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Sorry for another thread on this, but I haven't seen this angle done before. A lot of flak has been hurled at our recruiters for not taking a tall player with our first-round pick. But when you look at the list additions we have this year as a whole, its actually a very even crop:
- Lachlan Henderson: Tall forward
- Kane Lucas: Athletic, outside midfielder
- Brock McLean: ball-winning, hard-nosed midfielder
- Marcus Davies: Tough, medium-sized defender/midfielder
- Sam Jacobs: Tap ruckman
- Aaron Joseph: tagger/small defender
- Rohan Kerr: Small forward
What exactly is the issue? A very versatile and balanced group of players, all of whom play different roles, and at least 6 of whom will play senior football next year.
Now look at our departures:
- Brendan Fevola - tall forward
- Nick Stevens - outside midfielder
- Adam Bentick - ball-winning, hard-nosed midfielder
- Jordan Bannister - medium-sized defender/midfielder
- Cameron Cloke - crash and bash ruckman
- Adam Hartlett - speculative tall defender/forward
- Jake Edwards - speculative tall forward,
Hmmm. Some similarities emerge. In fact, we've essentially replaced what we lost, and upgraded at potentially 4-5 positions (with a big down-grade at full-forward). We also lose 2 speculative forwards, who weren't actually in the team. But we still have the rookie draft to come - a chance to add... a couple of speculative talls. Or, throw Waite (basically a new player returning from injury) in as a key forward, treat Henderson as a speculative tall, and we're essentially even, assuming we use at least 1 rookie pick on a speculative big.
So in other words, our recruiters took the players they rated the highest, adopted a balanced strategy, and effectively replaced our departures with potential uprgrades in all but the most unusual case (Fevola). Our senior list balance remains almost identical to what it was before, and the balanced approach lends itself to rebuilding the list over a period of time. Seems not to be something worth kicking up a huge fuss about to be honest...
- Lachlan Henderson: Tall forward
- Kane Lucas: Athletic, outside midfielder
- Brock McLean: ball-winning, hard-nosed midfielder
- Marcus Davies: Tough, medium-sized defender/midfielder
- Sam Jacobs: Tap ruckman
- Aaron Joseph: tagger/small defender
- Rohan Kerr: Small forward
What exactly is the issue? A very versatile and balanced group of players, all of whom play different roles, and at least 6 of whom will play senior football next year.
Now look at our departures:
- Brendan Fevola - tall forward
- Nick Stevens - outside midfielder
- Adam Bentick - ball-winning, hard-nosed midfielder
- Jordan Bannister - medium-sized defender/midfielder
- Cameron Cloke - crash and bash ruckman
- Adam Hartlett - speculative tall defender/forward
- Jake Edwards - speculative tall forward,
Hmmm. Some similarities emerge. In fact, we've essentially replaced what we lost, and upgraded at potentially 4-5 positions (with a big down-grade at full-forward). We also lose 2 speculative forwards, who weren't actually in the team. But we still have the rookie draft to come - a chance to add... a couple of speculative talls. Or, throw Waite (basically a new player returning from injury) in as a key forward, treat Henderson as a speculative tall, and we're essentially even, assuming we use at least 1 rookie pick on a speculative big.
So in other words, our recruiters took the players they rated the highest, adopted a balanced strategy, and effectively replaced our departures with potential uprgrades in all but the most unusual case (Fevola). Our senior list balance remains almost identical to what it was before, and the balanced approach lends itself to rebuilding the list over a period of time. Seems not to be something worth kicking up a huge fuss about to be honest...