Game Day Adelaide vs Hawthorn - Adelaide Oval

[fairfooty]

I think we should be more careful about using early picks on kids with strong family ties to Melbourne clubs. Watts and Gunston both had fathers on the boards of Victorian clubs.
Kelly does too, but Collingwood passed over him for even a rookie spot, so I'm not to worried about him leaving super early (and, of course, he still has to actually make it as a player).

Spot on - avoid like the plague as regardless of how good they are as kids they are highly unlikely to stay and re-pay the development effort we've put into them. Need to avoid becoming the development nursery for other interstate clubs IMO.

Having said that, I think it's more than that - there seems to be a particular type of parent that thinks nothing of behaving badly to get whatever they want for their baby boy. Gunston and Tippett are a case in point. Ends justifies means stuff.

 

[fairfooty]

Agree -the background checking is enormous these days in terms of the player. I know for a fact all teachers from school days and principal are interviewed.

I think you're spot on though it needs a full family check as well

Agree - 360 degree background checks - nothing less. And that's not to say one identified potential problem is a deal breaker - but knowing about it means it can be part of the decision and managed. Although I suspect if we'd interviewed the two fathers in question we might have made different decisions. Or if not, at least been much more alert to potential problems with them down the track and then managed them in a more shall we say, 'sophisticated' way.

 

[Dandy_GO]

Spot on - avoid like the plague as regardless of how good they are as kids they are highly unlikely to stay and re-pay the development effort we've put into them. Need to avoid becoming the development nursery for other interstate clubs IMO.

Having said that, I think it's more than that - there seems to be a particular type of parent that thinks nothing of behaving badly to get whatever they want for their baby boy. Gunston and Tippett are a case in point. Ends justifies means stuff.

I agree to an extent, but I kind of feel that we need to almost put a line through kids who we suspect might get homesick AND have parents working at other clubs. Reilly, for instance, was very homesick early on with us, but managed to get over it. Steinglein, Tippett, Jon Griffin are also examples of guys who were homesick from the get-go. Yes, all ended up leaving, but they all stuck around for at least a couple of contracts with us, which meant we had enough time to develop them far enough to get value in return (sadly, that ended up being nothing in Tippett's case due Trigg/Reid stupidity, and Jon Griffin had been on the list for ages, but had stagnated so badly that we didn't get much for him.)

Guys like Gunston and Fergus Watts both have dads who were in the system at Melbourne clubs, however, and I expect would have put far more pressure on their sons to move back, or would have been less receptive to our club's moves to scratch out at least another contract or two. Due to the contacts and experience their fathers had, there was far less uncertainty about leaving the club that drafted them. Hence, both left after their initial 2 year contracts ran out, which, in Gunstons case was a contributing factor in us getting far less for him than we should have, though we did end up getting a pretty amazing deal out of Watts, admittedly.

So, yes, we should be thinking about the family situations of all players, but I think we need to be especially careful with kids who have dads working at interstate clubs. It just seems to be a really dumb move.

 

[fairfooty]

Good post - we need to become much more astute at identifying the deal-breakers - and you've spotted probably the top one. Overall we really need to become much more sophisticated in the way we recruit these kids.

 

[SteppingTiger]

Adelaide were under the impression that Gunston was going to re-sign, to the point the thought he was coming into the club with his manager to do just that - But then just the manager turned up without him and said --'Gunston has flown back to Melbourne and he's not coming back, he want's to go to Hawthorn'..

shit way to leave a club

Cheers for the replies. Booing is more understandable.

 

[TheLeftFist8]

Cheers for the replies. Booing is more understandable.

For comparison Maric, Griffin, Knights, Vince…there is no way those guys would get collective booing.