Recruitment: Are we in trouble?

[Big_Tony]

Our depth is fine. You have your best players in the senior team, and then the players who can come in and play roles when required develop at the state level. As has been mentioned by other posters: Ellis, Brown, Sheed, Barras, Nelson, Cole, Jetta could all come in and hold their own at AFL level. A couple of those should also be best 22 when in form (Sheed and Jetta). It is still far too early to judge the 2015 crop.

It is very rare for a draftee to come in and start impacting AFL games in the first couple of seasons (Carlton have recently snagged two of those in Cripps and Weitering, but they have had far more opportunity than us at drafting). Give our young blokes some time and some will develop into great players I'm sure.

 

[greatwhiteshark]

Every club faces the same challenges, recruiting is hard as all players are potential only. Some clubs look like they get lucky but if a player is recruited to Hawthorn at the moment he will develop better than one that goes to the Saints for example.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
My issue with our recruiting is we don't like giving anything up to achieve our goals.
If Midfield is where we think we lack then go after a midfielder of star quality but be prepared to give up players or draft picks.

Hypothetically if we were chasing Mitch Duncan or the like then to get him you have to give up a draft pick and a Masten type player. Our club is reluctant to deal most years and is very stubborn on not giving up players they have invested time into whether they are good players or not.
Footy now is a meat market. Emotional decisions, loyalty and all that other crap mean nothing now.

if we want to target a midfielder of class then we should, but we have to give up something to do it.

 

[greatwhiteshark]

We recruited Jetta based on form that was 3 years ago with the thought pattern being that a new club might inspire him. So far that looks not such a good deal but we need to give that time still.
Reality is though that Jetta has not played good footy for Sydney since 2013.

 

[Miguel Sanchez]

Every club faces the same challenges, recruiting is hard as all players are potential only. Some clubs look like they get lucky but if a player is recruited to Hawthorn at the moment he will develop better than one that goes to the Saints for example.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
My issue with our recruiting is we don't like giving anything up to achieve our goals.
If Midfield is where we think we lack then go after a midfielder of star quality but be prepared to give up players or draft picks.

Hypothetically if we were chasing Mitch Duncan or the like then to get him you have to give up a draft pick and a Masten type player. Our club is reluctant to deal most years and is very stubborn on not giving up players they have invested time into whether they are good players or not.
Footy now is a meat market. Emotional decisions, loyalty and all that other crap mean nothing now.

if we want to target a midfielder of class then we should, but we have to give up something to do it.

I'd argue we haven't had the opportunity to give up anything for a classy midfielder. It's not like any have put their hand up to come to us but we haven't coughed up enough at the trade table. The ones we've (reportedly) chased, like Coniglio last year, have generally opted to re-sign.

Where guys have agreed to come (Jetta, Yeo, Cripps etc) we've got the deal done, usually pretty quickly.

 

[greatwhiteshark]

I'd argue we haven't had the opportunity to give up anything for a classy midfielder. It's not like any have put their hand up to come to us but we haven't coughed up enough at the trade table. The ones we've (reportedly) chased, like Coniglio last year, have generally opted to re-sign.

Where guys have agreed to come (Jetta, Yeo, Cripps etc) we've got the deal done, usually pretty quickly.

That might be right mate but maybe it never gets passed first base in any chats because we won't give up anything??
Either way it is bloody hard to find A Grade mids as you know but if you get a chance at one when ever that might be then you have to give up something big to do it.

 

[bzparkes]

Four failures in our four biggest tests, with the competitions smallest injury list, and the fourth most experienced squad fills you with optimism?

Tell me other teams who passed their biggest tests? Don't forget we also started our pre-season late. I'm not too concerned and will refrain from judging until the last quarter of our season.

 

[Miguel Sanchez]

That might be right mate but maybe it never gets passed first base in any chats because we won't give up anything??
Either way it is bloody hard to find A Grade mids as you know but if you get a chance at one when ever that might be then you have to give up something big to do it.

Well generally the first chat is with the player, if he agrees to come and requests a trade then you start to worry about getting the deal done with the other team.

I think it's fanciful to suggest we've missed out on players because we haven't been willing to pay the price at the trade table. Recent history suggests we've been more than fair in paying up for decent players - just look at what we coughed up for Wellingham, Redden and Jetta.

 

[Miguel Sanchez]

Tell me other teams who passed their biggest tests? Don't forget we also started our pre-season late. I'm not too concerned and will refrain from judging until the last quarter of our season.

