Game Day 2019 Draft - now with poll!

So how did we do?

  • A+ - nailed it

  • A - really great

  • B - pretty good

  • C - okay

  • D - could have been better

  • E - could have been a lot better

  • F - terrible!


Results are only viewable after voting.

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Hamish gives a good explanation on our last 2 picks.

They felt OConnor has good upside because he was stuck behind 2-3 in the WA midfield. They projected the touches he did get to more midfield time and concluded he would have had greater production.

Gollant they accept is a Smokey but felt if he went round another year would be high end so best get him in now.

Some rationale I guess. Hamish has too many runs on the board to be throwing the toys out at this early stage.
 

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Can Jack Martin demand a higher pay and contract length from the rookie draft? AFL site says "Melbourne has a selection before the Blues at Friday's Pre-Season Draft but a hefty contract demand made by Martin - believed to be for five years - will ensure the 24-year-old finds a new home at Princes Park. "

Could the demons select Martin, pay him the base rookie wage, then trade him to Carlton for a 1st round pick next season?
 
Well that was a pretty weird draft I think.

Hamish did warn us that we shouldn't overreact to names we don't know, and that was how it panned out.

What was interesting mostly, was the choices we made.

McAsey looks like a really good get. Hopefully he is a Talia like selection where he is a set and forget key defender for the next 10 years. The interesting part is we made a choice to trade down and let Stephens go. Dylan looks like a high quality mid, but we obviously didn't have him rated as high. Interesting choice to overlook the SA kid that is rated super highly for a KP Victorian kid.

At our next selection, we took an SA midfielder. Shoenberg has improved greatly in last 12 months, so lets hope he is still on the upwards trajectory. Seemed a good choice.

We then opted to trade down and as such gave up both Will Gould (another highly rated SA kid) as well as Jeremy Sharp. Sharp was, I thought, perfect pick for us. A quick, hard running outside mid would have been perfect. In the end we get Worrell, which looks like a great pick, but is essentially another tall. Will be interesting to see if we can settle him in a position. The trade down decision, which really was for very little, especially given GC then gave up pick 11 in 2020 for the next pick. Think we really missed an opportunity there.

With lots of currency available, many of us thought we would have a chance to trade up and grab a slider. It seems like we tried a little bit, but without much luck. Could we have gone hard for a player??

In the end we drafted a very big, possibly developing mid. He's got enough size that he can play in the SANFL pretty much straight away. Let's hope he has the scope to develop further. Very surprised we didn't go for Ralph-Smith or Bianco at this pick. Another quality running player might have been a good choice??

The last pick is the biggest head scratcher of all. Again a supposedly highly rated SA player in Taheny is available, but we instead went for complete surprise. On the surface, Gollant doesn't seem to fill any need and doesn't seem to have anything to really rate him. He's a tallish guy at 191 cm, who ran a slow 20m sprint at the testing. He's effectively a 191 cm, slow outside mid?? Nothing in his performances indicates what it is that Hamish sees in him, but Haggis obviously thinks there is significant scope for improvement. Very weird pick, given you would think he was available in the Rookie Draft if we wanted.

In the end, Ogilvie did what he always does - he picked purely based on his talent ranking. He didn't worry about SA kids V non SA kids. He picked who he thought was best - which is a good thing.

What concerned me is that every pick we looked like we wanted to trade it down to build more assets. Literally every pick we was on the phone trying to swing deals. Sometimes you just have to get the best kids available right there and then and not worry about building more picks for later. I am a bit worried that we might get the balance wrong and become to infatuated with the pick trading possibilities. Ultimately we need the best players on the field, not more assets year after year.

As always, it's nearly impossible to judge a draft straight away. We might look at who we got compared to where they were initially ranked and think we didn't do all that well, but I will take Ogilvie's judgements over Nightmare or Twomey any day.
 

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Last 2 picks are high risk/high reward types. I remember the melts when Danger was picked over Ebert as 1. He was victorian 2. In the U18 national champs he only averaged something like 10 touches a game and 3. He stayed another year in Victoria to finish high school.

Danger from memory was a big reach at pick 10 too - most of the year he was in the 20-40 bracket but late mail was he could push up the draft.

Essentially Danger was fairly underexposed as he was used as a tagger/HBF in the U18 champs in his draft year. I remember he did pre season with us then went back and played TAC cup again when he was 18 but after he was drafted by us... he absolutely tore the TAC cup to shreds, regularly getting 30 + touches, think he played CHB and got close to 40 touches and and he may have kicked a bag of 10 from memory too?

Anyway, moral of the story is Haggis and the team would've taken a punt as it seems like O' Connor wasn't given a chance to play his most suited role as an inside mid at the champs (but when he played that role in his U18 WA side, did very well) so they reckon his production was down because of that. Same with Gollant, they would've seen something in him (most likely his movement and height for a player of his size) and thought that if they left him he would've exploded in production next year or someone wouldve taken a punt later in the draft on him. I think that's what the later draft picks are for - would you rather take a Brad Symes type who probably racks it up from day dot if you slot him into a rd 1 AFL side with limited upside or would you rather go the gun or bust route where they have a special AFL attribute but have a lot to work on but won't be able to slot in from day 1. I know which kid i'd rather take.
 
One thing is for sure, absolutely no-one knows what we are going to do in any draft!!

Our decision to rookie two recycled player is a complete surprise to everyone. Very interesting strategy, but kind of makes sense. We are loading up our team with younger players this year and next year, so to be able to add two 22 year old's that have developed bodies allows us to have some cover. This way we don't expose and smash the younger guys when we don't need to.

Interesting for sure.
 
So now this means we can add a player over the summer. Think Hamish will leave this one as a "nicks" pick and invite tons of kids to train to see if they fit the mould.
 
Love the Ben Keays pick, I think he has more to offer at AFL level and was unlucky to be delisted by Brisbane.

Ben Crocker... would have to show serious improvement over what he did at Collingwood to get AFL games. More likely than a Patrick Wilson type but he's not that good IMO
 
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