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

[Lore]

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
  Matthew Rosa

  Age

  37

  Ht

  191cm

  Wt

  84kg

  Pos.

  Mid

  Career

  Season

  Last 5

  D

  21.1

  5star

  K

  11.0

  4star

  HB

  10.1

  5star

  M

  5.0

  5star

  T

  2.7

  4star

  CL

  1.7

  4star

  No current season stats available

  D

  14.6

  4star

  K

  9.4

  4star

  HB

  5.2

  4star

  M

  4.4

  4star

  T

  1.4

  4star

  – AFL Talent & Operations Manager!

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.”​

 

[Duckworth]

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?

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..


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.

Yeah that’s all good, but usually I like some stats to back it up.

 

[blitzer]

Career games makes sense from a long term drafting evaluation point of view. No club has ever built a poor list by drafting lots of 200+ game players.

I don't think anything in particular shows up in our long term drafting except for one thing: we've had good players but we haven't hit an absolute superstar with our drafting. Even Watson only had a couple of years where he was a really elite player. We haven't had a Pendlebury type who has just been a top 20 player for years upon years or a Martin, Fyfe, Dangerfield, Ablett, Franklin etc.

Or to give a more Essendon example - we haven't had anyone the same caliber as Hird, Lloyd and Fletcher since that time despite the fact that they were drafted in the early to mid 90s. Daniher was probably the only one that seriously looked like getting there and now its looking unlikely due to injury.

 

[Maxabillions]

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?

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..


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.

Interesting stuff.

One issue with the data could be that the value of number of games played depends on the quality of the other players on the list, all of whom were drafted by the same person/team.

I wonder how it would look to compare coaches votes. Is there an easy way to find that data?

 

[Lore]

Interesting stuff.

One issue with the data could be that the value of number of games played depends on the quality of the other players on the list, all of whom were drafted by the same person/team.

I wonder how it would look to compare coaches votes. Is there an easy way to find that data?

Coaches votes are a bit of a pain in the arse actually. I've played with them a bit before, I like them better than brownlow votes or player ratings as a metric, and the players who poll well are obviously getting votes from opposition coaches, not just their own, such is their impact. It's also not as midfielder-centric as the brownlow votes and player ratings. But the way they're presented on the aflca website is not easy to scrape and there's far too much of it to enter manually :/

With the quality of the list affecting career games, you can compare clubs in the embed on this post. Most clubs have had varied fortunes over the last 14 years. Crap teams also tend to turn over their lists more often, cull deeper, and offer shorter contracts. Players also tend to leave them to get success somewhere else, even though they're still listed on the chart of the club that drafted them originally. While it might have some effect I think it's mostly swings and roundabouts..

 

[Lore]

Literally just a formula counting how many letters it took them to write down all of the honours for each player... and only for current players. But it amused me for a minute, and maybe it's not too subjective?

 

[Maxabillions]

Coaches votes are a bit of a pain in the arse actually. I've played with them a bit before, I like them better than brownlow votes or player ratings as a metric, and the players who poll well are obviously getting votes from opposition coaches, not just their own, such is their impact. It's also not as midfielder-centric as the brownlow votes and player ratings. But the way they're presented on the aflca website is not easy to scrape and there's far too much of it to enter manually :/

With the quality of the list affecting career games, you can compare clubs in the embed on this post. Most clubs have had varied fortunes over the last 14 years. Crap teams also tend to turn over their lists more often, cull deeper, and offer shorter contracts. Players also tend to leave them to get success somewhere else, even though they're still listed on the chart of the club that drafted them originally. While it might have some effect I think it's mostly swings and roundabouts..

Fair enough, good points. Probably evens out more or less.

 

[TDay]

I think we will rue the decision to knock back picks 5 and 9, even pick 9 and swan 2020 first.

We carry the risk now with him RFA next year or getting injured.

Was there anyone that we could have drafted with the Joey level of skill, potential and ability to fill a critical role for us at pick 5?
Not even close

 

[Towno78]

Interesting stuff.

One issue with the data could be that the value of number of games played depends on the quality of the other players on the list, all of whom were drafted by the same person/team.

I wonder how it would look to compare coaches votes. Is there an easy way to find that data?

Well that's just ridiculous. All that would show is that the teams who have been consistently winning lots of games of football (not us), have drafted plenty of players who have polled lots of votes.

