Discussion Paddy v Petracca

[Joffaboy]

Look I am not a club basher, being of an optimistic and probably too blindly loyal to the club, I try and give the guys at the helm the benefit of the doubt.

Now I don't think the Paddy selection was the greatest blunder of all time, I get the feeling with some that Paddy was a useless hopeless hack that should have been selected at pick 50. This is not the case, he had undoubted skill and talent, his potential was cut short by horrific multiple concussions.
If you are not convinced, have a look at some of his highlights from 17 and 18. You could see the skill and he was starting to develop.

Paddy was in my opinion undoubtably a first rounder, probably top ten in his draft year. The issue is was he a no.1 and was he what the St Kilda football club required at the time.
My opinion is that if we had to choose between Paddy and Petracca, the obvious choice for our needs was Petracca. In hindsight this has been borne out and unless your name is Adrian Dodoro, you live and die by your results at the selection table.

The name of this thread is Paddy v Petracca, it is obvious our selection of Paddy was wrong. I was worried at the time and it has been borne out. Do i derive any pleasure in that or some kind of vindication? No. I remember being so excited that Carlton took Boekhorst and we got Goddard.

So excited to have the bookends for the next decade. And there you go.......

 

[George]

Thats not pick 1.

Disagree on the clear cut 1. Especially on here back then.

Not the point I was making. You said it was the worst draft decision in the "professional era" whatever that means. I am saying it wasn't. Clearly worse decisions made than Paddy over Petracca.

Melbourne mates have rated him like we rate Gresham. He wasn’t sh*t just still had improvement in him. He’s now stepped up to a top 10 in the Comp type. We didn’t care when he was a pretty good player. Now he is good it hurts more. Paddy never really looked that good ever. He brother has shown much more than he ever did.

He was a pretty clear number one pick too.

Top 10 in the comp after a dozen games? Do we forget about Shane Woewodin? I'd say he needs to do it for more than a dozen games to be top 10 in any discussion.

Paddy did look good. And again, Petracca was not a clear choice for pick 1.

My opinion is that if we had to choose between Paddy and Petracca, the obvious choice for our needs was Petracca.

Wow seriously?

 

[Joffaboy]

Wow seriously?

Nice out of context quoting of my post George.

Yes seriously. For our needs we needed mids,mids and more mids. We still need them 6 years later. But hey Wow, I wanted a mid that most other clubs would have taken over Paddy.

Shocking revelation hey?

 

[George]

Nice out of context quoting of my post George.

Yes seriously. For our needs we needed mids,mids and more mids. We still need them 6 years later. But hey Wow, I wanted a mid that most other clubs would have taken over Paddy.

Shocking revelation hey?

Out of context? Only wanted to discuss this part of your post. You don't think we needed a key forward with an aging Riewoldt and nobody else of any real quality there? Not to mention the money it costs clubs in trading in good key position players far exceeds that of bringing in a midfielder. Look at how much the Dogs paid for Tom Boyd. Why spend over a million per year on bringing in a KPF when we could just draft the best one in that year?

The selection was justified, got no problems with it, only in hindsight do we say we got it wrong. If Paddy wasn't rated #1 he was clearly top 3 and given what I've mentioned previously it was the right move.

Our issue was not drafting Paddy our issue was not trading in midfielders. With the amount you'd pay for a young KPF back then, we could've nabbed two quality mids for the same price. We didn't do that.

 

[Joffaboy]

Out of context? Only wanted to discuss this part of your post. You don't think we needed a key forward with an aging Riewoldt and nobody else of any real quality there? Not to mention the money it costs clubs in trading in good key position players far exceeds that of bringing in a midfielder. Look at how much the Dogs paid for Tom Boyd. Why spend over a million per year on bringing in a KPF when we could just draft the best one in that year?

The selection was justified, got no problems with it, only in hindsight do we say we got it wrong. If Paddy wasn't rated #1 he was clearly top 3 and given what I've mentioned previously it was the right move.

Our issue was not drafting Paddy our issue was not trading in midfielders. With the amount you'd pay for a young KPF back then, we could've nabbed two quality mids for the same price. We didn't do that.

yes out of context, that is the point of only quoting a small portion of the post. yes we needed a key forward, but we needed mids more. The selection in my eyes was incorrect at the time, and was proven to be incorrect.

But hey, just ignore where I said Paddy was obviously talented and skilled and was developing nicely and in my view was a 10 ten dp in his draft year.
In my opinion we needed mids more than a Key Forward. We selected Paddy so i wanted him to go well. 33 games and multiple concussions is no indication of what he could have been. That was nobodies fault. if he had of been able to develop it may be different but the fact is in the end we didn't get the key forward until King and we missed out on a top midfielder.

I thought it was wrong then and it turned out to be.

