Opinion Cripps, Parker and Davies - your time is nigh

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The Fantasia trade was so bad that it alone should put the list managers role into question. Looked s**t then, looks s**t now. An extraordinary price to pay for a guy who had spent the previous two years on the injury list. Huge surprise he has spent most of the time at Port on the injury list. We always play the nice guy in trade period, often to our detriment and this is just another case.

Giving up Ladhams for nothing with the justification that we thought Hayes was ready to take the next step was also laughable. Davies talking s**t that it would "take a significant price for us to let him go" in the media, or something along those lines, made him look like a complete idiot as well.

The trade that led us to drafting Sinn were diabolical as well. Giving up an additional second round pick for a guy who we would seen play a handful of games of football over a period of two years. Generally speaking our drafting has been OK but given the lack of information around Sinn it shows an immense amount of faith in the recruiting team to pick players based on U16 form given the assets we gave up to get him. The last guy they did that with was Rozee and that looks... suspect at the moment.

Also, what in hells name is going on with our salary cap. Didn't we have a warchest to spend on a Merritt type? Where did that cash go? Please tell me it didn't go to Rozee.

To summarise, Parker still a tick, Cripps and Davies crosses.
 

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Shaucob_Burjan said:
I've thought about the Rockliff, Motlop, Watts off-season a few times but IMO if you get an opportunity to add those guys who in theory were clearly first 18 players for us (on top of the magnitude of stars we already had) you do it. Especially coming off 5th on the ladder.
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I'm also fine with them. The only player we actually traded for was Watts, and before the injury that ultimately led to his career ending he was playing reasonably good football as an intercepting defender. It's just s**t luck he got that injury.

Rockliff and Motlop just took cap space and its impossible to know if we would've spent that cap space in a better way if we didn't get them. They were both OK, probably not justifying their salary but did add a bit to the team when they were playing.
 
TeeKray said:
I'm happy with not using premium picks on key defenders. Positions get harder to play as you move further towards goal ergo backs just aren't as valuable as midfielders and forwards. Any club worth its salt should be able to unearth good key defenders from later picks. Take Geelong as an example. Stewart was pick 40, Henry rookie draft, Blicavs rookie draft. Our own Aliir Aliir was pick 44. Harris Andrews pick 61. The list goes on.
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A premium draft pick IMO is a 1-5 pick - pick 6 has a horrendous history.

We have used our top 5 picks on mids;
4. Hartlett 2008, 5. Boak 2006, Stevens 1998, Rozee 2018 is supposed to develop into a mid.

We traded pick 4 in 2000 to get a KPD, Darryl Wakelin a 192cm KPD but most KPF's back then were only 195cm, today they are 200+cms. That was worth a pick 4 IMO.

After our inaugural 1996 draft, most of our picks 6-9 have been mids or mid-forwards, a couple of KPFs;
9. Chad Cornes 1997, 7. Josh Carr 1998, 6. Steve Salopek 2002, 8. John Butcher and 9. Andrew Moore 2009, 6. Chad Wingard 2011, 7. Ollie Wines 2012.

In my op I talked about using picks 10-25 on a 195+cm KPD, that is a mid table to top of table season draft pick, basically the Hinkley years picks. Partly because I know Port's drafting history and don't expect it to change, and partly because I wouldn't use a pick 1-5 on an 18 year old KPD. Use it to trade in a Wakelin type KPD - is no worries by me.

If modern sports is about defence winning championships, defend first, then defence should have at least 1 top end talent general, and in Aussie footy where marking close to goal is key, that should be a KPD who is in a the same weight division as the champion KPFs.

Melbourne have Lever a pick 14 by Adelaide and May was a GC 17 year old NT zone pick not a 17 year old access pick so he was probably ranked outside top 10, but probably top 40 for his year.

Rance only played in the 2017 flag before doing an ACL in Rd 1 2019, but he was the general in defence and their defensive style was built around him over several seasons. He was pick 18 in 2007 and then they drafted Noah Balta a Rance clone, in 2017 with pick 25.

WCE didn't have a top 10-25 pick KPD, but let's compare their most important KPD of the last 5 years to ours.

McGovern was rookie pick #44 2011, is 196cms/100kgs, were as Jonas was rookie pick #16 2011 is 188/90. McGovern fights inside his weight division, Jonas doesn't, when they line up on the KPF's. McGovern floats and takes intercept marks and contested marks, undersized Jonas, flies to spoil against an opponent he regularly is giving 10cms and 10+kgs advantage to.

