Footy Dept. Soon to be ex-GM - List & Recruiting Adrian Dodoro #putoutyourjackets

[Lore]

Cliff notes:

• Stepping back from his current senior role following the 2023 AFL Draft
• Transition plan, raised the possibility with Vozzo in April
• Replacement is Matt Rosa, whose thread is here: Welcome to Essendon Matthew Rosa
  Matthew Rosa

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  No current season stats available

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  – AFL Talent & Operations Manager!

To coincide with this announcement, the Club’s General Manager of List and Recruiting, Adrian Dodoro, has made the decision to take a step back from his current senior role following this year’s NAB AFL National Draft. He will lead the Club through the upcoming 2023 Trade and Draft period in his current position prior to transitioning to and assisting Matt Rosa moving forward.​

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Dodoro, an Essendon Life Member, has played a significant role at the Bombers over nearly three decades and said the time was right to take a step back.​

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“I approached Craig back in April to discuss the concept of transition and I feel that now is the right time to make this decision,” Dodoro said.​

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"I sat on the panel to assist in the selection of Matt, and I believe he will be an outstanding acquisition to the Club for years to come. I look forward to working with Matt moving forward.​

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“These roles are very taxing on individuals and their families and it just feels like that. After nearly three decades and with stability in key roles at the Club, now is the right time for me to take a step back in to a role which will provide me and my family with a better work life balance.​

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“More immediately, we have an important few months coming up and I’m looking forward to playing my part to deliver a strong Trade and Draft period for the Club to ensure that the playing list is in a strong position for the future.”​

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Essendon CEO Craig Vozzo acknowledged the significant impact Dodoro has made at the Club since joining in a full-time role in 1998.​

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“Adrian is a highly respected Life Member of the Essendon Football Club and has made an enormous contribution to the Club and the wider AFL industry during his time in football, including assisting to navigate the Club through unprecedented and challenging periods,” Vozzo said.​

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“Throughout his time at the Bombers, Adrian’s commitment and passion to take the Club forward in its list management and recruiting, has been unquestionable. Some of the Champions of Essendon have been identified and selected by Adrian, and we will always be grateful for the important and enduring role he has played.​

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“On behalf of the entire Club, we would like to acknowledge Adrian’s selfless decision and we look forward to his ongoing contribution to the Club.​

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“Adrian will work with Matt to ensure a smooth hand-over and a successful transition of responsibilities.”​

 

[Vindicater]

I can't wait to see which half back flankers we pick this year at the draft.

 

[NAB777]

Recruiting/identifying junior talent & development are both problems for this club.

 

[owen87]

Make sure Zac Clarke's ticket to Perth has no return ticket!

Dodo should be sacked for getting Z. Clarke.

Clarke was dominating the WAFL last year, he really (sadly) was as good a ready made option as any.

Tom Campbell probably the only one that realistically was an option. We were lucky with Leuenberger that he was actually AFL standard but happy enough to play out the season in the VFL.

Someone like Jacobs might be decent backup / selection pressure for Bellchambers for 2020, but we’re relying heavily on Draper coming good late 2020 onwards at the moment.

Dodoro is a hard one to measure, does seem to struggle to pick genuine midfielders but has been pretty good with KPPs (especially defenders). Also one of maybe 3-5 list managers people even know the name of, so probably suffers more open criticism of his failures than most.

Our development has been woeful, and we continually play kids out of position for ‘versatility’ while they lose whatever natural attributes they even came in with.

I’ve said it before; none of our recruitment, development, or coaching are elite. Most of the top sides have at least one element of the above that’s elite, we have none.

I do wish we’d stop drafting flankers though.

 

[citizen-erased]

Fwd line has been a major issue for years. The best we got it was Stewart + Hooker supporting Daniher in 2017.
Stewart has been awol since. Daniher hampered. And Hooker required in defence.
McKernan and Brown went from depth to 1st choice.
That's an indictment.

