Team Mgmt. Talk about the makeup of our list - midfield balance, height profile, endurance runners

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I’d argue McGrath and Ridley.
Yeah. I forgot about Ridley. McGrath still has a bit to go I think but might get there. Ridley is a gun.
 
Somehow we need to add 3 mids. I'm not really sure how that happens.

Doable, not sure which one of Dodoro’s family members you’d have to kidnap to make it happen though.

Top 3 pick in the midseason draft. 2 natural selections in the top 25 odd of the 2021 draft. Should all be midfielders as far as I’m concerned, wouldn’t even consider anything else.

I’d be making a genuine approach about a priority pick as well.
 
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Doable, not sure which one of Dodoro’s family members you’d have to kidnap to make it happen though.

Top 3 pick in the midseason draft. 2 natural selections in the top 25 odd of the 2021 draft. Should all be midfielders as far as I’m concerned, wouldn’t even consider anything else.

I’d be making a genuine approach about a priority pick as well.
we should have done that last year with McKenna getting chased out of the country.
i have no shame.

Draft time, if Merrett leaves, top 2 picks should be Bailey Smith & Rory Sloane clones. Hard at it, one with breakaway pace and hard two way running (and a bit of nutter), the other inside extractor.
If Merrett stays, try for Dunkley. If he comes off, go the Smith style mid. If he doesn't, the Sloane type.

MSD gets interesting.
Who didn't get drafted last year that could help this year?
 

JayJ20

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Our cupboard is so bare its laughable.

All player over 30 are cooked. Too many perennially injured. Our mid range consists of too many journeyman, role, bit part players.

We need all our unproven kids to come on all once again to be a competitive unit.

Zach Merrett is our only genuine top 50 AFL player and a class above the rest by a fair margin. He's probably the only player on our list that would automatically get a game in our 2000 side, Brisbane flag side, Geelong/Hawthorn teams. etc. We cannot afford to lose him as we'd be seriously rooted.

Pretty bleak. Just hoping for some glimmer throughout the season but even our good decent kids of recent years aren't the A grade game breakers.
Merrett, Shiel, Ridley, Walla, Stringer and McGrath are the 6 players that would play in every side right now.
Merrett and Ridley would be elite at every club.

Like you said, we can't afford to have any of Perkins, Cox or Reid be busts. We also need Baldwin, Eyre, Brand and Jones to be best 22 players.
Last year's draft haul will go a long way to determine where we finish. I say that because it takes 4-6 years for us to know if they make it at AFL level.
 
10-15 games into the kids this year makes them better for next year. Zaka, Gleeson etc shouldn't play unless absolutely necessary

Play Perks, Reid, Brand, Eyre ASAP - they played very little football last year as 17/18 year olds so playing them know lets them catch up and accelerate their development. They don't have to be KPP yet but play them FFS.
 

BrunoV

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Doable, not sure which one of Dodoro’s family members you’d have to kidnap to make it happen though.

Top 3 pick in the midseason draft. 2 natural selections in the top 25 odd of the 2021 draft. Should all be midfielders as far as I’m concerned, wouldn’t even consider anything else.

I’d be making a genuine approach about a priority pick as well.


It's a problem that has multiple layers.

The starting point is recruitment. The prime example for me is selecting McGrath to turn him in to Taranto. One is a specialist inside pig with an elite engine the other was primarily a half back/defender who could play in the middle with amazing athleticism. 5 years in, Taranto has already been a prime mover in a midfield that played in a GF - Coniglio and Ward missed significant parts of 2019. Taranto was second only to Kelly among the mids for average disposals that year and he played all 26 games - if that means one thing it means he was at the top of the midfield rotation (as a third year player).

Dodoro is Scott Clayton, forever chasing the flashier player at the expense of the meat and potatoes simplicity that most decent midfields are built on.

Second major problem is "accepting we have a problem". There is virtually no prospect that Dodoro will give up on a combination of Parish, Merrett, McGrath, Caldwell and Shiel and he appears to have almost complete control in this regard. If that's the case, where does the midfield time come from? Adding 3 midfielders to the team means moving on 2 of these players. That leaves us with a core of 5 to which we'd want to add Perkins. Midfields do not really go deeper than that in any meaningful sense - the depth is really a matter for the balance of a healthy list. The rest of the rotations should be a Tippa or a Stringer for a few minutes to try to steal or break the ball out of the middle.

