Window of opportunity

manpurple

Club Legend
Dec 5, 2012
1,722
1,322
AFL Club
Fremantle
I find it a little strange that so many people think that our window of opportunity is closing. The thinking being that consequently we need to make sure we win a GF next year because it's our last chance for a while. I have no objection to winning a GF for Pav or Sandi but I think our window is open for about 4-5 years.

If we look at the team that went down to Port last weekend the following are all players between 20 and 24.
  • MDB, Walters, Z Clarke, Suban, Hill, Fyfe, Sutty, Neale and Crozier. (It's impressive how young this lot is)
To this we can add players of the same age who we would reasonably expect to play more in the future.
  • C Pearce, Mora, Sheridan.
Then we come to the last two years of the draft. Players who have played and looked ok for their youth
  • Hannath, Duffy, Apeness, Simpson (reluctant to include due to of-field issues)
Now the question is, can we find another 6/7 players from what we have on the list and what we will draft/trade over the next x years.
From the youth on our list I would expect the following to do well
  • Grey, Ballard, Moller, A Pearce.

Yes I accept that not all of those will go on for us or be the stars we all hope and pray they are. But the fact that last year the following were selected to play in a granny, all younger than 23 (at the time), which says something about the future; MDB, Walters, Z Clarke, Hill, Fyfe, Suban and Sutty (32% of the team).
 

wild side

Norm Smith Medallist
Mar 29, 2010
5,120
5,413
perth
AFL Club
Fremantle
mdb, Zac Clarke & Suban are all fringe IMO. Zac Clarke did not lay a tackle against Port. Not one tackle!
Suban went missing after half time, and MDB tried hard, but he's just not that good.
 
Sep 11, 2008
12,340
9,133
Adelaide
AFL Club
Fremantle
Other Teams
Man Utd
I find it a little strange that so many people think that our window of opportunity is closing. The thinking being that consequently we need to make sure we win a GF next year because it's our last chance for a while. I have no objection to winning a GF for Pav or Sandi but I think our window is open for about 4-5 years.

If we look at the team that went down to Port last weekend the following are all players between 20 and 24.
  • MDB, Walters, Z Clarke, Suban, Hill, Fyfe, Sutty, Neale and Crozier. (It's impressive how young this lot is)
To this we can add players of the same age who we would reasonably expect to play more in the future.
  • C Pearce, Mora, Sheridan.
Then we come to the last two years of the draft. Players who have played and looked ok for their youth
  • Hannath, Duffy, Apeness, Simpson (reluctant to include due to of-field issues)
Now the question is, can we find another 6/7 players from what we have on the list and what we will draft/trade over the next x years.
From the youth on our list I would expect the following to do well
  • Grey, Ballard, Moller, A Pearce.

Yes I accept that not all of those will go on for us or be the stars we all hope and pray they are. But the fact that last year the following were selected to play in a granny, all younger than 23 (at the time), which says something about the future; MDB, Walters, Z Clarke, Hill, Fyfe, Suban and Sutty (32% of the team).

B:
HB: Sutty T Smith A Pearce
M: Crozier Neale Mora
HF: Sheridan Taberner J Simpson
F: Walters Apeness Duffy
R: Z Clarke Hill Fyfe
B: Ballard Grey Moller

I don't have Suban or MDB in the team, because I doubt they will be regular best 22 players in the next few years.

We are definitely missing a lock down small defender, and a young full back but other than that we are looking pretty good.

Hugh Goddard, and a young full back should be top of our list.

What I do find interesting is that we only have two players born in 88 (Ibbotson and Mayne), and none in 89.
The players born in 87 are Ballas, Spurr, Silvagni and Spurr (all drafted as mature age recruits) which just shows how much of a failure these 3 years of drafts are.

It is fair to see we do have a whole in our list during these years which we filled very well with Mature age recruits, but I would expect our team to drop off until the players mentioned above are finals ready.

A big congrats to Bond, Lloyd and Co to get our list in this situation from where we were at the end of 2007.
 

TheMcManusNose

Premiership Player
Apr 21, 2014
3,801
6,544
AFL Club
Fremantle
Other Teams
Vancouver Canucks
If we look at the team that went down to Port last weekend the following are all players between 20 and 24.
  • MDB, Walters, Z Clarke, Suban, Hill, Fyfe, Sutty, Neale and Crozier. (It's impressive how young this lot is)
To this we can add players of the same age who we would reasonably expect to play more in the future.
  • C Pearce, Mora, Sheridan.
Here's your obvious counterpoint:

KPPs between the age of 20-24: Taberner

KPPs between the age of 24-28: Silvagni (Just)

KPPs above the age of 28: Pav, Dawson, Johnson, McPharlin

Something seriously needs to be done about that, as right now we're so utterly reliant on Taberner, Apeness, A.Pearce and Smith making it. Not only that, but we need them to develop fast, as KPPs traditionally take a bit longer to mature.
 

pokerspiv

Premiership Player
Jun 23, 2013
4,714
2,713
AFL Club
Fremantle
I don't have Suban or MDB in the team, because I doubt they will be regular best 22 players in the next few years.

