Geelong vs Golden State Warriors - has AFL equalisation failed?

[Ned_Flanders]

Yeah, either pub teams or teams from over a century ago. Anyone calling Juventus a franchise that could just up and leave for Rome tomorrow, is on the sauce. That's my point. Any serious club wouldn't move.

then say what you mean or mean what you say, you tried to make a bold declaration and it was too wide sweeping to be correct which is why I pointed out you were wrong

 

[Johnny Bananas]

then say what you mean or mean what you say, you tried to make a bold declaration and it was too wide sweeping to be correct which is why I pointed out you were wrong

I mean if your goal is to concoct an argument where none is needed, then mission accomplished I guess.

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

Golden State Warriors became dominate because their venture capitalist billionaire got a bunch of his executives to study the game and then change the way they played based on that study. They then got a player and a new coach to take advantage of what they discovered. That has changed the way the game is being played.

I don't see Geelong changing the way the game has been played. Sure since 1989 when Blight got to Geelong and shook them up they have the most dominate win-loss regular season record but their dominance in home and away hasn't been reflected by dominance in flags since 1989 season.
https://afltables.com/afl/teams/allteams/overall_wl_dec.html

Wrote this on the Port board 3 years ago when they were about to complete the most successful season and this Wall Street Journal article was reproduced in The Weekend Australian.

Last Saturday's Weekend Oz they had a great article from fellow Murdoch paper The Wall Street Journal about the rise of the Golden State Warriors since the new owners came on board in 2010. They went from cellar dwellers to winning the NBA last year, being the best offensive team, no one got close, and a couple of nights ago they won their 72nd game in the season to go to a 72-9 record v Jordan's 1995-96 Bulls record season at 72-10. Edit Golden State Warriors beat the Memphis Grizzlies this arvo (Thursday 14th) and have finished the season 73-9 to beat the Bulls record.

How Golden State Warriors stepped outside the arc to change game

• BEN COHEN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL APRIL 9, 2016

On every NBA court, about 7.3m from the basket, there is a thin stripe of coloured paint. The flat-sided semi-circle it forms is the boundary between shots that count for two points and shots that are worth three. When the NBA added the lines in 1979, the players weren’t sure what to think. They sniffed and pawed at them like cats with a new toy. Only three per cent of the shots they put up that season were three-pointers.

Over the next three decades, that number crept higher. When it reached 22 per cent, the growth curve flattened. It seemed that the sport had found its optimal ratio. Then the Golden State Warriors came along and blew that assumption to pieces. The Warriors, the National Basketball Association’s defending champions, stand three wins from equalling the league record of 72 in the regular season, set in 1996 by Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls. Much of the credit belongs to star guard Stephen Curry, who is having, by almost every measure, one of the best seasons of any player in history.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/bus...e/news-story/e14cf241f354a54d25a51422237f3194

Silicon Valley takes over and analyzing the data commences - producing a result is a style no one has yet figured out how to defeat.

But there is another tale to be told about the Warriors. It involves a group of executives with limited experience, led by a Silicon Valley financier, who bought a floundering franchise in 2010 and set out to fix it by raising a single question: What would happen if you built a basketball team by ignoring every orthodoxy of building a basketball team? The process took many twists and turns, and there were times when it nearly failed. But the dominance the Warriors have displayed this season can be traced back to one of the most unusual ideas embraced by the data-loving executives: the notion that the NBA’s three-point line was a market inefficiency hiding in plain sight.

This season the Warriors have sunk 1025 three-pointers, by far the most in NBA history. Not only has Curry taken more threes than any other player, he is making them at a rate of 45.6 per cent, higher than the NBA average for all shots. He has shattered his own record for most three-pointers in a season by 34 per cent. Moreover, distance seems to have no significant effect on his accuracy. Curry is a better shooter from 9-12m than the average NBA player is from 1-2m.

The result is a style no one has yet figured out how to defeat

.
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers are the biggest Venture Capital firm in Silicon Valley - have been for 40 years, so anyone from there was going to tinker.

“What’s really interesting is sometimes in venture capital and doing start-ups the whole world can be wrong,” said the team’s primary owner, Joe Lacob, a longtime partner at Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. “No one really executed a game plan — a team-building architecture — around the three-pointer.”

In 2010, the Golden State Warriors hadn’t won an NBA title since 1975. They played in a dumpy arena beside an interstate and had made the playoffs just once in the last 15 years. The previous owner, Chris Cohan, was loathed by many loyal fans.