 

[Ricmel]

Who are they?
Top 5 Billings, Paddy, King - one good one a bust, one will be good
top 10 Clark and Coff - you reckon they wont be any good? OK
Top 20 Dunny - GOP, Acres gone, Gres good
After - Goddard bust

I'm not talking about busts/good. No First rounder should be a bust (and we have a few of them). I am talking about getting an A grader. In 10 first round picks, we should have nailed one A grader and we haven't. We've picked all around them. You would think just dumb luck would have given us one (yes, I think King will get there).

 

[StCicatriz]

Out of context? Only wanted to discuss this part of your post. You don't think we needed a key forward with an aging Riewoldt and nobody else of any real quality there? Not to mention the money it costs clubs in trading in good key position players far exceeds that of bringing in a midfielder. Look at how much the Dogs paid for Tom Boyd. Why spend over a million per year on bringing in a KPF when we could just draft the best one in that year?

The selection was justified, got no problems with it, only in hindsight do we say we got it wrong. If Paddy wasn't rated #1 he was clearly top 3 and given what I've mentioned previously it was the right move.

Our issue was not drafting Paddy our issue was not trading in midfielders. With the amount you'd pay for a young KPF back then, we could've nabbed two quality mids for the same price. We didn't do that.

this was actually discussed way back then too. selecting mids vs KPP. many reckon the rebuild needed to start with midfielders as that's the core of the side and the engine.

 

[Ricmel]

Brendon Goddard went alright.

We got 2, maybe 3 A grade years. Where is our Martin, our Bontimpelli, our Selwood etc. We have not had a marquee player, even a top 25 player since Roo left. Goddard did go OK but like most of Saints success, it was so brief.

 

[Ricmel]

we will get 200 games from Seb Ross
we got 169 games out of Armo
McEvoy went alright
Coff and Clarke look the goods
King is going to be good

Sorry, it is not the point of my post. My post is where is our A grader? Maybe it will be King maybe Clarke will get there but 8 years at the lower end of the ladder and we have been unable to unearth a single AA, let alone an A grade top 25 AFL player.

 

[Joffaboy]

I'm not talking about busts/good. No First rounder should be a bust (and we have a few of them). I am talking about getting an A grader. In 10 first round picks, we should have nailed one A grader and we haven't. We've picked all around them. You would think just dumb luck would have given us one (yes, I think King will get there).

So Coff and Clark are written off - Ok.
Steele, we gave up a second rounder and is up the pointy end of votes this year, no good? Oh thats right only A graders can come from the top 10.

So who have our top ten picks been
Paddy - Bust
Billings - solid B wont get higher
Clark - so much upside but we can't tell
Coff - so much upside but we can't tell
King - so much upside but we can't tell

So out of the 5, we have a bust, a miss, and three we don't know about, but you write them off.

OK

 

[George]

yes out of context, that is the point of only quoting a small portion of the post. yes we needed a key forward, but we needed mids more. The selection in my eyes was incorrect at the time, and was proven to be incorrect.

But hey, just ignore where I said Paddy was obviously talented and skilled and was developing nicely and in my view was a 10 ten dp in his draft year.
In my opinion we needed mids more than a Key Forward. We selected Paddy so i wanted him to go well. 33 games and multiple concussions is no indication of what he could have been. That was nobodies fault. if he had of been able to develop it may be different but the fact is in the end we didn't get the key forward until King and we missed out on a top midfielder.

I thought it was wrong then and it turned out to be.

Got no issue with the rest of your post if I did I'd have quoted it. You said we needed mids more than KPF's at the time. I disagree. Midfielders grow on trees, real KP talent doesn't come around as often and typically to trade that into your club you need to pay exorbitant amounts.

If we drafted Petracca we would still need to bring in a KPF at some point. I doubt you would want us paying over a million a year to pry one from another club so the question then is how could we have planned to draft one in future years given we didn't know what picks we'd have.

As I said, with the money we would've paid to trade in a KPF, we could've spent the same money and bought in two midfielders. Our problem was that we didn't do that, it took us three years to finally bring in an actual quality midfielder (Steele) and we relied too heavily on Steven, Ross, Montagna in the years following. Basically it was Steven v the rest. Now if it were Steven and Petracca that's great, much improved, but who do we kick the ball to. With nobody playing forward and Riewoldt in the twilight of his career we would have to pay millions to bring in a player that plays in a position that if we drafted for we could've got for a tenth of that. Not to mention the invaluable teachings someome like Roo would've given to Paddy to prepare him and the club for life post Riewoldt.

Paddy's situation is very unlucky but again the selection justified.

this was actually discussed way back then too. selecting mids vs KPP. many reckon the rebuild needed to start with midfielders as that's the core of the side and the engine.