We are definitely missing a lock down small defender, and a young full back but other than that we are looking pretty good.

Clubs develop such players from the pool of mids they draft. Nobody who is good enough to get drafted plays their junior footy as a "lock down small defender". You don't go looking to recruit such players because they don't exist. They are just midfielders who are given that role.
 

arrow_dactyl

Senior List
Aug 26, 2013
228
175
AFL Club
Fremantle
In 2016 and beyond GCS and then GWS become bloody hard to beat.
Exactly I don't think we're going to get that worse, it's just there a lot of other teams that are going to be getting better. Yes you could say that's the case every year, but I can't see many of the current top teams falling back soon, somethings got to give.
 

DardySingh360

Premiership Player
Mar 16, 2011
4,921
5,371
WA
AFL Club
Fremantle
Other Teams
Arsenal
We're a bookend at either end away from our first flag.

Looking forward to next year greatly. Expecting Tabs, Crozier, Duffy, Sutty and Neale to name a few continue to develop and become seriously good footballers. Window isn't closed for a long time.
 

freofc1994

All Australian
Sep 15, 2014
635
783
Perth
AFL Club
Fremantle
Other Teams
NY Giants, Chelsea
It's not about your best 10 players, its about your next 10. Every side has bonafide stars. We are no different. It;s when you start getting further down the list that we see the difference between our guys and recent premiership teams.

We really need to have the likes of Suban, Clarke, Mayne etc. etc. have stand out years to be a real powerhouse next year
 

manpurple

Club Legend
Dec 5, 2012
1,722
1,322
AFL Club
Fremantle
It's not about your best 10 players, its about your next 10. Every side has bonafide stars. We are no different. It;s when you start getting further down the list that we see the difference between our guys and recent premiership teams.

We really need to have the likes of Suban, Clarke, Mayne etc. etc. have stand out years to be a real powerhouse next year
I agree with the next 10 point. But not so much the named people.

In my opinion there is more scope to see sherro, hannath and Apeness push the three you mentioned out of the team. In general I expect to see improvement less in the existing second 10 but rather new blood with better skills displacing the entrenched who haven't progressed.
 

manpurple

Club Legend
Dec 5, 2012
1,722
1,322
AFL Club
Fremantle
Here's your obvious counterpoint:

KPPs between the age of 20-24: Taberner

KPPs between the age of 24-28: Silvagni (Just)

KPPs above the age of 28: Pav, Dawson, Johnson, McPharlin

Something seriously needs to be done about that, as right now we're so utterly reliant on Taberner, Apeness, A.Pearce and Smith making it. Not only that, but we need them to develop fast, as KPPs traditionally take a bit longer to mature.
I don't usually have the opportunity to get to training session and only watch about 8 WAFL games a year but from all that others have been saying there is a lot of confidence in both A Pearce and Smith on the back line.
More importantly though, we have seen Tabs have a couple of good games and Apeness showed promise in his first 2 games for us.
So I would say that I am pretty confident that we can find 1 or 2 talls out of that 4.

If Apeness and A Pearce are good enough, they are 18 and so they will be playing for a decade. Tabs and Smith are only a year old so 10 years of games with them is also easy.

A "whole list" view of the team would indicate that you need 2 KPD's, 1 Ruck (2 with some coaches), and 2 KPF's plus a spare for each position. Bonus points for a Ruck who can also be used as a KPP or a "swing man". But in broad brush strokes a list of 46 can do well enough with 9-10 talls. Or one in 5 players needs to be tall.

Now as go_the_dockers pointed out, prior to Bondy taking over, we completely rogered our recruitment. This meant that he had to fix the complete lack of quality in the mids using drafts 08-11. On the whole he came through (10 was bust) but that meant he has only been able to really focus on talls in that last two drafts. In the last 2 years we have added 5 main list and 4 rookie (1 subsequently upgraded) talls from 11 main list and 6 rookies.

My point is that unless we take a FA or trade for a mature tall I would not expect this draft to focus on talls. I would expect no more than 1 tall to come this year. We need to get some premium "flankers" this year, so that we can turn them into HBF's, Key small backs or HFF's and IMHO pace is the requirement this draft.
 

beetz

Norm Smith Medallist
Apr 30, 2014
5,030
6,122
AFL Club
Fremantle
I tend to agree. Our flankers, rucks and mids are fairly sound and show a lot of promise. The difference between us being a top 4 team or not post Pav/Sandi/McPharlin will depend on the development of our younger KPP.