Still, competition to buy the team was fierce. To fend off the other finalist, Oracle Corp founder Larry Ellison, Lacob and entertainment mogul Peter Guber paid $US450 million ($597m), which was, at the time, the highest price for a team in NBA history.

The data analysis

It wasn’t long before Lacob, who is 60 years old, installed a basketball brains trust akin to a board at one of his companies. The team’s executives are always communicating — a group text message hums on their phones during games — and every decision brings vigorous debate. But from the beginning, the Warriors brass placed an unusually strong emphasis on numbers.

The data dive yielded many insights, but the Warriors eventually zeroed in on the three-point line. NBA players made roughly the same percentage of shots from 7m as they did from 7.3m. But because the three-point line ran between them, the values of those two shots were radically different. Shot attempts from 7m had an average value of 0.76 points, while 7.3m shots were worth 1.09.

This, the Warriors concluded, was an opportunity. By moving back just a few centimetres before shooting, a basketball player could improve his rate of return by 43 per cent.

Lacob wasn’t the only team owner in sports to delve into statistics — baseball has been doing it for years — and the Warriors weren’t the first NBA team to see the potential of the three-pointer. Starting in the 1990s, a string of teams with brutally effective defences had prompted teams like the Phoenix Suns and San Antonio Spurs to search for different ways to score, and that meant shooting more three-pointers. More recently, as the data improved, it became clear that teams weren’t taking nearly enough of them.

The difference between the Warriors and everyone else was what the team decided to do with this information.

For many years after James Naismith invented basketball in 1891, the prevailing view was that the most important area of the court was near the basket. From Wilt Chamberlain’s finger-rolls in the 1960s to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s sky hooks in the 1970s to Jordan’s soaring dunks in the 1990s, the NBA was the dominion of players who owned the rim.

But once the analysis was done - how do you fit it around the players you have and who do you go and recruit?

When the Warriors, under their previous owners, drafted Curry in 2009, he wasn’t a prototypical NBA superstar. Though his father, Dell, had played in the NBA, Stephen Curry was so lightly recruited out of high school that he had attended tiny Davidson College near his hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina. He only emerged as a tantalising NBA prospect after his team made an improbable run to the regional finals of the 2008 NCAA tournament.

Even after his first two seasons with Golden State, Curry wasn’t a sure thing. Still, as the team’s new executives settled on their plan to exploit the three-point line, they became convinced Curry would be their centrepiece.

The first test of their commitment came in the form of a controversial decision: trading the team’s leading scorer, Monta Ellis. Some believed Ellis was too similar to Curry and that he was costing him shots. Others thought it was crazy to banish the most popular player. At one point, just before the deal, Lacob tested the confidence of his basketball executives by telling them he was getting cold feet. They defended their plan and pulled the trigger.

The week after the 2012 trade, Lacob was booed by fans. The team finished that season with one of the NBA’s worst records. The Warriors already were building a team around Curry that would allow him to take more three-pointers. The most critical step had come in the 2011 draft when they selected guard Klay Thompson. He, too, was the son of an NBA player and an excellent shooter. At 200cm (6ft 7in) , he was 10cm taller than Curry.

The team believed Thompson’s shooting ability would make defences too frightened to leave him alone, and that would limit their ability to double-team Curry. But because he was tall, he could defend the other team’s best guard and shoot over defences without being blocked, which could help the Warriors compete against teams that hoped to use their size to contain Curry.

What made the move most attractive was its novelty. Most three-point-shooting teams had one superb shooter surrounded by a collection of supporting players. “Imagine if we could have two of those guys,” Kirk Lacob, the owner’s 27-year-old son and the team’s assistant general manager, recalled thinking at the time. “It’s once in a lifetime,” said Joe Lacob.

The day after Ellis was traded, Thompson was inserted into the starting line-up. After that, according to the general manager Bob Myers, when the team was drafting and signing players, the strategy shifted from wondering whether they could play with Curry to asking: “Who can play with Steph and Klay?”

But as they built the team from the analysis the tech milionaires reckon they have to sack the coach to find one that can take advantage of their game plan and get the players to implement it - ie a guy who shot a lot of 3 pointers.

By the time the 2014-15 season began, the Warriors had padded their roster with Australian Andrew Bogut, a 213cm (7ft) centre who protects the rim and shores up their defence; the position-defying Draymond Green, the steal of the 2012 draft; and rangy guards Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston, whom they acquired in free agency. “They complemented shooting, even though they’re not shooters,” Myers said.

