If you are infringed upon in a marking contest, do you not deserve a free kick?
That’s like calling Lebron James a fraud because a third of his points are scored at the free throw line.
Draft Expert Knightmare's 2021 Draft Almanac
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That’s like calling Lebron James a fraud because a third of his points are scored at the free throw line.
brooksnk
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Probably best not to directly compare Mids and KPF's anyway - but your point stands that at the very least, KPF's hold higher value pound for pound due to their rarity.
I am biased obviously being a North fan, but Tarryn Thomas is a more damaging player scoreboard wise. Smith gets more uncontested ball. Contested wise they are similar.
But remember that Smith is playing in a top 2-3 team. TT has been playing in the weakest North side in recent history (and the AFL more widely) for the best part of his career. Swap the teams Smith and TT have been playing in and TT, in my view, would be clearly above Smith. Score impacting mids is where the game is moving.
Is this a piss take? Smith kicked 8 goals in 4 finals.
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I don’t do basketball
Shinboner1
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brooksnk
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True, but for the season:
Smith averages 0.65 goals, 0.5 behinds a game
TT averages 1.14 goals, 0.81 behinds a game
Then keep in mind North scored 9.6 goals a game and the Dog's were scoring 12.6. TT's scoreboard impact is far more impressive, especially doing it in the worst side in the comp compared to Smith playing in the ~second best team in the comp.
So no, sorry, wasn't a piss take.
Dogga6
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TT reminds me of Richard Tambling/Daniel Wells. Will be a good player who carves out a 100 game career.
Every single club would take the King twins and Bailey Smith over TT every single day of the week.
That's an absolute given.
Every single club would take the King twins and Bailey Smith over TT every single day of the week.
That's an absolute given.
I think you wrote 250+ game career wrong. Daniel Wells was a great player.
I think clubs would take the King twins for sure, given the value of talls. Not so sure that Bailey Smith will have a substantially better career than Tarryn Thomas, despite the mullet.
Knightmare
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Dittmar, Rogers, Schlensog, Baker, Avery, Fejo, C.Voss, Ferres, Paton, Preston.
If you want a medium-taller marking type, Ferres ticks the boxes and can play closer to goal and hit the scoreboard. While Paton across half-forward for pressure is nice and brings more speed.
Bailey Lambert as a mature ager I liked early season and would consider along with Sam Lowson and Tyrone Thorne. Max Pescud I like as a medium forward.
Still wilfully missing the point.
Every club would love to ship out a mediocre player with a large salary attached for a good return. Who's buying?
If there is substantial interest in Sam Weideman, there will be interest in Todd Marshall. That happens because key forwards are so scarce, and in particular those key forwards who are still young who were drafted early draft.
Overs paid for Mitch McGovern, Josh Schache, Jesse White, Chris Dawes with the returns received in each case extrodinarily high for the players they are.
Why does that happen with key forwards? Scarcity.
If the group think is wrong, I'm going to call it out every single time and first call it.
And they shouldn't have tried to offload either. Both were proven footballers and players I would have targeted this time last year as a rival club perspective. Sometimes guys have down seasons. The key is recognising when someone has game and when they really shouldn't still be AFL listed and don't have best-22 prospects.
I haven't seen any of Dempsey as he played no NAB League.
He's one of the rare few cases where I can't comment on his capabilities.
The equation is as simple as, Weideman is two years older and has done less at AFL level, yet he was highly coveted before he signed.
I wouldn't have been surprised if Collingwood had have offered a 2022 2nd rounder for Marshall. That's my estimate if he was tabled of what could have been had as a return.
I don't agree with the view Marshall and Georgiades are the two key forwards. Georgiades I agree is a long term piece, but Finlayson if I'm Port Adelaide I would favour to Marshall post-Dixon. He's the better footballer. And if you can bring in Finlayson for less and ship Marshall out for more, I'd be doing that any day of the week.
That's one of my major gripes with AFL clubs over the years. There are so many good ones in the state leagues, you could just about have an All-state league team compete against AFL sides if you gave them AFL coaching and that time to gel together.
Every year I'm putting the likes of Schloithe and Bolton in my power rankings knowing full well they're not going to get picked fundamentally because they're both AFL calibre midfielders who respectively in just about any AFL midfield would be best-22.
Schloithe has only been on Fremantle's list.
You could look at a Sam Menegola who was delisted by both Fremantle and Hawthorn, before dominating at state league level and doing great at AFL level. James Podsiadly was rookied by Collingwood and Essendon back in the day, then way down the track joins Geelong as a rookie and he has a terrific career.
Looking at being delisted by multiple AFL clubs doesn't mean you can't play at AFL level or shouldn't be AFL listed again.
Knightmare
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Answering the above two quotes in one.
Uncertainty around whether he can become a midfielder. Only average as a contested ball winner and work by foot isn't great.