Also largely ignored the fact we had a 29yo injury prone ruck, a kid who hadn't played AFL yet and Clarke out of the WAFL in a position thats getting more important every year.
Draper should have been viewed as a prospect (injury aside, he may not stand up to AFL pressure) and Clarke as break in case of emergency.
The 2nd ruckman should have been on the list last year along with Shiel.
Another indictment

Has used the picks mostly well over recent years (so much i can almost forgive Steinberg over Parker).
Shiel, Smith, Saad and Stringer are all big ticks.

For those criticising not drafting pure mids - Parish and McGrath are pure mids. The coaches need to play them there though. Whether he is part of the selection committee or not i don't know.

We're a solid B- in this aspect.
Much more to it than the list. But the list isn't perfect either.

 

[JayJ20]

We can argue development vs recruiting all we like, but one thing we can all agree on is that we need a change. He's one of them

 

[ghostdog]

We can argue development vs recruiting all we like, but one thing we can all agree on is that we need a change. He's one of them

I'd look at who's recruiting at Geelong, Brisbane, WC... that circle.

 

[boncer34]

You blokes are kidding yourselves.

Blaming this on recruiting.

Jesus, get a grip!

So we lay it all at the 5th Senior coach and how ever many assistants we've had?

Adrian gets another free pass?

 

[Lore]

Make sure Zac Clarke's ticket to Perth has no return ticket!

Dodo should be sacked for getting Z. Clarke.

Irony being if we never drafted Zac Clarke and went into 2019 with four rucks instead of five, this thread would be full of “we have no healthy rucks how did we not pick up Zac Clarke it’s so obvious look at his stats in the WAFL and would only cost a rookie spot and minimum wage”.

I think we were going to grab another ruck in the mid season rookie draft but the one we wanted was taken before our pick too. Thems the breaks.

 

[Lore]

So we lay it all at the 5th Senior coach and how every many assistants we've had?

Adrian gets another free pass?

Por que no los dos

 

[boncer34]

Por que no los dos

Absolutely.

But we've only done something about 1 half of the problem.

 

[the PILL]

Guilty of enjoying the hype Dodoro drums up each trade period targeting players other clubs want but after so long I think he's a fairly large chunk of whats wrong with our glaring long period of shortcomings...

Mosquito fleets are risky if parts are missing and a huge part of our failings come from not having a datum line contesting midfield. Its all very well to have blistering speed but without some pitbull in the middle we may aswell be a track n field relay team...

You can't out sprint an oppositions well possessed kicked ball. We've tried multiple times and we break down everytime.

Demote Dodo to late picks, revamp the whole strategy and go find Gary Buckenara.

 

[The Donners]

Not often I defend Dodoro but last night had little to do with him. I agree he needs to go but in terms of depth, not many clubs would have that many best 22 players out of the side and win against a team challenging for the 8. However, if you blame the recruiter/talent scout/list manager for the effort put in by players, he’s guilty af.

 

[Yoda_]

Irony being if we never drafted Zac Clarke and went into 2019 with four rucks instead of five, this thread would be full of “we have no healthy rucks how did we not pick up Zac Clarke it’s so obvious look at his stats in the WAFL and would only cost a rookie spot and minimum wage”.

I think we were going to grab another ruck in the mid season rookie draft but the one we wanted was taken before our pick too. Thems the breaks.

We have 3 rucks on the list

 

[Lore]

We have 3 rucks on the list

At the end of the last off-season we had Bellchambers, Clarke, Draper, Lavender and Smack.

 

[BrunoV]

I wished I'd have kept tabs on who we brought in when we delisted players.
Hindsight is such a wonderful thing but i still don't know why we selected two flanker types within 3 picks of each other (Langford/Laverde) instead of utilising a pick on a more pressing need. We have continually picked flankers.


Dodoro has often identified ok talent, but the development has failed at the football club. My gripe with Dodo has been topping us up but we have not progressed as a football club.

Here's one I prepared earlier:


I agree with almost everything Bunk Moreland has been saying. One of the points he has been making is that the job of the recruiter is to get the talent in the door. He can only be judged on the talent. Dodoro can't be responsible for ongoing mental frailty, botched development and/or bizarre team selection.

