Bradley Hill, West Perth

slicedndiced

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#26
Long story short.

S. Hill got up at 5am to stack bricks, trained like a trojan, was softly spoken and respectful.

Turn that on its head and you have B. Hill at the same age.

Both could play exceptional footy as juniors.

There are 16 other clubs apart from us who are rueing the opportunity of drafting him and only Hawthorn pulled the trigger late, in comparison to his undoubted talent. They have a recent history of taking risky players and sometimes it works, like this, and then you get a Garlett.

We didn't have the necessary culture, at that stage, (Hawthorn did), to take a punt on him, and not many clubs do. However, I dare say that if he was available now, in our current system, we would have taken him, just as we did with Josh Simpson.

Enough for you?
 

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crackerjack4X4

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Thread starter #27
Enough for you?
Nah not really. The current talent scouts don't look in our back yard often enough.

Phil Smart was a frustrated man because of interference by others around the club who thought they knew better.
Schwab / Connelly obsession with trading for big names and drafting country Vics kids put us back 10 years.
 

crackerjack4X4

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Thread starter #28
We didn't have the necessary culture, at that stage, (Hawthorn did), to take a punt on him, and not many clubs do. However, I dare say that if he was available now, in our current system, we would have taken him, just as we did with Josh Simpson.
What a load of bullshit!!! Freo has a long history of drafting young Indigenous kids and Bradley hill was well known to our drafting gurus.
 

slicedndiced

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#29
Nah not really. The current talent scouts don't look in our back yard often enough.

Phil Smart was a frustrated man because of interference by others around the club who thought they knew better.
Schwab / Connelly obsession with trading for big names and drafting country Vics kids put us back 10 years.

That's got jack-shit to do with the B. Hill non-selection.

But hey, enjoi your obsession and club bashing.

I feel that I offered a genuine, honest and reasonable answer.
 

estibador

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#31
Nah not really. The current talent scouts don't look in our back yard often enough.
Too right! Not only did they miss Hill, look what else the morons did in the 2011 draft:

- took Sheridan when we could have had Josh Bootsma
- Crozier instead of Murray Newman
- Neale instead of Corey Gault
- Sutcliffe instead of Kyal Horsley
- Spurr instead of Cam Eardley

All those West Aussie stars were the next locals picked in each case. Our recruiters are ******* idiots, when will they learn to stick to our own backyard?
 
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crackerjack4X4

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Thread starter #32
You tell me short stork.

16: Tom Sheridan, Calder Cannons

20: Hayden Crozier, Eastern Ranges

29: Alex Forster, Norwood

33: Bradley Hill, West Perth

Unforgivable !!!
 

slicedndiced

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#34
What a load of bullshit!!! Freo has a long history of drafting young Indigenous kids and Bradley hill was well known to our drafting gurus.


Let's keep going with this.

Let's talk about Caleb Mourish and Clayton Collard.

I can play this game all night and make you look like an even bigger idiot if you like.
 

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Rob

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#39
Bear in mind that Brad Hill was only a fringe player for the WA under 18 team - he wasn't even picked in a few games. He was no standout performer, and even for a pick in the 30's he was a risk.

But our strength in drafting should always be our own backyard. We should be allocating more resources to it than all but 1 other club, and we should know every WA kid better than all but 1 other club. It's ridiculous thinking we are going to outwit the 10 Victorian clubs by consistently picking players out of their backyards. Barlow was a freak selection, and it still astounds me that one of the clubs over there didn't pick him. But if you have a look at our late selection success stories, and they're mostly from WA. Sandi, Walters, Pearce, De Boer, Johnson, Duffield. Probably add Mzungu in there even though technically we got him via the Suns. Barlow is probably the only one from Victoria, maybe you can include Crowley in there as well (which took a long time to come good). But we've had many many fails along he way. Once you're past about pick 40, I reckon we are deadset kidding ourselves if we think we can see something in some kid from Victoria that other clubs don't know about.
 

Nickos66

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#40
Ugh..

If it's not a Rich/Hill thread it's a Pitt/Darling thread. Now we can add the Forster/B.Hill thread to the list.

But yeah, never mind about the fact that we have the highest rookie draft success rate in the last 10 or so years, of which recently got us to a grand final. Lets just look backwards when things don't go our way, hell, it seems to be the regular avenue for the pigeons up the road.
 

scon

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#45
Never mind all the hoo hah. It would have been sublime had we had the two Hill boys. Maybe it will happen one day.
I was actually very keen for us to throw the net and drag him in.Unfortunately despite my dizzying financial retainer and unequalled influence in such matters the club chose to go their own way.
 

Alfonz

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#46
Hindsight is wonderful, but in this particular case it is a bit different because we already had a Hill on the list. Getting brothers together is often a good thing, especially when we had one that was a bit shy/quiet ... having his brother around could only help.

I daresay we wanted to do it, but were expecting him to be there at a later pick and then we were blindsided by Hawthorn.

I wouldn't say we nailed it with Sheridan or Crozier ... not yet. What Hill Jr is doing now is exactly what I think we hoped Sheridan would be doing. Freely running around with great endurance and no close attention, and racking up possessions in open space.
 

mike91

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#47
Hindsight is wonderful, but in this particular case it is a bit different because we already had a Hill on the list. Getting brothers together is often a good thing, especially when we had one that was a bit shy/quiet ... having his brother around could only help.

I daresay we wanted to do it, but were expecting him to be there at a later pick and then we were blindsided by Hawthorn.

I wouldn't say we nailed it with Sheridan or Crozier ... not yet. What Hill Jr is doing now is exactly what I think we hoped Sheridan would be doing. Freely running around with great endurance and no close attention, and racking up possessions in open space.
Good call. Sheridan is a third year player, which means he needs to lift this year. Personally, I'm still not sure about him, not writing him off by any means. Big year for Neale/Sheridan/Crozier, haven't put Sutty in that group because I think hes basically proven himself to be a good consistent player.
 

slicedndiced

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#48
Hindsight is wonderful, but in this particular case it is a bit different because we already had a Hill on the list. Getting brothers together is often a good thing, especially when we had one that was a bit shy/quiet ... having his brother around could only help.

I daresay we wanted to do it, but were expecting him to be there at a later pick and then we were blindsided by Hawthorn.

I wouldn't say we nailed it with Sheridan or Crozier ... not yet. What Hill Jr is doing now is exactly what I think we hoped Sheridan would be doing. Freely running around with great endurance and no close attention, and racking up possessions in open space.
Nup.
 
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