- Jun 29, 2023
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- AFL Club
- Geelong
Might be a dumb question but why do you end up with dead wood when players retire ? Is this a pick donation by the afl or something. Surely we still hold our two good picks right.Literally pick 84+
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Might be a dumb question but why do you end up with dead wood when players retire ? Is this a pick donation by the afl or something. Surely we still hold our two good picks right.Literally pick 84+
Excellent observations.We should have been contenders this year but for a horrid run with injuries.
In midfield, last season was on a knife edge with poor performances early, it turned with new roles for Blicavs and Atkins that ignited things. This season, it's Selwood, Guthrie, and Dangerfield that have been the problem. Selwood is gone, Dangerfield has had limited availability after the broken rib, and Guthrie limped through the first 6 games before pulling the pin.
That has meant Bruhn, Holmes, O'Connor, and Miers have had to attend a significant number of centre-bounce and they just don't win the clearances/ contested ball required for us to be competitive over the course of a game. Bruhn is getting there, and maybe Holmes will too though he's currently a good winger. But Miers will never be big enough for an inside role, and O'Connor is simply too defensive with that role better filled by Blicavs and Atkins.
There's been other problems with Cameron taking hits, inconsistent performances in the ruck, and structural issues down back playing Ratugolea. But those are typical regular season problems ironed out in the home and away. What's been fatal is the lack of ball-winners in the midfield. It shouldn't be hard to fix this off-season with maybe a veteran recruit, and may resolve itself with the development of some young guys and the return to health of others. And as has been the case for a decade, we could always improve in the ruck.
We've still got our first round pick, but at this point in time our following pick is 84.Might be a dumb question but why do you end up with dead wood when players retire ? Is this a pick donation by the afl or something. Surely we still hold our two good picks right.
I think the lesson with all of those was don't overpay for older role players.It’s interesting, if you look back at our “ready-made” recruits in the past decade and divide them between sub-28 and 28+ years old you see a pretty clear pattern. I’d want extremely good justification to get anyone over 28 based on this evidence. The two successes had 5 Premiership medals between them!!
28+
McIntosh
Jenkins
Steven
Higgins
Ablett
Smith
Ceglar
If 2024 is 2015 v2.0, 100% our top target will be Zak Butters. He’s a Darley boy (fairly local), will be 24 years old by then and is already one of the top midfielders in the comp. He’s signed until end of 2025 I believe so we’ll need to trade him in.I do apologize as I know this is getting is repetitive, but I just think everyone needs to know this so we can stop even entertaining this idea.
If we were to cull the list this year, it would be a disaster. The FA pool is thin, we have no targets which appear as certainties, and we have one great pick (admittedly, that could be two pending Sav)
A full cull would result in a list clogged with dead wood. Literally pick 84+, that's not an exaggeration, that's what it'll be.
At best one of them makes it, chances are none of them do....and they'll all be on 2 year deals hindering our ability to draft or trade heavy next year.
2024 is looking like the reincarnation of 2015. We'll have the choose to either trade heavy, or draft heavy, as it's a far better year for OOC players.
Which ever choice we make, we will need the list spots...and I don't know about you, but I'd much prefer a couple of first round picks and/or Zak Butters on the list over pick 105.
In midfield, last season was on a knife edge with poor performances early, it turned with new roles for Blicavs and Atkins that ignited things. This season, it's Selwood, Guthrie, and Dangerfield that have been the problem. Selwood is gone, Dangerfield has had limited availability after the broken rib, and Guthrie limped through the first 6 games before pulling the pin.
That has meant Bruhn, Holmes, O'Connor, and Miers have had to attend a significant number of centre-bounce and they just don't win the clearances/ contested ball required for us to be competitive over the course of a game. Bruhn is getting there, and maybe Holmes will too though he's currently a good winger. But Miers will never be big enough for an inside role, and O'Connor is simply too defensive with that role better filled by Blicavs and Atkins.
I think the lesson with all of those was don't overpay for older role players.
Smith, Ceglar, Jenkins and Steven were pretty much free hits at the trade table, all costing the square root of stuff-all.
Ablett, effectively traded for our R2 pick, was probably worth it in retrospect. McIntosh was a risk worth taking as he addressed a very specific need.
Higgins for p30 was the outlier. Paid way too much for a player in a position where we were already overstocked.
Agree. What I wouldn't give to know what the motivation was behind the stabbing, too...Even so, Steven should never have been recruited no matter what. That disaster of a debut will hopefully never be repeated. Bringing in a fat, unfit player was something with luck we'll never see again.
I think that Geelong last year was also very much a side that depends on system over talent.We should have been contenders this year but for a horrid run with injuries.
In midfield, last season was on a knife edge with poor performances early, it turned with new roles for Blicavs and Atkins that ignited things. This season, it's Selwood, Guthrie, and Dangerfield that have been the problem. Selwood is gone, Dangerfield has had limited availability after the broken rib, and Guthrie limped through the first 6 games before pulling the pin.