That's part of the problem I have with the discussion. Dodoro has been around a long time and never been associated with a list that has done anything, and maybe that is reason enough to part ways, but it always seems to me that he's being blamed for part of the outcome that is not his responsibility.

The reason you can look at Parish, for example, as a "miss" is because with all of the opportunity he has received he's largely the same player he was in year 1 and displays nothing that would be expected of a midfielder recruited that high in a draft (surely the minimum expectation looks something like Taranto or Oliver). It was a clear error and one of the few worth mentioining that Dodoro has made at the draft table in a long time. As much as people like to dismiss my opinion on Parish, no one actually argues that he is the player they want when they pick a mid in the top 5 (or that he is or will be better than Stanton or Zaharakis who were and/or remain whipping boys). That's not the same thing as saying that he won't have a career but that's not the discussion it's about the talent Dodoro brought to the club.

On the other hand, I've never understood why people insist on citing perennially injured players as recruiting failures. It's Laverde at the moment and it used to be Gumbleton. It's nonsensical that a recruiter could be blamed for that. There was plenty of excitement about Laverde at the end of 2015. It's also no achievement for Laverde to be an "unknown", by the way. It's essentially the best thing that can be said about his career to date. A lot of it seems to me to be petty slagging because posters can't accept Parish for what he is. Laverde could never play another senior game and it's not going to mean a thing for the quality of Parish's performances.

Francis is probably a more dicey selection than is initially obvious. He clearly had the raw ability to be selected as early as he was in the first round. However, I would also say that Dodoro's non-selection of Charlie Curnow, for example, is symbolic of an attitude he has had which does not place enough of an emphasis on the running capability of players (and physical prowess generally). You'd assume that Francis' immaturity would have been identified and I think you do have to query whether he was a smart selection where he also lacked endurance/running capability.

I don't think there is any doubt that we have not invested heavily enough in players that Worsfold recognizes as midfielders, but it raises an interesting question. Who should we have taken and what with? There is no point going back before the supplements saga, the rebuild to that point was solid enough and then got broken apart by the loss of 5 senior players who either were or have since proven to be quality players. Draft sanctions offset any raid we could have made on the draft during this period - and we were largely limited to taking the normal quota of picks over 4 years between 2013 and 2016 (despite the loss of players). There was also the problem that list management got frozen in time for a few years as we held on to chaff as we refused to play kids for 3 years.

So if we're looking at just the midfield, and starting with 2014 (as 2013 speaks for itself and being 2 selections that you could not revisit in good faith regardless of who followed).

Who were the better prospects as midfielders than Langford and Laverde? Is there a player that anyone looks at even now and thinks that he'd be making a huge difference in the middle? Jack Steele, Touk Miller, Neale-Bullen or Toby McLean? I call bulls**t on anyone who is recruiting any of those players. Steele was an academy selection anyway. In my opinion Conor Blakely is the only player with an equivalent level of raw talent. So far, it's one kid from outback WA (which tends to be a bit of a black hole for AFL recruiting other than for the WA sides who clearly hide players - and unlike SA for example where we have had a lot of success) who was not in any discussion as a top 20 pick.

For the two first round picks in 2015, it's really only Josh Dunkley who was not tied to an academy that was available to us and who can be part of the conversation if it's not pure revisionism (I'm not going to jump shark by suggesting that we select Mathieson or Fiorini at 5 instead of Parish or say that either is a better player). I suppose you could argue that Curnow could have been developed on-ball but I don't think he has played a game there to date. Gresham is starting to look like a mid but he was a small forward and has been a small forward to this point. In Redman we probably took the best available midfield sized talent so we've won anyway. Tom Phillips was taken at 58. Now, I'm definitely willing to concede that Dodoro has routinely failed to recruit players with the running power of Phillips but we don't get to do a revisionist draft in which a player taken at 58 all of the sudden becomes part of the discussion at 5. I do struggle to understand how, given the characteristic lack of running power of an Essendon midfield, he was not selected in the 20s but chances are we don't have Redman (as you can't just replace Morgan because he didn't work out). It's much the same story with Menegola.

