A Waste of Money?

[walshy1993]

an article was written up on http://www.bomberblitz.com about essendon having a stand alone vfl side was a waste of money

"This week's VFL opponent in Williamstown can be classed as Collingwood's VFL team. The Pies have paid $25,000 to 'align' with Williamstown for the 2001 VFL Season. Just means that the Collingwood senior players who don't make the senior team and their rookie list players play for Williamstown. Yet Essendon have to pay $85,000 in 2001 to field it's own team under it's own name. Why bother?"

Why bother? Essendon is and always be a proud club, to think of having our players play in another jumper is a joke. Essendon has worked hard over the last decade to get themself into the finacial position they are in now, and $60,000 may sound a lot of money, it is, but the long run benifits far outway this amount.
We have complete control over our vfl side, our reserves play a style of football that is dictated by the essendon football club, the players play in positions that the essendon football club believes will benifit them and the future of the team
while we can still afford to put a vfl team in an essendon jumper why not do it

"It's embarrassing for Essendon's VFL team to lose to the likes of Frankston, who aren't even aligned with any AFL team or get flogged by Port Melbourne (aligned with Sydney). It doesn't do the profile of the club any good to see it's VFL team get rolled week after week and sure as hell can't be too great on the players morale either."

another point i disagree with, most weeks the vfl consists of a group of kids, u may see this as a waste but i dont, damien peverill is an example of why its not a waste, a top up player last season and only 4 days ago he beat one of the best players in the competition
essendon has the comfort of experimenting and developing juniors and a lot of them
essendon has always been able to come up with fresh new talent year after year, solomon, johnsons, heffernan, caracella etc
and the vfl competition is a perfect place for kids to develop, but they need to do it in an essendon jumper
its not embarrassing at all to see essendon lose to frankston if we get to see ted richards, james davies, jordan bannister etc all develop and play a style of football that will one day see them graduate into the next lot of essendon premiership players

[Dave]

Walshy a few points. http://www.bigfooty.com/ubb/smile.gif

Whilst we have money now, we may not always be as well off comparitively speaking. It never hurts to be wise with your money.

Not being competitive, losing week in week out can have an effect. At the moment with the senior team going ok it's probably not a big issue, but when (and it is a when) they drop off eventually I don't think it'll help their confidence to have the new players getting belted every week. I've been there and I can tell you, it stinks. Even when it deosn't matter.

As for the jumper, it's only the twos' who aren't even two's any more. Half of them aren't even on the clubs list.

The coaching aspect isn't an issue either IMHO. If the club algined I'm sure they'd get their players played where & when they wanted them. The other aligned clubs don't seem to have any problems with this.

[Max Power]

Well I didn't write it so I can't probably speak about the article in much more than on-looker mode.

But I add this snippet -

"Let's do some sums here. AFL senior lists are currently 38 players. Minus 22 players in the senior game, take away an average number of 8 injured players at one time in the middle of the season. So realistically we are paying $85,000 a year for 8 senior players to run around in the VFL plus 4 rookie list players. The rest of the Essendon VFL team is made up of rejects or young kids not good enough to be drafted and most likely never will be drafted."

That is a pretty intersting point imho in this debate (I'll go on record as being apatheic on this issue - don't care either way), where is the cutoff point?

Look at Josh Mahoney for instance are we developing him to be picked up by another AFL club, seeing he is only a top-up player?

I don't think there is a solid answer to this question, but Esendon is now is the only one of 3 of having a sole VFL team with Carlton set to drop their team next year. SO are we right and all the other clubs wrong?

Here is the full article btw
http://essendon.rivals.net/default.asp?sid=1451&p=2&stid=8109670

* If anybody wants to write about anything like this (ie. have a rant about an Essendon issue) feel free to scribble a few lines together and we'll chuck it up on the site! Just e-mail it to me at bomberblitz@hotmail.com

------------------
www.bomberblitz.com (http://www.bomberblitz.com) - Essendon coverage without the PR spin

[walshy1993]

top up players for the weekend were

Sean Denham- basically as captian, does a great job towards developing the kids and keeps on getting the ball

Josh Mahoney -i cant speak highly enough of this guy, been in the best every week, is hard at it, has great hands, great skills and kicks goals

Ken Hall - a tassie boy who has an amazing kick, pretty hard at it and definatly a great prospect

Damien Uze - brother of adam, anther one who has great skills and ability, does some freakish things at times but is unfortunately injured at the moment

Ben Cranage - brother of carltons sam, smart player, has ability, havent seen a lot of him, but he does seem to have the goods

Ben Goddard - was sensational on saturday, only lightly built but does everything the coach asks, plays very smart football and does all the hard things, which for a guy of his built is amazing, also has a great skill level

These two missed out due to injury
Damien Uze - brother of adam, anther one who has great skills and ability, does some freakish things at times but is unfortunately injured at the moment

James Podsiadly - his improvement from last season has been unbelievable, can ruck or become a forward target and considering he has only been playing football for about 4 years there seems to be something there

other top ups are chris murphy, simon clarke, scott goldsworthy, shane sheppard, matthew green, jeremy dukes

now by playing with another club we wouldnt have the luxury of being able to see these kids every week, of developing them, because basically our senior list players would just become top ups for another club
if we can persist with these kids, regardless of the results and find one or two players out of there (eg damien peverill) then wouldnt u say its worth the money?

[This message has been edited by walshy1993 (edited 30 April 2001).]