What a lot of people either forget or are unaware of is, all clubs have very different power rankings. And like mine, they don't read like phantom drafts. You'll have players go in the 20s who a club might rate top-10. That happened with Johnson. If a player is 2nd or 3rd on a club's draft board, that can lead to a Johnson dropping. And same story with Goater. If you average up club draft boards, he would be on average rated higher than he went. But given he wasn't any clubs preferred pick, he dropped.
So that's not something I really can take any credit for.
My interest isn't in having my power rankings align with what clubs ultimately choose to do but rather have my power rankings ultimately reflect who we will look back at as the best footballers in what order.
Thanks for the kind words.
That's what I'm here to do, be it on Bigfooty, Twitter or YouTube.
I'd like ultimately for more people in the media to engage the public and have discussion around their opinions. That dialogue and debate is something I value and would like to see more of.
What evidence do you have that Weidemann was highly coveted? And by which clubs?
My understanding is that due to Weidemann's lack of currency, Melbourne conceded that Cerra wasn't gettable. And unsurprisingly they've identified Van Rooyan as a forward long term. And based on your philosophy, Melbourne re-signing Weidemann for 2 years is a mistake, because at the moment, he's purely depth.
curnow inferno
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KM, do you think soon you could give is an updated best 100 prospects from last 4 drafts? And maybe a 2022 AA team prediction?
Knightmare
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2022 top-10 is on espn.com.au/afl and also in my signature or page 1 depending on what's easiest.
North Melbourne, Gold Coast and Collingwood each wanted Weideman and were prepared to table offers. I don't follow public reporting, but I'd assume if I've heard interest from each of those clubs, there would have been public reporting on it.
How high or how much? They're not details that have been communicated to me nor questions I bothered asking as Weideman is someone I viewed as a trade period trap. My assumption is a second round pick could have been possible, even if those clubs would have looked at moving something mid-late second in an exchange.
Melbourne re-signing Weideman I do view as a mistake. I would have traded him for the best offer possible and drafted Tyler Keitel and/or Matthew Hammelmann as rookies who I consider marginal upgrades.
That's a thought. I'm open to putting those on my list of videos for consideration this offseason.
Shinboner1
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I think North may have taken him for a late pick considering he isnt best 22 in melbs side.
They wouldn't budge and seemingly weids was happy to play VFL every week.
Its that crucial age of a player (soon to be 25/49 games) that North has spend the last 2 years delisting that probably scared the club away too.
Once they got CCJ in it pushed Weidman out of the equation.
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The Bulldogs destroyed Schache at the Lions he was playing pretty good football for a junior forward
Schache is a third forward…. As such he played good football as a forward when allowed to play that role.
Most know that ruckman like Dean Cox, Mark Jamar, and Darren Jolly were rookie picks who became AA, or in the case of Jolly an AA40 member. Typically, I'd agree that later in the draft or rookie draft is where you can find best value in the ruck department. And I'm sure there are far more recent examples than the ones I've given, however, it would be a mistake if recruiters stopped using their intuition and foresight and simply lumped players collectively as ''ruckman'' and drafted accordingly.
You mention how Jackson ''looked and played'' in his draft year and that even now you wouldn't use an early pick on such a player. Clearly, what Jason Taylor and his recruiting team saw wasn't what you saw. They didn't see just another potential young ''ruckman''. They saw a highly flexible ruck/forward (still a work in progress), who could be a high leaping, aggressive athletic ruck, who then becomes an extra mid at the stoppages. Most ''rucks'' become next to useless once the initial ruck contest has become a ground-ball dispute.
Jackson may not finish his career as the best player from his draft year, but most wouldn't argue that right now he's in that conversation and probably leading the order. Probably a mistake to overlook such a player just because they're lumped into the ruck category. Recruiting is far more nuanced than that.
Some experts are better at identifying talent than others. I'd suggest we have a case in point.
Although, I fully expect you'll say that you saw the same potential upside as Taylor et al. I challenge that assertion considering it's predicated by what you ''saw'' and not by what Jason Taylor saw.
You're welcome to tell me who they should have taken at pick 3.
That’s garbage, and just about every one on the Lions board would tell you that.
Schache had a good first season, but fell away towards the end of the season.
He was a shadow of himself in his second season, with a lot going on, off the field.
No one destroyed Schache (except maybe himself, but I wouldn’t put it like that). I’m
Knightmare
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CCJ has voiced his desire to be more of a ruck/KPF than a KPF/ruck. Securing CCJ for this reason I can't imagine would have done a lot to reduce North Melbourne's desire to secure Weideman.
The basic principle with key forwards is if they're four years in and still not AFL quality, they're generally not going to be AFL quality. When you're six years in and still not there as a key forwards. The odds aren't looking good.
After four years as a key forward and they're not good enough, my view is that's either the time a shift into defence if they have contested marking gifts and are capable 1v1, otherwise they should be delisted.
Having this view doesn't mean AFL clubs see the equation the same way. Weideman after all remains. I can't say I'm seeing value to the retention with Weideman still yet to show he can play good football at AFL level.