That's fine. Trade them in then. Instead of paying over a million a year to pry a KPF from another club, draft a KPF and spend that money on midfielders.

Us drafting Paddy was not the actual issue. It was our inability to bring midfield talent into the club. If it was by salary cap restraints or other reasons, we didn't get it done.

 

[Joffaboy]

Midfielders grow on trees

So why, 6 years later we are still so skinny on mids?

If we drafted Petracca we would still need to bring in a KPF at some point.

Max King

I doubt you would want us paying over a million a year to pry one from another club so the question then is how could we have planned to draft one in future years given we didn't know what picks we'd have.

How much did Shiel cost, Essendon, O'Meara cost Hawthorn in money and picks. How much was Kelly offered? What are we paying for an outside mid in Hill?

As I said, with the money we would've paid to trade in a KPF, we could've spent the same money and bought in two midfielders.

But we didn't. We brought in Steele who could be a top player, Zac Jones who is OK, and Hanners who can't get on the field and is past it. If you want a gun mid you need to pay well over a mill nowdays.

This argument just does not stack up. Plain fact is that they panicked because Bulldogs paid a million for Boyd. Name any KPP that has changed teams and come close to that amount? Paton? Hogan? McCarthy? Maybe Lynch however he would have taken less to be in the Richmond team.

Our problem was that we didn't do that, it took us three years to finally bring in an actual quality midfielder (Steele) and we relied too heavily on Steven, Ross, Montagna in the years following. Basically it was Steven v the rest. Now if it were Steven and Petracca that's great, much improved, but who do we kick the ball to.

You kicked to who we actually had up there, Bruce, Membrey and the smalls. Paddy didn't get it because we have never had the mids to kick it to the forwards.

With nobody playing forward and Riewoldt in the twilight of his career we would have to pay millions to bring in a player that plays in a position that if we drafted for could've got for a tenth of that.

The point is Paddy was never there anyway and therefore we had no mid or no KF, and we would have to pay millions. That has proven to be false. Maybe Lynch got a million but many more mids have got much bigger money than key forwards.

in the end we did neither. We didn't use this mythical million to bring in mids, or we didn't use it to get a Key Forward.

One thing is for sure, we don't have our no.1 pick and we don't have a top line bull mid.

The pick was poor the rationale flawed and those involved eventually paid for their plethora of recruiting errors with their jobs. Good thing too because the new lot have been excellent in rebuild 2.0.

 

[StCicatriz]

Got no issue with the rest of your post if I did I'd have quoted it. You said we needed mids more than KPF's at the time. I disagree. Midfielders grow on trees, real KP talent doesn't come around as often and typically to trade that into your club you need to pay exorbitant amounts.

If we drafted Petracca we would still need to bring in a KPF at some point. I doubt you would want us paying over a million a year to pry one from another club so the question then is how could we have planned to draft one in future years given we didn't know what picks we'd have.

As I said, with the money we would've paid to trade in a KPF, we could've spent the same money and bought in two midfielders. Our problem was that we didn't do that, it took us three years to finally bring in an actual quality midfielder (Steele) and we relied too heavily on Steven, Ross, Montagna in the years following. Basically it was Steven v the rest. Now if it were Steven and Petracca that's great, much improved, but who do we kick the ball to. With nobody playing forward and Riewoldt in the twilight of his career we would have to pay millions to bring in a player that plays in a position that if we drafted for we could've got for a tenth of that. Not to mention the invaluable teachings someome like Roo would've given to Paddy to prepare him and the club for life post Riewoldt.

Paddy's situation is very unlucky but again the selection justified.


That's fine. Trade them in then. Instead of paying over a million a year to pry a KPF from another club, draft a KPF and spend that money on midfielders.

Us drafting Paddy was not the actual issue. It was our inability to bring midfield talent into the club. If it waa by salary cap restraints or other reasons, we didn't get it done.

history will show that's exactly the approach the club took with McCartin and Goddard. you can argue that's the strategy to go with, the problem is the draft selections made do not fit the strategy. so it's cooked from the very beginning. basically the club's gone, this is what's happening in the competition, these are the reasons we have to have the list strategy we want to adopt. problem is the draft doesn't always fit that strategy. the draft will throw up what it does, you can't control it. so the problem we ran into is the 2014 draft did not support the list strategy we had.

in others words the problem was that the KPP talent available did not have the attributes to make top-line AFL football. McCartin was under-sized with no agility or ability to cover the ground. Goddard whilst tall did not have the speed or agility to make it. remembering the game by this stage already had a very strong emphasis on defencive pressure and repeat efforts/running patterns.

