Dud recruiters

[Tigerbob]

It's not just the people, it's the resources those people have available.

Richmond has the same guy who picked Tambling over Buddy still in place (Francis Jackson).

Back when he did that, he was working part time (and his real job as a teacher involved coaching the kids on the weekends).

Now he's full time as are his 2 assistants and there is a much bigger support crew (scouts, etc) and technology backup.

5 extra years of experience also wouldn't hurt.

Not saying he doesn't still make mistakes, recruiting is about taking chances after all, but I dare say he makes far fewer.

Francis Jackson wasn't there when we picked Tambling over Franklin. He was there for the debacle of 2005 with Jarrad Oakleigh-Nicholls.

Your point still stands. Resources were really low. Staggeringly low. One guy, part time and Greg Miller juggling 5 roles with some recruiting. Awful.

Since 2006 when Francis Jackson became full time, our recruiting has improved. Significantly too. Resources will be spent more on recruiting so more successes will be had. Confident we got the right guy in charge of recruiting, but need more eyes. We have three full timers now. Collingwood have something stupid like 14? Still a way to go, but signs are good and getting better.

 

[theflea]

Jeez, aside from a few in Blease, Trengove, Martin, Howe, McKenzie and McDonald - it looks pretty grim for Prendegast who had the reigns from 2008-11. Before him was Richmond's current recruiter Craig Cameron who selected the type of players that meant a few of our young guys were on the back foot by just having to follow those people's examples.

craig cameron is not our current chief recruiter,francis jackson is. he is footy op manager.

 

[tigerfan1961]

Francis Jackson wasn't there when we picked Tambling over Franklin. He was there for the debacle of 2005 with Jarrad Oakleigh-Nicholls.

Your point still stands. Resources were really low. Staggeringly low. One guy, part time and Greg Miller juggling 5 roles with some recruiting. Awful.

Since 2006 when Francis Jackson became full time, our recruiting has improved. Significantly too. Resources will be spent more on recruiting so more successes will be had. Confident we got the right guy in charge of recruiting, but need more eyes. We have three full timers now. Collingwood have something stupid like 14? Still a way to go, but signs are good and getting better.

That was a Greg Miller pick though- not sure how much say Frank in the other two picks, but as you say, since he took over in 2006, we have been okay since. I have faith in him at this stage

 

[Blaz]

Thread should be dedicated to Richmond and Melbourne

richmond has had solid recruiting for the past 2-3 years

 

[Ambrosia]

richmond has had solid recruiting for the past 2-3 years

Agreed.

Pretty much only Melbourne can you say have drafted poorly.

 

[Slattery_20]

Stephen Wells was the one who recruited Ablett/Bartel/Kelly so i don't understand what you mean

You read the whole post and couldn't pick the point?

Basically it distills down to this - even the best make *-ups.
Even given he'd recruited 30-odd gun players and was basically drafting to fill gaps, he still made a reasonably sizeable list of blues.
Sometimes it's just inevitable - there's nothing there in the draft to pick from. And there's other factors that come into it as well.

 

[Slattery_20]

No one cares about Reynolds because he was pick effectively pick 100 taken in the rookie draft. It's all relative to draft position. Sure Wellingham went after that, but 30 of the 40 others never cut it, Wellingham was just a good pick by the pies. If you are burning top 20 picks like the dees that's when the recruiters cop the heat.

He should've been 300th down the order!
Genuinely, properly, terrible AFL footballer, and terrible is terrible is terrible.

We're not talking about a kid who just had a few question marks or niggles & didn't quite cut it, Reynolds had had 5 years at Essendon by that stage, & wasn't even decent in the 2s.

I laff'd at Geelong when they did it... (laffter was, admittedly, short-lived...)

 

[Partridge]

Wells also has the uncanny ability to pick the likes of Stokes at 61 or Enright at 47 or Christiansen at 40 and the are lots of others. It's not so much his early picks which lately have been a bit hit and miss but his late round picks where he gets the gems that everyone else misses.

Yeah Wells' efforts with late picks have been terrific.

It's a good point though, for instance in the two drafts that Geelong absolutely slaughtered - 1999 (Corey, Chapman, Ling, Enright) and 2001 (Bartel, Kelly, Johnson, Ablett), it's commonly forgotten that even he picked other players ahead of them. In 1999 after Corey he picked Ezra Bray and Daniel Foster (everyone is saying - who???). In 2001 he picked Charlie Gardiner immediately before Steve Johnson. Just shows no one has a crystal ball.

 

[Slattery_20]

Wells also has the uncanny ability to pick the likes of Stokes at 61 or Enright at 47 or Christiansen at 40 and the are lots of others. It's not so much his early picks which lately have been a bit hit and miss but his late round picks where he gets the gems that everyone else misses.

I would question whether that actually stacks up, or whether people just forget the late picks (Spencer? Koulouritiotis? McKenna? Owen? Hogan? etc etc) that panned out as you'd expect a later pick to.