We've lost four interstate games against top eight sides. Games which everyone in the league is losing apart from Geelong at Adelaide and Sydney at Hawthorn.

In two of those games we were poor. Against Sydney we were in it until the final term, against the Bulldogs we were in it up to our necks.

It's not the greatest record but it's hardly time to hit the panic button and start reviewing every department, I'd have thought.

 

[greatwhiteshark]

Well generally the first chat is with the player, if he agrees to come and requests a trade then you start to worry about getting the deal done with the other team.

I think it's fanciful to suggest we've missed out on players because we haven't been willing to pay the price at the trade table. Recent history suggests we've been more than fair in paying up for decent players - just look at what we coughed up for Wellingham, Redden and Jetta.

We gave up pick 17 for Wellingham which was fair. Sinclair for Jetta, not sure how we did there. And Pick 17 for Redden. Draft Picks though are what ifs? You never know what you will get.

As a Hypothetical lets say we could go after someone like a Dylan Shiel from GWS, what would you give up for him?

 

[bzparkes]

We've lost four interstate games against top eight sides. Games which everyone in the league is losing apart from Geelong at Adelaide and Sydney at Hawthorn.

In two of those games we were poor. Against Sydney we were in it until the final term, against the Bulldogs we were in it up to our necks.

It's not the greatest record but it's hardly time to hit the panic button and start reviewing every department, I'd have thought.

Pretty much the way I look at it. Would've won on the weekend with McGovern in instead of Cole too. At the game it was obvious he doesn't know how to read the game properly yet.

 

[kranky al]

Really? Back in November 2009 when no one had Fyfe going any higher than the pick 20 he ended up, you would have taken him at 7?

No - that was the inference i made with the little sad face after my post -

id have fyfe

As in i wish.......

 

[twce13]

We're not going to be telling other clubs you can have masten and pick x if you give us player x before the player has committed to us. That's a nice way of losing the playing group quickly.

When the right deal presents itself the club can get it done. For instance Sinclair was clearly happy at wce once jetts was on board Sinclair was out the door.

West coast have done quite well with retaining a lot of quality interstate players on the list at the moment, that's not luck based. Given the lack of players who have committed to coming to west coast it's speculation to say we are not aggressive on the trade table.

My biggest issue with west coast list management is our trend to hold onto dead wood. We need to turn over our list a lot more then we have been, cause we have way too many simply not up to it. Colledge, Karpany, Tunbridge, McGinnity are example of us holding onto players with no value moving forward. Depth wins premierships

 

[Miguel Sanchez]

We gave up pick 17 for Wellingham which was fair. Sinclair for Jetta, not sure how we did there. And Pick 17 for Redden. Draft Picks though are what ifs? You never know what you will get.

As a Hypothetical lets say we could go after someone like a Dylan Shiel from GWS, what would you give up for him?

Purely hypothetical because he's about as likely to move West as Essendon are of making the finals this year... but he's a similar sort of value as Treloar I suppose. Collingwood gave up two first rounders (this year's and next's) and got a second rounder back. Our first round pick won't be anywhere near as high as there's was (pick 7) so we probably wouldn't be getting the second rounder back. Maybe a third?

Importantly for the example though, Collingwood got the Treloar deal done without trading away any players.

 

[Belltower]

Never said anything about our draft performance that year - I was just making a point that we don't have many young players in our side where I have thought 'wow - this guy is going to be a super star that will bring us a flag'.

I also don't agree that Gaff is going to 'win his position' every week. He'll reliably rack up stats, but that doesn't necessarily = winning his position.

Anyway, splitting hairs here over one player instead of focusing on our overall list management/recruitment since our last flag.

I did previously look at our overall draft performance, 2 years absolute s**t, but look at 2009 and that was clearly a crap year for most clubs, Freo nailed it but hardly anyone else did. When does a player have to be a contested ball king to be a star. Our overall drafting has been average to good I would think with very few top 10 picks we have done fairly well. Our 2 top 10 picks were nailed in Gaff and naita, Masten has been handy but Cyril would have been nice it is the 20's picks that we have struggled a bit, Koby, weedon, mcinnes, newman. The problem we have is attracting non homesick players to Perth, that is why the Hawks have been successful. Gibson, Burgoyne, Hale, Harris, mcevoy, frawley etc have all been plucked and only one has had to move states. Look at the problems freo have had attracting a medium to big name players

Our traded in players are all still best 22 players with Yeo still having the potential to be great. All the talk about people like Duncan etc we have missed out on, he is also an outside player and would be a good player for us but he is not a player you build a premiership on, he is more the cream. Simpson has been targeting classy ball users as disposal was identified as an issue when he arrived, Nelson, Duggan, partington, cole all good users and cool under pressure, Jetta also.

