Opinion Port Adelaide - how do you rate our development of players

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Feb 17, 2005
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I am not disagreeing with you. Its semantics. I know, but my point is that like a number of other clubs we chose not to make it a focus. They have chosen to trade in the likes of Schulz, Dixon, Ryder over the last 10 years, while using later picks to find a smokey as backup.

My point also is that this only stands out as being an issue because Port has failed in every other facet. We have failed in management, coaches, poor game plan, poor forward structure. We have made deleterious decisions, like appointing co-captains, that have eroded the fabric of the club.

IMO this is not as big an issue as some bang on about here. Correct the other issues, and this team could have, and can become anything.
IMO it has probably been our biggest issue.
Not having been able to develop a half decent KPF has meant we had to trade top end picks that could have been used on potential top end talents for solid but not very top shelf KPFs, as in B+ to A but not A+, plus forced us to try and develop tricky dicky type game plans rather than a predictable yet simple game plan that other teams struggle to defend against.
 

Powerage

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We're not talking superstars here. A Dixon tier KPF, rather than a Warren, Buddy or Reiwoldt (either). As Butters Made Me Do It noted we are cowards. Tall forwards you are going to have more busts then successes, but to have a good chance of success you have to draft early (as we did with Marshall, for the rarity).

Our recruiters / list managers would rather get the praise for 10 successful smalls picked early, then cop potential grief for going 5 successful smalls, 2 successful talls and 3 talls that were complete busts. They are afraid of blow back on "Why did you pick that spud early! We could have had <insert successful midfielder>! You should be sacked!". That we have no direction from higher up to do these picks and you can take the inevitable failures without it being a risk to your job (unless you are grabbing a Mitch Harvey at pick #5 type situation) is yet another mark of failure by the club.

I do agree with this. Additionally, there seems to be a trend toward picking players that will have an immediate impact for their respective clubs. This skews things even more in favour of choosing small to mid-sized players. Few 18-year-olds over 193cm are going to come in and have the impact of a McGrath, or a Walsh, or Rozee etc etc.
 

Tibbs

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The Gold Coast have done a better job of developing tall forwards than Port Adelaide have since they entered the competition. Port Adelaide under Hinkley has done some absolutely unforgivable stuff when it comes to developing talls.

Marshall absolutely has the talent to be an AFL quality key forward and beyond. He'd probably already be one if he'd been drafted elsewhere, and I don't trust the current coaches to back him in during any lulls in form in 2020.
Seriously?

You dont reckon that being given the choice of the best players in the land for multiple years running might have had something to do with it? Give us the same crop of players, and never mind Coke-can Ken, Alfie the boot-studder could have matched them!
:rolleyes:
 

El_Scorcho

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Seriously?

You dont reckon that being given the choice of the best players in the land for multiple years running might have had something to do with it? Give us the same crop of players, and never mind Coke-can Ken, Alfie the boot-studder could have matched them!
:rolleyes:
You can keep making excuses for the club, or you can recognise that our tall forward development has been terrible.

Every premiership winning club in memory has had a star key forward. We can keep paying through the nose for them, or we can generate our own and get people to pay us first rounders for the excess.
 

NEGAN

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You can keep making excuses for the club, or you can recognise that our tall forward development has been terrible.

Every premiership winning club in memory has had a star key forward. We can keep paying through the nose for them, or we can generate our own and get people to pay us first rounders for the excess.
The club does have an excuse though...

We have been absolutely screwed bottoming out when we did..during GWS and gc talent pillage....

Sarge technically flourished under us even though he started elsewhere.
 
Jun 12, 2012
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The club does have an excuse though...

We have been absolutely screwed bottoming out when we did..during GWS and gc talent pillage....

Sarge technically flourished under us even though he started elsewhere.

This is bullshit.

Who would we have picked in 2011 if we had pick #2 instead? Almost definitely Wingard anyway.

Who would we have picked in 2012 if we had pick #3 instead? Probably Toumpas or Wines. Maybe Stringer, but who knows considering we had Butcher and thought he was gonna be the next big thing at the time and he seems like a massive dickhead who would’ve burned us anyway.

GC and GWS are not the root of our problems.
 

Magus

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This isn’t a video game, players don’t gain experience every match and that isn’t the only way for them to improve. I’m sure playing AFL helps a lot, but we have seen dozens and dozens of players come through and never develop despite heaps of games at AFL level.

Of course they do. Many coaches will tell you that it's not worth judging a draftee too harshly until they've reached 50 games.
 

El_Scorcho

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The club does have an excuse though...

We have been absolutely screwed bottoming out when we did..during GWS and gc talent pillage....

Sarge technically flourished under us even though he started elsewhere.
And we can be a club who gets beaten by things like this or we can be a club who overcomes.

Every club always has reasons they could have failed. Good clubs succeed despite those issues.
 

NEGAN

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This is bullshit.

Who would we have picked in 2011 if we had pick #2 instead? Almost definitely Wingard anyway.