The Warriors then had a chance to trade for one of the league’s premier players, Minnesota Timberwolves forward Kevin Love. The move would have been a no-brainer for most basketball people. But the Timberwolves wanted a player in return whose departure would have scuttled the Warriors’ master plan. “They kept asking for Klay, and we kept saying no,” Lacob said. “We weren’t going to trade Klay, and they weren’t going to do a deal without Klay.”

The team doubled down on its three-point plan by replacing coach Mark Jackson with Steve Kerr, a member of five NBA championship teams who had retired with a 45.4 per cent shooting rate on three-pointers, the highest in league history. It was his first NBA coaching job.

And they keep recruiting and playing 3 point shooters

That season, with all the pieces in place, the Warriors fielded five players between 190cm and 203cm who all were threats to shoot three-pointers. This “small-ball” line-up — widely known as the “death line-up” or, as Barack Obama called it, the “nuclear line-up” — helped the Warriors take 9 per cent more three-pointers as a team than the year before and make a higher percentage than anyone in the league.

This combination of frequency and efficiency had a fascinating effect on opponents. It forced them to spread out, extending their defence all the way to the three-point line instead of packing the paint, leaving the Warriors with lots of open space. Curry set a record for three-point shots and was named the league’s Most Valuable Player. Thompson made the All-Star team. The Warriors overcame the Cleveland Cavaliers to win their first NBA title in 40 years.

But the Silicon Valley boys and new coach kept tinkering.

The tinkering could have stopped there. The Warriors clearly had hit on a winning formula. But then they began thinking about an audacious idea that would make them even better.

The plan had started to take shape in 2013, during a playoff game against the Spurs, one of the NBA’s top teams. Curry was just then coming into his own, showing signs that he could be both dazzling and deadly. During one possession early in the first quarter, Curry dribbled around a screen and found himself in a pocket of open space. Immediately, even before he had time to set his feet, Curry pulled up and fired a three-pointer.

Myers, the general manager who was in the arena watching that night, couldn’t believe his eyes. As the ball swished through the net, he turned to the other Warriors executives around him to confirm what he had just seen. “Did he just shoot that off one foot?” he asked. “Who shoots a three off one foot?”

And just like Rinus Michels found Cruyff to carry out Total Football, the Warriors found Steph Curry

The shot was only one of dozens of stunners Curry had made during his young NBA career. But it played a crucial role in firming up another idea the team was batting around. The Warriors were dreaming about what would happen if they gave Curry a green light to take more shots, and more crazy ones, too — not off one foot, exactly, but from places on the floor where nobody had ever routinely taken shots.

Curry had already reached the point where he could take as many as 10 threes in one game without anyone noticing. It didn’t matter if the shot was off one foot, from 1.5m behind the three-point line or the popcorn stand in the concourse. His accuracy didn’t seem to suffer much. Before every game, in fact, Curry practices these kinds of bombs by shooting from the half-court logo.

The team realised that any possession that ended with a three-point attempt by Curry was worthwhile — and that they would never discourage him from taking one. In this, the season of Curry’s unleashing, the Warriors are shooting 17 per cent more threes than a season ago. Curry is attempting more than 11 a game. No NBA team had ever had a player attempt more than nine. Last season he hit 286 threes. This season he is on pace for about 400.

What amazes fans even more is the location of those shots. NBA players shoot an average of 28 per cent from 8m or beyond. Most players don’t even take them unless the shot clock is running out. Curry has taken 253 such deep shots this year and made 47 per cent of them. The result is that defenders have strayed even farther from the basket to guard him, opening even bigger spaces for his teammates.

“Stretching a defence makes it easier to score,” Myers said.

The success of the Warriors this season has turned Curry, 28, into one the NBA’s biggest stars. He has an everyman appeal because he isn’t a giant.

His celebrity has raised the profile of the three-point shot. This year, like the last four years, NBA teams are taking more three-pointers than ever. They now amount to 28.3 per cent of total shots. College teams also hit another high in three-pointers attempted per game this season. High school teams have caught the bug, too.

The owners know other teams will try and find a way to stop them and beat them, but they know it wont be overnight

Guber, the team’s co-owner, said other NBA teams will try to emulate the Warriors’ original approach as they attempt to end the team’s reign. “Other teams will do it in a different way,” he said. “They’ll take chances and challenge the incumbent and come up with another way to create the magic.”

For now, the Warriors have it. They turned the three-point line into a boundary in time. The kind of strategy that unfolded inside the line belonged to the game’s past. The future of basketball, they believed, lay behind the line — and Curry showed it was farther behind that line than even they imagined.

“I don’t know why it took so long,” Lacob said. “You would think in sports that this would’ve been tried a long time ago.”