IMHO, he's no messiah, he's just pretty good at his job.

 

[Ghost of Punt Road]

I would question whether that actually stacks up, or whether people just forget the late picks (Spencer? Koulouritiotis? McKenna? Owen? Hogan? etc etc) that panned out as you'd expect a later pick to.

IMHO, he's no messiah, he's just pretty good at his job.

2004 Greg Miller

Nathan Brown
Thomas Roach
Andrew Raines
Simon Fletcher
Ben Marsh
Luke Weller
Kelvin Moore
Shane Tuck
Brent Hartigan
Shane Morrison
Nathan Foley
Kyle Archibald
Daniel Jackson

2005 Greg Miller
Brett Deledio
Richard Tambling
Danny Meyer
Adam Pattison
Dean Polo
Luke Mcguane
Dean Limbach
Mark Graham
Trent Knoble
Troy Simmonds
Will Thursfield

2006 Greg Miller
Jarred Oakley-Nicholls
Cleve Hughes
Travis Casserley
Matt White


2007: Francis Jackson
Jack Reiwoldt
Shane Edwards
Daniel Connors
Carl Peterson
Andrew Collins

2008: Francis Jackson
Trent Cotchin
Alex Rance
Dean Putt

2009: Francis Jackson
Tyrone Vickery
Jayden Post
Tom Hislop
Robin Nahas

2010: Francis Jackson
Dustin Martin
Benjamin Griffiths
David Astbury
Matthew Dea
Troy Taylor
Jeromey Webberley
Ben Nason
Dylan Grimes

2011: Francis Jackson
Reece Conca
Jake Batchelor
Bradley Helbig
Dean Macdonald
Tom Derickx

2012: Francis Jackson
Brandon Eliis
Todd Elton
Matthew Arnot
Brett Ohanlon

 

[Pat_Footy]

The Reece Conca pick raised a lot of eyebrows in the 2010 draft.
It's still very early but still looks like a waste of a top10 pick.

 

[Slattery_20]

2004 Greg Miller

Nathan Brown
Thomas Roach
Andrew Raines
Simon Fletcher
Ben Marsh
Luke Weller
Kelvin Moore
Shane Tuck
Brent Hartigan
Shane Morrison
Nathan Foley
Kyle Archibald
Daniel Jackson

2005 Greg Miller
Brett Deledio
Richard Tambling
Danny Meyer
Adam Pattison
Dean Polo
Luke Mcguane
Dean Limbach
Mark Graham
Trent Knoble
Troy Simmonds
Will Thursfield

2006 Greg Miller
Jarred Oakley-Nicholls
Cleve Hughes
Travis Casserley
Matt White


2007: Francis Jackson
Jack Reiwoldt
Shane Edwards
Daniel Connors
Carl Peterson
Andrew Collins

2008: Francis Jackson
Trent Cotchin
Alex Rance
Dean Putt

2009: Francis Jackson
Tyrone Vickery
Jayden Post
Tom Hislop
Robin Nahas

2010: Francis Jackson
Dustin Martin
Benjamin Griffiths
David Astbury
Matthew Dea
Troy Taylor
Jeromey Webberley
Ben Nason
Dylan Grimes

2011: Francis Jackson
Reece Conca
Jake Batchelor
Bradley Helbig
Dean Macdonald
Tom Derickx

2012: Francis Jackson
Brandon Eliis
Todd Elton
Matthew Arnot
Brett Ohanlon

And?
More of your supposed "failed" 2004 picks are still on lists than your much-vaunted 2008 or 2009 picks?
Or is that the point.

 

[Slattery_20]

The Reece Conca pick raised a lot of eyebrows in the 2010 draft.
It's still very early but still looks like a waste of a top10 pick.

Nah, he looks very solid.

Might not quite be in the best 6 in the draft, but he'll be a very very very good player for them, for a very long while.

 

[Pat_Footy]

Nah, he looks very solid.

Might not quite be in the best 6 in the draft, but he'll be a very very very good player for them, for a very long while.

Agreed. The expectation is always to get a superstar in the top 10 but obviously this doesn't always happen.

 

[SaintsSeptember]

There is a thread on the Saints board comparing ( in retrospect ) Matt Bergan's official phantom draft each year with the players actually recruited by the club.
Turns out StKilda would have been slightly better off if they'd just gone with the phantom draft, which is a bit sad really.
Its hard to know how much is recruiters and how much is "overridden" by the coach though.

 

[Centurions]

I don't think anyone did their research. We spoke to him, his family, coaches, friends, etc and realised he'd gotten a bum rap. We were very close to taking him with pick 4, but outside mids were a more pressing need and Gaff will be elite.

His rep was funny. He got caught in bed with a chick in a school camp. So? He then got king hit in Subiaco by a random when he was at a bar of legal age. Again, so? Clubs just didn't do their due diligence.

