I am not convinced all clubs had got much ‘smarter‘ by 2009, which had a high number of first round busts. (but good quality in the 2nd round!). That was 5 years ago now though! I am guessing though, that it means there‘s a reasonable chance that there will be half a dozen ‘surprises‘ in the top 20, either due to clubs rating players highly, or really _not_ rating players that the “internet gurus†rate.
The ‘haven‘t played in a year, but we don‘t care‘ situation. Both Lever and Cockatoo, in different ways, create this worry. They both have no high standard football in their draft year. Lever is expected to be top 5ish, and Cockatoo top 20. They may have that level talent and genuinely be worth it, but what bothers me is that (for Lever in particular) it seems there‘s no ‘risk mark down‘ in play. In most years not playing at all in your U18 year would at least raise a bunch of alarm bells, and there‘d be discussion about how it might affect your draft position. For Lever it appears not. Either he‘s a Chris Judd / Joel Selwood level talent, or there‘s a lack of others who pushed up this year. Given that I‘ve seen it written that he‘s enhanced his prospects this year due to his dedication to rehab, I feel it‘s the latter.
Athleticism. We‘ve discussed Blakely plenty, and after reading that afl website story I went back and watched his vids again. He straight out looks plenty fast enough. So the conundrum is, was the draft camp time an aberration, or is the overall athleticism of this year‘s group such that being a slow mid is barely noticeable against your peers. I have no idea, but I went back and had another look at the draft camp sprint numbers (hardly a scientific analysis, but without access to all draft camp #s all time I can hardly do a decent comparison!). Amongst the 20m sprint top 10, only Pickett, R. McKenzie, Menadue and Cockatoo are mentioned amongst those likely to be ‘Top 30‘ in the draft. For the repeat sprints Pickett and McKenzie then drop out. Guys like McKenna and Brophy and Baynham all made their presence felt in these tests, but my feeling is that they didn‘t push the results higher, they just fitted legitimately into a top 10 that was no better than previous years. It makes me wonder if maybe the top end of this draft is a little less athletic than some other years. It mightn‘t seem much, as plenty of less than superstar athletes have made the grade over the years (and been guns as well!), but if we‘re starting with guys who may be slightly flawed in other ways, then missing that 5% of athleticism may also hurt their chances of being long term guns.
The ‘vibe of the thing‘. I‘m going back to 2009 again, because it feels like a good reference point for this draft, but I don‘t know why. My vibe is there are a bunch of mids who are decent, but they don‘t hit targets under pressure, they don‘t find lots of the ball, and they don‘t have any particularly special traits. Then there are a bunch of talls who don‘t demand the ball in the air, and don‘t do other things that well. Then there are a bunch of guys who have some exceptional quality combined with a bunch of flaws that will need to be rectified to allow the exceptional quality to shine through. Somewhere amongst that bunch I feel there‘s a Jake Carlisle and a Nat Fyfe. But there‘s also a whole bunch of other guys who aren‘t Jake Carlisle or Nat Fyfe. I think the clubs attempts to find the guns are going to lead to a lot of head scratching in the days post the draft as the internet tries to understand why guys who everyone thought were worth pick 50 or 100 went at 25, and why guys that were considered first round locks went undrafted. Then in another 5 years there will be more head scratching as all of the ones that were got so wrong (both positive and negative) become clear.
For me this makes me happy that we‘re not a massive part of this draft. You want to be spending your list spots on drafts that are worth it. The 2001 draft set up some clubs for a decade and missing out on it hurt us for a decade. Going hard in the wrong drafts also hurts as you lock up list spots for 3 or 4 years on guys that are borderline.
It also makes me worried about Long, because if a club can‘t find someone they rate at pick 40+, the risk that they‘ll pick someone from left field is higher. Fortunately I think it‘s unlikely that there‘ll be too many picks taken late, given FS choices, academy choices and rookie upgrades.
I guess we‘ll only know in 5 years whether any of this had any basis in reality, but I figured I‘d put it out there for discussion. Really all I‘m saying is I feel we could pull a massive surprise at one of 17 and 20. (maybe we‘ll take Tippa at 17 and Tagliabue at 20!)
Time will tell. I look forward to being completely wrong!
Great read. I particularly liked the bit where you prefaced the post that you have nfi about everyone, and then went on to speak like you had an intricate knowledge of every player in the draft.
Thanks for your feedback. I did consider not declaring that I had nfi, but that would have just been dishonest. I also considered not writing anything, but the board would be very light for entertainment if people chose that path. Therefore I decided to go with the post as it was.
Anyway. Since the post Emma Quayle has said that she likes the draft, and I've also read that the recruiters generally feel more comfortable about this year's draft than last year's, so that's a positive sign for finding 2 quality players at our picks.
I find it interesting that she didn't have a couple of the talls as high in her estimations (about outcomes not draft position) as some that have been floating around, but that she still rated them.
As every day passes now we're (the punters in the stands) getting access to more and better info. And we can make better judgements based on that. We won't have the full story come draft time, and no one will have the *full* story for 5+ years, but there's still plenty to work with.
its mabo
Should be in the BENFTI thread...
needs to be a denis denuto thread
Needs to be in the ASAGA thread where they're talking about 'the constitution.'needs to be a denis denuto thread
Should be in the BENFTI thread...
its mabo
17. Ahmed Saad
20. Lance Armstrong.
17. Ahmed Saad
20. Lance Armstrong.
lol