Gone Critical
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At the risk of boring you silly I have put together analysis of the above topic with my own interpretations. My interest was sparked by what I see as a wide disparity of what expectations there are for our new recruits. In particular I have thought about the likelihood of say a De Goey v a Maynard getting games in their 1st season purely based on their draft position.
My belief is we should have a real expectation of a top 10 guy making a contribution I his 1st season where there is a pretty low chance a guy around pick 30 will do very much in his 1st or even 2nd season. We should consider this when assessing the progress of our recruits and not get disappointed if it is not to season 3, 4 or 5 before a Maynard type makes a real contribution to our best 22. That is on the assumption they make it at all which is no given. In comparison it is an expectation to automatically expect this from a top 10 draft choice.
So I have gone back through the last 5 drafts, 2009 - 2013, and assessed how many games each season the top 10 picks have played compared to picks 26-35 which groups around the Maynard pick (30). One tweak I did was take Luke Ball out of 2009 and add pick 36 instead (Houghton) as Ball was the only player of these 100 who wasn't a new recruit.
The table below is what I came up with. Each draft is listed and the 2 numbers represented the total games of the top10 picks v the picks 26-35, so
2013 Draft. 122 games v 65 games in 1st season.
2012 Draft. 138 v 14 (1)* 1st season, 284 v 61 after 2nd season
2011 Draft. 88 v 16 (1st), 189 v 82 (2nd), 339 v 155 (3rd)
2010 Draft. 128 v 75 (1st), 286 v 192 (2nd), 447 v 295 (3rd), 634 v 396
2009 Draft. 145 v 38 (1st), 260 v 95 (2nd), 398 v 149 (3rd), 546 v 233 (4th), 672 v 311 (5th)
The most obvious and expected confirmation here is that the top 10 are just better players so year in year out they play far more games than their 26-35 counterparts. No surprise. If you look at the individual players you will also quickly surmise that the quality of their games is also far greater. The top kids by and large turn into guns. I will try and put up the individual data in a post below to illustrate that ( put it here and it gets to busy).
What I am more interested and I believe the data shows this is the discrepancy between the groups is most marked in year 1. So the De Goey group can be expected on this data to knock out 10 games + on average in their 1st year as a group with many players playing most games. In comparison the 26-35 players have a much lesser and more mixed output in their 1st year.
At the extreme of that is the 2012 group who had 138 v 14 games. I have also added a * there as if you take out Viney on the basis he was a F/Sand add pick 25 instead that group of 10 players only had 1 game between them in their 1st season and only 30 games in total for their 1st 2
In each of the 26-35 group there were a few exceptions who played a lot of footy early but most played very little in their 1st seasons. In contrast , unless injury intervened, the top kids almost routinely played most games by season 2
Why have I put this up? Two reasons. One is to emphasise the time kids like Maynard need to be accorded compared to a De Goey to give them a fair chance of making it. A few might slot into a senior team like Tom Langdon did this year and be a 18-22 player but most will need a significant VFL apprenticeship. Further if a player from this group does make the grade it is much more likely they will be a Macaffer than a Hodge.
2nd point this data illustrates is that our soldiers, Caff, Blair, Sack and Toovs remain very important players potentially in our next successful team. It's tough to become as good an AFL player as these guys are even though they appear journeymen to many. Their contributions to their team often go unrecognised by the masses and allow supporters too easily to write them off as superfluous to our ne tilt at success. "Our shiny new toys" in Maynard, Goodyear et al likely face a number of years journey if they are to displace our soldiers from their place in the 22. Don't discount that any of these 4 soldiers won't retire 2 x Collingwood premiership players.
My belief is we should have a real expectation of a top 10 guy making a contribution I his 1st season where there is a pretty low chance a guy around pick 30 will do very much in his 1st or even 2nd season. We should consider this when assessing the progress of our recruits and not get disappointed if it is not to season 3, 4 or 5 before a Maynard type makes a real contribution to our best 22. That is on the assumption they make it at all which is no given. In comparison it is an expectation to automatically expect this from a top 10 draft choice.
So I have gone back through the last 5 drafts, 2009 - 2013, and assessed how many games each season the top 10 picks have played compared to picks 26-35 which groups around the Maynard pick (30). One tweak I did was take Luke Ball out of 2009 and add pick 36 instead (Houghton) as Ball was the only player of these 100 who wasn't a new recruit.
The table below is what I came up with. Each draft is listed and the 2 numbers represented the total games of the top10 picks v the picks 26-35, so
2013 Draft. 122 games v 65 games in 1st season.
2012 Draft. 138 v 14 (1)* 1st season, 284 v 61 after 2nd season
2011 Draft. 88 v 16 (1st), 189 v 82 (2nd), 339 v 155 (3rd)
2010 Draft. 128 v 75 (1st), 286 v 192 (2nd), 447 v 295 (3rd), 634 v 396
2009 Draft. 145 v 38 (1st), 260 v 95 (2nd), 398 v 149 (3rd), 546 v 233 (4th), 672 v 311 (5th)
The most obvious and expected confirmation here is that the top 10 are just better players so year in year out they play far more games than their 26-35 counterparts. No surprise. If you look at the individual players you will also quickly surmise that the quality of their games is also far greater. The top kids by and large turn into guns. I will try and put up the individual data in a post below to illustrate that ( put it here and it gets to busy).
What I am more interested and I believe the data shows this is the discrepancy between the groups is most marked in year 1. So the De Goey group can be expected on this data to knock out 10 games + on average in their 1st year as a group with many players playing most games. In comparison the 26-35 players have a much lesser and more mixed output in their 1st year.
At the extreme of that is the 2012 group who had 138 v 14 games. I have also added a * there as if you take out Viney on the basis he was a F/Sand add pick 25 instead that group of 10 players only had 1 game between them in their 1st season and only 30 games in total for their 1st 2
In each of the 26-35 group there were a few exceptions who played a lot of footy early but most played very little in their 1st seasons. In contrast , unless injury intervened, the top kids almost routinely played most games by season 2
Why have I put this up? Two reasons. One is to emphasise the time kids like Maynard need to be accorded compared to a De Goey to give them a fair chance of making it. A few might slot into a senior team like Tom Langdon did this year and be a 18-22 player but most will need a significant VFL apprenticeship. Further if a player from this group does make the grade it is much more likely they will be a Macaffer than a Hodge.
2nd point this data illustrates is that our soldiers, Caff, Blair, Sack and Toovs remain very important players potentially in our next successful team. It's tough to become as good an AFL player as these guys are even though they appear journeymen to many. Their contributions to their team often go unrecognised by the masses and allow supporters too easily to write them off as superfluous to our ne tilt at success. "Our shiny new toys" in Maynard, Goodyear et al likely face a number of years journey if they are to displace our soldiers from their place in the 22. Don't discount that any of these 4 soldiers won't retire 2 x Collingwood premiership players.