Footy Dept. Soon to be ex-GM - List & Recruiting Adrian Dodoro #putoutyourjackets

Cliff notes:
  • Stepping back from his current senior role following the 2023 AFL Draft
  • Transition plan, raised the possibility with Vozzo in April
  • Replacement is Matt Rosa, whose thread is here: Welcome to Essendon Matthew Rosa – AFL Talent & Operations Manager!
Full text from media release said:
To coincide with this announcement, the Club’s General Manager of List and Recruiting, Adrian Dodoro, has made the decision to take a step back from his current senior role following this year’s NAB AFL National Draft. He will lead the Club through the upcoming 2023 Trade and Draft period in his current position prior to transitioning to and assisting Matt Rosa moving forward.
Dodoro, an Essendon Life Member, has played a significant role at the Bombers over nearly three decades and said the time was right to take a step back.
“I approached Craig back in April to discuss the concept of transition and I feel that now is the right time to make this decision,” Dodoro said.
"I sat on the panel to assist in the selection of Matt, and I believe he will be an outstanding acquisition to the Club for years to come. I look forward to working with Matt moving forward.
“These roles are very taxing on individuals and their families and it just feels like that. After nearly three decades and with stability in key roles at the Club, now is the right time for me to take a step back in to a role which will provide me and my family with a better work life balance.
“More immediately, we have an important few months coming up and I’m looking forward to playing my part to deliver a strong Trade and Draft period for the Club to ensure that the playing list is in a strong position for the future.”
Essendon CEO Craig Vozzo acknowledged the significant impact Dodoro has made at the Club since joining in a full-time role in 1998.
“Adrian is a highly respected Life Member of the Essendon Football Club and has made an enormous contribution to the Club and the wider AFL industry during his time in football, including assisting to navigate the Club through unprecedented and challenging periods,” Vozzo said.
“Throughout his time at the Bombers, Adrian’s commitment and passion to take the Club forward in its list management and recruiting, has been unquestionable. Some of the Champions of Essendon have been identified and selected by Adrian, and we will always be grateful for the important and enduring role he has played.
“On behalf of the entire Club, we would like to acknowledge Adrian’s selfless decision and we look forward to his ongoing contribution to the Club.
“Adrian will work with Matt to ensure a smooth hand-over and a successful transition of responsibilities.”
 
Jul 23, 2018
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Go and look at all of the unavailable Magpies late in the year.

The Giants.

Richmond had half a team with 10 weeks to go and had a good run from there.

Brisbane's year is an outlier and so you want to be an outlier too.

In any given year a club essentially has no control over injuries to that extent.
GWS were missing 2 gun midfielders for most of the year but luckily for them, they used all of their draft concessions to advantage and built unbelievable depth in their midfield. Look what happened when Phil Davis went into the grand final underdone. Richmond, the team with only 1 player missing from their best 22, on the back of a 10 week injury free run, destroyed them. If GWS were missing Cameron, Himmelberg, Greene, Phil Davis and Nick Haynes as well as Ward and Coniglio, you'd have to wonder whether they wouldve even made it. Collingwood were missing De goey only in the prelim. Possibly they wouldve played mason cox. So maybe 2 best 22 players. We had Daniher, Stewart (not guaranteed best 22), Fantasia unable to run, Smith, Zaharakis, Heppell, Hooker and Hurley all injured. Our injuries were the worst of all finals teams, and considering our depth is nowhere near GWS or Collingwood due to our aftersaga rebuild, our injuries hurt the most. I realise you cant control them, you need a degree of luck. Id just like to see us get some luck with this group so we can actually see what its capabilities are.
 
Assuming we actually act on those plans and don't just take the view that he'll fall back in love with the club because we're Essendon.
Not because we're Essendon, because WE ARE ESSENDON!
 
Oct 22, 2008
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GWS were missing 2 gun midfielders for most of the year but luckily for them, they used all of their draft concessions to advantage and built unbelievable depth in their midfield. Look what happened when Phil Davis went into the grand final underdone. Richmond, the team with only 1 player missing from their best 22, on the back of a 10 week injury free run, destroyed them. If GWS were missing Cameron, Himmelberg, Greene, Phil Davis and Nick Haynes as well as Ward and Coniglio, you'd have to wonder whether they wouldve even made it. Collingwood were missing De goey only in the prelim. Possibly they wouldve played mason cox. So maybe 2 best 22 players. We had Daniher, Stewart (not guaranteed best 22), Fantasia unable to run, Smith, Zaharakis, Heppell, Hooker and Hurley all injured. Our injuries were the worst of all finals teams, and considering our depth is nowhere near GWS or Collingwood due to our aftersaga rebuild, our injuries hurt the most. I realise you cant control them, you need a degree of luck. Id just like to see us get some luck with this group so we can actually see what its capabilities are.
Luck is when opportunity meets with preparation.
 

