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Roast Francis Jackson

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I've always thought of fj at the back of the room when reviewing the u18 tapes being like the CiA ops in the spy movies , wait, what was that , pan the vision in , sharpen it up and you see the impossible handball out of the pack that everyone else missed. the rest of the room just look back at fj shaking their collective heads, how do you do it man.
 
mopsy said:
Hmm not quite right.

Miller bought in FJ as a part timer in 2005 it then meant we had both Miller and FJ doing the job on a part time basis.
At the end of 2005 FJ was made head of recruiting for 2006 and it was widely reported that the full time appointment was made on the back of his sterling work in 2005.
He was very much involved in the 2005 draft and i know for a fact that Millers preference in that draft was Travis Varcoe but conceded to Jackson on the
J-O-N pick on the day.
How do i know well that came from a member who was on the table on the day.

As for FJ and how well he has done over what 13 yrs well the truth is we had not won a final until this yr and Jacksons strike rate in the ND would be barely over 1 a yr for his time in charge that is 05 - 14.

Anyone who is trying to say FJ was a good recruiter is rewriting history. We won a premiership despite the awful efforts of FJ over a very long period of time.
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Even if that was true re 2005 draft, he was doing it part-time, solo. Nobody could draft well in those conditions. Richmond were in millions of dollars of debt and didn't start investing in recruiting until 2009...
 

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One of those 'Im sorry baby, i didnt mean it' times. Ive been critical of Jackson in the past im sure but as the story comes out it seems he was pretty limited with resources at times. A great servant to the club and well deserved life membership.

Also reckon the move from head of recruiting to back to basic recruiter has helped bring out his strengths.

Well done FJ :thumbsu:
 
Wacky Tiger said:
One of those 'Im sorry baby, i didnt mean it' times. Ive been critical of Jackson in the past im sure but as the story comes out it seems he was pretty limited with resources at times. A great servant to the club and well deserved life membership.

Also reckon the move from head of recruiting to back to basic recruiter has helped bring out his strengths.

Well done FJ :thumbsu:
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I think with Francis, effort could never be questioned and obviously he is here for the club so well earned :thumbsu:

Its a bit like Ben Griffiths, either way we ended up with a couple of premierships and directly indirectly he helped us get there and he did pick a number of players recruitment wise that got us over the line so good stuff!! :thumbsu:
 
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Please remember that the draft is a junior speculative auction and no one will understand why juniors don't make it in the seniors. Just the way it is and ALL head drafters have their fair share of duds. Clark has been around for a long time, so a lot of those mistakes were his as well. It is also dependant on the budget you have to use as well. If you had said Jackson selections were part of 2 flags I would have said your drunk. But alas...………….
 

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THE_GUN said:
Whilst its all fluffy nowdays i still dont and have never rated francis jackson

way too many glaring mistakes

Tambling , Fiora , Conca , Lennon

Happy with Matthew Clarke at the helm now
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two of those weren’t even FJ 🤦🏻‍♂️
 
Ok going to bring this thread to the top because it is topical and I think we are in a position to start doing some objective work in rating the recruiting haul of Francis Jackson. I have made a couple of posts about it off topic on other threads and I think it is worth bringing those and some other posts across to here.

Mick Warner has just done his top 20 Tigers from 1987 - and 7 of the top 13 were recruited by Jackson in effectively his first 6 draft periods.

Some posters on this thread have tended to focus on his misses, but is that even the right way to judge a recruiter? While we have some downtime, let’s get this discussion going properly on the thread where it belongs. More to follow....
 
Cut from an early post on thread - listing of some later round picks....
Good strike rate IMO

Sam Lloyd - a bees dick away from being a premiership player in 2017
Oleg Markov - back-up
Jayden Short - premiership player
Jason Castagna - 2 x premiership player
Kane Lambert - 2 x premiership player
 

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Until I read all of the information posted in the Chris Scott thread, I hadn't given too much thought about whether FJ was a failure, pass or success taking in his whole career with The Tiges - and what he had to work with in the early days. It is now very apparent to me that he is a strong success in what he has done for the club, both in his very under-resourced early fays and then the vital part he played in putting together a team that has won 2 out of 3 and is still one of the dominant teams.
 
Roachy8 said:
Cut from an early post on thread - listing of some later round picks....
Good strike rate IMO

Sam Lloyd - a bees dick away from being a premiership player in 2017
Oleg Markov - back-up
Jayden Short - premiership player
Jason Castagna - 2 x premiership player
Kane Lambert - 2 x premiership player
Click to expand...

