Thought some of you might be interested to see a comparison between the composition of the past few flag sides and Geelong’s best 22 now.
View attachment 980432
Note: I’ve counted Hawkins as a top 10 pick given he was taken under the previous F/S system.
It’s clear there’s a class gap at the top end, with Geelong having about two fewer first round picks and slightly fewer second rounders. That’s about three players difference at the top end in total. Arguably, we have managed to bridge a fair bit of that gap in acquiring Dangerfield through trade.
But it does tend to indicate to me that there’s not a world of difference between us and the composition of successful recent teams. It’s a matter of 2-3 players at the top end. Note that this doesn’t include Clark, Stephens or Cockatoo, all of whom, if they made Geelong’s best 22, would immediately bridge the gap in quality that is observed. Geelong also has another three first round picks to come shortly. So again, the scope to bridge the gap is within reach.
At the risk of banging on about it, it again shows to me that the first round failures in Smedts, Thurlow and Lang, added to by the injury failures in Menzel and Cockatoo, are what have hurt us most. It is not any decision to favour an approach to bring in ready-made over drafting. If anything, the above shows that we haven’t utilised that approach significantly more than recent successful clubs.
As usual you make a good case ... id say the devil is in the detail ..if our T10 picks are Hawkins and JS ... we are probably only able to say one is playing at that level now ... and adding a couple of players like SDek or Stephens would not make us that much better now.. so there is probably an age range/ games played to symbolise players close to their best. How many R1 picks under 70 games and over 280 games for example in those flags side?
For example the has been commentary on Riewoldt at Richmond..280 games , Cotchen 248 , Martin 241 , Lynch 172 .....
I agree failure of draft picks has played a significant role in current situation , and one might have expected Smedts to succeed or Lang .... I think there is ample evidence that we just have not had enough access to prime end of the draft... and even this year we will not be able to add a single figure pick without significant painful trading. If we count up the first 3 columns we are 3 players down in that high end talent zone ..and we have tried redress that with clever drafting at the tail end and trades.. but its getting hard to do
And ..there is something different about drafting a player than bringing him in. The Danger ..and this year Crouch and Cameron ... .. not sure its quite the same. Not many work like Danger and Neale. Id say there would be very few if any flag side that have not drafted single figure picks... and all 6 left this year have players like that again.. although our time within that stat is running out