I don’t think Francis is a key position player. We’ve almost always had Hooker, Hurley, Ambrose and even BZT play on key forwards while Francis has been in the side.
I just want to pull you up on this.
It’s not true as a profile
You’re mistaking average age, and other metrics, for a list that actually is abnormal, age wise, in that we have a hole in our mid career player numbers.
Thanks to sanctions etc, and the 2016 hiatus.
For example, if you look at the number of listed players 26 and older. Either at their peak, or static, or on the downhill slide, whatever - but with little chance of improvement - you get some more interesting numbers.
At the start of 2019 we had 14 players in this age range.
So did GWS. And Freo .
Richmond had 15.
The supposed ‘young sides’, Brisbane, Footscray, had 11.
Whereas Hawthorn had 18, Port, WCE & Collingwood had 17.
So our list profile is not particularly old.
With Dea, Myers, Bags, MacNiece all definitely gone, and only a handful of 25 year olds -Smith, Walla, Stewart, Hartley (& Daniher) coming through it’s not an ageing list in AFL terms
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We’ll have 7 players 30+ next year. Whether you measure by average age or number players past their best, we are an older than average team.
Yeah… Nah.
At round 1 next season we will have 3 - Hooker, Bellchambers and Zaha.
We currently have 4 plays over 30, of which Myers and Baguely are departing. (Zaha is 29, turning 30 in Feb.)
Using that metric we are younger than Richmond, Brisbane, Collingwood, Carlton, West Coast…
Turning 30 next year, not including delisted players and retirees: Hooker, Hurley, Smack, Brown, Zaka, Belly and Zlarke.
Using the same metric, GWS have 7 players, Brisbane 6, Carlton 6, Collingwood 7, Richmond 5, Geelong 8, West Coast 8, Hawthorn 8.
Our 7, which will almost certainly be 6 if we replace Clarke, is hardly an indicator of an overly old playing list.
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And Smack and Brown won’t be 30 until they’re playing in the finals (Sept 1st & August 28th birthdays respectively)
You’re being disingenuous- your other points may have merit, but the age profile argument is a bust.
What we do have is a relatively greater number of 21 to 24 year old players going into next year.
For example we have 19 in that bracket- young Brisbane has 14.
They’ve stocked up on many more 18 & 19 year olds which brings their “average” down, at the time we were bringing in Stringer Saad, Smith & Shiel, the first two of whom are surprisingly young.
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I agree we need a hard reset (the one you need a pin for), but we’re not going to get it. Not now that we’ve just locked in four more years of the same with the head coaches, and Dodoro has said that his trade priorities are keeping the current list together.
I was very pleased when Lindsay Tanner became President and Worsfold was appointed. But they have both turned out to be “safety first” men. That might have been the right approach coming off the saga, but it’s not the right approach now.
I’m expecting either to scrape into the 8 next year or to miss out narrowly, and the same again in 2021 when Rutten takes over. And to make it worse FC and Hawthorn will probably get the next two flags.
Format the drive and install Linux. It’s that dire.
We’ve never culled. Ever. Its been one of my big criticisms of our list strategy; whether it comes from Dodoro or higher up, its been stuffed. In my view it was a huge factor in dragging out how long it took to rebuild from 2005 to about 2013. We had an opportunity in 2015 or 2016 to do so, and rightly or wrongly didn’t take it.
For the last 30 years the only times I can remember EFC initiating the trade of an older established best 22 players are in 2001 and 2002 when Jackson stuffed the salary cap, and probably Cummings when we already had Lloyd/Lucas coming through. Maybe Jacobs, not sure who initiated that.
Even with the Caddy situation, Hooker wasn’t established at that point. Similar to trading Barnes for Denham.
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If JD and Raz both stay, now is the last moment to be putting the broom through our list. The only older player with any significant value is potentially Hurley, trading out one guy for a single pick is bonkers. If JD and Raz stay, then we need to try and push for top 4. We have the talent, we don’t have the fitness team and coaches to do it. Both will hopefully have changed.
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There’s about 8 of these threads already
Probably slightly more than the average for footy forums, though if we lock one we become less than the average and suddenly more positive.
The EFC does not do rebuilds. They effect the bottom line, so as much as one may be needed or wished for by the fans you will not see one.
I’d love some examples of this “culling” to drive a team to success.*
*You can’t use Hawthorn 2004, because that was under a different set of rules and probably couldn’t be replicated given the current policies in place around a few things
*You also can’t use Deledio, as That wasn’t a hard reset to build a new list. That was Deledio wanting a chance to win a flag that had seemingly passed him by at Richmond.
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with Oraziooo staying should the thread title change to a soft reset?
fitness team already changed, coaching team too.
Can only hope Caracella and Rutten really push the guys in preseason and bed the game plan down so its ready round 1.
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a player reset is no good if your coaching reset isn’t done.
in theory it has been with worsfold moving somewhat sideways and rutten taking over and cara no doubt his no.1 general.
case in point we’ve recruited how many new guys in the last 2 years, and yet went backwards and got back only to the same point as 2 years ago.
In theory we could win it next year with the list as is, even without daniher IF the coaching side of things, as well as fitness is taken care of.
only time will tell if it is.
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Thats lid off sort of Territory
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We must be ready for Round 1, 2020. No more slow starts, they cost you in the end. We need a consistent year, too, and a healthy percentage. And that means a lot more goals and winning by substantial margins. No more heart-stopping wins by less than a kick, coming from behind. Let’s play to our capacity which we’ve rarely done for the last few years.
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