 

[PerthBoy86]

Golden State Warriors became dominate because their venture capitalist billionaire got a bunch of his executives to study the game and then change the way they played based on that study. They then got a player and a new coach to take advantage of what they discovered. That has changed the way the game is being played.

I don't see Geelong changing the way the game has been played. Sure since 1989 when Blight got to Geelong and shook them up they have the most dominate win-loss regular season record but their dominance in home and away hasn't been reflected by dominance in flags since 1989 season.
https://afltables.com/afl/teams/allteams/overall_wl_dec.html

Wrote this on the Port board 3 years ago when they were about to complete the most successful season and this Wall Street Journal article was reproduced in The Weekend Australian.

Last Saturday's Weekend Oz they had a great article from fellow Murdoch paper The Wall Street Journal about the rise of the Golden State Warriors since the new owners came on board in 2010. They went from cellar dwellers to winning the NBA last year, being the best offensive team, no one got close, and a couple of nights ago they won their 72nd game in the season to go to a 72-9 record v Jordan's 1995-96 Bulls record season at 72-10. Edit Golden State Warriors beat the Memphis Grizzlies this arvo (Thursday 14th) and have finished the season 73-9 to beat the Bulls record.

How Golden State Warriors stepped outside the arc to change game

• BEN COHEN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL APRIL 9, 2016

On every NBA court, about 7.3m from the basket, there is a thin stripe of coloured paint. The flat-sided semi-circle it forms is the boundary between shots that count for two points and shots that are worth three. When the NBA added the lines in 1979, the players weren’t sure what to think. They sniffed and pawed at them like cats with a new toy. Only three per cent of the shots they put up that season were three-pointers.

Over the next three decades, that number crept higher. When it reached 22 per cent, the growth curve flattened. It seemed that the sport had found its optimal ratio. Then the Golden State Warriors came along and blew that assumption to pieces. The Warriors, the National Basketball Association’s defending champions, stand three wins from equalling the league record of 72 in the regular season, set in 1996 by Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls. Much of the credit belongs to star guard Stephen Curry, who is having, by almost every measure, one of the best seasons of any player in history.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/bus...e/news-story/e14cf241f354a54d25a51422237f3194

Silicon Valley takes over and analyzing the data commences - producing a result is a style no one has yet figured out how to defeat.

.
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers are the biggest Venture Capital firm in Silicon Valley - have been for 40 years, so anyone from there was going to tinker.


The data analysis


This, the Warriors concluded, was an opportunity. By moving back just a few centimetres before shooting, a basketball player could improve his rate of return by 43 per cent.



But once the analysis was done - how do you fit it around the players you have and who do you go and recruit?


But as they built the team from the analysis the tech milionaires reckon they have to sack the coach to find one that can take advantage of their game plan and get the players to implement it - ie a guy who shot a lot of 3 pointers.


And they keep recruiting and playing 3 point shooters


But the Silicon Valley boys and new coach kept tinkering.


And just like Rinus Michels found Cruyff to carry out Total Football, the Warriors found Steph Curry


The owners know other teams will try and find a way to stop them and beat them, but they know it wont be overnight

Maybe the lesson for the AFL is to get more players who can regularly and reliably kick em from beyond the 50m arc? Lol

 

[Black Stripe]

A resounding YES to AFL equalisation policies being a complete and utter failure as this Geelong superteam should not have been allowed to be built.

 

[Teen Wolf]

OP might've been on to something with the comparison. No shame in failing to three-peat, though.

 

[Coaster2012]

A resounding YES to AFL equalisation policies being a complete and utter failure as this Geelong superteam should not have been allowed to be built.

Man you are embarrassing.

 

[Adroyo]

Upon hearing the news of Geelong trying to lure Jeremy Cameron, I can't help but be reminded of Kevin Durant leaving the Thunder to go to the Golden State Warriors.

Funny enough while Geelong remind me of the Warriors, my followed AFL club the Giants remind me of my followed NBA team the Thunder.

This coupled with Geelong's phenomenal domination of the AFL much like the Warriors domination of the NBA, you can't help but feel that AFL equalisation policies have failed.

Do you agree that the AFL equalisation policies have failed, and what policies can be brought in to try and stop 1 team dominating year in, year out?

If Geelong lure away Cameron I'll officially hate cats.

On SM-G950F using BigFooty.com mobile app

 

[Billy ray]

 

[Freomaniac]

The famous Glasgow Rangers? Not officially in their "current" name, but they do refer to themselves as that.

Celtic more accurate.

