Who to Draft ??

[StrengthThroughLoyalty]

This year we have the opportunity to pick the two best kids in the country. Which poses the question do you pick the players that potentially will be the best footballers or do you pick players who will potentially solve a deficiency in the team structure.

If we look at last years draft would we have recruited Pavlich who looks like he will be (is) a gun midfielder or Josh Fraser and another tall key position player because we need more talls?

The only way clubs can get good key postion players is to develop them young. It's impossible to draft established good developed talls.

My philosophy would be to to try and recruit key postion players, with Reiwoldt and Kosi looking the most likely. I only hope that by not recruiting Didak we haven't missed out on the best player from this draft.

It's all a bit of a lottery, hopefully our numbers will come up.

A bit of luck and good management and who knows where this ride will take us.

[karnaby]

Yeh, have to agree on Koschitzki & Reiwoldt, size is important for us.

McDougall & Didak scare me a bit with their WA/SA heritage, I saw it argued elsewhere that it would be good to watch Collingwood & Carlton (picks 3 & 4 in the draft) have possible problems in 2-3yrs time when these guys come up for renewal of their original contracts & start to have thoughts of going home. Frankly I'd prefer others to have those sort of problems rather than us, even if it is all conjecture.

As an aside,the name Reiwoldt rings a bell, did we have a guy from Tassie with that name in the 80s?

[StrengthThroughLoyalty]

Karnaby, I have read that the Reiwoldt's are a great football family from Tasmania, Nick and his family are originally from Tassie. I can't recall any Reiwoldts's playing in the VFL/AFL in the 70's or beyond.

It maybe a good omen that a Tasmanian joins our club, if he's as good as the one's from the 60's he will be a champion.

Doc, Stewart, Howell.

[sainter]

STL and Karnaby,

I agree that Koschitzke and Riewoldt are the way to go.

Didak is the best midfielder on offer and may be the most likely to warrant immediate senior selection on offer but like you have said STL, key position players like these guys will not come around very often at all.

For someone like Riewoldt, who is regarded as a top CHF yet is agile enough to play as a wingman for Southport, he looks to have it all.

Apart from the fact that I have just learnt to spell his name, I think Koschitzke should be the other section. He has proven to have natural talent as a CHF and CHB while prefering to be a ruckman. And with a height of 196cms, he has an opportunity to develop as a ruckman underneath Spider and Capuano.

Both of them are very tall and slighly built and may take a while to develop into senior players. But having them playing regular senior football next year is not the main thing. These guys have the potential to be fantastic footballers and I hope our selections will be made on their long-term worth to the side and not that they are a ready made senior footballer like Didak.

[karnaby]

Well guys (I'm assuming...), it looks like we're all pretty much in agreement; there's only 38-39hrs to see if we either get proven correct, or surprised.
Just as a little conjecture, who might the smokeys be if the club has been feeding everybody a line?
Might Angwin be a surprise?
Clearly we need bigger players rather than small, and there are arguements that could be put that:
a) Spider offers a lot up forward as well as rucking and his defensive skills aren't what they could be.
b) Capuano has twice copped major ...(the dreaded i word)
c) We seem to have very little left as back up, yeh, Elliott might be able to do the job (being positive!) & maybe others could play a role - Stewie - but really the cupboard seems a bit light on for long term big man prospects. (Is Olly Trand a hope?)
Just a few thoughts to keep us going.

Congrats too, Sainter, 500 posts, you really have been flying our flag!

Onward & upward.