Time will tell!
 

TheMcManusNose

Premiership Player
Apr 21, 2014
3,801
6,544
AFL Club
Fremantle
Other Teams
Vancouver Canucks
I don't usually have the opportunity to get to training session and only watch about 8 WAFL games a year but from all that others have been saying there is a lot of confidence in both A Pearce and Smith on the back line.
More importantly though, we have seen Tabs have a couple of good games and Apeness showed promise in his first 2 games for us.
So I would say that I am pretty confident that we can find 1 or 2 talls out of that 4.

If Apeness and A Pearce are good enough, they are 18 and so they will be playing for a decade. Tabs and Smith are only a year old so 10 years of games with them is also easy.

A "whole list" view of the team would indicate that you need 2 KPD's, 1 Ruck (2 with some coaches), and 2 KPF's plus a spare for each position. Bonus points for a Ruck who can also be used as a KPP or a "swing man". But in broad brush strokes a list of 46 can do well enough with 9-10 talls. Or one in 5 players needs to be tall.

Now as go_the_dockers pointed out, prior to Bondy taking over, we completely rogered our recruitment. This meant that he had to fix the complete lack of quality in the mids using drafts 08-11. On the whole he came through (10 was bust) but that meant he has only been able to really focus on talls in that last two drafts. In the last 2 years we have added 5 main list and 4 rookie (1 subsequently upgraded) talls from 11 main list and 6 rookies.

My point is that unless we take a FA or trade for a mature tall I would not expect this draft to focus on talls. I would expect no more than 1 tall to come this year. We need to get some premium "flankers" this year, so that we can turn them into HBF's, Key small backs or HFF's and IMHO pace is the requirement this draft.

Yeah, it's not a criticism of the current recruiting team (well, it is to an extent in respect to trade and free agency, but much more so the previous one) that i'm making. There's a serious age and experience gap there. I am one of the biggest A.Pearce fanboys going around but I really think we'll be lucky to have 2 or 3 of these guys become seriously good players for us, and it's not going to happen overnight - historically even the best KPPs have taken a while to sort their game out. IMO, unless we do something about it this year, we're going to end up with a situation in 2-3 years where we go a couple of seasons in the same KPF desert we're in now - while guys like Barlow are nearing the end.

I tend to agree with you about the draft focus, although I think we may very well use our first on a tall given how the 1st round of this draft is littered with them.
 

blue shark

Norm Smith Medallist
Aug 15, 2009
5,452
4,851
perth
AFL Club
Fremantle
We should have a longer period of success than St Kilda, who most footy followers will argue we will become. The difference in my
eyes is that we have genuine quality youth coming through the ranks.
Freo need to make free agency work for the club, and a Mcpharlin, Pav, replacement is a priority, and a guy in his mid twenties is worth
every penny.
If Simpson is still available to the club next year, fingers crossed, he is the outside X factor required to break the lines with pace, skill.
Otherwise our first round pick will be a mid/flanker, when we should probably be looking for a tall.
 

freofc1994

All Australian
Sep 15, 2014
635
783
Perth
AFL Club
Fremantle
Other Teams
NY Giants, Chelsea
I agree with the next 10 point. But not so much the named people.

In my opinion there is more scope to see sherro, hannath and Apeness push the three you mentioned out of the team. In general I expect to see improvement less in the existing second 10 but rather new blood with better skills displacing the entrenched who haven't progressed.

It wasnt so much those players it was more that you need your whole list to effectively contribute. The top 10 guys more often than not will perform week in week out. We need the next in line to be consistant to a higher level
 

pavsbootlace

Cancelled
Dec 30, 2011
3,729
4,903
Fremantle
AFL Club
Fremantle
Other Teams
South Fremantle
It wasnt so much those players it was more that you need your whole list to effectively contribute. The top 10 guys more often than not will perform week in week out. We need the next in line to be consistant to a higher level

Our bottom ten are already performing at a high level. That's what Ross Lyon has brought to this club. I don't think our bottom 10 will be an issue, while Ross is our coach. He is very good at getting players to play a role effectively.

I actually think what's most important in terms of winning a flag are your A graders. The sort of players who can lift to another level when the going gets tough and drag your team over the line. And to be honest, I'd prefer that elite talent was in the midfield, but I don't think it really matters where they play. I think Pav, Sandi and Luke will be replaced by Fyfe, Walters and ... whichever of our youngsters are capable of becoming elite. The ones that excite me the most are Apeness, Crozier, Morabito and Simpson.

I think if Smith, A Pearce, Apeness and Taberner can be come adequate, then we will have no problem in Key positions.
 

valkorum

Club Legend
Feb 4, 2010
2,095
876
Perth
AFL Club
Fremantle
Other Teams
East Fremantle, Sacremento Kings
I find it a little strange that so many people think that our window of opportunity is closing. The thinking being that consequently we need to make sure we win a GF next year because it's our last chance for a while. I have no objection to winning a GF for Pav or Sandi but I think our window is open for about 4-5 years.