Given this is in a draft discussion, I'd assume the only conclusion we're going to find is that the best teams have drafted better than us.

All this, when we're looking for something to justify our mediocrity.

 

[Old Campaigner]

Well that's just ridiculous. All that would show is that the teams who have been consistently winning lots of games of football (not us), have drafted plenty of players who have polled lots of votes.

Given this is in a draft discussion, I'd assume the only conclusion we're going to find is that the best teams have drafted better than us.

All this, when we're looking for something to justify our mediocrity.

There's also the question of whether we've been drafting kids with heaps of potential but failing to develop it, vs clubs that maybe aren't picking the greatest kids but they're able to get more out of them through better coaching.

 

[Lore]

Well that's just ridiculous. All that would show is that the teams who have been consistently winning lots of games of football (not us), have drafted plenty of players who have polled lots of votes.

Given this is in a draft discussion, I'd assume the only conclusion we're going to find is that the best teams have drafted better than us.

All this, when we're looking for something to justify our mediocrity.

The main issue is that we only have the 2018 and 2019 votes available, and that between 5-10 players get votes each game. If you only have 5-10 good players, they're going to poll much better than a team that has a more even contribution.

So it's actually more likely to be the opposite, good players in s**t teams will look better than good players in good teams. Midfielders that carry middle ranking or low ranking teams seem to do better on the coaches votes, similar to the brownlow.

 

[Lore]

The main issue is that we only have the 2018 and 2019 votes available, and that between 5-10 players get votes each game. If you only have 5-10 good players, they're going to poll much better than a team that has a more even contribution.

So it's actually more likely to be the opposite, good players in s**t teams will look better than good players in good teams. Midfielders that carry middle ranking or low ranking teams seem to do better on the coaches votes, similar to the brownlow.

View attachment 771411

As an aside, teams that are forever drafting mids would also be more likely to look good by this metric... lol.

 

[Towno78]

The main issue is that we only have the 2018 and 2019 votes available, and that between 5-10 players get votes each game. If you only have 5-10 good players, they're going to poll much better than a team that has a more even contribution.

So it's actually more likely to be the opposite, good players in s**t teams will look better than good players in good teams. Midfielders that carry middle ranking or low ranking teams seem to do better on the coaches votes, similar to the brownlow.

View attachment 771411

But the winning teams as a whole will poll more votes and have more votes to spread amongst their players.
In any case, my post was a complete piss-take and not deserving of a considered response...

 

[Lore]

But the winning teams as a whole will poll more votes and have more votes to spread amongst their players.
In any case, my post was a complete piss-take and not deserving of a considered response...

I think I knew that and then forgot started replying on one device earlier and then came back to it now on the other without re-reading the quote. I have had the longest week

At any rate it was a discussion point earlier and I've actually checked now I definitely can't get the stats or do anything with it even if I wanted to, so I guess the post still has some value.

The split seems to be fairly even in close games, like 14-16 or 13-17 or something. A 6+ goal loss is more likely to be lopsided in the vote count.

 

[owen87]

I’d say Lore’s original measure of games played is a reasonable enough assessment of the various clubs drafting.

Generally better players play more games, it’s only at the absolute pointy end where you start arguing over whether one 200 game player is better than another.

What it does show is that our drafting isn’t overly terrible in terms of identifying players with AFL traits that are able to play to the expected level of where they’re taken.

So is it more a matter of not drafting to fill needs where two similarly rated players are available, and less about actually identifying talent?

 

[Here_we_come]

Better players play more games. But mexabillions’ point was that it’s easier to reach more games if you’re in a poor team - which is a very good point. Thus, while the analysis of games played is interesting, it is not very meaningful because results are skewed depending on the quality of each draftee’s peers.

I mean, does anyone actually believe players like Myers would have reached anywhere near as many games had he been drafted by Collingwood, hawthorn, or Geelong over the last decade?

 

[Lore]

Better players play more games. But mexabillions’ point was that it’s easier to reach more games if you’re in a poor team - which is a very good point. Thus, while the analysis of games played is interesting, it is not very meaningful because results are skewed depending on the quality of each draftee’s peers.

I mean, does anyone actually believe players like Myers would have reached anywhere near as many games had he been drafted by Collingwood, hawthorn, or Geelong over the last decade?

David Myers may not have played 123 games in the teams you named, but he probably still would have played at least 100 games over his career, probably at multiple clubs. It's not exactly a huge number.