It's scary that we get 2 injuries to midfielders and the remaining genuine midfield prospect on the list is a guy whose kicking is so bad we're playing him as a pressure forward (i.e. Clarke). That gets us to the boring old argument of the complete lack of respect paid to the midfield in recruiting, list management and day to day coaching (which has churned through all the options despite the consistent incompetence of our midfield and without really ever looking at the alternatives).

Seriously, how the * did we take Hibberd, a 192cm, 95kg inside midfielder who would probably be 6:25ish over 2km, play him on ball for 2 of his 20 quarters and then delist him to carry on with, and I don't take any pleasure in saying this, a nothing romance story like Lachlan Johnson? Ned Cahill, a slow small forward who at a small 178cm probably looks best suited to a midfield role (it sure as hell doesn't look like it will be half back)?

Our first choice midfield, like I said somewhere else comprises 2 x AAs (the oldest of which is 28), 1 x 100 game 6th year pick 5 and 1 x 80 game 5th year pick 1 and it has been embarrassed for the last 20 games.
 
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Established players we’ll rely greatly on this year

Hooker
Merrett
Heppell
Langford
McGrath
Ridley
Smith
Tippa
Parish
Stringer
Wright
Shiel - gone
Hurley - gone

Much of the season rests on their ability to stay on the park, play decent footy and actually be leaders in large or small part.

If enough of them can do that, we’ll be kinda okay and bring some kids through.

If they can’t, s**t is gonna get real ugly.
 
It's a problem that has multiple layers.

The starting point is recruitment. The example for me is selecting McGrath to turn him in to Taranto. One is a specialist inside pig with an elite engine the other was primarily a half back/defender who could play in the middle with amazing athleticism. 5 years in, Taranto has already been a prime mover in a midfield - Coniglio and Ward missed significant parts of 2019. Taranto was second only to Kelly among the mids for average disposals that year and he played all 26 games - if that means one thing it means he was at the top of the midfield rotation (as a third year player).

Dodoro is Scott Clayton, forever chasing the flashier player at the expense of the meat and potatoes simplicity that most decent midfields are built on.

Second major problem is "accepting we have a problem". There is virtually no prospect that Dodoro will give up on a combination of Parish, Merrett, McGrath, Caldwell and Shiel and he appears to have almost complete control in this regard. If that's the case, where does the midfield time come from? Adding 3 midfielders to the team means moving on 2 of these players. That leaves us with a core of 5 to which we'd want to add Perkins. Midfields do not really go deeper than that in any meaningful sense - the depth is really a matter for the balance of a health list. The rest of the rotations should be a Tippa or a Stringer for a few minutes to try to steal or break the ball out of the middle.

It's scary that we get 2 injuries to midfielders and the remaining genuine midfield prospect on the list is a guy whose kicking is so bad we're playing him as a pressure forward (i.e. Clarke). That gets the boring old argument of the complete lack of respect paid to the midfield in recruiting, list management and day to day coaching (which has churned through all the options depsite the consistent incompetence of our midfield and without really ever looking at the alternatives).

Seriously, how the fu** did we take Hibberd, a 192cm, 95kg inside midfielder who would probably be 6:25ish over 2km, play him on ball for 2 of his 20 quarters and then delist him to carry on with, and I don't take any pleasure in saying this, a nothing romance story like Lachlan Johnson? Ned Cahill, a slow small forward who at a small 178cm probably looks best suited to a midfield role (it sure as hell doesn't look like it will be half back)?

Our first choice midfield, like I said somewhere else comprises 2 x AAs (the oldest of which is 28), 1 x 100 game 6th year pick 5 and 1 x 80 game 5th year pick 1 and it, has been embarrassed for the last 20 games.

Your example with Hibberd, when the meat and potatoes is recruited it’s not served in the accustomed matter anyway. I think Hibberd deserved more of a chance...
 
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10-15 games into the kids this year makes them better for next year. Zaka, Gleeson etc shouldn't play unless absolutely necessary

Play Perks, Reid, Brand, Eyre ASAP - they played very little football last year as 17/18 year olds so playing them know lets them catch up and accelerate their development. They don't have to be KPP yet but play them FFS.
It would hinder their development getting a bath at afl level because they aren’t ready. I can see Eyre and Reid will getting a taste later in the year, Brand is still a way off. Perkins will most likely play this week. No need to rush them in if they aren’t ready though.
 