Edit: I've left Sier out of this discussion. He has played 12 games all last year (and we regarded as having a real problem initially adapting to being an AFL player). He is probably someone we should have been looking at but, again, be careful what you wish for because he was taken at 32 which means that Redman has to be factored into this discussion.

It gets interesting in 2016. There is virtually no support for the idea that McGrath was the wrong type of player to select (though I think he is if we don't get a quality midfielder or two out of Ridley, Begley and/or Mutch). Willem Drew and Jack Graham are the only mids from 22 (Ridley) onwards you'd bother arguing about. Anyone want to substitute Ridley or Begley for either of those two on draft day in 2016? That's two of the most talented players we have and two big aggressive kids who should be developing in the middle for us. I really like Parfitt and Fisher as players but they're hardly the solution to the issues we have with our midfield.

So for 2017, who is giving up Stringer and Smith for some kids? In 2018 who is giving up Shiel?

If I had my way we'd have Saad and Shiel. It would be a hard argument to make that we would be in a better position right now if that is what occurred. I have always been prepared to accept the rationale of selecting McGrath where need was balanced out by the rest of the draft.

In 2014 to 2016, even with its questionable selections, Dodoro provided the list with a lot of raw ability in bigger/powerful players that could be used in the midfield (Laverde, Langford, Redman, Ridley and Begley). So far we've picked the least competitive player, the least suited to the role, and found a number of creative ways not to pick the others either at all or in the middle.

So I can say that I don't agree with the lack of focus Dodoro has placed on physical capability. The spine in particular is not mobile enough. The mids are not gifted runners. We haven't recruited enough highly talented inside midfielders. I might be able to squeeze Blakely and Tom Phillips onto the list but at the expense of Laverde/Langford and possibly Redman. I can't get from there to sacking Dodoro.

There is a versions of this that sees Dodoro take the fall as being responsible but no one ever really gets there as far as the analysis is concerned.

This leads me to the wonderfully rigid selection criteria which confines players to single roles despite that fact that the talent of the list is heavily skewed to the flanks and dual position players (which was clearly part of Dodoro's recruiting strategy).

Edit: everyone always criticises us for trying to turn flankers into to midfielders. We have tried it with 1 player so far. How about we try it with some of the others?

Of course, we've also got to ensure that when injury hits we start reinventing defenders as forwards, not playing forwards as forwards and using wingmen in defence instead of players who play their football in defence.

Even looking at some of last year's contracts says a lot:

- Baguley was basically the last player signed on what is 1 last 1 year deal, of course he play the first 7 games and all JLT.
- Laverde gets a 2 year deal and 2 quarters of JLT football, including a ride up to GWS as the traveling emergency (his non-selection had nothing to do with injury).
- Brown gets a 1 year deal so of course he's straight in.
- Stewart gets a 2 year deal and naturally he does not feature in our planning (as is evidenced by the fact that he was an emergency in JLT).

It has long been apparent that there is a significant disconnect between list management and coaching. List management has produced as much talent as we could reasonably expect and the coaches seem to do their best strategizing coming up with ways not to use the talent (focusing on bargain basement depth instead).

I am failing to see the connection between the recruiting and the performance of the team except for in the middle of the ground but I see no convincing way in which the middle of the ground could be improved by recruiting what was available without sacrificing an equal or greater amount.

Footy Dept. - Soon to be ex-GM - List & Recruiting Adrian Dodoro #putoutyourjackets

Cliff notes: Stepping back from his current senior role following the 2023 AFL Draft Transition plan, raised the possibility with Vozzo in April Replacement is Matt Rosa, whose thread is here: Welcome to Essendon Matthew Rosa – AFL Talent & Operations Manager! To coincide with this...

www.bigfooty.com

 

[Yoda_]

Not often I defend Dodoro but last night had little to do with him. I agree he needs to go but in terms of depth, not many clubs would have that many best 22 players out of the side and win against a team challenging for the 8. However, if you blame the recruiter/talent scout/list manager for the effort put in by players, he’s guilty af.

Why I bumped this thread because of the ego that Adrian possess'. He has failed to look at ruck (bar Draper) for the best part of a decade. Don't get me started on midfielders, the bloke couldn't pick one if gifted an All Australian squad to choose from.