And whilst WCE didn't use high picks on their other KPD's who played in 2018, they at least drafted guys in their correct weight division - McKenzie pick #29 197/100, Barrass #43 194/95 and Schofield #50 196/92.

Western Bulldogs I'm not gonna bother, 2016 they are outliers in just about every category.

Hawks in 2008 won a GF with pick #3 Trent Croad and #16 (by Port) Stephen Gilham on the FB line and Hodge #1 pick 184cms at CHB and Grant Birchall #14 who is Tom Clurey's height 193cms, on the HBF.

They pinched that GF and they knew it, and then after losing a EF in 2010, a PF in 2011 and GF in 2012 they loaded up with proper KPD's to win 3 in a row. Gibson + Lake and Birchall played 3rd tall in 2013, Spangher came in, in 2014 and Birchall went to the flank and in 2015 Frawley was a free agent who came in and replaced Spangher.

If you don't think defence is that important, you bring in undersized scrubber type KPDs to fight out of their weight division. If you think it's important you keep adding decent standard guys who have the size and can fight in their weight division, and every few years add someone with a lot of defensive class.

Weitering is the only #1 pick KPD of the last 10 years. Actually in the last 3 decades. The one before Weitering was Darren Gasper by the Swans in 1993.

Carlton have been terrible but he has been solid throughout the period he has played. As they keep adding to their midfield and forwards and he isn't under so much seige, I can see him becoming the lynchpin of any Carlton success over the next 3 or 4 years, but they have to quickly replace no vax Liam Jones.

We talk about the sides that have 3 or 4 x 183-185cm midfielders having to fight out of their division against the sides that have 3 or 4 x 190-192cm midfielders. No difference in the battle of the KPD's vs KPF's.

I don't think our coach and list guys think defence is that important. They want to manufacture other stuff.
 
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JakeNeadeFan said:
I'm also fine with them. The only player we actually traded for was Watts, and before the injury that ultimately led to his career ending he was playing reasonably good football as an intercepting defender. It's just s**t luck he got that injury.

Rockliff and Motlop just took cap space and its impossible to know if we would've spent that cap space in a better way if we didn't get them. They were both OK, probably not justifying their salary but did add a bit to the team when they were playing.
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At the end of 2018 I was so pissed off with Motlop and Watts I drafted up a spreadsheet of the club's B&F voting to see how many games they contributed absolutely nothing. 5 coaches gave votes from 0-5. Attached is the spreadsheet.

Motlop played 21 games polled 0 votes out of a possible 25 in 10 games and polled 85 votes all up for 15th in the B&F.

He did his usual start well polling 13 and 10 and then 14 games later plays one of his really good games and gets 16 votes and there is 39 of his 85 votes in 3 of the 21 games. Motlop has basically had 4 more rinse and repeat years like that. He played 14 games and was 26th in the B&F in 2019

Watts was worse than Motlop in 2018. Played in 19 games, got dropped, polled 0 votes in 10 games and polled 50 in total for 20th place. Next year he starts of with 12+8 = 20 when max votes were 4 coaches gave 0-5 so he had 20/40 which was a good start but injury finishes his career and its a bust at Port.

Rocky delivered. 13th placed in 2018, 93 votes from only 18 games and only 4 with 0 votes. Then top 10, 7th in 2019 and 8th in 2020, before injuries destroyed his 2021 and career over.
 

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We have traded out some good players for very little. All of Dougal Howard, Patrick Ryder and Pete Ladhams would be useful right now. In terms of who we have delisted, tell me Boyd Woodcock and Jarod Leinert would not be offering more than Mcentee and Skinner
 
Marat said:
We have traded out some good players for very little. All of Dougal Howard, Patrick Ryder and Pete Ladhams would be useful right now. In terms of who we have delisted, tell me Boyd Woodcock and Jarod Leinert would not be offering more than Mcentee and Skinner
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Pretty sure we used Dougal to move up for Georgiades so I would definitely do that one all over again.

Ryder and Ladhams would not be relevant if we actually chose to play Hayes - not sure what's going on there?

Woodcock was not up to it at all, but would definitely take Lienert over Skinner.
 
Dare I say it, but ever since CD's infamous "professional jealousy" comment to cRowie late last season on AA, things have gone almost unbelievably bad for us.