Results are one thing.
3-4 years of the same issues, no more on display than in that hawks game, it's not that early.
Short of the Roos, i don't see where we get a win. Last time the outlook was this dire was 2016 and we had most our list suspended.

goalkicking, skills, effort, leadership. we need to make a lot of this up
We're also down to a 0 gamer as our sole ruck option, we have no FB (well, we do but he's kicking our goals) and our midfield depth can't cover two injuries.
We lost to the Hawks by a point. We where out classed by a top 4 side. We will lose the next two which most would have already predicated. We are 1 win behindwhere I thought we would be. We will win a few in the back end and finish bottom 5.
 

Saint

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I don't see as much benefit to finishing lower this year as others. We need games into all our young players, but we also need to start building winning momentum. With the injuries sustained it looks like that is unlikely to happen until the second half of the year.

At least expectations will be dampened, let's hope they don't use it as an excuse for half-hearted efforts. Any of that should be cruelly dealt with by the match committee.
 
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I don't see as much benefit to finishing lower this year as others. We need games into all our young players, but we also need to start building winning momentum. With the injuries sustained it looks like that is unlikely to happen until the second half of the year.

At least expectations will be dampened, let's hope they don't use it as an excuse for half-hearted efforts. Any of that should be cruelly dealt with by the match committee.

We should play the best team available each week, with a preference towards giving opportunity to younger guys who've shown sufficient form at VFL level. I don't think wheeling out a team of kids each week is the way to go, but we also need to blood kids as we can. With our current injury list we don't have a whole lot of choice.

Last week we fielded the least experienced team in the AFL.
 

carloss

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B : Francis(23), Brand(18), Johnson(19)

HB : Ridley(22), Reid(19), Laverde(24)

C : Ham(21), Caldwell(20), Cox(19)

HF : Perkins(19), Jones(20), Langford(24)

FF : Cahill(20), Eyre(18), Mosquito(20)

R : Draper(22), McGrath(22), Merrett(25)

IC : Bryan(19), Parish(23), Snelling(23), McBride(19)

Waterman(24), Wright(24), Zerk-Thatcher(22)
 
It just wasn't quite miserable enough mate.
Not sure what happened . Seems some thought we could be half decent against good sides. Was not going to happen within two weeks. Sure we threw a game away against the Hawks but we where never going to be close to Port in Adelaide.
 
List management is fairly much irrelevant unless EFC fixes the two biggest on-field issues from the last two years - First, our full ground defence when the opposition transitions from our forward 50 to their forward 50 is NOT AFL standard - This is an issue of structure and discipline, not list management - Secondly the club suffers from too many injuries which impacts performance - Fix these two issues and you can add three or four wins to the end-of-season total.
 
Not sure what happened . Seems some thought we could be half decent against good sides. Was not going to happen within two weeks. Sure we threw a game away against the Hawks but we where never going to be close to Port in Adelaide.

I dare say the injury hits to Draper, Shiel and Caldwell combined with our fixture for the first half of the season (and the realistic prospect of being 0-8+) has brought some people back down to earth regarding expectations.

May well win a few on the back end, though if our bye gets moved to round 5, that may make it all the harder.
 

ghostdog

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I actually wouldn't offer Merrett a contract and encourage him to exercise his FA rights, hopefully we finish last and take 1&2, I'd also pay 75% of Shiel's contract if we could get another top 25 selection, I'd consider offers for Parish as well.

If we finished last I would also target an OOC player and low ball the club at the trade table like Adelaide did to GWS for Hately.

I'd then pick the best available mids at each selection.

McGrath, Caldwell, Perkins, Horne, Sinn, Langford and Parish (If he stayed)
Would you still chase Dunkley?
Issue with trading Merrett is that none of McGrath, Caldwell, Langford or Parish distribute as well as Zach. Jury is out on Perkins. I don't know about Horne and Sinn, but the 'unproven' tag will stick until they are proven, and probably wouldn't get too many games in their first year anyway.
I know our delivery i50 has been crap anyway, but it would be worse without Zach, surely. If Hooker's gone we continue to set Jones up for a crunching at the age of 21? I'm not sure about trading him. The currency is enticing though.
 
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