Mikevk123

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I’ve made a small list of players we should look at with our draft picks I think we are taking four picks into the draft.

31
Mitch Georgiades Key Fwd
Jay Rantall Inside Midfielder
Darcy Chirgwin Inside Midfielder

33
Charlie Comben Key Fwd/Ruck
Thomson Dow Inside Midfielder

61
Cooper Sharman Key Fwd
Daniel Mott Outside Midfielder
Jake Pasini Key Defender

64
Chad Warner Inside Midfielder
Dyson Hilder Key Defender
Josh Honey Small Forward
 
31
Mitch Georgiades Key Fwd

33
Charlie Comben Key Fwd/Ruck

61
Jake Pasini Key Defender

64
Josh Honey Small Forward

That's what I would do based on those names.
 

Mikevk123

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31
Mitch Georgiades Key Fwd

33
Charlie Comben Key Fwd/Ruck

61
Jake Pasini Key Defender

64
Josh Honey Small Forward

That's what I would do based on those names.
I like it but we do need an Inside Midfielder. Wouldn’t mind Comben/Rantall that would be a win
 
Apr 26, 2007
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15x defenders (5x KD Hooker, Hurley, Ambrose, BZT, Hartley, 4x MD Ridley, Redman, Francis. ? , 6x SD Saad, McKenna, Gleeson)
20x midfielders/rucks (10x IM Heppell, Clarke, Shiel, Parish, McGrath, Guelfi, 6x OM Merrett, Zaka, Smith, Mutch, Ham, Cutler , 4x rucks TBC, Phillips, Draper)
10x forwards (5x KF Daniher, Stringer, McKernan, Gown, Stewart, 2x MF Langford, Laverde, Begley, Brown, 3x SF Fantasia, Tippa, Snelling, Mosquito)

obvious where we need to focus the drafting.
Yep, that’s a very average midfield by best practice standards.
 

Here_we_come

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Richmond and WCE are two of the better modern teams. Hawks the standard of the modern game.
Each have/had excellent spines. AA quality imo

If you played the game on paper, we'd have a better midfield than most of those sides.
Put the team on the park and its a vastly different story.

You don't draft effort, intensity or hunger. It's instilled in a group.

I don’t agree. I think our midfield is very average and lacks real inside grunt. It has also been average to below average for almost 20 years now.

Those teams you mention had good spines. But they also had excellent midfields, hence their success.
 
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Richmond and WCE are two of the better modern teams. Hawks the standard of the modern game.
Each have/had excellent spines. AA quality imo

If you played the game on paper, we'd have a better midfield than most of those sides.
Put the team on the park and its a vastly different story.

You don't draft effort, intensity or hunger. It's instilled in a group.
Have you watched much West Coast? This is a strange misconception that crops up surprisingly often.

Shuey, Yeo and Gaff are all better individually then any midfielder Essendon can wheel out, plus a very competent second string in Redden, Sheed and Duggan. Oh, and Tim Kelly now.
 
Apr 26, 2007
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If you played the game on paper, we'd have a better midfield than most of those sides.
Put the team on the park and its a vastly different story.
I don’t really understand this. How if you put them on paper does it make them better than the opposition than when they actually play?

I’d have Essendon’s midfield about 12th-13th in the league with Carlton coming up from behind us and nearly overtaking us and Sydney arguably still better than ours “on paper”.

Saints, Kangas and Suns clearly below us.
 
Have you watched much West Coast? This is a strange misconception that crops up surprisingly often.

Shuey, Yeo and Gaff are all better individually then any midfielder Essendon can wheel out, plus a very competent second string in Redden, Sheed and Duggan. Oh, and Tim Kelly now.
West Coast have the best midfield in the AFL for me.
 
We keep talking about our history in the draft, so I thought I'd do a bit of research...

Green = more than average games for that pick
Red = less than average games for that pick
White = Exactly average or not judged because they're young and still playing
Bold/asterisk = Current players



When all draftees are mapped onto a graph, it looks like this:
Screen Shot 2019-10-27 at 3.20.48 pm.png

Some obvious things we already knew, like first round draftees typically play at least 20 games, later round picks are less likely to play a lot of games, etc.

Bit busy though so if we cut back to just 2006-2015 (which covers nearly all of the established current AFL players over a ten year period):
Screen Shot 2019-10-27 at 3.39.07 pm.png


Shiel isn't on there as he was a 17 year old mini-draft selection for GWS and therefore wasn't in the National draft. Also doesn't include upgraded rookies (e.g. Ambrose, Walla), Irish players (McKenna), alt talent (Lavender), or pre-season, rookie or mid-season draftees (Bellchambers, Draper, Snelling).

