No delisted opposition players, please.
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Stringer wasnât part of the future. No point keeping him
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While Stringer might have earnt the extra year, he does not figure in the direction of future plans, so it was time to part ways. If Menzie doesnât lift his game in 2025, we will part ways with him also.
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Why?
Great kick, still only 26 but a bit soft and not very quick. Not a bad option for more HB depth but I think weâve seen his ceiling.
But isnât this the absolute example of what Brad is clearly trying to do with the club in an attempt to turn around our loser culture?
Menzie a limited footballer that gives his all and plays his game for the team v Stringer, highly talented, shows up each year overweight, lacks any defensive pressure and goes missing late in the year each season.
By rewarding these ordinary footballers that try their guts out and cutting blokes that arenât fully professional, heâs intentionally trying to send a message to the whole squad.
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Itâs pretty consistent being the second round is still very high chance of a good player, even first half of third still. After 45-50 depending on the year itâs a crapshoot.
But Iâve been super critical of us alway chasing the Top 10 picks when we lack bulk talent.
I think about this year from the perspective of how we moved a first out to next year then gained a lost of later picks. If we alternated doing this and had good depth assessments you could really clean up. Taking lots of 2/3 rounders one year, a couple of higher the next and doing it again. When you look at the extra value we generated doing it it seems like a great way to go.
Average there is a poor measure.
You really need to look at the std dev at games at picks and it tells a very different story. What your after is 250+ game players who win awards. What you can find is that there is way more variation at the pick than pick games decent you see on your graph. Al lot of the first 20-50 games of top picks can be attributed to being top picks and given opportunity.
When you think about recruiting what you want to know if the chance of a particular pick region of being a 50, 100, 200 game player and chance of awards. What you find is there is a lot more value in late first, second and early third rounders than that graph suggests.
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Witherden would infuriate a large proportion of this forum. He is a very neat player in space and a poor competitor in the contest and one-on-one.
An anti-finals footy type player.
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- Very young team, severe lack of leadership on and off field, severe lack of star players.
- Question marks over coaching, team selection and development.
- 2024 was held together by a very good year from 5 players. What happens next year?
- Subtle messaging from the club about next year being a bit of a reset
NO to Witherden.
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The only player we lost is Stringer, we could well make up for that with a streamlined and higher pressure forwardline - a lot of other teams improved with new players coming in as well however
I was sat next to some West Coast fans for the first half of Melbourne vs WCE this year.
Fair to say their opinion of Witherden was fairly unfavorable. The term âheâs complete â â â â â â â â â â â â was used on more than one occasion.
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Sounds like that is what Mahoney and Rutten advocated for. In classic Essendon Board fashion, they backed in the list
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What a strange board this is. The complaint is that our list and our culture arenât good enough, then people suggest that we should have kept Stringer (who was the very antithesis of good culture ), cull half the list (another culture destroyer) and recruit discards from other clubs who werenât good enough for them ( including bottom 4 clubs). The club has made it very plain about the direction it is taking which I believe is sober and well thought out. Set standards high, place belief in youth and hit the draft (with 3 first round picks in 2 years).
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I agree but for me the frustration is that the approach we are taking now should have been adopted when Scott commenced his position. He had a licence to stamp his authority on the list immediately but either lacked the courage or was delusional about where we were. Two debutants last year also lacked integrity and good judgement especially when we were spiralling out of control after the bye. It is a bit disingenuous to not have a strong narrative about rebuilding (talent and culture) when everyone knows it is exactly what we are doing and would probably accept it. It is simply that another wasted two years have been added onto two decades of underperformance.
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Itâs probably been discussed already on here but appears Richmond have done well.
Won 3 premierships and have now turned their draft hand into picks 1, 6, 10, 11, 18, 20, 23, 24 on what sounds like an excellent draft year.
Lose some premiership players but really theyâve been there and done that so better off for both clubs that they have a fresh start.
Now thatâs how you do a rebuild.
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Itâs almost as though the board is made up of lots of different people, voicing lots of different opinions.
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Tiger 8 x top 25 picks
I dont think some people have come to terms with Stringers off field issues.
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