Woosha – final moments or finals moment?

dbeas · August 15, 2019, 2:21am

This, and @SCarey made a very post about who we have recruited in the last four years and how 2/3 of them are our best 22 now:

Adrian Dodoro - Flankers into Mids since 2000

Jackets has been outstanding, especially since 2015

Just wanting to do a quick post regarding Disco’s drafting/Trading in of current players, I think the following shows how well he has done especially well since the sanctions hit in 2013 and even more so since 2015, with Jacket’s finding another level, already finding 22 potential best 22 players from the 2015 draft onward with possibly more to come.

In bold I have put 36 players who I think are players I think are part of our current and future AFL side, with the remaining 10 either older players (4) who would be more than decent depth and younger players (6) who haven’t established themselves as AFL players but still may well do so.

2007 - Myers, Hooker and TBC
2008 - Hurls, Zakka
2009 -
2010 - Hepp
2011 - Bags
2012 - Joe D, Marty
Sanctioned drafts -
2013 - Zerrett, Raz and Ambrose
2014 - Langers, Lav, Smack, Conor and Longy
Post Sanctions
2015 - Parish, Francis, Redman, Brown, Hartley, Walla
2016 - Stewart, McGrath, Ridley, Begley, D Clarke, Draper , Mutch, McNiece, Dea
2017 - Stringer, Smith, Saad, Zerk, Guelfi, Mynott, Houlahan
2018 - Shiel, Mozzie, Ham, Zed, Gown, Jok,
2019 - Snelling

Having lost players affected by the saga, eg. Ryder, Carlisle, Hibberd, Melksham, Crameri, Colyer has been a part of making our current side stronger and younger, picking up draft picks, which somewhat offset draft sanctions.

But even with this, I think Dodoro has hit it out of the park since sanctions, if you look at the drafts prior to 2013, we were lucky to get more than 2 decent players per draft and sometimes less. During sanctions (2013-14), he managed to find 7 players who are arguably currently best 22, and post sanctions the 2015 draft provided 6 players who were in the winning side on Friday night and among the best players. There are also 6 potential best 22 players from the 2016 draft on the list and another 3 who provide depth. 2017 provided the 3 S’s who are in our top 10 players as well as Guelfi and Zerk who looks likely to be Hooker’s replacement and two more who are still developing. 2018 not only provided Shiel but we can’t wait for Mozzie to debut and combine with Walla, Ham is very promising and Zac Clarke has already surprised and hopefully will recover from his illness and have a very solid remainder of the season in the AFL side and Gown and Jok show good potential.

To top it all off, Disco has already got off to a flyer in 2019 with Snelling and hopefully he can spot more players with good upside, given we have already traded away our first round pick and will have our own and GWS’s 2nd rounder to play with (which may be our highest pick).

Talent can only take us so far, it takes time. Look at Hawthorn, they peaked too early in 2008 and their dynasty officially started in 2013, 5 years after their 2008 premiership.

We overrated our list massively in 2017 when we limped into the finals. In 2018, we had the SSS playing for the first time but our midfield still sucked. This year, we had a bad start and we are still on track for finals despite the injuries. Geelong and Brisbane have the latest amount of injuries and they are first and second. It ain’t an excuse, just a reality of the nature of our sport.

This is why, just one finals win is the pass mark, however, with the injuries, we should accept if we don’t get a finals win. It’s the reality, not because of Xavier is not doing his job or Jackets ■■■■■■ up the list, it’s ■■■■■■ footy.

I believe our premiership window starts next year and top 2 should be the pass mark in 2021 or 2022 when the majority of our best 22 have played at least 100 games.