Well I follow Aberdeen

 

[Gaborone]

All credit to Geelong for being able to recruit whomsoever they please. Apparently it is because Geelong is a cheaper place to live and therefore the salary goes further, and that players are willing to make salary concessions to make room in the salary cap. And then of course there is the surf. But I have some questions. Does the AFLs head of football have access to every clubs' salary contracts? If yes, is this information available to all other clubs? If no, is there. conflict of interest in the AFL head of football taking over as CEO of Geelong, with the potential to use this information in recruitment? I am happy to be debunked. I just want to know if there is an ethical issue here, especially now that another AFL head of football is taking over as coach of Essendon?

 

[Lavender Bushranger]

Upon hearing the news of Geelong trying to lure Jeremy Cameron, I can't help but be reminded of Kevin Durant leaving the Thunder to go to the Golden State Warriors.

Funny enough while Geelong remind me of the Warriors, my followed AFL club the Giants remind me of my followed NBA team the Thunder.

This coupled with Geelong's phenomenal domination of the AFL much like the Warriors domination of the NBA, you can't help but feel that AFL equalisation policies have failed.

Do you agree that the AFL equalisation policies have failed, and what policies can be brought in to try and stop 1 team dominating year in, year out?

The Warriors thing is largely bullshit.

Steph took massive unders on his previous contract. Massive unders. They won the title before KD arrived, and should have won it twice. Then they won it again after he left.

I heard that wheezebag Windhorst sooking after we beat the Celtics in Game 6 and declared it a 'chequebook victory' because we had Wiggins!! Wiggins FFS! The guy that no one wanted, and that the Timberwolves couldn't get rid of quick enough. We were a luaghing stock then we picked him up.

Anyway, I digress....

The biggest issue with the AFL, as usual, is that every time they introduce a rule or policy - they have another one that contradicts it and cancels it out! All the equalisation in the world will not stop the best players wanting to play for big clubs in big games. And all the equalisation in the world won't stop the best players from making teams really good.

So you have this outdated, moronic and non-sensical Father-Son rule, which has robbed battling teams of the likes of Scarlett, Hawkins, Ablett, Daicos, Darcy, Ashcroft, Cloke, etc. etc. It directly negates the 'equalisation policy' of the Draft, as do Academy picks.

Then you have Geelong and their home ground, whilst other clubs all share home grounds (as huge an advantage as this is, I don't see an alternative). You have 'ambassador roles' and 'blockbuster' games that only a few clubs get, etc. etc. which directly negate the Salary Cap.


So I don't think that their policies have failed as such, it's just that they've introduced (and in some cases retained) other policies and rules that cancel them out to a large degree.

 

[Lavender Bushranger]

All credit to Geelong for being able to recruit whomsoever they please. Apparently it is because Geelong is a cheaper place to live and therefore the salary goes further, and that players are willing to make salary concessions to make room in the salary cap. And then of course there is the surf. But I have some questions. Does the AFLs head of football have access to every clubs' salary contracts? If yes, is this information available to all other clubs? If no, is there. conflict of interest in the AFL head of football taking over as CEO of Geelong, with the potential to use this information in recruitment? I am happy to be debunked. I just want to know if there is an ethical issue here, especially now that another AFL head of football is taking over as coach of Essendon?

Geelong can remain consistently competitive because they play at an exclusive home ground, which no one else does. That's an extraordinary leg up.

Remaining competitive and playing finals most years, makes you very attractive to players.

How many clubs have the club specific 'go home factor' too? None.

If you want to go home to WA, there are two clubs to fight over you. Ditto in NSW, Queensland and SA. In Melbourne there's shitloads.


It's these two things that are the reason Geelong can continue to attract gun players. And the snowball effect is that the more gun players you attract, the more likely it is that you remain consistently competitive.

I don't think they're breaching or dodging the salary cap. Players want to go there, and take less money to do so, and accept less money to stay. It's the reasons players want to go there in the first place that is am advantage that no other clubs have.

 

[Gaborone]

All credit to Geelong for being able to recruit whomsoever they please. Apparently it is because Geelong is a cheaper place to live and therefore the salary goes further, and that players are willing to make salary concessions to make room in the salary cap. And then of course there is the surf. But I have some questions. Does the AFLs head of football have access to every clubs' salary contracts? If yes, is this information available to all other clubs? If no, is there. conflict of interest in the AFL head of football taking over as CEO of Geelong, with the potential to use this information in recruitment? I am happy to be debunked. I just want to know if there is an ethical issue here, especially now that another AFL head of football is taking over as coach of Essendon?

I know it is odd that I am replying to my own post but I just want to know the answer to the question I am posing, above.