What it is, however, is a solid number of games for pick 6 in the draft. I'd take that over 35 games from a highly talented pick 2 any day.

 

[Here_we_come]

David Myers may not have played 123 games in the teams you named,
It's not exactly a huge number.

What it is, however, is a solid number of games for pick 6 in the draft. I'd take that over 35 games from a highly talented pick 2 any day.

David Myers may not have played 123 games in the teams you named, but he probably still would have played at least 100 games over his career, probably at multiple clubs. It's not exactly a huge number.

What it is, however, is a solid number of games for pick 6 in the draft. I'd take that over 35 games from a highly talented pick 2 any day.

Maybe we’ll have to agree to disagree, but should 100 very average games for even a single club be considered a successful high first round draft pick? Let alone multiple clubs? I’d actually be annoyed if the club viewed that as a successful pick. I’d be interested to see how many of the 123 games were in the single figures for possessions.

 

[Here_we_come]

Oops, sorry for the double quote. I’m doing this on my phone.

 

[GUMBLETRON]

I mean, does anyone actually believe players like Myers would have reached anywhere near as many games had he been drafted by Collingwood, hawthorn, or Geelong over the last decade?

He probably wouldn't have crippled his career by repeatedly shredding his hamstrings early on and knocked out a fair few more.

 

[GUMBLETRON]

I read a good analysis a few years back pointing out how historically-crap clubs had fewer F/S prospects coming through because they churned through players trying to get good and as such didn't get enough to 100 games.

I can't find it now but if that holds it's a sound counter-argument.

 

[eth-dog]

Maybe we’ll have to agree to disagree, but should 100 very average games for even a single club be considered a successful high first round draft pick? Let alone multiple clubs? I’d actually be annoyed if the club viewed that as a successful pick. I’d be interested to see how many of the 123 games were in the single figures for possessions.

9, at least 2 of which were as the sub, and another 3 were in games where he got injured early on due to lack of gametime and extended time out.

 

[boncer34]

9, at least 2 of which were as the sub, and another 3 were in games where he got injured early on due to lack of gametime and extended time out.

That's interesting. I read somewhere over half his games were sub 20 touches at the start of the year.

He had a massive amount in the 10 - 20 range going by that. Pretty much mediocre for a midfielder.

 

[Lore]

Maybe we’ll have to agree to disagree, but should 100 very average games for even a single club be considered a successful high first round draft pick? Let alone multiple clubs? I’d actually be annoyed if the club viewed that as a successful pick. I’d be interested to see how many of the 123 games were in the single figures for possessions.

It's not so much agree to disagree, it's more that you've misrepresented the point that I was making with the career games and then started carving chunks out of it over one player who played a very average number of games for a top 10 pick, in an average sort of way, with average sort of stats resulting in mostly average sort of opinions about his performances. I'd give it a pass, but it's not magna cum laude in the drafting stakes, and to my knowledge no one has ever claimed that it was. It's also a pretty minor thing to get hung up about when you're looking at 734 draftees over a period of ten years.

Imo if we're doing something like league average then on a scale of 1 to "sack dodo" we'd be closer to "this draft strategy needs tweaking in a couple of key areas". David Myers, notwithstanding.

I read a good analysis a few years back pointing out how historically-crap clubs had fewer F/S prospects coming through because they churned through players trying to get good and as such didn't get enough to 100 games.

I can't find it now but if that holds it's a sound counter-argument.

Makes sense. Would also lead to entrenched inequality if the number and quality of father-sons is in any way significant. One in a blue moon isn't going to tank the equalisation policy but 3-4 solid players going to the same clubs every year would certainly make you wonder.

It's one of the interesting things about northern academies – I don't begrudge them having academies generally or increasing the pool of available talent, but we're currently in that awkward teenage growth stage where it's successful enough on the one hand to give them a great advantage in the draft every year (and a 20% increase in draft capital as a result), but not quite successful enough yet to overflow and increase the quality of players available to any of the other clubs in the competition.

A the current stage all it's really achieved on a competition level is counteract the drain on available resources that comes with adding additional teams when the talent pool wasn't really there to support it.

 

[Here_we_come]

I wasn’t trying to misrepresent your point or get hung up on Myers for that matter. I was merely using him as an example of why you can’t just take quantity of games as an indication of success.

 

[yodellinhank]

Are we any good at drafting, we drafted david myers. We're no good. Game set and match.

Shoulda picked Rioli.