i mean look at the players we are comparing him too here. Boyd was 201cm, he was a perfect description of a modern tall forward, if you wanted a poster boy for one. he moved better than paddy. People then compared McCartin to Hawkins, given he was the "closest" fit people could think of. Problem is Hawkins was still 198cm. McCartin in the draft combine spreadsheet distributed by the AFL to all club has McCartin listed as 193cm. he's just far too undersized and the weakness in his game far too exposed at the highest level. that's before you look at the injury history and other issues.

so the idea that McCartin would be the tall forward you build the entire club around, just didn't hold true. it never was going to happen.

so the strategy was flawed from the outset.

so we would have been better off just going BEST AVAILABLE, regardless of any pre-decided list strategy. rather than trying to turn the draft into something it was never going to be.

it's funny because once pelchen, ameet and trout were gone, this is exactly what we changed. we started going best available, regardless of list strategy. hence how we got Max King.

history will show we got it wrong. the strategy was massively flawed.

it's funny because even Finnis kind of alluded to "another approach", but i think he was far too new and it wasn't his area to be stepping into.

 

[Ricmel]

So Coff and Clark are written off - Ok.
Steele, we gave up a second rounder and is up the pointy end of votes this year, no good? Oh thats right only A graders can come from the top 10.

So who have our top ten picks been
Paddy - Bust
Billings - solid B wont get higher
Clark - so much upside but we can't tell
Coff - so much upside but we can't tell
King - so much upside but we can't tell

So out of the 5, we have a bust, a miss, and three we don't know about, but you write them off.

OK

Well I said King and Clark jury is out. But you don't seem to read posts. I'm not talking about top 10 picks. We have been at the lower end of the ladder since 2012 and here is the simple fact, 8 drafts later we have not managed to draft a single A grader. I'm not interested in trades, that does not go to our ability to spot talent - I know Bontimpelli is a good player.

My original post and the context of my posts since is that St Kilda has an uncanny knack of picking heads instead of tails.

Will one of Clark, Coff or King become one. I like Kings chances.

 

[George]

So why, 6 years later we are still so skinny on mids?

Not sure what todays list has to do with what we're discussing which was the list six years ago. We didn't trade for quality midfielders in the years following the McCartin selection and then the rebuild started again.

Max King

Not too sure what point you're trying to make here either. What does Max King in 2020 have to do with drafting a KPF in the years following the 2014 draft? Are you saying we draft Petracca in 2014 and then keep our eye on 14 year old Max King, planning to finish bottom four in 2018 so we can pick him up? I don't understand.

How much did Shiel cost, Essendon, O'Meara cost Hawthorn in money and picks. How much was Kelly offered? What are we paying for an outside mid in Hill?

Well for one I didn't say we need to bring in 2 of the best mids in the game. I said instead of prying a KPF out of another club for over a million a year, we could've used that 1 million to pry two midfielders from other clubs that would've been in the 500k range. Again a lot has changed in six years, no real point bringing up Kelly and Hill when those offers were made well beyond 2014.

But we didn't. We brought in Steele who could be a top player, Zac Jones who is OK, and Hanners who can't get on the field and is past it. If you want a gun mid you need to pay well over a mill nowdays.

This argument just does not stack up. Plain fact is that they panicked because Bulldogs paid a million for Boyd. Name any KPP that has changed teams and come close to that amount? Paton? Hogan? McCarthy? Maybe Lynch however he would have taken less to be in the Richmond team.

I think we are not understanding each other. This isn't about the midfielders we brought in in the last two years, it's about the state of our list in 2014, what we needed at the time and the immediate years following that. Not six years after the fact. Like I said earlier in hindsight you can say it was a bad call but all the evidence is there to suggest given what clubs were paying for KPF's, our need for a KPF, and the state of our list, the call was fine.

You kicked to who we actually had up there, Bruce, Membrey and the smalls. Paddy didn't get it because we have never had the mids to kick it to the forwards.

What? Membrey wasn't on the list in 2014. Bruce was playing in the backline. Tom Lee was our forward along with a 32 year old Nick Riewoldt having to drain fluid from his knees every few games just to get out there.

The point is Paddy was never there anyway and therefore we had no mid or no KF, and we would have to pay millions. That has proven to be false. Maybe Lynch got a million but many more mids have got much bigger money than key forwards.

Yeah again I didn't say we could get two million dollar midfielders, I said we should've drafted Paddy and then spent the money on midfielders. Two $500,000 midfielders is still a massive upgrade over what we had, not to mention a far better strategy than selecting one midfielder (Petracca) and then paying out the nose for a KPF.

in the end we did neither. We didn't use this mythical million to bring in mids, or we didn't use it to get a Key Forward.

One thing is for sure, we don't have our no.1 pick and we don't have a top line bull mid.

The pick was poor the rationale flawed and those involved eventually paid for their plethora of recruiting errors with their jobs. Good thing too because the new lot have been excellent in rebuild 2.0.

