Tough thing to answer, as even if the path the club has currently chosen doesn’t work out, it won’t necessarily mean it was a bad call. Just like if they’d chosen to go in the opposite direction.
As HM has said they seem to have banked on the fact they can win a flag with BJ, Watson and co.
That’s obviously been made 10 times harder with the drama of the last two years, and will probably continue for a couple more years.
Personally I don’t think we had the team or list to challenge for a flag 2 years ago without drastic change to the starting 22, and still think that way.
By the time the current crop develop into a well oiled machine I don’t think Watson, Stanton BJ will either be in the side or at their current output.
But again no one path is the right path, and any path you do choose can be both good and bad outcomes.
Ultimately you should be judged on the success of your plan. The issue we have had as a club for a few years now, is both club and certain supporters change the goal posts about what the initial aim was, to suit their agenda’s.
Best example was last year and how Thompson had about 5 different running plans about how to make us seasoned finals contenders, the best of which was " he wasn’t worrying about winning early in the season, but was more focused on building up form near the end of the season and heading into finals".
We’ve drafted, whether forced or not, to pinch a flag from 2013 onwards, and are still doing so to try and pinch one now by around 2016. There is no other way you can honestly try and sell it, and that is what the coach and club should be judged on in due course, unfortunately it’s 2 years away so alot can happen in that time.
Well, it could be that (aside from the ASAGA) we are kind of sticking to Hirds original plan when he was hired.
Surely he would have identified talent and opportunities and the 4 year contract he was given would have been based on Hird (and his sidekick Bomber) getting the side into a position where we would be playing finals footy and having a crack at a flag in 2014. As a brief summary, we came 8th in 2011, finished 11th in 2012, in 2013 we came 7th but excluded from finals, and in 2014 Bomber took us to 7th place. There’s nothing strange at all really about us topping up when you think about it, it would actually be strange if we were still foucussed on development.
We have a good balance to our side now. we do have depth this coming season and perhaps 2016 hence the premiership window being 15/16.
I believe our midfield is well placed for the future with this years picks, our forwardline looks the most set in Daniher and Carlisle.
We could use another KPP for our backline next years draft as Fletcher ( retire ) Pears ( maybe delisted ) Steinberg ( maybe delisted ) aware with our first pick in this years draft can play this role would be good to get another though.
Ruck stocks went from bare to well placed now.
All in all our team for this year and future looks ok.
We probably will regret it somewhat because this group is unlikely to win a Premiership, but it’s worth the gamble because we are at least some chance of winning one. On average Premierships are win every 18 years. We’ve got a two year window to get it done, and I think we have the demographics and class to at least get in the top four. If you make the top four, anything can happen. I’d say we are a one in five chance of playing in a Grand Final next year or the year after. A lot of things would have to go right for us to win one. After all, it has been over 10 years since we’ve even won a final. But I believe you should throw everything at it when the window opens, and that is what we have done.
The cost is that the likes of Chapman, Gwilt, Cooney, Giles, Goddard and McKernan are filling list spots that would otherwise be occupied by young prospects, and they are likely to play 300 odd games that we could be getting into youngsters. Of that lot, Cooney cost us a second rounder and Giles a third rounder. The other four would have effectively been replaced by late draft picks. Say you’re a 50/50 chance of finding a player with a second/third rounder, and a one in four chance with a late pick, the odds are that we have missed out on two good young players compared to if we had never picked up any of those mature players and focused on youth. When you consider the role the the likes of Goddard and Chappy in particular have in developing young players, I’d say the long-term cost is minimal at it has been a worthwhile exercise.
The draft penalties in 2013 left us with a choice of two equally uninviting options. I’ve posted this analogy before, but our choice was between betting the house on a pair of sixes (topping up with older players for a flag run and hoping everything goes right) or folding with two pair kings high (accepting that the Watson/Goddard/Stanton generation will never see a flag and starting a rebuild, in the full knowledge we won’t be contenders for another 4-5 years minimum and even then we can probably expect the expansion teams to be fully mature and winning everything)
I don’t think the club ever felt they had a real choice. The players have held strong through two years of extraordinary external pressure and there is a perception that this pressure was brought about at least partly as a result of the club’s failings. For Essendon to then turn to the senior players such as Watson and Stanton and say ‘thanks for your loyalty, but we’ve decided not to try to win a premiership during your career’ would be unconscionable. From a pragmatic, list-management perspective there may have been other alternatives but I think the administration feel that they have a moral obligation to give the senior player a shot at a flag even if the possibility is fairly remote.
What were we going to get with pick 53 & onwards exactly?