Since then, we've:
  • Been shellacked in a home prelim - even though we had every conceivable advantage under the sun
  • Lost key off-field staff in Schofield, Voss and Macka
  • Got a head coach who seems to have completely lost the players
  • Had injuries to players who are pivotal to our game plan (this is another failing of the coach)
  • A playing group that looks, all of a sudden, like a bottom 4 squad
The above would've seemed almost impossible when he made that comment.
 
Marat said:
We have traded out some good players for very little. All of Dougal Howard, Patrick Ryder and Pete Ladhams would be useful right now. In terms of who we have delisted, tell me Boyd Woodcock and Jarod Leinert would not be offering more than Mcentee and Skinner
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If I am not mistaken, we let Paddy walk as we had Ladhams, and we let Ladhams walk as we have Hayes.

Sack them.
 
Jojay said:
Dare I say it, but ever since CD's infamous "professional jealousy" comment to cRowie late last season on AA, things have gone almost unbelievably bad for us.

Since then, we've:
  • Been shellacked in a home prelim - even though we had every conceivable advantage under the sun
  • Lost key off-field staff in Schofield, Voss and Macka
  • Got a head coach who seems to have completely lost the players
  • Had injuries to players who are pivotal to our game plan (this is another failing of the coach)
  • A playing group that looks, all of a sudden, like a bottom 4 squad
The above would've seemed almost impossible when he made that comment.
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It's almost our version of Trigg's "Port are devaluing the AFL brand" comment.
 

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Jojay said:
That's exactly what I was thinking as I was writing it
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It was a bit cringeworthy when he said it. Now, it's massively cringe.
 
I can't agree with this REH.

I think the recruiting, by and large, has been good.

Drafting another flanker (Sinn) looks to be a miss, trading away Howard and to some extend Ladhams also maybe mistakes.

But if you think any club is getting it right 100% of the time across a decade, you're kidding. We can draft L.Austin, M.Harvey and J.Butcher but if Ken and his team keep picking S.Gray, J.Neade and C.Sutcliffe you can't blame the recruiters.


This was a premiership list, and Ken kissed it away.
 
Our KPD stocks are not our biggest problem. We've had one of the best defences in the AFL for the last few years now. Clurey, Jonas, Mckenzie, Burton and Aliir are not the worst group going around and have proven themselves to be capable. Sure we've had the odd blip here and there and there are times where a KPF will rip us apart, but that happens to every team. Hawkins kicked 5.3 against Brisbane on the weekend.

Our issues are in our forward half and midfield. Of our KPF, we have Georgiades who has looked promising at times, Dixon who is out at the moment but is an AA CHF, Marshall who hasn't come on as we'd have liked. And then we have no one. Lord, Visentini who are raw and probably not up to the level yet and Finlayson, who hasn't settled since coming across. Dixon is coming to the end of his career and while he's injured, this is the time when one of these guys need to step up and take the opportunity to be that focal point.
Unfortunately we also have a terrible game plan that does these guys no favours at all and seems to involve bombing it long to a pocket or half forward flank and trying to knock it to the ground for crumbing goals or a boundary throw in. Our forwards rarely lead to space, either because there isn't any or because our mids just don't seem to lower their eyes. Houston is an exception.
Every player we have just seems devoid of confidence and like they are not enjoying their footy and the solution is simple. New coach. New ideas, fresh perspective and a clean slate.
I'm confident we have the players, but they are going through the motions at the moment and I don't think Ken has the drive and passion anymore to turn that around.
 
Winganeen said:
I can't agree with this REH.

I think the recruiting, by and large, has been good.

Drafting another flanker (Sinn) looks to be a miss, trading away Howard and to some extend Ladhams also maybe mistakes.

But if you think any club is getting it right 100% of the time across a decade, you're kidding. We can draft L.Austin, M.Harvey and J.Butcher but if Ken and his team keep picking S.Gray, J.Neade and C.Sutcliffe you can't blame the recruiters.


This was a premiership list, and Ken kissed it away.
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Drafting another flanker (Sinn) looks to be a miss- wow talk about going early on this one, lets see in 2 yrs before calling it a failure please.
 
all seeing eye said:
Drafting another flanker (Sinn) looks to be a miss- wow talk about going early on this one, lets see in 2 yrs before calling it a failure please.
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Maybe worded poorly, its not Sinn himself, it the role that he plays.