Our issue was not the selection of McCartin, only in hindsight can you say that but at the time it was a justified move for where our list was at, our problem again was the inability to trade in midfield talent, or at least a group of decent midfielders that collectively would push us up the ladder. Pick was fine, rationale fine, and I would say the reason they were sacked was not the drafting of McCartin but the state the list was in when he was drafted. We completely stuffed the salary cap. Traded out legends of the club because we had ruined things so badly. Needed the money to go after players from other clubs but couldn't get anything of note done until Steele came in 2017 and I would say the inability to trade in talent coupled with the mess of a salary cap is the reason they are no longer at the club.

 

[Crusty Undies]

Got no issue with the rest of your post if I did I'd have quoted it. You said we needed mids more than KPF's at the time. I disagree. Midfielders grow on trees, real KP talent doesn't come around as often and typically to trade that into your club you need to pay exorbitant amounts.

If we drafted Petracca we would still need to bring in a KPF at some point. I doubt you would want us paying over a million a year to pry one from another club so the question then is how could we have planned to draft one in future years given we didn't know what picks we'd have.

As I said, with the money we would've paid to trade in a KPF, we could've spent the same money and bought in two midfielders. Our problem was that we didn't do that, it took us three years to finally bring in an actual quality midfielder (Steele) and we relied too heavily on Steven, Ross, Montagna in the years following. Basically it was Steven v the rest. Now if it were Steven and Petracca that's great, much improved, but who do we kick the ball to. With nobody playing forward and Riewoldt in the twilight of his career we would have to pay millions to bring in a player that plays in a position that if we drafted for we could've got for a tenth of that. Not to mention the invaluable teachings someome like Roo would've given to Paddy to prepare him and the club for life post Riewoldt.

Paddy's situation is very unlucky but again the selection justified.


That's fine. Trade them in then. Instead of paying over a million a year to pry a KPF from another club, draft a KPF and spend that money on midfielders.

Us drafting Paddy was not the actual issue. It was our inability to bring midfield talent into the club. If it was by salary cap restraints or other reasons, we didn't get it done.

Just wait until there's better kpf options than paddy in the draft...? KPFs don't have to go at 1 as shown by the King's Luko and many many others in the last few years. Taking paddy with with all his many flaws at 1 too maaaybe prevent having to get another kpf IF he worked out over the clearly better player at 1 isn't smart list management it's getting ahead of yourself. We weren't going anywhere in 2015 so we'd still have a good pick which we ended up using on billings. We had a top 8 pick in 2016 too that we on traded for clark a year later. Since then we've got all of King, Membrey, Marshall, Battle and co for the price of 1 1st, a couple of late 2nds and change. This line of thinking of "we needed to take paddy because kpfs cost more" is stupid and unfounded imo.

 

[gringo2011]

Look I am not a club basher, being of an optimistic and probably too blindly loyal to the club, I try and give the guys at the helm the benefit of the doubt.

Now I don't think the Paddy selection was the greatest blunder of all time, I get the feeling with some that Paddy was a useless hopeless hack that should have been selected at pick 50. This is not the case, he had undoubted skill and talent, his potential was cut short by horrific multiple concussions.
If you are not convinced, have a look at some of his highlights from 17 and 18. You could see the skill and he was starting to develop.

Paddy was in my opinion undoubtably a first rounder, probably top ten in his draft year. The issue is was he a no.1 and was he what the St Kilda football club required at the time.
My opinion is that if we had to choose between Paddy and Petracca, the obvious choice for our needs was Petracca. In hindsight this has been borne out and unless your name is Adrian Dodoro, you live and die by your results at the selection table.

The name of this thread is Paddy v Petracca, it is obvious our selection of Paddy was wrong. I was worried at the time and it has been borne out. Do i derive any pleasure in that or some kind of vindication? No. I remember being so excited that Carlton took Boekhorst and we got Goddard.

So excited to have the bookends for the next decade. And there you go.......

To me the recruiters are buying and selling stocks. It feels like under Trout we had a good inheritance and invested it with some shonk who told us not to invest in Google and blue chip stocks and went and invested in harebrained schemes that were high risk and even the ones that didn't bust hardly pulled a dividend.

It's gone and you shouldn't look back but every time the share prices are shown you want to throw something across the room. I need to get over it but it I'm still bitter. I tried to tell everyone for a long time that our recruiting was sub par and got shouted down, it wasn't a hindsight call.