First about Jackson and my impressions of him and his role at Tigerland.

My first memories of Francis Jackson are as a 6-7 year old Richmond supporter realising we had two Francises on the list. This especially caught my attention as the name Francis/es is(sadly) prevalent in our family, including getting at least three mentions on my birth certificate.

At some point along the way I recall realising the other Francis was the superior player, but, maybe judging by radio commentator statements to the effect in matches Francis Jackson played in, I remember thinking he warranted more senior games than he could command at Tigerland. He was traded out along with Brian “Whale" Roberts and Graham Teasedale and plenty of doh ray mi in order to extract John Pitura out of South Melbourne. Jackson went on to play a hundred games at Swans and was a decent enough player. He polled 11 Brownlow votes one year, though I am unsure if that was under the two umpire voting system( two sets of 3-2-1 votes per match) that prevailed for a year or two in the late 70’s or the one umpire/one set of votes system that has otherwise been in force. As a former Tiger I always had a soft spot for him, he seemed a disciplined, intelligent player who certainly might have been handy at Tigerland in the late 70’s and early 80’s.

My loose impressions of him as a recruiter is that he has done a very reasonable job. For every apparent failure we can point to an apparent success and vice versa. He clearly spent a lot of his time as a recruiter under-resourced relative to other clubs. There have been incredible purple patches and some flat spots in his years in charge, but ultimately, on balance, my perception is he has done well. And the club has recognised this by retaining him. It could well be he is a better recruiter than manager, and perhaps this was one of the reasons for his retention and demotion in the big restructure in 2016.

I will list some facts as best I could scout. I would appreciate any assistance with this if people can add or correct anything.

- Francis Jackson was appointed to a part time recruitment role in 2005 and participated in the draft of that year. Football Manager/Director? at the time, Greg Miller, was effectively the chief recruiting decision maker in the 2005 draft?

- Francis Jackson is appointed full time as recruiting manager in 2006, presumably in plenty of time to take charge of the decision making during the 2006 drafts?

- In the years 2006-2008 Jackson was effectively the recruiting department, albeit at least he was full time.

- In 2009 the decision was taken to cut money from player payments to fund two extra full time recruiters. Current(from Nov 2016 onwards) Recruiting Manager Matthew Clarke was one of those. Richard Taylor the other? All of Jackson, Clarke and Taylor remain at the club.

- At the end of 2013, for the 2014 season, a "talent scout" was added to further bolster the recruiting department, Luke Williams. I think he is now a recruiting officer equivalent to Jackson and Taylor?

- Therefore the drafts for which Jackson should be correctly considered to have been in charge, and for which he can be held chiefly responsible were 2006-2016 inclusive. 11 Drafts.

Open to correction on any of this above, but I think the time line for Jackson looks like this by draft:

2005 - one out part time recruiter in a totally under-resourced football department, effectively second in charge of recruiting behind Miller

2006 - 2008 inclusive - One out full time recruiter/Recruiting Manager, one man department, in charge of recruiting.

2009-2016 - Recruiting Manager of an ever better resourced department, but still not recognised as being resourced above average for AFL.

2017 - ongoing - Recruiting Officer after restructure, including specialising to some extent in future drafts. Report from 2017 I found said Tigers had Recruiting Manager, three Recruiting Officers and 10 part-time scouts!

So I will post this for now to allow for corrections before moving on to look further at our/Jackson’s recruiting performance in subsequent posts.
 
Meteoric Rise said:
Ok going to bring this thread to the top because it is topical and I think we are in a position to start doing some objective work in rating the recruiting haul of Francis Jackson. I have made a couple of posts about it off topic on other threads and I think it is worth bringing those and some other posts across to here.

Mick Warner has just done his top 20 Tigers from 1987 - and 7 of the top 13 were recruited by Jackson in effectively his first 6 draft periods.

Some posters on this thread have tended to focus on his misses, but is that even the right way to judge a recruiter? While we have some downtime, let’s get this discussion going properly on the thread where it belongs. More to follow....
Click to expand...

I think you're getting FJ mixed up with Brad Miller.
 
After reading through this thread.....

I think we need a full Ernst And Young review of our Bigfooty Department. :eek:

We had people not only sacking Jackson, but Hartley, Hardwick and....

People claiming that posters here had better judgement than Jackson, whilst one poster rated Shane Edwards a C Grader in 2016 and not one person questioned this!

I am saying this with the benefit of hindsight of course, but Edwards has just been rated number 7 in Mick Warner’s list of top 20 Tigers for the last 33 years, and again, nobody seems to be arguing. So this is one vote for Jackson. He saw something 10 years in advance that nobody on here seemed to be able to see three years in advance.