Who would we have picked in 2012 if we had pick #3 instead? Probably Toumpas or Wines. Maybe Stringer, but who knows considering we had Butcher and thought he was gonna be the next big thing at the time and he seems like a massive dickhead who would’ve burned us anyway.

GC and GWS are not the root of our problems.
Sorry I DID NOT say it was the root of our problems

I said it was an excuse for poor development of a KPP....



You take GWS and GC out and we are the ones who get a free shot at their talent pool. Would have been nice to have someone like jcam fall into our lap.



Where were our priority picks?
 
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Sorry I DID NOT say it was the root of our problems

I said it was an excuse for poor development of a KPP....



You take GWS and GC out and we are the ones who get a free shot at their talent pool. Would have been nice to have someone like jcam fall into our lap.



Where were our priority picks?

Yeah it’s really not. Without GC and GWS there’s an extra 100 (?) players floating about between all 16 existing clubs. That’s only about 6 players per club and half of them have proven to be spuds. As for KPPs there are probably only about 5 worth getting out of bed for league wide.

So maybe we could’ve jagged a star like Jeremy Cameron, but maybe we got stuck with Sam Day instead and half our rivals got the cream of the expansion crop and we’re back to square one.

As for the priority picks that’s an AFL policy issue that had nothing to do with expansion clubs.

They’re excuses and poor ones at that.
 

NEGAN

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Yeah it’s really not. Without GC and GWS there’s an extra 100 (?) players floating about between all 16 existing clubs. That’s only about 6 players per club and half of them have proven to be spuds. As for KPPs there are probably only about 5 worth getting out of bed for league wide.

So maybe we could’ve jagged a star like Jeremy Cameron, but maybe we got stuck with Sam Day instead and half our rivals got the cream of the expansion crop and we’re back to square one.

As for the priority picks that’s an AFL policy issue that had nothing to do with expansion clubs.

They’re excuses and poor ones at that.
You may not like the excuse but it is valid ....we have had no opportunity besides butch to develop a rated kpp talent ....

We had sarge and we made him into one of the league's best. Since his retirement we are still developing Marshall and brought in Dixon both have had turmoil outside of the club's control. Hayes you could add to this list. Llahams seems to be doing ok

Billy delisted jury still out but he was drafted at 84.

It's not like we have had drafted a Patton or someone highly rated and busted them.

We also turned Doogs pick 56 into 18....on the back of pure hype rather than output
 
Jun 12, 2012
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You may not like the excuse but it is valid ....we have had no opportunity besides butch to develop a rated kpp talent ....

We had sarge and we made him into one of the league's best. Since his retirement we are still developing Marshall and brought in Dixon both have had turmoil outside of the club's control. Hayes you could add to this list. Llahams seems to be doing ok

Billy delisted jury still out but he was drafted at 84.

It's not like we have had drafted a Patton or someone highly rated and busted them.

We also turned Doogs pick 56 into 18....on the back of pure hype rather than output

No opportunity? Spare me.

2009 we picked Moore/Pittard before Talia/Carlisle/Gunston
2010 we picked Ben Jacobs before Jack Darling and Newton/Young/O’Shea before Tom McDonald
2011 we picked Nathan Blee before Tory Dickson
2012 we picked Mason Shaw (who we failed to develop) but we could’ve had Tim Membrey or Mason Wood instead
2013 we picked Mitch Havery (lol) over Ben Brown

Sure none of them are Warren Hodges but I’d take any of them over the guys we drafted (and subsequently delisted).

When it comes to KPPs opportunity knocks and we hide under the bed.
 

NEGAN

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No opportunity? Spare me.

2009 we picked Moore/Pittard before Talia/Carlisle/Gunston
2010 we picked Ben Jacobs before Jack Darling and Newton/Young/O’Shea before Tom McDonald
2011 we picked Nathan Blee before Tory Dickson
2012 we picked Mason Shaw (who we failed to develop) but we could’ve had Tim Membrey or Mason Wood instead
2013 we picked Mitch Havery (lol) over Ben Brown

Sure none of them are Warren Hodges but I’d take any of them over the guys we drafted (and subsequently delisted).

When it comes to KPPs opportunity knocks and we hide under the bed.
what are you implying here? We should draft better?

You could literally make this argument for every position on the ground.
 
Jun 12, 2012
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what are you implying here? We should draft better?

You could literally make this argument for every position on the ground.

That’s part of the equation yes strange as it may sound if you want to have good KPPs you firstly have to draft some prospects but then you also need to develop and play them. We don’t have this issue with every position on the ground but we just nabbed Wylie Buzza so clearly the KPP cupboard is pretty bare at the moment and that’s no one’s fault but our own.

We have erred by overlooking some very good key position players for nothing more than generic types and failed to
effectively develop the few guys we have selected. These are called OPPORTUNITIES. They have been there despite the expansion clubs and we have f@&ked them up while some other clubs have not.
 