The main failures there in the first couple of rounds are probably Gumbleton, Hislop, Kavanagh, Pears, J.Merrett, Steinberg, Ashby, Morgan, A.Long. A lot of those are due to injuries, but a couple just didn't make it.


All of the current AFL players drafted by Essendon fall into the areas marked below.
current players.png

The vast majority clearly fall into the area on the left. After pick 30 we don't have a lot of success, other than a weird bump around pick 50 where we've found a few gems. 30-50 is not a good place for us to take a pick, our strategy is probably bad in this part of the draft, taking on too much risk, or perhaps not enough? :shrug:

It is also worth noting the effects of the saga on this data: Draft sanctions in 2013 and 2014, a number of players with lower career games tallies due to the suspensions, and possibly related injuries, mental health which may have caused them to miss more games than otherwise.

The marked picks also have a significant fail rate of more than 40% (defined as delisted after less than 50 career games):
40% fail.png

There's at least one error on there where I've marked a pick that I shouldn't have, that one only had a 33% fail rate.. :eyes:


Basically on these statistics our drafting isn't that bad. We're typically above the historical average for career games at each pick in the first 30 picks or so, but below average for career games after that. Other clubs tend to do better than us in the 30-50 range particularly, the only players of any note that we have drafted in that range are Alwyn Davey and Bachar Houli. If Redman keeps going the way he might be the third. Since 2016 our 30-50 picks have been Begley, Mutch, Houlahan, Mosquito.


I wonder if the list balance issue that we're noticing might also be related to taking best available earlier in the draft, while later in the draft we pick for needs. Basically the better draftees play in a complete lottery of positions, and the players who play in positions we really need are less likely to be good players..?


How many first round picks do you need to use in the draft in order to get a player like Dylan Shiel? Or like Fyfe, Dangerfield, Martin...? Perhaps the problem here is going to the draft at all. :think:
 
We keep talking about our history in the draft, so I thought I'd do a bit of research...

Green = more than average games for that pick
Red = less than average games for that pick
White = Exactly average or not judged because they're young and still playing
Bold/asterisk = Current players



When all draftees are mapped onto a graph, it looks like this:View attachment 770913
Some obvious things we already knew, like first round draftees typically play at least 20 games, later round picks are less likely to play a lot of games, etc.

Bit busy though so if we cut back to just 2006-2015 (which covers nearly all of the established current AFL players over a ten year period):
View attachment 770926

Shiel isn't on there as he was a 17 year old mini-draft selection for GWS and therefore wasn't in the National draft. Also doesn't include upgraded rookies (e.g. Ambrose, Walla), Irish players (McKenna), alt talent (Lavender), or pre-season, rookie or mid-season draftees (Bellchambers, Draper, Snelling).

The main failures there in the first couple of rounds are probably Gumbleton, Hislop, Kavanagh, Pears, J.Merrett, Steinberg, Ashby, Morgan, A.Long. A lot of those are due to injuries, but a couple just didn't make it.


All of the current AFL players drafted by Essendon fall into the areas marked below.
View attachment 770928
The vast majority clearly fall into the area on the left. After pick 30 we don't have a lot of success, other than a weird bump around pick 50 where we've found a few gems. 30-50 is not a good place for us to take a pick, our strategy is probably bad in this part of the draft, taking on too much risk, or perhaps not enough? :shrug:

It is also worth noting the effects of the saga on this data: Draft sanctions in 2013 and 2014, a number of players with lower career games tallies due to the suspensions, and possibly related injuries, mental health which may have caused them to miss more games than otherwise.

The marked picks also have a significant fail rate of more than 40% (defined as delisted after less than 50 career games):
View attachment 770925
There's at least one error on there where I've marked a pick that I shouldn't have, that one only had a 33% fail rate.. :eyes:


Basically on these statistics our drafting isn't that bad. We're typically above the historical average for career games at each pick in the first 30 picks or so, but below average for career games after that. Other clubs tend to do better than us in the 30-50 range particularly, the only players of any note that we have drafted in that range are Alwyn Davey and Bachar Houli. If Redman keeps going the way he might be the third. Since 2016 our 30-50 picks have been Begley, Mutch, Houlahan, Mosquito.


I wonder if the list balance issue that we're noticing might also be related to taking best available earlier in the draft, while later in the draft we pick for needs. Basically the better draftees play in a complete lottery of positions, and the players who play in positions we really need are less likely to be good players..?


How many first round picks do you need to use in the draft in order to get a player like Dylan Shiel? Or like Fyfe, Dangerfield, Martin...? Perhaps the problem here is going to the draft at all. :think:

Haters are going to hate.

I'd go one step further and represent the games played by the player in comparison to others in the same draft year. The Elliot Kavanagh year in particular sticks out as a stinky one.

Injuries need to be considered too.

