I kept the stats across three seasons 2016-2018 (thought it was more, maybe I've got a more complete set stashed away somewhere). I used to source the player data from the team lists via AFL/clubs websites. I was thinking of restarting it this year, but they've removed the option of getting all the player data in a list form, which makes it harder to gather that data in the same format (bloody Champion Data & Craig Hutchison). So I'm having to think about whether I can be bothered. Checking back I used to use slightly different data bins (I think this table must be from one of the rounds in 2018 maybe):
| Team | 0-20 yrs | 21-23 yrs | 24-28 yrs | 29-36 yrs |
| Port Adelaide | 1 | 6 | 11 | 4 |
| Hawthorn | 1 | 5 | 10 | 6 |
| Richmond | 2 | 4 | 13 | 3 |
| Essendon | 2 | 5 | 12 | 3 |
| Greater Western Sydney | 2 | 6 | 12 | 2 |
| Geelong | 2 | 5 | 11 | 4 |
| North Melbourne | 2 | 4 | 11 | 5 |
| Adelaide | 2 | 5 | 8 | 7 |
| West Coast | 3 | 4 | 10 | 5 |
| Melbourne | 3 | 9 | 7 | 3 |
| Collingwood | 4 | 5 | 9 | 4 |
| St Kilda | 4 | 6 | 8 | 4 |
| Sydney | 4 | 6 | 7 | 5 |
| Carlton | 5 | 6 | 7 | 4 |
| Western Bulldogs | 5 | 12 | 4 | 1 |
| Gold Coast | 6 | 5 | 9 | 2 |
| Brisbane | 6 | 8 | 5 | 3 |
| Fremantle | 6 | 7 | 4 | 5 |
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3rd chance
For me has has more upside than Tucker so I would be playing him ahead. But Ras is clearly not ready yet so happy to leave him out until he is.
Time to embrace him Snuff, he's never going away.
From memory Serong didn't debut round 1 either.
DRAGONS FFC And he'll have to play out of his skin to retain his spot. Which is only a positive thing.
How a hot start will anchor the Dockers' September hopes
Imagine the Fremantle Dockers sitting inside the top four come their Round 14 bye. For years, the great hopes of the purple army have…www.theroar.com.au
Stupendous post, I really like it, feel it...agree with it. I don't know if I missed it first time round but thank you for re-sharing, it resonates with me. The glass is more than half-full I reckon, the cup may be about to overfloweth.....cyber high five for you.
Treacy
Another awesome, well written; balanced post with salient points but also a sense of the joy of what's about to unfold. Dead right, sit back fans and just soak in what's about to happen....could be a lot of fun, but even if we're 'disappointed' as fans it's the reason why we are, the belief that we'll get there, to that promised land...one day. It's the reason why we turn up. I think we've got every reason to feel optimism and excitement, it's in the air for sureThis feels like a healthy re-balancing of the attitude in this thread, but I'm hoping we land as a whole on the positive side of the ledger. I don't think we're sh*t - I think that's a bit excessive.
We're certainly unproven but I think the enthusiasm comes from the expectation that we will take an important step because:
1. We've had a charmed run with injuries through pre-season. This seems to be the most important time to have continuity. Players that complete an entire season off an interrupted pre-season seem to struggle, but players with a proper pre-season seem to have a better run at staying on the park, and seem to be much better when they are on the park.
2. We have competition for spots across the board. To an extent this is linked to point 1, but it's also due to what seems like a decent level of improvement across a tonne of our young players. Yes, we've been competing either against ourselves or against the Weagle's C team, but we talk constantly about how premierships are won by the bottom 10 players not the top 5. We currently have a list that has 20 odd players vying to be the bottom 10, which feels like something we've never had before.
3. We've got a revamped coaching team. Particularly, we've gone away and aggressively targeted coaches that can address our deficiencies. The addition of Graham and LeCras was probably my favourite off-season move. The fact that we stuck with Hale for, what, 6 or 7 years began to seem like a form of insanity.
4. We actually saw the implementation of skills and aspects of the game plan that we've been crying out for during the West Coast game. Ignoring the opposition and to a large extent the actual score, the timing of our forwards, the inclination of our mids to lower the eyes and spear passes to leading forwards and the constant switching of angles off half-back was just so exciting. Everyone knows we have to do this against real opposition when points are on the line, but surely this is the best we've looked for years.
5. Everything we saw in point 4 was done by our B team midfield. This shouldn't be ignored. We've been hauled over the coals by east coast pundits for years for being overly reliant on Fyfe, Mundy and Walters - the notion was essentially that we couldn't win games without one of them starring. What we saw was a whole of team effort, driven by our elite young players across the back line and midfield.
Overall, my personal view is that if we play to our potential we should absolutely challenge for the 8. Will we? No idea. But I think there is a happy middle ground between "we're sh*t" and "we're going to win a flag".
We should play some excellent football this year and I think it's going to be really fun to be a wharf
Arguably his 4th. Drafted in 2017. Delisted and re-drafted to the rookie list in 2019. Delisted and invited to train with Freo in 2020. Invited to train with WC 2022