He is the one who has assembled the list, he is the one who has failed to notice the constant short comings of the group and not identify and rectify these. Dodoro is apart of the problem as much as people want to look past it.



Im not even mad about the players like Baguley, Myers, McNeice getting a game last night, our season is still alive (somehow), I understand why they were picked over kids like Ridley, Mynott and Jok. What I can't understand is the lack of change from the top down and our once proud football club doing SFA about it.

 

[Yoda_]

At the end of the last off-season we had Bellchambers, Clarke, Draper, Lavender and Smack.

I don't count Lavender as he was that far off playing AFL whilst we all know McKernan is a stop gap for 5 minutes here, 5 minutes there and not a #1 ruck for 10 weeks straight.

We can stop the excuses now

 

[The Donners]

Here's one I prepared earlier:

Footy Dept. - Soon to be ex-GM - List & Recruiting Adrian Dodoro #putoutyourjackets

Cliff notes: Stepping back from his current senior role following the 2023 AFL Draft Transition plan, raised the possibility with Vozzo in April Replacement is Matt Rosa, whose thread is here: Welcome to Essendon Matthew Rosa – AFL Talent & Operations Manager! To coincide with this...

www.bigfooty.com

So a VFL club has the professionalism to move on an underperforming recruiter/list manager?

Very amateurish Essendon.

Bring back Sheedy... oh wait...

 

[Darealrath]

His inability to draft quality genuine midfielders when we were crying out for them for so long is damning.

Has done better on the trade front.

Said this in May and neither the really good wins or really bad losses have swayed my opinion.

He's obviously not responsible for development of players or the form of the team from week to week, but he is for structural deficiencies of the list that have been obvious to just about all outsiders and a lot of our fans for a very long time.

I can never understand how johnny-new-bloke at clubs like WC, Geelong, Adelaide and GWS (though that's a bit different) look so much more physically powerful and ready than our new blokes do. Been targeting short/slight/skinny builds for so long and guess what, they can't run out a full season or handle it when teams bring finals like physical intensity. Even one of our really powerful KP players like Ambrose hardly looks any bigger on the field than some midfielders in the top teams.

 

[Bunk Moreland]

So we lay it all at the 5th Senior coach and how ever many assistants we've had?

Adrian gets another free pass?

If he’s not doing a good job.

Sheedy’s time was well past up.

Knights was a disaster.

Hird and Bomber, let’s not even go there.

I don’t think you can say Dodoro has been “getting a free pass” while these guys got the bullet for him.

The fact is we’ve long made very poor choices when it comes to coaching.

We kept Sheedy too long

Knights was a shithouse coach

Hird / Bomber say no more

Woosh was actually a very good appointment, our first one. He did a great job in 2016 and 2017.

The fact we haven’t improved a jot in two years since can hardly be laid at the recruiting staff. What exactly have they got wrong over the last couple of years?

 

[mad_monkey_j]

While I wouldn't be opposed to change to get a fresh look over the list, I think player development is the main issue.

 

[Lore]

I don't count Lavender as he was that far off playing AFL whilst we all know McKernan is a stop gap for 5 minutes here, 5 minutes there and not a #1 ruck for 10 weeks straight.

We can stop the excuses now

I can see here that I’m wasting my time, so I won’t waste it any further.

I do hope you have something fun planned for today though. Have a good one

 

[Red Black and Blue]

It’s pretty spot specific but Dodoros failings have come down to three players. Parker, Oliver and Worpel. All and sundry identified these players as needs for us predraft. Missed with Parker and didn’t trade up to guarantee Oliver or Worpel.

 

[Bunk Moreland]

Here's one I prepared earlier:


I agree with almost everything Bunk Moreland has been saying. One of the points he has been making is that the job of the recruiter is to get the talent in the door. He can only be judged on the talent. Dodoro can't be responsible for ongoing mental frailty, botched development and/or bizarre team selection.

That's part of the problem I have with the discussion. Dodoro has been around a long time and never been associated with a list that has done anything, and maybe that is reason enough to part ways, but it always seems to me that he's being blamed for part of the outcome that is not his responsibility.