Will it kinda hurt in some areas - yes. Will Hams and Elliott Kavanagh et al would be further along (or we’d have made a decision on them sooner).
How do you quantify that exactly? Cos BJ has been absolutely grouse, and I think Giles and probably Cooney will be too.
I think there’s an intangible there about leadership/mentoring as well. You can’t clear everyone out and expect a huge bunch of kids to learn in a vacuum. They need to see professionals and leaders up close - see Melbourne for comparison - to learn the best way.
I think all the recruiting staff did was target players who they thought would make us better as a unit.
We needed a well rounded midfielder who could win contested footy, break away from packs along with speed, classy disposal and goal kicking ability and found that despite however unlikely it sounded, Adam Cooney was available and willing to come to our club for the cost of only a second round pick. (I’ll just add that at his best he is all of those things and it isn’t a mere formality that he will produce those things but it is sounding like he is the fittest he has been in a long time and is really tearing up training).
We then found a ready made replacement for Ryder with Giles coming to the club for a pick in fifties.
We signed Gwilt as a free agent to give our backline more cover and flexibility if someone is to be injured/suspended or even if he just impresses and surpasses expectation, we have nothing to lose.
We then drafted:
Laverde
Langford
Long
McKenna
McKernan
I thought we had as good of an off-season as we possibly could have and only addressed areas with mature bodies where required.
Think some people are making it sound a bit worse than it actually is.
You need these older recruits to play every pic. We aren’t good enough to cherry pick who plays. Posted previously that improvement must come from the 3rd to 5th year players - Two or three become good AFL players and we can improve.
The other question you could ask is are the other players better for bringing in these guys, in the chase of Goddard and Chappy I would say yes. They play at another level.
The other question you could ask is are the other players better for bringing in these guys, in the chase of Goddard and Chappy I would say yes. They play at another level.
Correct. Likewise Joe is better off not being the #2 ruck, had we not acquired Giles. And Carlisle not having to play defence had we not picked up Gwilt.
They all make a fair bit of sense.
No doubt. Players like Goddard who are extremely good decision makers and very accurate distributors of the ball will lift the performance of the whole team. This was a very conspicuous part of Goddards 2013 season, when he played a lot off half back in an almost “quarterback” role at times. In 2014 he was used all over the ground and as a close in midfielder and was less effective at bringing other players into the game. IMO.
We probably will regret it somewhat because this group is unlikely to win a Premiership, but it's worth the gamble because we are at least some chance of winning one. On average Premierships are win every 18 years. We've got a two year window to get it done, and I think we have the demographics and class to at least get in the top four. If you make the top four, anything can happen. I'd say we are a one in five chance of playing in a Grand Final next year or the year after. A lot of things would have to go right for us to win one. After all, it has been over 10 years since we've even won a final. But I believe you should throw everything at it when the window opens, and that is what we have done.
The cost is that the likes of Chapman, Gwilt, Cooney, Giles, Goddard and McKernan are filling list spots that would otherwise be occupied by young prospects, and they are likely to play 300 odd games that we could be getting into youngsters. Of that lot, Cooney cost us a second rounder and Giles a third rounder. The other four would have effectively been replaced by late draft picks. Say you’re a 50/50 chance of finding a player with a second/third rounder, and a one in four chance with a late pick, the odds are that we have missed out on two good young players compared to if we had never picked up any of those mature players and focused on youth. When you consider the role the the likes of Goddard and Chappy in particular have in developing young players, I’d say the long-term cost is minimal at it has been a worthwhile exercise.
A bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush. It is never ever the wrong choice to improve your list from season to season especially when we have not sacrificed much to do it. I have no doubt that some revisionists are already writing up the epitaph if we don’t win a flag in the next 2 years but just like the recruiting of guys like Campo & Murphy didn’t cause the finals drought of the mid 00’s, recruiting guys like Cooney & Gwilt will have far less impact on our longer term future than the recruiting & development of guys like Laverde, Ashby & Kav.
I’ve never thought that gifting games to any player helps them so as we’ve seen with guys like Zerret & Heppel, if you are good enough you will get games from the start. We are not forced to play Gwilt especially if a younger guy has better form. Hell even Cooney wouldn’t be guaranteed games. If Browne comes back & bursts the game apart, Zerret & Jerret demand mid time & Hams, Melks & Kav improve plus if Laverde & Langford are the next Mercs & Hird from 93 then it won’t matter a lick how old others on the list are. That’s the area of our list we’ve invested the most in & that’s what will more than any other decide our middle to long term fortunes.
There simply is no 4-5 year fool-proof blueprint to a premiership.