When I heard we drafted a silky, rebounding left footed flanker I thought great sounds like Polec or Pittard or Bonner but maybe Amon or even Burton (ok, not a leftie). How many times are we going back to this well?
 
Winganeen said:
Maybe worded poorly, its not Sinn himself, it the role that he plays.

When I heard we drafted a silky, rebounding left footed flanker I thought great sounds like Polec or Pittard or Bonner but maybe Amon or even Burton (ok, not a leftie). How many times are we going back to this well?
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We and every other team will keep going to that well, because that type of player, is the very player that breaks open Defences.
 
HugeJohnson said:
our mids just don't seem to lower their eyes.
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After rewatching some of the Melbourne game, the number of times they could have looked sideways across the arc or to the fat side i50 and had a genuine option was so frustrating. It's like everyone rocked up to the SPP school of 'play-on and bomb it down the line or to the top of the square without looking'.
 
P4Life said:
We and every other team will keep going to that well, because that type of player, is the very player that breaks open Defences.
Click to expand...

Yes but I think the question raised in this thread is; are we recruiting the right types? I believe and will stand corrected that REH is arguing we don't draft and develop KPD's and we're all the worse for it.

I'm making the point that our drafting and recruiting has been pretty good except for a couple of misses here and there, which even premiership sides will have over a decade. Previously we've had a good pool of KPP's but Ken and Co. have been too gun-shy of playing them.

In this particular draft, again we've gone for a flanker, where I'd argue we are well stocked. Ken is only too happy to play flankers, but we are none the more successful. Maybe, in this instance, we would have been better drafting a KPP rather than moving one on (Ladhams).
 
Winganeen said:
Yes but I think the question raised in this thread is; are we recruiting the right types? I believe and will stand corrected that REH is arguing we don't draft and develop KPD's and we're all the worse for it.

I'm making the point that our drafting and recruiting has been pretty good except for a couple of misses here and there, which even premiership sides will have over a decade. Previously we've had a good pool of KPP's but Ken and Co. have been too gun-shy of playing them.

In this particular draft, again we've gone for a flanker, where I'd argue we are well stocked. Ken is only too happy to play flankers, but we are none the more successful. Maybe, in this instance, we would have been better drafting a KPP rather than moving one on (Ladhams).
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Sorry my bad. you are saying we already had enough of that type. I thought you meant why do clubs keep recruiting that type.
 
Frank Hansen II said:
After rewatching some of the Melbourne game, the number of times they could have looked sideways across the arc or to the fat side i50 and had a genuine option was so frustrating. It's like everyone rocked up to the SPP school of 'play-on and bomb it down the line or to the top of the square without looking'.
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This is what drives me mad about the way we play. The players don't kick to the fat side like that unless it's a big slow switch through the backline first. I'm pretty sure it's coached because we've already setup our zone to lock it in the forward line, and we care more about repeat entries than getting a good first entry that might lead to a goal.
 
RussellEbertHandball said:
A premium draft pick IMO is a 1-5 pick - pick 6 has a horrendous history.

We have used our top 5 picks on mids;
4. Hartlett 2008, 5. Boak 2006, Stevens 1998, Rozee 2018 is supposed to develop into a mid.

We traded pick 4 in 2000 to get a KPD, Darryl Wakelin a 192cm KPD but most KPF's back then were only 195cm, today they are 200+cms. That was worth a pick 4 IMO.

After our inaugural 1996 draft, most of our picks 6-9 have been mids or mid-forwards, a couple of KPFs;
9. Chad Cornes 1997, 7. Josh Carr 1998, 6. Steve Salopek 2002, 8. John Butcher and 9. Andrew Moore 2009, 6. Chad Wingard 2011, 7. Ollie Wines 2012.

In my op I talked about using picks 10-25 on a 195+cm KPD, that is a mid table to top of table season draft pick, basically the Hinkley years picks. Partly because I know Port's drafting history and don't expect it to change, and partly because I wouldn't use a pick 1-5 on an 18 year old KPD. Use it to trade in a Wakelin type KPD - is no worries by me.

If modern sports is about defence winning championships, defend first, then defence should have at least 1 top end talent general, and in Aussie footy where marking close to goal is key, that should be a KPD who is in a the same weight division as the champion KPFs.