 

[Teen Wolf]

All credit to Geelong for being able to recruit whomsoever they please. Apparently it is because Geelong is a cheaper place to live and therefore the salary goes further, and that players are willing to make salary concessions to make room in the salary cap. And then of course there is the surf. But I have some questions. Does the AFLs head of football have access to every clubs' salary contracts? If yes, is this information available to all other clubs? If no, is there. conflict of interest in the AFL head of football taking over as CEO of Geelong, with the potential to use this information in recruitment? I am happy to be debunked. I just want to know if there is an ethical issue here, especially now that another AFL head of football is taking over as coach of Essendon?

Steve Hocking's and Brad Scott's knowledge of player contracts would be insignificant compared to Ken Wood's:

https://www.codesports.com.au/sport/afl-2022-david-noble-under-pressure-as-north-melbourne-kangaroos-go-from-bad-to-worse/news-story/9141b663144a704b1dfc9e9378f0fe1c

The Herald Sun can also reveal the Roos hired former AFL total player payments policeman Ken Wood to help with the club’s salary cap.

“We engaged Ken as a consultant after he left the AFL as the owner of the League’s Total Player Payments,” the club said.

“We invited him to provide advice, guidance and validation to our GM of Finance and Administration Chris Simmonds and our then GM of Football Brady Rawlings about our total player payments processes.

 

[JohnZ]

Geelong can remain consistently competitive because they play at an exclusive home ground, which no one else does. That's an extraordinary leg up.

Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sydney, GWS, Bulldogs (Ballarat), North (Hobart) and Hawks (Launceston) all regularly play home games at exclusive venues.

 

[vozzon]

Any Geelong supporters have the info on the list make up and where each player has come from? No doubt Geelong are a successful club but to have a group of players all potentially come from the area with the lure to go home has played a part in the success.

 

[Lavender Bushranger]

Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sydney, GWS, Bulldogs (Ballarat), North (Hobart) and Hawks (Launceston) all regularly play home games at exclusive venues.

The catch is that Geelong not only get the exclusive home ground advantage - they get the bonus of MCG exposure as well.

So where decent interstate teams like Sydney and Brisbane use their exclusive home ground to notch up enough wins to make the 8 - finals at the MCG remain a disadvantage once they get there. Cause, you know, they're often playing teams that have the G as their home ground whilst they barely play there at all.

 

[The Unforgiven]

Any Geelong supporters have the info on the list make up and where each player has come from? No doubt Geelong are a successful club but to have a group of players all potentially come from the area with the lure to go home has played a part in the success.

Not a list, but every so often I keep tabs on where each player comes from and at least a quarter of the list appeared to be from the Geelong Falcons last time I checked.

 

[vozzon]

Not a list, but every so often I keep tabs on where each player comes from and at least a quarter of the list appeared to be from the Geelong Falcons last time I checked.

I think that has played a small part in your success. No doubt the 3 F/S in Ablett/Scarlett and Hawkins helped, but all developed well within the club. Guys like Danger and Cameron have been great pick ups along with the local talent you seem to nail every time there recruited.

Since SANFL gutted the Port Magpies and there junior program it has effected Port Adelaide it developing and recruiting local talent, also took away a good pathway from players from SA. Over the years good players have come from there with Mcleod, Buckley, Tredrea, Wanganeen, Scott Thompson. Some came back to port others continued at other clubs. Having that type of set up, maybe unfair but really advantages a club and also helps develop players.

 

[The Unforgiven]

I think that has played a small part in your success. No doubt the 3 F/S in Ablett/Scarlett and Hawkins helped, but all developed well within the club. Guys like Danger and Cameron have been great pick ups along with the local talent you seem to nail every time there recruited.

Since SANFL gutted the Port Magpies and there junior program it has effected Port Adelaide it developing and recruiting local talent, also took away a good pathway from players from SA. Over the years good players have come from there with Mcleod, Buckley, Tredrea, Wanganeen, Scott Thompson. Some came back to port others continued at other clubs. Having that type of set up, maybe unfair but really advantages a club and also helps develop players.

I live in Adelaide, so I'm well versed in the whole SANFL situation. Having the Falcons play the majority of games at Kardinia Park, and being headed by long-time coach and former Geelong player, Mick Turner, has certainly preserved a culturally intrinsic link between the Cats and the Falcons.

In David Koch's pursuit for having 'One Port Adelaide' where the Magpies play directly under the Power as its seconds side, something seemingly had to give. The concern for having a 'One Club' mantra where that same club fields an under-18 side feeding talent directly to the AFL seemed to compromise the integrity of the whole institution.