There was more to it than just that. Even when he was playing for West Perth, he started playing up the ground but was too slow as a mid and was he going to be tall enough at the next level. Also, clubs would have considered the fact that he had never done a proper pre-season before he had been drafted and may have been concerned whether his body would have held up. He has done extremely well and thrives in being the 3rd tall in a forward line which is an ideal situation for him.

 

[SaintsSeptember]

Nah, he looks very solid.

Might not quite be in the best 6 in the draft, but he'll be a very very very good player for them, for a very long while.

Saints did something similar passing up James Frawley and Jack Reiwoldt and getting David Armitage.
Armitage is good , but it still seems disapointing.

 

[theflea]

You read the whole post and couldn't pick the point?

Basically it distills down to this - even the best make ****-ups.
Even given he'd recruited 30-odd gun players and was basically drafting to fill gaps, he still made a reasonably sizeable list of blues.
Sometimes it's just inevitable - there's nothing there in the draft to pick from. And there's other factors that come into it as well.

fans need to remember its a speculative auction. you do the form then you choose. its not perfect.

 

[theflea]

Agreed. The expectation is always to get a superstar in the top 10 but obviously this doesn't always happen.

completely disagree with your assessment of conca(when played as an inside mid for which he is, he was very good) but we all have different views. i will however say there is very few drafts in which all top 10's in each draft end up being the best 10 of their draft. in fact i dont think thats happened ever.

 

[Ned_Flanders]

How Greg Beck is not in this thread is amazing - set the drafting bar at RFC at levels which made angels weep

 

[volcboy]

IMHO just about all of us fixate too much on what guys haven't done, rather than what they have done.
Mistakes they've made, rather than successes.

Someone put up this list of Stephen Wells' draft picks over the last 6 or 8 years on our board... plenty of misses, slow developers and/or mistakes -

.....

2008
Brown (15)
Gillies (33)
Motlop (39)
Hunt (49)

But the guy's delivered 30 odd premiership players, and 3 flags. So do you think anyone's hanging it on him for "10 failures in 6 years DUD" ?
And you can't expect guys to pick peanuts out of s**t either - some drafts (04, 05) were just massive busts.

You have to take into account he was starting with a list of Ablett/Bartel/Kelly etc - and for eg Dodoro (when he started full-time, in 2006) had Watson, and Stanton, Ryder, and, err...

I was wondering why you stopped at 2008, but then I checked who Wells recruited in 2009:
Menzel (17)
Duncan (28)
Christensen (40)
Vardy (42)
Cowan (56)

Now that's what I call recruiting, and in a Premiership year

 

[Slattery_20]

I was wondering why you stopped at 2008, but then I checked who Wells recruited in 2009:
Menzel (17)
Duncan (28)
Christensen (40)
Vardy (42)
Cowan (56)

Now that's what I call recruiting, and in a Premiership year

You've missed the point there, and by a fair bit.

Handy tip is to read what you're quoting & replying to.

 

[volcboy]

You've missed the point there, and by a fair bit.

Handy tip is to read what you're quoting & replying to.

No, you've missed the point. Sure, not every player recruited makes the grade, but Wells hits the mark more often than most, given that our success has led to relatively low draft positions most of the time.

You chose to start your list of recruiting in 2003 and finish the end of 2008 in order to support the point you were trying to make - that is called selective analysis and is fundamentally flawed (scientifically speaking). If you include the years preceding 2003, you would need to list:

2002
Andrew Mackie (7) - 173 games, still playing
Tom Lonergan (23) - 97 games, still playing
Tim Callan F/S (36) - 34 games

2001
Jimmy Bartel (8) - 225 games, still playing, Brownlow/Norm Smith, 2 x AA
James Kelly (17) - 213 games, still playing, 1 x AA
Charlie Gardiner (23) - 62 games
Steve Johnson (24) - 196 games, still playing, Norm Smith, 3 x AA
Gary Ablett F/S (40) - 232 games, still playing, Brownlow, 5 x AA
Henry Playfair (41)
Matthew McCarthy (69)
David Johnson (81)

Plus adding the draft of 2009 that I added before.

And here's a condescending 'handy tip' for you - maybe Essendon should have targeted Wells instead of Bomber and McCartney?

 

[Richard Jones]

How Greg Beck is not in this thread is amazing - set the drafting bar at RFC at levels which made angels weep

I agree he is a s**t recruiter.

 

[Slattery_20]

No, you've missed the point. Sure, not every player recruited makes the grade, but Wells hits the mark more often than most, given that our success has led to relatively low draft positions most of the time.

You chose to start your list of recruiting in 2003 and finish the end of 2008 in order to support the point you were trying to make - that is called selective analysis and is fundamentally flawed (scientifically speaking). If you include the years preceding 2003, you would need to list:

You're still missing the point.
Obviously easier to type than read.

The gist of it is spelled out in post #106.