didaksrightfoot
Premiership Player
- Sep 12, 2013
- 4,902
- 5,555
- AFL Club
- Collingwood
- Other Teams
- SA Spurs, Juventus
No club perhaps in the competition does it worse with those over 23s regarding development.
Guys in their mid 20s still have the capacity to improve, and generally guys when they hit 30s might lose a bit of speed or have a higher incidence of injury, but even then they can still add small things to their games. We're just not seeing any of that at Collingwood.
What has Cloke added? Brown? Goldsack? Macaffer? Blair? You can look through that 2010 premiership squad and ask the question who has improved and you wouldn't jump up and down and enthusiastically say anyone. Beams (now gone - improved in 2012) and Reid for that 2011 season were really those only improvers, but we haven't really seen it from anyone else.
Fremantle with Ross Lyon are our opposite in that their relatively poor developing those under 22s but then once their in their mid 20s and even when they hit 30, his guys still have the capacity to improve and we saw the same with his teams at St Kilda.
You've also got other perennial contenders in Hawthorn, Sydney, Geelong, Fremantle and St Kilda who only more recently have dropped off though still have some really good veterans. Often on those worse sides you'll see veterans drop away earlier, perhaps this is them knowing their not on a contender and not putting in as hard relative to those veterans on contending teams who desperately want to be part of a premiership or at least some finals success.
Collingwood even despite until last year having the longest run of consecutive finals appearances in the competition just haven't been able to like those other good teams keep the veterans going or even get that development from their mid career guys.
Overall it's greatly troubling that your mid career and late career guys are not continuing to develop or in the case of the late career guys, deteriorating at such a rapid rate. It's highly unusual for a team that has been so successful, and to be successful it's a critical element to winning that at the present time is missing and not where it needs to be for the ultimate success to again be experienced.
That is a very interesting view, and honestly not one I had really put much thought into before... but the more I think about it, probably the more I agree with you, to an extent. There probably is something in the fact that, since 2010, we haven't really been a team where the veterans have stepped up and gone to the next level when we really needed them to.
But I do think that there are a number of factors that you have to take into account, and for some of the guys that should really be entering their peaks now (Reid, Brown) - injuries would be a big reason for that plateau (or actually downturn) in development.
I also think that we, probably more than most clubs, may overestimate the potential in some of our young players... so having the right expectations to start off with will also determine how we view someones trajectory. (Eg. I think putting Goldsack on that list probably doesn't really help your case IMO - he was always going to be a limited/role player... was never going to have much more improvement in him, and if anything has just added a bit more flexibility)... also, where would you list Caff developing into one of the leagues best taggers (if only for a limited period of time)- it may not be seen as developing skills per say (though I would disagree), but is about finding the best way for him to contribute on the field... and again, after an ACL.
And how good actually were our 2010 group? Talking specifically about the mid-lower 22 guys: were these champion players ready to take the next level? Or were they limited players who were made to look much better than they were because the style we played suited our team perfectly: pressure, pressure, pressure defensively, and offensively exploit the extra space on the wings so turnovers weren't costly.
Look at the progress of the guys who have moved to other teams since then... and it may just be that they were never thaaaat good as players. (other than Ceglar, I can't think of another player who has improved since leaving Collingwood).