The clubs that do it well make me jealous, Western Bulldogs are putting together an ominous list. It isn't all clicking yet but I reckon they have substantially rebuilt post premiership and are assembling a list that looks a couple of years off another. Geelong are just vomit inducingly good at it. They don't seem to have missed finals for 15 years and have rebuilt on the hop in that time. Should be equal favourites if not outright favourite this year and have been close for the last few. Sydney had a run there that has come to an end but they do spot talent well. Gold Coast had a leg up but they look on a slipstream to being a scary good side. Tigers were horrible for years now recruit like gods.

 

[George]

history will show that's exactly the approach the club took with McCartin and Goddard. you can argue that's the strategy to go with, the problem is the draft selections made do not fit the strategy. so it's cooked from the very beginning. basically the club's gone, this is what's happening in the competition, these are the reasons we have to have the list strategy we want to adopt. problem is the draft doesn't always fit that strategy. the draft will throw up what it does, you can't control it. so the problem we ran into is the 2014 draft did not support the list strategy we had.

in others words the problem was that the KPP talent available did not have the attributes to make top-line AFL football. McCartin was under-sized with no agility or ability to cover the ground. Goddard whilst tall did not have the speed or agility to make it. remembering the game by this stage already had a very strong emphasis on defencive pressure and repeat efforts/running patterns.

i mean look at the players we are comparing him too here. Boyd was 201cm, he was a perfect description of a modern tall forward, if you wanted a poster boy for one. he moved better than paddy. People then compared McCartin to Hawkins, given he was the "closest" fit people could think of. Problem is Hawkins was still 198cm. McCartin in the draft combine spreadsheet distributed by the AFL to all club has McCartin listed as 193cm. he's just far too undersized and the weakness in his game far too exposed at the highest level. that's before you look at the injury history and other issues.

so the idea that McCartin would be the tall forward you build the entire club around, just didn't hold true. it never was going to happen.

so the strategy was flawed from the outset.

so we would have been better off just going BEST AVAILABLE, regardless of any pre-decided list strategy. rather than trying to turn the draft into something it was never going to be.

it's funny because once pelchen, ameet and trout were gone, this is exactly what we changed. we started going best available, regardless of list strategy. hence how we got Max King.

history will show we got it wrong. the strategy was massively flawed.

it's funny because even Finnis kind of alluded to "another approach", but i think he was far too new and it wasn't his area to be stepping into.

So what if McCartin is 193cm? Undersized...yet 3 years after McCartin was drafted a team won the flag with their tallest forward 195cm. Not too sure what you're basing your opinion off of but the strategy was absolutely fine, the spine of the ground is undoubtedly the most important and the most expensive. Structure. This is why Carlisle came to us in 2016.

Strategy was far from flawed, in fact it was the exact opposite, we needed a spine and McCartin & Goddard were two fine selections that unfortunately didn't pan out. That's not to say they were never up to it or they were bad decisions because sometimes being unlucky is a part of football not to mention the application of the player to his career. In hindsight we stuffed it up but at the time they were both good selections.

Max King was best available and he was also what we needed. McCartin was looking like never playing again. But more importantly it goes back to my other point. Either draft a midfielder in 2018 with our first pick and then trade for Max later which would've cost us millions or draft Max now and then put together a nice, decent group of midfielders who collectively can get the job done which is what we're seeing in some ways now. And you bring up McCartin's injury history. What about King? We were taking a massive risk with him coming off an ACL too. He was going #1 overall if it weren't for that injury. Point is sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you get unlucky. Both Paddy & Max came in with injury concerns, one turned out unlucky, the other has been playing well so far but still needs to keep it going for a few more years before any call is made there.

Just wait until there's better kpf options than paddy in the draft...? KPFs don't have to go at 1 as shown by the King's Luko and many many others in the last few years. Taking paddy with with all his many flaws at 1 too maaaybe prevent having to get another kpf IF he worked out over the clearly better player at 1 isn't smart list management it's getting ahead of yourself. We weren't going anywhere in 2015 so we'd still have a good pick which we ended up using on billings. We had a top 8 pick in 2016 too that we on traded for clark a year later. Since then we've got all of King, Membrey, Marshall, Battle and co for the price of 1 1st, a couple of late 2nds and change. This line of thinking of "we needed to take paddy because kpfs cost more" is stupid and unfounded imo.

See, that's taking what I said out of context. I didn't say we needed to take him because KPF's cost more. I said that's definitely a reason but the other reason was the state of the list in 2014 and the needs of the list in 2014. We couldn't have predicted we would bring in King, Membrey, Marshall, Battle and others at the time we selected Paddy, would be great if we could see into the future as obviously we wouldn't have selected him. It just didn't turn out as we would've hoped. That's all. All this talk about a bad draft selection and the worst selection we've made is nonsense. He was a clear cut top 3 pick. We had holes all over our list. We needed midfielders yes but we also needed forwards, backs, rucks, everything. We had bottomed out - we had the number 1 pick haha.