With the TAC Cup sides having no official affiliation with any AFL side, it would definitely appear on the surface that the Cats/Falcons relationship would be unique among Victorian sides. To be honest, I am not really sure how strictly the relationship between the two entities is enforced to ensure there's no collusion happening.

Conversely, if you look west, it's interesting to note that Fremantle's alignment with Peel Thunder flies completely under the radar. Should it be as equally under scrutiny as the idea of a Port Magpie zone aligned to Port Adelaide Power?

Sure, Mandurah is a good half hour drive from Cockburn, so the two clubs don't train together. However, I am not sure that it shouldn't be completely dismissed as a distinct advantage to Fremantle given the access the Dockers undoubtedly have to the Thunders' Colts, given that its seconds team is Peel Thunder.

The fear with Port Adelaide controlling essentially the old Port zone stems back to historically how successful the Port Magpies were. The idea that Port Adelaide Power would directly benfit under its old SANFL zone, by grooming and potentially "hiding" players by covert means to drop their value at draft day has everyone up in arms.

Conversely, I have little doubt that the Geelong Football Club keeps tabs on Falcons players to the point where it has not just more intel on the player, but perhaps a low level rapport with the family.

I am only speculating, so I don't know for certain, but surely, given the unsurprisingly high volume of Falcons that play for Geelong, both drafted and also returned via trade at a later stage, that if there's nothing nefarious going on, at the very least, the Falcons program could be considered a distinct advantage for the Geelong Football Club.

Until such time that Peel feeds plenty of talent that finds itself bolstering Fremantle's flag stocks, I think that the relationship will larglely remain unquestioned. Fremantle nor Peel, have history that dates beyond the mid-90s, and neither entity has been exactly successful. There remains, at this stage, no solution to a problem that does not yet exist.

For Port Adelaide, the safest thing to do was to completely abolish any ties to any junior program at state level. For the rest of S.A. and the SANFL, the idea of a Port Adelaide Power with a Port Adelaide Magpies junior program under the one alignment was simply unpalatable.

 

[Freomaniac]

I live in Adelaide, so I'm well versed in the whole SANFL situation. Having the Falcons play the majority of games at Kardinia Park, and being headed by long-time coach and former Geelong player, Mick Turner, has certainly preserved a culturally intrinsic link between the Cats and the Falcons.

In David Koch's pursuit for having 'One Port Adelaide' where the Magpies play directly under the Power as its seconds side, something seemingly had to give. The concern for having a 'One Club' mantra where that same club fields an under-18 side feeding talent directly to the AFL seemed to compromise the integrity of the whole institution.

With the TAC Cup sides having no official affiliation with any AFL side, it would definitely appear on the surface that the Cats/Falcons relationship would be unique among Victorian sides. To be honest, I am not really sure how strictly the relationship between the two entities is enforced to ensure there's no collusion happening.

Conversely, if you look west, it's interesting to note that Fremantle's alignment with Peel Thunder flies completely under the radar. Should it be as equally under scrutiny as the idea of a Port Magpie zone aligned to Port Adelaide Power?

Sure, Mandurah is a good half hour drive from Cockburn, so the two clubs don't train together. However, I am not sure that it shouldn't be completely dismissed as a distinct advantage to Fremantle given the access the Dockers undoubtedly have to the Thunders' Colts, given that its seconds team is Peel Thunder.

The fear with Port Adelaide controlling essentially the old Port zone stems back to historically how successful the Port Magpies were. The idea that Port Adelaide Power would directly benfit under its old SANFL zone, by grooming and potentially "hiding" players by covert means to drop their value at draft day has everyone up in arms.

Conversely, I have little doubt that the Geelong Football Club keeps tabs on Falcons players to the point where it has not just more intel on the player, but perhaps a low level rapport with the family.

I am only speculating, so I don't know for certain, but surely, given the unsurprisingly high volume of Falcons that play for Geelong, both drafted and also returned via trade at a later stage, that if there's nothing nefarious going on, at the very least, the Falcons program could be considered a distinct advantage for the Geelong Football Club.

Until such time that Peel feeds plenty of talent that finds itself bolstering Fremantle's flag stocks, I think that the relationship will larglely remain unquestioned. Fremantle nor Peel, have history that dates beyond the mid-90s, and neither entity has been exactly successful. There remains, at this stage, no solution to a problem that does not yet exist.

For Port Adelaide, the safest thing to do was to completely abolish any ties to any junior program at state level. For the rest of S.A. and the SANFL, the idea of a Port Adelaide Power with a Port Adelaide Magpies junior program under the one alignment was simply unpalatable.