McIntosh was the worst list management decision we have made in my football watching lifetime.I think the lesson with all of those was don't overpay for older role players.
Smith, Ceglar, Jenkins and Steven were pretty much free hits at the trade table, all costing the square root of stuff-all.
Ablett, effectively traded for our R2 pick, was probably worth it in retrospect. McIntosh was a risk worth taking as he addressed a very specific need.
Higgins for p30 was the outlier. Paid way too much for a player in a position where we were already overstocked.
McIntosh was the worst list management decision we have made in my football watching lifetime.
Clark and Steven were at least huge talents who perhaps had “other issues” that could be weighed in a risk-reward calculus. McIntosh was talent deficient (at that point of his career) and already having calf issues. Had played 8 games in two years prior to us paying pick 38. In two of his three years with us he contributes zero games.I still think Clark and Steven were worse. And Higgins wasn't much better.
McIntosh was the worst list management decision we have made in my football watching lifetime.
Predates my footy watching time. Greg Williams was another poor one for different reasons wasn’t it?Hmac was bad but we have made a few ..
Sidebottom was so bad... Footywire doesn't even count his 7 game 1981 season.
Topped of with missing the bus t the game in a final. What a disaster.
Predates my footy watching time. Greg Williams was another poor one for different reasons wasn’t it?
Clark and Steven were at least huge talents who perhaps had “other issues” that could be weighed in a risk-reward calculus. McIntosh was talent deficient (at that point of his career) and already having calf issues. Had played 8 games in two years prior to us paying pick 38. In two of his three years with us he contributes zero games.
Absolutely horrendous and unparalleled disaster.
Higgins I put in a different category: should have come as a free agent a year earlier and by the time he came, paying anything at all was a poor decision. His first season was a pass mark, barely, and in his second he simply faded and was passed by others in a successful flag year so zero harm done.
Predates my footy watching time. Greg Williams was another poor one for different reasons wasn’t it?
Thanks for the clarification. I see your point that we have not many selections to replace the large number of old brigade with. IMO we should be taking the two or three good picks we have to the draft not recruiting a FA (like Parish). Our prem window is closed for the next 2 years. Maybe this the way to manage the staggered transition is ensuring the fringe young players (the future) play every game, even at the expense of the old brigade.We've still got our first round pick, but at this point in time our following pick is 84.
It's not a donation or anything like that, it's because we traded our second and third rounders last year for other deals.
Having said that, we will most likely get back into the second and third rounds through trading out Sav and Parfitt respectively.
Also, never feel dumb for asking a question!! It can be complicated some times and we're all learning, more than happy to help!!
I think it was worth going for at the time, but we seriously overpaid.McIntosh was the worst list management decision we have made in my football watching lifetime.
I disagree that he was talent-deficient, as it were. He was pretty good in 2014, and certainly vastly better as a ruckman than Blicavs/West/Walker.Clark and Steven were at least huge talents who perhaps had “other issues” that could be weighed in a risk-reward calculus. McIntosh was talent deficient (at that point of his career) and already having calf issues. Had played 8 games in two years prior to us paying pick 38. In two of his three years with us he contributes zero games.
Absolutely horrendous and unparalleled disaster.
Predates my footy watching time. Greg Williams was another poor one for different reasons wasn’t it?
Greg Williams? List management decision? Depends on the way you look at it. In a way it was similar to Mummy. Willaims ahd been passed over multiple time by Carlton . Told he was too slow.
We gave a shot at it. Adding GAblett and Williams in the same year. What a centre line ..perhaps our best ever Turner.Williams GAblett.
After two years ..the offer from Sydney was out of this world.. and he was (apparently) will to stay if we went only a bit more . Some say as little as 5000.
The issue is that was when we were probably technically bankrupt. The money we gained from the transfer was important to us at that time. Wiki has it only $120,000 but it was enough to keep us above water. Its hard to relate to now. Different era. And some within the club(similar to Mummy) almost thought that we had given him a chance and sort of expected a bit of loyalty. Probably says how were not very professional, and watching him tear us a new one in 95 ..sure it hurt... but it was a dangerous time for Vic sides that were not the big four. Ask Fitzroy supporters. As it was.. we still nearly went down the drain and it was mainly Costa that put the plug in the drain.
That’s the point: based on his two seasons prior he was never going to be fit. Dumb!I think it was worth going for at the time, but we seriously overpaid.
After all, the ruck was our achilles heel up till really the last two years. If he'd been fit for the 2013 finals...
Not sure about that. To me there's nothing similar about them at all.
Williams was a ready made superstar from his very first game (a mere 38 touches). He won the league MVP in his second year of football, as well as Geelong's Best and Fairest. An established top line performer in our team. Mumford was a fringe ruckman who got senior games due to injuries, and for perfectly valid reasons hit the wall late in the season and was dropped (quite correctly too). This hurt the team so much we won the premiership. He got a ridiculous offer from Sydney that he couldn't get from Geelong, and didn't deserve from Geelong either. He left, and critically, only bitched about it after he was in Sydney.