Do you not think the points I've made were not discussed in list management meetings? Tom Boyd going to the Dogs for a million a year set the bar at what it would've taken clubs to bring in KPP's from other clubs. Knowing there's a kid who is rated, lets say top 5 in his draft, and is a KPF, wouldn't it make sense to draft him and look to bolster the side in other areas with the million we'd saved? Petracca wasn't going to be our saviour. We needed a lot more than that. Imagine we draft Petracca, the bar is set on price for KPF's with the Boyd deal, so we go after a KPF from another club. Say we get Boyd. What do we do now? We bring in two players, whereas drafting McCartin gave us the best forward in the draft while also having plenty of money to spend to improve other areas of the side. Again the issue was that we didn't do anything with that available money. Not sure if players didn't want to come to us or if we were just horrible at prying players out, but for whatever reason we didn't do it. That's the issue. If we drafted McCartin but were able to get 2 decent mids from other clubs on 500k each, I reckon nobody would even be talking about this selection. Which is the point I'm making. It wasn't the draft that was stuffed (in hindsight yes but what good is that at the time) but the lack of talent we brought in, specifically to the midfield.

Took us three years to land one finally in Steele and even then we didn't really know what we'd be getting until last year but most definitely this year.

 

[gringo2011]

We got 2, maybe 3 A grade years. Where is our Martin, our Bontimpelli, our Selwood etc. We have not had a marquee player, even a top 25 player since Roo left. Goddard did go OK but like most of Saints success, it was so brief.

You know me, I'm as pessimistic as a supporter can get but we have nearly completely replaced our list from 2015. In 4 draft/trade periods we moved on a lot of Pelchen and Trout's little mistakes. It generally takes around 4 years to go from a good player to the next step. Dusty was nearly traded away before he became the player he did. If we have an A grader on the books he probably hasn't had time to develop to the next stage. It's taken Jack Steele 6 years to get there but he must be close in 2020.

Richo played damage mitigation footy. We never moved down the ladder like Collingwood did with better lists but we were in a holding pattern of not going anywhere as we just played not to lose and didn't really change up the list that much for a side so far away from success. I think we grabbed at Hanners and Hill hoping that getting quality in might move us quicker, it actually looks like it's been a better option to draft than buy ring ins.

Anyway I think we look a lot better than we did as far as drafting got but we really need to keep taking players at the top end of the draft if we want star players. Caleb Serong looks a beauty, we need to try to find our own players like that. King already looks better than any of the players that we paid up to get and he's not even played 20 games.

 

[StCicatriz]

So what if McCartin is 193cm? Undersized...yet 3 years after McCartin was drafted a team won the flag with their tallest forward 195cm. Not too sure what you're basing your opinion off of but the strategy was absolutely fine, the spine of the ground is undoubtedly the most important and the most expensive. Structure. This is why Carlisle came to us in 2016.

Strategy was far from flawed, in fact it was the exact opposite, we needed a spine and McCartin & Goddard were two fine selections that unfortunately didn't pan out. That's not to say they were never up to it or they were bad decisions because sometimes being unlucky is a part of football not to mention the application of the player to his career. In hindsight we stuffed it up but at the time they were both good selections.

Max King was best available and he was also what we needed. McCartin was looking like never playing again. But more importantly it goes back to my other point. Either draft a midfielder in 2018 with our first pick and then trade for Max later which would've cost us millions or draft Max now and then put together a nice, decent group of midfielders who collectively can get the job done which is what we're seeing in some ways now. And you bring up McCartin's injury history. What about King? We were taking a massive risk with him coming off an ACL too. He was going #1 overall if it weren't for that injury. Point is sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you get unlucky. Both Paddy & Max came in with injury concerns, one turned out unlucky, the other has been playing well so far but still needs to keep it going for a few more years before any call is made there.


See, that's taking what I said out of context. I didn't say we needed to take him because KPF's cost more. I said that's definitely a reason but the other reason was the state of the list in 2014 and the needs of the list in 2014. We couldn't have predicted we would bring in King, Membrey, Marshall, Battle and others at the time we selected Paddy, would be great if we could see into the future as obviously we wouldn't have selected him. It just didn't turn out as we would've hoped. That's all. All this talk about a bad draft selection and the worst selection we've made is nonsense. He was a clear cut top 3 pick. We had holes all over our list. We needed midfielders yes but we also needed forwards, backs, rucks, everything. We had bottomed out - we had the number 1 pick haha.