Melbourne have Lever a pick 14 by Adelaide and May was a GC 17 year old NT zone pick not a 17 year old access pick so he was probably ranked outside top 10, but probably top 40 for his year.

Rance only played in the 2017 flag before doing an ACL in Rd 1 2019, but he was the general in defence and their defensive style was built around him over several seasons. He was pick 18 in 2007 and then they drafted Noah Balta a Rance clone, in 2017 with pick 25.

WCE didn't have a top 10-25 pick KPD, but let's compare their most important KPD of the last 5 years to ours.

McGovern was rookie pick #44 2011, is 196cms/100kgs, were as Jonas was rookie pick #16 2011 is 188/90. McGovern fights inside his weight division, Jonas doesn't, when they line up on the KPF's. McGovern floats and takes intercept marks and contested marks, undersized Jonas, flies to spoil against an opponent he regularly is giving 10cms and 10+kgs advantage to.

And whilst WCE didn't use high picks on their other KPD's who played in 2018, they at least drafted guys in their correct weight division - McKenzie pick #29 197/100, Barrass #43 194/95 and Schofield #50 196/92.

Western Bulldogs I'm not gonna bother, 2016 they are outliers in just about every category.

Hawks in 2008 won a GF with pick #3 Trent Croad and #16 (by Port) Stephen Gilham on the FB line and Hodge #1 pick 184cms at CHB and Grant Birchall #14 who is Tom Clurey's height 193cms, on the HBF.

They pinched that GF and they knew it, and then after losing a EF in 2010, a PF in 2011 and GF in 2012 they loaded up with proper KPD's to win 3 in a row. Gibson + Lake and Birchall played 3rd tall in 2013, Spangher came in, in 2014 and Birchall went to the flank and in 2015 Frawley was a free agent who came in and replaced Spangher.

If you don't think defence is that important, you bring in undersized scrubber type KPDs to fight out of their weight division. If you think it's important you keep adding decent standard guys who have the size and can fight in their weight division, and every few years add someone with a lot of defensive class.

Weitering is the only #1 pick KPD of the last 10 years. Actually in the last 3 decades. The one before Weitering was Darren Gasper by the Swans in 1993.

Carlton have been terrible but he has been solid throughout the period he has played. As they keep adding to their midfield and forwards and he isn't under so much seige, I can see him becoming the lynchpin of any Carlton success over the next 3 or 4 years, but they have to quickly replace no vax Liam Jones.

We talk about the sides that have 3 or 4 x 183-185cm midfielders having to fight out of their division against the sides that have 3 or 4 x 190-192cm midfielders. No difference in the battle of the KPD's vs KPF's.

I don't think our coach and list guys think defence is that important. They want to manufacture other stuff.
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The rookie draft is what kills me about Parker. He always targets speculative smalls, not speculative talls.

2015 - Snelling, Hewett, Houston & Mitchell. Houston is a win, but four smalls, two of them short people. Come on. Chol left on the board until after we picked Hewett.

2016 - Ladhams, Eddy & Lienert. No complaints here.

2017 - We pick L Thomas, a cooked, unprofessional small forward, leaving Nathan Krueger undrafted. Now playing full forward for Collingwood.

2018 - We pick Tobin Cox & Cam Hewett, leaving both Jordan Butts (Adelaide Full Back) and Mabior Chol (Gold Coast Full Forward, previously rookied) on the table.

2019 - Cam Sutcliffe in the mid-season draft, *******. Pasini, T Burgoyne, Woodcock & Grundy. Pasini looks to have been a good pick. Would have preferred a Hugh Dixon, currently filling in for Oscar Allen at WCE over one of Grundy or Woodcock being retained.

2020 - Tyson Goldsack & Taj Schofield, leaving Jacob Edwards, Ned Moyle and Jackson Callow to the mid season draft 2021.

2021 - McEntee, over Jackson Callow again in the preseason draft. Dumont & Mayes. I don't know who we passed over yet, but I'm sure we'll find out come mid-season draft time.

20 rookie picks since 2015:
  • 8 Mature Agers, the most successful being Sam Mayes thus far (so not a success).
  • 16 smalls for one success (Houston)
  • 4 talls for one success (Ladhams, and possibly Pasini given the reports from the SANFL this season).

I would gladly swap Hewett for Chol, L Thomas for Krueger & Cox for Butts (lol). I bet Parker would too. I ******* hope so.
 
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