I will finish reading the thread after taking the air. Then hoping to set about doing some objective analysis and comparisons of Jackson’s work.
 
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I remember him as a player , and the thing that seemed to stick was "very honest" hard working

roll forward a few decades
I had a few phone calls with FJ
I would pass on notes about junior players
He said they happily took on all intel and put into a data base when Nationals have an extra look at names they already had on file
Then at a wedding in northern NSW meet a guy ripping it up in the seniors and was looking to take the next step
Rang FJ and asked how should he go about it
and he said compile a one page resume and get a dvd of some playing highlights and go around the VFL clubs especially the non aligned VFL clubs

I passed it on and he did get a few runs with Geelong and then they pointed him towards a feeder club and I lost contact.

but was good advice from FJ and he seemed very approachable and in the part of the game I reckon you'd need good networks
and I'd go back to my first line and why a good admin department has kept him on all these years
honest and hard working and must be good behind the scenes

he's part of a dynasty now
 
Meteoric Rise said:
First about Jackson and my impressions of him and his role at Tigerland.

My first memories of Francis Jackson are as a 6-7 year old Richmond supporter realising we had two Francises on the list. This especially caught my attention as the name Francis/es is(sadly) prevalent in our family, including getting at least three mentions on my birth certificate.

At some point along the way I recall realising the other Francis was the superior player, but, maybe judging by radio commentator statements to the effect in matches Francis Jackson played in, I remember thinking he warranted more senior games than he could command at Tigerland. He was traded out along with Brian “Whale" Roberts and Graham Teasedale and plenty of doh ray mi in order to extract John Pitura out of South Melbourne. Jackson went on to play a hundred games at Swans and was a decent enough player. He polled 11 Brownlow votes one year, though I am unsure if that was under the two umpire voting system( two sets of 3-2-1 votes per match) that prevailed for a year or two in the late 70’s or the one umpire/one set of votes system that has otherwise been in force. As a former Tiger I always had a soft spot for him, he seemed a disciplined, intelligent player who certainly might have been handy at Tigerland in the late 70’s and early 80’s.

My loose impressions of him as a recruiter is that he has done a very reasonable job. For every apparent failure we can point to an apparent success and vice versa. He clearly spent a lot of his time as a recruiter under-resourced relative to other clubs. There have been incredible purple patches and some flat spots in his years in charge, but ultimately, on balance, my perception is he has done well. And the club has recognised this by retaining him. It could well be he is a better recruiter than manager, and perhaps this was one of the reasons for his retention and demotion in the big restructure in 2016.

I will list some facts as best I could scout. I would appreciate any assistance with this if people can add or correct anything.

- Francis Jackson was appointed to a part time recruitment role in 2005 and participated in the draft of that year. Football Manager/Director? at the time, Greg Miller, was effectively the chief recruiting decision maker in the 2005 draft?

- Francis Jackson is appointed full time as recruiting manager in 2006, presumably in plenty of time to take charge of the decision making during the 2006 drafts?

- In the years 2006-2008 Jackson was effectively the recruiting department, albeit at least he was full time.

- In 2009 the decision was taken to cut money from player payments to fund two extra full time recruiters. Current(from Nov 2016 onwards) Recruiting Manager Matthew Clarke was one of those. Richard Taylor the other? All of Jackson, Clarke and Taylor remain at the club.

- At the end of 2013, for the 2014 season, a "talent scout" was added to further bolster the recruiting department, Luke Williams. I think he is now a recruiting officer equivalent to Jackson and Taylor?

- Therefore the drafts for which Jackson should be correctly considered to have been in charge, and for which he can be held chiefly responsible were 2006-2016 inclusive. 11 Drafts.

Open to correction on any of this above, but I think the time line for Jackson looks like this by draft:

2005 - one out part time recruiter in a totally under-resourced football department, effectively second in charge of recruiting behind Miller

2006 - 2008 inclusive - One out full time recruiter/Recruiting Manager, one man department, in charge of recruiting.

2009-2016 - Recruiting Manager of an ever better resourced department, but still not recognised as being resourced above average for AFL.

2017 - ongoing - Recruiting Officer after restructure, including specialising to some extent in future drafts. Report from 2017 I found said Tigers had Recruiting Manager, three Recruiting Officers and 10 part-time scouts!

So I will post this for now to allow for corrections before moving on to look further at our/Jackson’s recruiting performance in subsequent posts.
Click to expand...
that is so glaringly inaccurate it isnt funny.
 

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