Do you not think the points I've made were not discussed in list management meetings? Tom Boyd going to the Dogs for a million a year set the bar at what it would've taken clubs to bring in KPP's from other clubs. Knowing there's a kid who is rated, lets say top 5 in his draft, and is a KPF, wouldn't it make sense to draft him and look to bolster the side in other areas with the million we'd saved? Petracca wasn't going to be our saviour. We needed a lot more than that. Imagine we draft Petracca, the bar is set on price for KPF's with the Boyd deal, so we go after a KPF from another club. Say we get Boyd. What do we do now? We bring in two players, whereas drafting McCartin gave us the best forward in the draft while also having plenty of money to spend to improve other areas of the side. Again the issue was that we didn't do anything with that available money. Not sure if players didn't want to come to us or if we were just horrible at prying players out, but for whatever reason we didn't do it. That's the issue. If we drafted McCartin but were able to get 2 decent mids from other clubs on 500k each, I reckon nobody would even be talking about this selection. Which is the point I'm making. It wasn't the draft that was stuffed (in hindsight yes but what good is that at the time) but the lack of talent we brought in, specifically to the midfield.

Took us three years to land one finally in Steele and even then we didn't really know what we'd be getting until last year but most definitely this year.

I think you nailed it in your first sentence. Its not the spine that's important. Its your midfield! That stat you showed highlights exactly the point of my argument.

The team that wins a grand final is always the one with a better midfield on the day.

If that wasn't the case then you would see Sydney beating Hawthorn with buddy. You would see hawthorn beating swans when they had buddy.

The 195cm you mentioned shows exactly what I mean. Those 195cm forwards are agile. They cover ground. Theyre not like mccartin. Mccartin is undersized and slow with literally no tank!!!!

 

[StCicatriz]

Just wait until there's better kpf options than paddy in the draft...? KPFs don't have to go at 1 as shown by the King's Luko and many many others in the last few years. Taking paddy with with all his many flaws at 1 too maaaybe prevent having to get another kpf IF he worked out over the clearly better player at 1 isn't smart list management it's getting ahead of yourself. We weren't going anywhere in 2015 so we'd still have a good pick which we ended up using on billings. We had a top 8 pick in 2016 too that we on traded for clark a year later. Since then we've got all of King, Membrey, Marshall, Battle and co for the price of 1 1st, a couple of late 2nds and change. This line of thinking of "we needed to take paddy because kpfs cost more" is stupid and unfounded imo.

Spot on.

 

[StCicatriz]

Funny thing is we found it easier to find gun KPP talent than we have in finding a gun mid.

Despite it apparently being harder to find the gun KPP talent.

Carlisle Marshall King Membrey Howard Wilkie

To what: Steele.

 

[gringo2011]

Funny thing is we found it easier to find gun KPP talent than we have in finding a gun mid.

Despite it apparently being harder to find the gun KPP talent.

Carlisle Marshall King Membrey Howard Wilkie

To what: Steele.

To be fair we have only taken about three mids in 15 years. Richo and Trout had a hard-on for turning half back flankers into mids. So far most of those aren't mids and aren't getting games at HBF or have been delisted. In an era where midfield ruled, we decided we'd reinvent the wheel by having 18 HBF swamp the ground. Funny enough Ratts comes in and moves a forward and a mid into the HBF. You really wonder what the * we had been doing for the previous 5 years. Hopefully we'd moved beyond the Pelican's brief.

 

[Trav 20]

Melbourne mates have rated him like we rate Gresham. He wasn’t sh*t just still had improvement in him. He’s now stepped up to a top 10 in the Comp type. We didn’t care when he was a pretty good player. Now he is good it hurts more. Paddy never really looked that good ever. He brother has shown much more than he ever did.

He was a pretty clear number one pick too.

It's funny the way opposition supporters and the media see Petracca. He came 4th in our B&F last year and kicked over 20 goals. He wasn't great and we were a bottom two team, but he had some good games; albeit you wouldn't see him for a quarter or a half. Prior to this year he averaged 19 disposals and a goal per game. Not too shabby, but we all knew he had more if he could get fit.

Then I look at Cam Rayner, a former pick one and wonder how he flies under the radar. Nearing the end of year 3 with almost 60 games under his belt and he averages 11 disposals and under a goal per game. He's cut the type of slack that was never afforded the ''disappointing'' Petracca, who performed much better from day one (kicked 26 goals in year 2).

I'm not knocking Rayner and have come to realise it's a Melbourne thing.

With Watts, Scully going (talk about a bog ordinary player), Trengove, Morton, etc. Melbourne players have become fair game. I kind of get it.

We're a flaky club with flaky players and the subsequent commentary follows.

Good lucky to Rayner. He gets a free pass, because he doesn't play for Melbourne.

 

[Joffaboy]

Anyway I think we look a lot better than we did as far as drafting got but we really need to keep taking players at the top end of the draft if we want star players. Caleb Serong looks a beauty, we need to try to find our own players like that. King already looks better than any of the players that we paid up to get and he's not even played 20 games.

Thought Serng was garbage last night