All in all I'd say not too shabby and would also love to see how other clubs stack up for comparison.
 

DapperJong

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Haters are going to hate.

I'd go one step further and represent the games played by the player in comparison to others in the same draft year. The Elliot Kavanagh year in particular sticks out as a stinky one.

Injuries need to be considered too.

All in all I'd say not too shabby and would also love to see how other clubs stack up for comparison.



This is still my favourite gif.

Here's the clubs from 2006-2015. I realised halfway through that I've mislabeled the "Current X players" data set, it should be "Current players drafted by X" (e.g. it includes players that have been traded out of the club that are still playing when it shouldn't), but yeah.


This is 2011 compared to all other years:
Screen Shot 2019-10-27 at 6.53.30 pm.png
 


This is still my favourite gif.

Here's the clubs from 2006-2015. I realised halfway through that I've mislabeled the "Current X players" data set, it should be "Current players drafted by X" (e.g. it includes players that have been traded out of the club that are still playing when it shouldn't), but yeah.


This is 2011 compared to all other years:
View attachment 771017

Is it possible to rank the clubs? May not even be possible.
 

Liberator

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We keep talking about our history in the draft, so I thought I'd do a bit of research...

Green = more than average games for that pick
Red = less than average games for that pick
White = Exactly average or not judged because they're young and still playing
Bold/asterisk = Current players



When all draftees are mapped onto a graph, it looks like this:View attachment 770913
Some obvious things we already knew, like first round draftees typically play at least 20 games, later round picks are less likely to play a lot of games, etc.

Bit busy though so if we cut back to just 2006-2015 (which covers nearly all of the established current AFL players over a ten year period):
View attachment 770926

Shiel isn't on there as he was a 17 year old mini-draft selection for GWS and therefore wasn't in the National draft. Also doesn't include upgraded rookies (e.g. Ambrose, Walla), Irish players (McKenna), alt talent (Lavender), or pre-season, rookie or mid-season draftees (Bellchambers, Draper, Snelling).

The main failures there in the first couple of rounds are probably Gumbleton, Hislop, Kavanagh, Pears, J.Merrett, Steinberg, Ashby, Morgan, A.Long. A lot of those are due to injuries, but a couple just didn't make it.


All of the current AFL players drafted by Essendon fall into the areas marked below.
View attachment 770928
The vast majority clearly fall into the area on the left. After pick 30 we don't have a lot of success, other than a weird bump around pick 50 where we've found a few gems. 30-50 is not a good place for us to take a pick, our strategy is probably bad in this part of the draft, taking on too much risk, or perhaps not enough? :shrug:

It is also worth noting the effects of the saga on this data: Draft sanctions in 2013 and 2014, a number of players with lower career games tallies due to the suspensions, and possibly related injuries, mental health which may have caused them to miss more games than otherwise.

The marked picks also have a significant fail rate of more than 40% (defined as delisted after less than 50 career games):
View attachment 770925
There's at least one error on there where I've marked a pick that I shouldn't have, that one only had a 33% fail rate.. :eyes:


Basically on these statistics our drafting isn't that bad. We're typically above the historical average for career games at each pick in the first 30 picks or so, but below average for career games after that. Other clubs tend to do better than us in the 30-50 range particularly, the only players of any note that we have drafted in that range are Alwyn Davey and Bachar Houli. If Redman keeps going the way he might be the third. Since 2016 our 30-50 picks have been Begley, Mutch, Houlahan, Mosquito.


I wonder if the list balance issue that we're noticing might also be related to taking best available earlier in the draft, while later in the draft we pick for needs. Basically the better draftees play in a complete lottery of positions, and the players who play in positions we really need are less likely to be good players..?


How many first round picks do you need to use in the draft in order to get a player like Dylan Shiel? Or like Fyfe, Dangerfield, Martin...? Perhaps the problem here is going to the draft at all. :think:

Think there’s a problem with average games played for pick 5 (see Hurley v Parish)...
Also, amazing work.
 
All good to say player a, b, c have played x amount of games. Forget the quality of said amount of games.
Well if you could could quickly go and rate every game of every player drafted in the last 15 years so we can get the subjective set of data you're after
 
Think there’s a problem with average games played for pick 5 (see Hurley v Parish)...
Also, amazing work.
Average games for pick 5 is 119 so Parish's should say -43 and his row should be white, not green 🤣 Good thing you checked because I didn't.
 
All good to say player a, b, c have played x amount of games. Forget the quality of said amount of games.
I thought about that. I concluded that someone who played 200 games was probably doing something right and someone who played 70 games of a higher standard than the 200 game player might've been a better player for a couple of seasons but not necessarily the best way to use a draft pick.

Personally I'm not sure that relying on brownlow votes, AAs or rising star nominations would have the desired effect, so I stuck to career games.
 
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