I am so glad someone brought up the comparison of port Adelaide power taking over the port magpies and Freo taking over Peel thunder.

At the end of 2013, Port Adelaide power wanted to take over the port magpies. SANFL agreed but port power paid a heavy price.

Port magpies had to give up their local recruiting and country recruiting zones... Like the crows SANFL side, They had amateurs to fill their ranks

Port Magpies made 3 grand finals in 2014, 2017 and 2019. Of the 21 players in that port magpies side in each of those grand finals, 19 of those 21 were power listed players.

Dockers on the other hand, took over Peel thunder at the end of 2013. Peel have always struggled from 1996-2013, no finals. Peel kept their local and country recruiting zones.

Peel won 2 WAFL flags in 2016 and 2017. When peel won the 2016 flag, 17 out of those 21 players were dockers players.

When peel won the flag in 2017, 14 of those 21 players were dockers players. One of those 14 dockers players was Zac Dawson.

 

[The Unforgiven]

I am so glad someone brought up the comparison of port Adelaide power taking over the port magpies and Freo taking over Peel thunder.

At the end of 2013, Port Adelaide power wanted to take over the port magpies. SANFL agreed but port power paid a heavy price.

Port magpies had to give up their local recruiting and country recruiting zones... Like the crows SANFL side, They had amateurs to fill their ranks

Port Magpies made 3 grand finals in 2014, 2017 and 2019. Of the 21 players in that port magpies side in each of those grand finals, 19 of those 21 were power listed players.

Dockers on the other hand, took over Peel thunder at the end of 2013. Peel have always struggled from 1996-2013, no finals. Peel kept their local and country recruiting zones.

Peel won 2 WAFL flags in 2016 and 2017. When peel won the 2016 flag, 17 out of those 21 players were dockers players.

When peel won the flag in 2017, 14 of those 21 players were dockers players. One of those 14 dockers players was Zac Dawson.

It's funny, though; a big fear with Port Magpies becoming Port Power's reserves was the idea that AFL players were going to dominate and comprise the integrity of the SANFL system. That has not eventuated.

As you've rightly pointed out, Peel's alignment with Freo has seen it rise from laughing stock to powerhouse in the WAFL. What has been the feel over west about Peel and Eagle's affiliate, East Perth, prior to getting its own team?

So far, only Peel has won flags in the WAFL, with neither the Crows nor the Magpies having won a flag in the SANFL. Thankfully it hasn't appeared to compromise those competitions too much.

 

[Freomaniac]

It's funny, though; a big fear with Port Magpies becoming Port Power's reserves was the idea that AFL players were going to dominate and comprise the integrity of the SANFL system. That has not eventuated.

As you've rightly pointed out, Peel's alignment with Freo has seen it rise from laughing stock to powerhouse in the WAFL. What has been the feel over west about Peel and Eagle's affiliate, East Perth, prior to getting its own team?

So far, only Peel has won flags in the WAFL, with neither the Crows nor the Magpies having won a flag in the SANFL. Thankfully it hasn't appeared to compromise those competitions too much.

Well you need to keep this in mind. The city of Mandurah or the Peel areas population is only 100,000. Not much to draw from.

But.... Having a maximum of 14 dockers listed players out of 21 peel players each week does help both clubs. Those 7 peel listed players are rotated each week.

When dockers players have injuries, then more peel guys get a shot.

Still gutted Freo didn't choose Aaron Naughton when we had the chance in that 2017 draft as he was a peel player.

 

[The Unforgiven]

Well you need to keep this in mind. The city of Mandurah or the Peel areas population is only 100,000. Not much to draw from.

But.... Having a maximum of 14 dockers listed players out of 21 peel players each week does help both clubs. Those 7 peel listed players are rotated each week.

When dockers players have injuries, then more peel guys get a shot.

Still gutted Freo didn't choose Aaron Naughton when we had the chance in that 2017 draft as he was a peel player.

100,000 isn't too bad. Geelong is only a bit over double, yet the Falcon zone is an incredibly talent-rich area. I'm sure that Peel, as a football club, has certainly helped football development in the region.

Hey, look, history is littered with "what ifs". You guys got the equal best forward from South Australia in the AFL era for his whole career, whilst the other guy in question, Tony Modra, also made a cameo for you guys at the end of his career.

As a resident of Adelaide, might I remind you just how many times over the years my Crows supporting mates rue the fact that an absolute star kid from S.A. headed west and became a football icon in W.A.

These days we just accept that in a national competition players move everywhere. Alas, back in the '90s, people over here were still coming to grips with the mass exodus of players east for the two decades which prededed it.