I do still see a place for ruckmen to on occasions be taken early if they're a rare talent. If Nic Nat 2.0 came along, I would fully endorse a club spending a top-2 pick on someone with those precise capabilities. It's just on average, knowing the script, the relative lack of success of early draft ruck, the success of rookie rucks and the success of rucks available during trade periods, I'd certainly be slightly shifting ruckmen down my draft board slightly, while still absolutely having the flexibility if the value is far superior to that of another type to go the ruckman.
Brodie Grundy in 2012 is an obvious example and one I've used many times where clubs went too heavily anti-ruck, and not picking him inside the top-10 was an atrocious blunder where it's not properly appreciating exactly how good he was even then and how obvious it would be that he would become one of the competition's best ruckmen.
On Jackson as a talent though coming through the juniors and coming back to process. He's sub 200cm which if we look back at the history of rucks rarely converts, so there is that asterisk firstly. Early draft rucks, again asterisk given the success of rookie rucks and those that can be traded for making it not a necessity to go so early to get a good one. On the positive, rate of improvement was very good and adds value given it's a position you're projecting out to the long term with, with some of his later season play in the WAFL Colts a good deal improved and showing he can find more of the footy around the ground. Has the athleticism and traits where by position suggesting a high probability that he can play at AFL level for many of the reasons you have identified. Was he so clearly going to be able to play forward though? Showed glimpses at times with how he attacked the ball aerially, but still didn't show what I'd describe as 'key forward talent' where I can necessarily play them forward for full games and feel they can necessarily have a good career there - he could even as a junior attack the ball aerially but was more a okay mark than a super fantastic mark, and again at ground level, he's able and an able mover for that height, but nothing extraordinary by position.
So coming in, it's expecting a good (but probably not great) ruckman and someone who may be able to play some forward as required but probably is for AFL purposes a ruckman. Jackson has improved from this status in both categories where going forward, he is over the long term one of the most appealing young ruckmen in the competition which wasn't assured coming in and as a forward, while I still wouldn't want him as a full time forward, he's adequate there already where he's at least not a liability forward of centre, which for this early stage in his development is a good spot to be.
I can see why you could make a case for Jackson being the top pick if the 2019 draft was re-done, and I have full faith in the player development at Melbourne given their coaching group and how that list is buying in and firing on all cylinders. I'm not necessarily sure though he will be a top-5 pick from 2019. And that's not necessarily the requirement for him to be successful by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm not at this point projecting Jackson reaches the heights of a Gawn or Nic Nat this generation, or Cox or Sandilands last generation, with his play forward of centre in my view highly unlikely to be competitive with the better key forwards in the competition.
On Taylor's talent ID, it would be easy to complement his ID, though the question then would be how much is him and how much is down to the development of these guys since joining the Melbourne Football Club? It's one of those factors that is so hard to definitively quantify, but when you're picking guys who ultimately make it at AFL level, he's certainly doing his job well and bringing in guys who are good enough for the club to make into good footballers. And the same acknowledgment should equally be applied to other clubs, where they can seemingly hit or miss through the draft, and the actual talent being drafted matters, but equally, so does all the variables that come into play once they enter a football club.
In hindsight who Melbourne should have picked at 3 instead of Jackson, even though it's still early days, I'd still have bid on Green (which would get matched), but from there I'd be taking Caleb Serong. What a lot of people won't realise with Serong is if they didn't watch his junior career is while Fremantle use him as a midfielder, he's actually a very capable forward and he's one I'd be rotating between the two positions and could see tremendous value in still doing that for AFL purposes. I hope it's not a component to his game Fremantle let go to waste, as he should at minimum have periods where he rests forward or pushes forward if he gets hot or wants to create matchup changes/problems to force the opposing side to adjust to his play.
Shinboner1
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He couldn't keep his spot in the best 22 of a side that didn't have a capable forward line in 2020 in a role of need being tall forward.
Has put up mediocre numbers across the board and seems to need to be fed the ball to get possessions vs getting them himself.
Was most likely scouted as a person of interest because he has played 'some footy' across his career, and his averages don't exactly scream pick me pick me.
\I think North are perfectly fine with CCJ now even in a ruck/forward role considering we have xerri and edwards building into the position and the club has actively said they'll be playing 2 rucks moving forward. Also have comben who debuted last year and has been going from strength to strength in the preseason. Seems to be really highly rated at the club also.
Agree with your principle around tall forwards and I'm glad the trade never happened.
Jackson is all of about 1cm off 200cm; and for all I know he could be 200cm since being drafted.
For all the words you've used, and I appreciate your detailed reply, you've not once touched on what makes Jackson the player he is. His footy IQ.
He's just about the smartest young ruck I've seen. And it's those smarts that made him such an influencer in a premiership side as a teenager.
It's also why he's better than your original power rankings and better than your present assessment.
It's what you ''missed'' and I suspect still do.
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VinnieB
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You could argue it's more difficult to do it as a midfielder in a top team. Particularly if you aren't the best midfielder in that team.
This sort of argument is rubbish.
How many 'top' midfielders from bottom clubs have we seen move to top clubs and not have the same impact?
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