The reason you can look at Parish, for example, as a "miss" is because with all of the opportunity he has received he's largely the same player he was in year 1 and displays nothing that would be expected of a midfielder recruited that high in a draft (surely the minimum expectation looks something like Taranto or Oliver). It was a clear error and one of the few worth mentioining that Dodoro has made at the draft table in a long time. As much as people like to dismiss my opinion on Parish, no one actually argues that he is the player they want when they pick a mid in the top 5 (or that he is or will be better than Stanton or Zaharakis who were and/or remain whipping boys). That's not the same thing as saying that he won't have a career but that's not the discussion it's about the talent Dodoro brought to the club.

On the other hand, I've never understood why people insist on citing perennially injured players as recruiting failures. It's Laverde at the moment and it used to be Gumbleton. It's nonsensical that a recruiter could be blamed for that. There was plenty of excitement about Laverde at the end of 2015. It's also no achievement for Laverde to be an "unknown", by the way. It's essentially the best thing that can be said about his career to date. A lot of it seems to me to be petty slagging because posters can't accept Parish for what he is. Laverde could never play another senior game and it's not going to mean a thing for the quality of Parish's performances.

Francis is probably a more dicey selection than is initially obvious. He clearly had the raw ability to be selected as early as he was in the first round. However, I would also say that Dodoro's non-selection of Charlie Curnow, for example, is symbolic of an attitude he has had which does not place enough of an emphasis on the running capability of players (and physical prowess generally). You'd assume that Francis' immaturity would have been identified and I think you do have to query whether he was a smart selection where he also lacked endurance/running capability.

I don't think there is any doubt that we have not invested heavily enough in players that Worsfold recognizes as midfielders, but it raises an interesting question. Who should we have taken and what with? There is no point going back before the supplements saga, the rebuild to that point was solid enough and then got broken apart by the loss of 5 senior players who either were or have since proven to be quality players. Draft sanctions offset any raid we could have made on the draft during this period - and we were largely limited to taking the normal quota of picks over 4 years between 2013 and 2016 (despite the loss of players). There was also the problem that list management got frozen in time for a few years as we held on to chaff as we refused to play kids for 3 years.

So if we're looking at just the midfield, and starting with 2014 (as 2013 speaks for itself and being 2 selections that you could not revisit in good faith regardless of who followed).

Who were the better prospects as midfielders than Langford and Laverde? Is there a player that anyone looks at even now and thinks that he'd be making a huge difference in the middle? Jack Steele, Touk Miller, Neale-Bullen or Toby McLean? I call bulls**t on anyone who is recruiting any of those players. Steele was an academy selection anyway. In my opinion Conor Blakely is the only player with an equivalent level of raw talent. So far, it's one kid from outback WA (which tends to be a bit of a black hole for AFL recruiting other than for the WA sides who clearly hide players - and unlike SA for example where we have had a lot of success) who was not in any discussion as a top 20 pick.

For the two first round picks in 2015, it's really only Josh Dunkley who was not tied to an academy that was available to us and who can be part of the conversation if it's not pure revisionism (I'm not going to jump shark by suggesting that we select Mathieson or Fiorini at 5 instead of Parish or say that either is a better player). I suppose you could argue that Curnow could have been developed on-ball but I don't think he has played a game there to date. Gresham is starting to look like a mid but he was a small forward and has been a small forward to this point. In Redman we probably took the best available midfield sized talent so we've won anyway. Tom Phillips was taken at 58. Now, I'm definitely willing to concede that Dodoro has routinely failed to recruit players with the running power of Phillips but we don't get to do a revisionist draft in which a player taken at 58 all of the sudden becomes part of the discussion at 5. I do struggle to understand how, given the characteristic lack of running power of an Essendon midfield, he was not selected in the 20s but chances are we don't have Redman (as you can't just replace Morgan because he didn't work out). It's much the same story with Menegola.