El_Scorcho

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IMO, list management 101 is to sort out your spine first. Talls take longer to come on and are very expensive to add later, so invest everything in tall development and then start drafting smalls when your talls are set.

We've done that with the rucks, but our developing KPP stocks are Marshall and nothing. It's not a great position to be in.
 

Leaveit2charlie

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The Gold Coast have done a better job of developing tall forwards than Port Adelaide have since they entered the competition. Port Adelaide under Hinkley has done some absolutely unforgivable stuff when it comes to developing talls.

Marshall absolutely has the talent to be an AFL quality key forward and beyond. He'd probably already be one if he'd been drafted elsewhere, and I don't trust the current coaches to back him in during any lulls in form in 2020.

Gold Coast has had top end picks.
 

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We hope that we have done that with our rucks. Let's wait and see with fingers crossed.

We've counted chooks before and ended up with ducks.
 

Tibbs

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Weve also traded out plenty of top end picks that we could have used on talls for magic beans in Dixon and Ryder
Very easy to sit in your armchair and trot out rubbish like this ... But how about you look back at those drafts and give an actually example of a TOP END TALL PLAYER that was available, & that we could/should have drafted with the actual picks we traded for Ryder & Dixon?
 
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Just closing another shitty chapter on this shitty story.

One of my biggest criticism of the treatment of Hayes was how terribly thought out it all was though. We were left without a ruck in potential window years because we gave up all our options (Ladhams, Ryder, Frampton, etc), and didn't recruit anybody at AFL level when there were many available. We essentially put all of our eggs in the Sam Hayes basket, then just ignored him anyway, ruining our forward line by putting Finlayson in there, or running a well past it Scott Lycett in to the ground. We even went so far as to pick up Narkle over Naismith, then didn't play Narkle either. Its just been a bizarre ride.

So from a Port perspective we certainly look to be in the best position we have for a very long time ruck-wise going forward, I can't fault them on that, and we've gotten there without selling the farm. Soldo, Sweet and Visentini with Dixon as back up is a ruck division I actually trust.

Sad for Sam himself - he was probably screwed over by the club as much as anyone has been, but on the other hand he has to take some responsibility himself too. If he'd pushed himself both in training and strategically he could still have a career - he should have been doing everything to get out of Port years ago once it was clear that the head muppet was never going to back him in.

Yes, over the Hinkley era the management of our ruck stocks has been abysmal. Thus far we have not developed one single ruckman under Ken and we have relied on trading in ready made ruckmen like Ryder and Lycett. I agree that we are well stocked atm but again Soldo and Sweet are imports with Visentini our only home grown ruck prospect. The irony is that the one decent home grown ruckman we had was traded away.

Good luck to Sam Hayes, I hope he finds a new home. A couple of seasons back he burnt up the SANFL and looked to be an AFL player in the making but sadly he went backward under Ken.
 

Phar Ted

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Yes, over the Hinkley era the management of our ruck stocks has been abysmal. Thus far we have not developed one single ruckman under Ken and we have relied on trading in ready made ruckmen like Ryder and Lycett. I agree that we are well stocked atm but again Soldo and Sweet are imports with Visentini our only home grown ruck prospect. The irony is that the one decent home grown ruckman we had was traded away.

Good luck to Sam Hayes, I hope he finds a new home. A couple of seasons back he burnt up the SANFL and looked to be an AFL player in the making but sadly he went backward under Ken.
Is that to do with hinkley or the recruiters?
Hayes has shown that he has no tank, Ladhams has shown that he has no brain and multiple others have not moved on to greener pastures after their time here,
 
One of my biggest issues with our development of rucks is that when we’re moving forwards up to play in the ruck it’s always a forward who’s presence will actually be missed up there like Dixon in his prime or Finlayson. Why aren’t we taking Mitch out of the forward line to let whichever of our other key forwards stay where they’re far more useful?
(Not a dig at Mitch’s forward craft, I just think comparatively you’d be sacrificing less up forward and probably gaining more in the ruck).
But I’m the flip side, if we were convinced Billy or Sam couldn’t make it as a ruck, why didn’t we try using one of them as a forward to plug the hole if we were going to use Dixon in the ruck? It just never seems like the coaches want to actually fix one thing without ruining something else. This off-season might have tricked me in prior years but I’m not so sure they’ve fixed things this time around.
 
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Is that to do with hinkley or the recruiters?
Hayes has shown that he has no tank, Ladhams has shown that he has no brain and multiple others have not moved on to greener pastures after their time here,

Maybe they have not moved to greener pastures because of their time with Hinkely and Co? Maybe we do not pick the right players who knows the fact still remains that in 11 seasons under Hinkley we have not produced one notable player over 193 cm.
 

Phar Ted

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Maybe they have not moved to greener pastures because of their time with Hinkely and Co? Maybe we do not pick the right players who knows the fact still remains that in 11 seasons under Hinkley we have not produced one notable player over 193 cm.
Agree, the truth is we really don't know exactly where the truth lies be it hinkley, recruiting or a bit of both.
 
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