Mistakes have been made, but look at every clubs drafting and I am sure you can pinpoint problems. How is beau muston and mitch Thorpe going from the Hawks, Billy smedts at pick 15 is a bit of a bust I reckon, jarrad grant, Christian howard at the dogs and the list goes on.

The trouble I see is the lack of good midfielders at east perth, waterman and cavka were expected to provide that, both unavailable. Mutimer has just come back from a serious hamstring. Colledge looked good early last year, big bodied midfielder but has fallen away badly.

Shuey showed in last year final series he is a competitive beast and he has a very good season but for some reason his contested ball has been down lately. Maybe it is time to give Hurn and Darling more runs in the midfield, Darling has show some clearance ability this year around the ground and Hurn is a bull and has shown some real aggressive intent recently.

 

[SpaceClef]

Pretty much the way I look at it. Would've won on the weekend with McGovern in instead of Cole too. At the game it was obvious he doesn't know how to read the game properly yet.

And likewise we would have lost if Murphy, Wood and Johannisen were playing instead against us.

We played a below strength Hawthorn, and had players from Sydney and Geelong go down with match-ending injuries in the first quarter of each game, yet still got overrun. WB similarly were down a man for half the match (unless McLean went back on - I'm not 100% sure).

The scoreboards arguably flattered us against Sydney and WB.

I'm not saying it's panic stations, but given the age profile of our key players, we are a risk of dropping out of contention. If Priddis drops off quickly like many 30+ year old WC players have in the past, and one of Shuey or Naitanui gets a long term injury (touch wood) then you could almost write us off completely.

That's where Freo are at the moment, and there's every chance the same thing could happen to us (I highly doubt we'd collapse as hard as they have though).

 

[Miguel Sanchez]

No - that was the inference i made with the little sad face after my post -

id have fyfe

As in i wish.......

Ah, well that's slightly more believable!

I think even Shep would acknowledge we should have taken Fyfe over him in hindsight.

My biggest regret from that draft, and probably from the last decade of drafting actually, is the club selecting Weedon and Stevens over Duncan, a local boy who was under consideration at those picks. That's the one that really hurts.

 

[SpaceClef]

I did previously look at our overall draft performance, 2 years absolute s**t, but look at 2009 and that was clearly a crap year for most clubs, Freo nailed it but hardly anyone else did. When does a player have to be a contested ball king to be a star. Our overall drafting has been average to good I would think with very few top 10 picks we have done fairly well. Our 2 top 10 picks were nailed in Gaff and naita, Masten has been handy but Cyril would have been nice it is the 20's picks that we have struggled a bit, Koby, weedon, mcinnes, newman. The problem we have is attracting non homesick players to Perth, that is why the Hawks have been successful. Gibson, Burgoyne, Hale, Harris, mcevoy, frawley etc have all been plucked and only one has had to move states. Look at the problems freo have had attracting a medium to big name players

Our traded in players are all still best 22 players with Yeo still having the potential to be great. All the talk about people like Duncan etc we have missed out on, he is also an outside player and would be a good player for us but he is not a player you build a premiership on, he is more the cream. Simpson has been targeting classy ball users as disposal was identified as an issue when he arrived, Nelson, Duggan, partington, cole all good users and cool under pressure, Jetta also.

Mistakes have been made, but look at every clubs drafting and I am sure you can pinpoint problems. How is beau muston and mitch Thorpe going from the Hawks, Billy smedts at pick 15 is a bit of a bust I reckon, jarrad grant, Christian howard at the dogs and the list goes on.

The trouble I see is the lack of good midfielders at east perth, waterman and cavka were expected to provide that, both unavailable. Mutimer has just come back from a serious hamstring. Colledge looked good early last year, big bodied midfielder but has fallen away badly.

Shuey showed in last year final series he is a competitive beast and he has a very good season but for some reason his contested ball has been down lately. Maybe it is time to give Hurn and Darling more runs in the midfield, Darling has show some clearance ability this year around the ground and Hurn is a bull and has shown some real aggressive intent recently.