Edit: I've left Sier out of this discussion. He has played 12 games all last year (and we regarded as having a real problem initially adapting to being an AFL player). He is probably someone we should have been looking at but, again, be careful what you wish for because he was taken at 32 which means that Redman has to be factored into this discussion.

It gets interesting in 2016. There is virtually no support for the idea that McGrath was the wrong type of player to select (though I think he is if we don't get a quality midfielder or two out of Ridley, Begley and/or Mutch). Willem Drew and Jack Graham are the only mids from 22 (Ridley) onwards you'd bother arguing about. Anyone want to substitute Ridley or Begley for either of those two on draft day in 2016? That's two of the most talented players we have and two big aggressive kids who should be developing in the middle for us. I really like Parfitt and Fisher as players but they're hardly the solution to the issues we have with our midfield.

So for 2017, who is giving up Stringer and Smith for some kids? In 2018 who is giving up Shiel?

If I had my way we'd have Saad and Shiel. It would be a hard argument to make that we would be in a better position right now if that is what occurred. I have always been prepared to accept the rationale of selecting McGrath where need was balanced out by the rest of the draft.

In 2014 to 2016, even with its questionable selections, Dodoro provided the list with a lot of raw ability in bigger/powerful players that could be used in the midfield (Laverde, Langford, Redman, Ridley and Begley). So far we've picked the least competitive player, the least suited to the role, and found a number of creative ways not to pick the others either at all or in the middle.

So I can say that I don't agree with the lack of focus Dodoro has placed on physical capability. The spine in particular is not mobile enough. The mids are not gifted runners. We haven't recruited enough highly talented inside midfielders. I might be able to squeeze Blakely and Tom Phillips onto the list but at the expense of Laverde/Langford and possibly Redman. I can't get from there to sacking Dodoro.

There is a versions of this that sees Dodoro take the fall as being responsible but no one ever really gets there as far as the analysis is concerned.

This leads me to the wonderfully rigid selection criteria which confines players to single roles despite that fact that the talent of the list is heavily skewed to the flanks and dual position players (which was clearly part of Dodoro's recruiting strategy).

Edit: everyone always criticises us for trying to turn flankers into to midfielders. We have tried it with 1 player so far. How about we try it with some of the others?

Of course, we've also got to ensure that when injury hits we start reinventing defenders as forwards, not playing forwards as forwards and using wingmen in defence instead of players who play their football in defence.

Even looking at some of last year's contracts says a lot:

- Baguley was basically the last player signed on what is 1 last 1 year deal, of course he play the first 7 games and all JLT.
- Laverde gets a 2 year deal and 2 quarters of JLT football, including a ride up to GWS as the traveling emergency (his non-selection had nothing to do with injury).
- Brown gets a 1 year deal so of course he's straight in.
- Stewart gets a 2 year deal and naturally he does not feature in our planning (as is evidenced by the fact that he was an emergency in JLT).

It has long been apparent that there is a significant disconnect between list management and coaching. List management has produced as much talent as we could reasonably expect and the coaches seem to do their best strategizing coming up with ways not to use the talent (focusing on bargain basement depth instead).

I am failing to see the connection between the recruiting and the performance of the team except for in the middle of the ground but I see no convincing way in which the middle of the ground could be improved by recruiting what was available without sacrificing an equal or greater amount.

Footy Dept. - Soon to be ex-GM - List & Recruiting Adrian Dodoro #putoutyourjackets

Cliff notes: Stepping back from his current senior role following the 2023 AFL Draft Transition plan, raised the possibility with Vozzo in April Replacement is Matt Rosa, whose thread is here: Welcome to Essendon Matthew Rosa – AFL Talent & Operations Manager! To coincide with this...

www.bigfooty.com

Truth.

I probably come across as some huge defender of our recruiting but I’m not really, I just don’t think you can look at it in the totality of the club and conclude it’s the problem.

The answer is always “oh well the head guy has been there 15 years”

I’d rather hear about the actual errors he’s made than his length of tenure.

People also like to forget that his first 5 years under Sheedy he had little say over anything, and the other 10 years includes four years of the biggest atomic bomb to ever be dropped on a club in the sports’s history.

 

[DapperJong]

Guys go outside or something