If we look at the team that went down to Port last weekend the following are all players between 20 and 24.
  • MDB, Walters, Z Clarke, Suban, Hill, Fyfe, Sutty, Neale and Crozier. (It's impressive how young this lot is)
To this we can add players of the same age who we would reasonably expect to play more in the future.
  • C Pearce, Mora, Sheridan.
Then we come to the last two years of the draft. Players who have played and looked ok for their youth
  • Hannath, Duffy, Apeness, Simpson (reluctant to include due to of-field issues)
Now the question is, can we find another 6/7 players from what we have on the list and what we will draft/trade over the next x years.
From the youth on our list I would expect the following to do well
  • Grey, Ballard, Moller, A Pearce.

Yes I accept that not all of those will go on for us or be the stars we all hope and pray they are. But the fact that last year the following were selected to play in a granny, all younger than 23 (at the time), which says something about the future; MDB, Walters, Z Clarke, Hill, Fyfe, Suban and Sutty (32% of the team).

What about Taberner?
 

calaisking

Premiership Player
Aug 6, 2013
3,251
3,107
AFL Club
Fremantle
Next year or bust.

Like someone above said, GC and GWS will reign terror in the coming years. And yes, we have got some bright kids coming up but they take time to develop.

Sandi, Pav, Macca, all will be gone by the end of next year and they are three massive shoes to fill. Also add Crowley, Johnson and Mundy to the list of players hitting the twilight of there careers after next season
 

manpurple

Club Legend
Dec 5, 2012
1,722
1,322
AFL Club
Fremantle
What about Taberner?

Thanks for pointing that out. I missed him because he fell through my nice collection of boxes :oops:.

I think that he has shown more than the rest of the players his age even though his performances have been patchy to date. In any case I have him ahead of the Hannath et al group.
 

manpurple

Club Legend
Dec 5, 2012
1,722
1,322
AFL Club
Fremantle
Next year or bust.

Like someone above said, GC and GWS will reign terror in the coming years. And yes, we have got some bright kids coming up but they take time to develop.

Sandi, Pav, Macca, all will be gone by the end of next year and they are three massive shoes to fill. Also add Crowley, Johnson and Mundy to the list of players hitting the twilight of there careers after next season
Valid point.
I don't want to dismiss the players mentioned but I guess my thinking runs as follows.
  • The current youth has some bonafide stars in it (Fyfe, Hill for starters)
  • Many of the currant top starting 18 are youth (5 by my count)
  • There is a lot in the next tear that play or could play regularly (7-8)
Yes there are a few massive outs coming our way over the next few years but I believe that RTB will be able to manage the exits and the rise of the youth. Whilst there are few like for like replacements, there are players like Walters or Hill that are not replacements at all. Our strengths going forward will change.

By example: Do I think that there is a ready made Pav replacement? Not in AFL. But I think that Taberner, Apeness or Hannath can do a job whilst Fyfe, Hill, Neale, Sutty and others deliver quality ball that Pav had little of. On balance a similar or maybe better result.

This reasoning is the basis for my optimism. Historically we relied on Pav, Sandi and McPharlin and had very few other significant contributors. These days, having watched the performance of our back line when we have missed two of our best 3 KPD's for large chunks of a season and still end up with the 2nd best defence in the comp, I am convinced that we have the cattle to remain in finals contention for at least 5 years.
 

free at last

Norm Smith Medallist
Aug 16, 2009
8,522
3,545
south of lat 32
AFL Club
Fremantle
We should have a longer period of success than St Kilda, who most footy followers will argue we will become. The difference in my
eyes is that we have genuine quality youth coming through the ranks.
Freo need to make free agency work for the club, and a Mcpharlin, Pav, replacement is a priority, and a guy in his mid twenties is worth
every penny.
If Simpson is still available to the club next year, fingers crossed, he is the outside X factor required to break the lines with pace, skill.
Otherwise our first round pick will be a mid/flanker, when we should probably be looking for a tall.

I just had a look at St Kilda's drafting when Ross was the top dog.The 2009-10 drafts were horrendous for St Kilda,ours in 2010 reads just as bad too.
 

blue shark

Norm Smith Medallist
Aug 15, 2009
5,452
4,851
perth
AFL Club
Fremantle
We still have the nucleus of a top four team, injury, suspensions, caught up with our season eventually. We should be more driven next
year, similar to Geelong in 06. A change of luck wouldn't go astray.
Dissapointed but very excited about next year, and looking forward to several players given game time, Duffy, A Pearce, Apeness, plus
free agency, drafts, trades to come.
 
Back