Oh I'm not suggesting for a second that no other teams have had busts - every team does. I just think our overall list management and recruitment strategy has made our busts hurt more than they should, because we had a few years where we drafted the bare minimum, and instead upgraded mediocre rookies.

I understand this is a thread about recruitment, but I guess I'm referring more to the way we've handled our overall list and selection policy.

 

[dave123]

We've lost four interstate games against top eight sides. Games which everyone in the league is losing apart from Geelong at Adelaide and Sydney at Hawthorn.

In two of those games we were poor. Against Sydney we were in it until the final term, against the Bulldogs we were in it up to our necks.

It's not the greatest record but it's hardly time to hit the panic button and start reviewing every department, I'd have thought.

I agree ...if we win this week it's likely we will be in the top 4 or close

We've got lions then another home game

I'm not panicking at all

The effort was there v Bulldogs

 

[dave123]

Purely hypothetical because he's about as likely to move West as Essendon are of making the finals this year... but he's a similar sort of value as Treloar I suppose. Collingwood gave up two first rounders (this year's and next's) and got a second rounder back. Our first round pick won't be anywhere near as high as there's was (pick 7) so we probably wouldn't be getting the second rounder back. Maybe a third?

Importantly for the example though, Collingwood got the Treloar deal done without trading away any players.

Sinclair would NOT be in the side this given Scott Lycetts form this year


So we kinda get Jetta for nothing really as Lycett is better


Look we need to judge Jetta over a whole year

 

[greatwhiteshark]

Sinclair would NOT be in the side this given Scott Lycetts form this year


So we kinda get Jetta for nothing really as Lycett is better


Look we need to judge Jetta over a whole year

If we had not lost Sinclair though we would know of Lycetts form as Sinclair would of been playing as a first pick player.

 

[WCErevival]

Our age profile is quite good. Only Priddis, Butler and Lecras in the 30 year old bracket. Plenty in the 25-30 so its not this year or nothing.

 

[eagles rule]

Sinclair would NOT be in the side this given Scott Lycetts form this year


So we kinda get Jetta for nothing really as Lycett is better


Look we need to judge Jetta over a whole year

I think we got Sinclair as a rookie pick too and it turned into a likely 1st Rd pick value to secure Jetta .So good trading .

 

[Keys]

Since 2006 only 4 clubs have won a flag in an era dominated firstly by Geelong and then hawthorn. Sydney have done well during this period to remain a force. Other clubs have had one or two year cameos as challengers whilst clubs (plus the expansion teams) haven't made the last day.

It's hard to build a group that can contend at the best of times but in the expansion period it's been immeasurably harder

Geelongs success came before expansion as did Collingwood and st kildas time.

Hawthorn have been the club that arguably has benefitted most from expansion. The 2008 side won a flag earlier than expected built on some astute drafting and trading plus a period down the foot of the ladder. Their collective inexperience saw them struggle in the following years a little but they still had a good strong core group that their 2011-15 success was built on.

Expansion did two things coupled with Free Agency. It meant that experienced players looking for success could choose a strong club and some chose hawthorn as well as younger players like Gunston. They became an attractive destination club and didn't have to bother with the complications of trading to get quality in

At the same time would be challengers trying to build lists were denied access to talent by the expansion sides mortgage over high draft picks. Go back over some of those 2010-12 drafts and see who we might have been able to get and plug them into our side now

For their part Sydney gave nothing but cash under an inflated salary cap to get Tippett and Franklin plus the academy has already given them Heeney and mills well below their true draft position

No doubt our recruiters could have done better but given what they've had to work with their performance has been reasonable

Attracting quality players to WA is also problematic and shouldn't be discounted when suggesting we should be going after stars at other clubs - Omeara for example reportedly wants to go to Victoria rather than return to WA.

 

[Big_Tony]

I agree ...if we win this week it's likely we will be in the top 4 or close

We've got lions then another home game

I'm not panicking at all

The effort was there v Bulldogs

Yep. This week is the big one. In the vast majority of other top 8 games (15 out of 17 in fact), the home side has been able to defend their patch. If we can do the same against Adelaide, I think we are right in the mix with the others. If we can't, it will be the first concrete evidence in my mind that maybe we are just not up to it this year. That's how I'm looking at it anyway. I think with how even all the sides are, the premier this year is going to need to rely on luck of the draw more so than usual.

 

[KO_KO]

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/a...r/news-story/002d259cb153143179ecfb44dfa1b7af

I'd take Swallow, interesting article though. Surely his brother doesn't have too many years left? Aged 29 I think