Craig Bird
- Thread starter mj23
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i'm pretty sure he is our NSW/ACT scholarship player so we get preference to him before every other club. Thats about all I know
- Banned
- #4
You have dibs on him. Untouchable if you want him.
You can either take him with your last selection in the national draft, or you can put him onto the rookie list.
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- Banned
- #6
Ah i see. I even checked the Swans previous players to see if we have ever had a Bird play for us but we had not so i ruled out the father son rule.
Is he a gun? What sort of quality are we talking?
Probably a late first rounder or early second rounder and is just the type of player we are looking for at present.
Reads the game very well, get's his own ball and can use it well when he get's it (especially by hand).
Only query is his pace, but he has been living with two Sydney players for the last year and has trained with the club since pre season. From a recent article on him he has been working very hard on his pace off the mark and seems to have improved in that area.
Will play senior football next year in red and white.
DST
- Banned
- #13
From what I've seen of him (not a lot), he looks to be very much a 'Sydney' player. He'll slot in nicely and be a very good player for your football club.
Good luck
Good luck
Does anyone else think its great that NSW is starting to produce a greater number of potential AFL players which clubs would actually want. It shows how much the Swans have helped the popularity of AFL in this state.
- Banned
- #18
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but i'm sure there were plenty of players that went after Lenny Hayes as well that we could of selected but chose not to.
Fosdike is probably one of our most underrated players actually. Goes about his business, good positioning, can use the footy reasonably well. Doesn't get the plaudits of other top 10 draft picks in years gone by and doesn't get the media attention of other midfielders at the Bloods like your Kirks, Boltons etc... Very handy type.
Jude Bolton has been servicable and despite people on this board having a crack at him this season i believe his in and under style is a valuable assest to our current gameplan which many people overlook.
Ryan Fitzgerald was probably what we needed at the time, but correct me if i'm wrong, there was already doubts over his fitness when we drafted him and it proved to end his career pretty much. I don't even remember seeing him play a game where his shoulders weren't heavily strapped and then there were his knee(s). But in hindsight, you'd take Lenny Hayes over him every time.
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- Moderator
- #20
Not if there is a better player available, otherwise what is the point of the Swans even competing? We aren't a defacto State of Origin side, we a club side based in Sydney that has its Football Department focused on winning first and the state of football in NSW second.
You pick the best available player for the need your looking to fill REGARDLESS of where they live and if that player happens to be from NSW than great and if not so what. Its not our job to fix up player development in NSW when drafting a team to WIN PREMIERSHIPS. That's left to the AFL and NSWAFL and the club provides help, not positions on the team to players from NSW.
I agree but i also dont agree. I agree that the Swans should pick the best available players regardless of where they come from but i dont agree when you say that the Swans dont have any responsibility to develop AFl players in NSW. The Swans are flying the flag for AFL in NSW and as a result they should do all they can do within reason to develop players in NSW for the good of the AFl as a sport.
- Thread starter
- #22
well Lenny Hayes is clearly the better player thats what i mean and he's from the home state. St kilda even said they couldn't believe there luck with hayes they thought they would have Bolton, Bolton being a saints supporter correct me if im wrong.
They've put proposals to the AFL several times in recent years to effectively withdraw from the draft but instead be given exclusive access to local talent, into which they would then put a lot of resources developing. I read a report a week or so ago that they've resubmitted this proposal to the AFL very recently.
I understand why the AFL has rejected it - it goes against the whole equal-access thing that the draft provides. But I also applaud the club for trying to propose ideas to fast-track the growth of top-quality NSW youngsters making it through to the AFL.
But I also don't see why, in the absence of the AFL accepting the proposal, the Swans should pile a lot of their limited resources (time and money) into doing in NSW what the TAC cup teams, SANFL / WAFL colts systems, and state level underage schemes do in the rest of the country. Their number one objective is to compete at the elite level with the other 15 AFL clubs and if they are not getting tangible benefits from developing local players, it would be a misuse of those resources.
- Moderator
- #24
Its not as easy as that. It's all well and good to 8 and half years down the track to say the the Swans should of selected Hayes with one of our 3 First Round Picks in the 1998 Draft because he was the local boy and he has gone on to do great things, but the clubs line of thinking back then was that he would be a second round selection AT BEST and we didn't have one of those to use because we had used our second round pick on Heath James under the Father Son Rule.
So in 1998 we traded for early draft picks so we could get Fitzgerald (who was wanted by Collingwood, the two SA clubs and ourselves) to develop as a Key Forward looking forward to life without Lockett and Fosdike considered the best midfielder in the draft pool after Headland that year with Picks 3 and 4.
After that we had Pick 8 to use on another midfielder which Hayes was NEVER considered for and we went with the Best available player in Jude Bolton over Marc McVeigh who was considered to be the Best prospect from NSW that year. Not everything turns out the way you plan it, but thats the way the draft works.
So regardless of how you paint this draft, Hayes WOULD NEVER of been drafted by the Swans at Pick 3 or 4 because we targeted Fitzgerald and Fosdike with those picks and if we did take the local kid at Pick 8 it would of been Marc McVeigh who was concidered the better NSW product that year and was selected at pick 9 after we took Jude at pick 8.
Of course St Kilda would say they couldn't believe their luck, they got the they targeted and in the end they were really the only club who pushed that hard for him. They could of got him at 22, but they didn't want to risk it, not knowing how other clubs were thinking regarding Hayes and took him early and got the reward from what has turned out to be a very poor draft. As for Bolton being a Saints fan, news to me I've always though he was an Essendon supporter growing up.
- Moderator
- #25
We run a football club that is out there to WIN PREMIERSHIPS, not a production line for NSW Football.
We should think about ourselves as a club first and no one second. If the AFL and NSWAFL need the club to give them a hand to promote the code (ie run training camps, provide players for junior clinics) then we can give them all the unlimited help they need, but we SHOULD NOT pick players who aren't good enough for our senior team.
As it stands I believe the selection of NSW players on the Rookie List is the only exception to the rule as it gives us a chance to check NSW/ACT kids who pass though the draft for up to two years risk-free (ie we get an expanded Rookie List as a result, so why not try a few out and see what they have and see if we can unearth a gem. I'm just oppossed to giving up spots on the senior list for this exercise, not so much the rookie list).
I'm not against selecting players from NSW by any means just selecting them for the sake of selecting them, thats all.