Preview CROWS versus port - Community Series Match - Sunday 4.10PM

[CrowBox89]

They’re pushing the younger players through there at times too, but we also have to remember Keays and Crouch are in their early to mid 20s, Laird is only 27. None are what I would even call old in footy world. Seed shouldn’t be in there at all, not sure what Nicks sees here, he needs to be moved on like Atkins. Sloane was better in the 2nd half yesterday but would prefer he’s on the outside more. Schoenberg definitely played through the midfield a bit yesterday, he just didn’t have his best game. I actually thought Berry showed the most of any of the young mids and he played one quarter.

Sounds like Hately was average in the sanfl trial too, just needs to build confidence in the sanfl and I’m sure he will be in the side within the first month.

Nicks also said hately had a different defence then What he worked on with the giants, and that the crows are a slightly different in that way, and will take some time for hately...
Not sure sitting him in the sanfl for a month is the answer, rather than learning on the run in the AFL structure, and what he has to do defensively considering the line up yesterday gave up 190 marks to port and looked very undersized compared with ports mids.
Would much rather see hately getting a game then Seedsman

 

[hey shorty]

Worrell looks pretty versatile to me. Sure he doesn't have the build to be an AFL KPD now but will hopefully develop into one of those defenders who can both defend and intercept in time. If we don't get seduced by someone who can adequately fill a role that is

He strikes me as a Westhoff type. Not quite a KPF or KPD but can float everywhere.

 

[Golumless]

Are the official histories going to be rewritten to acknowledge Hamish as a fraud who speculated draft after draft and got bailed out by the fact that our previous coaching staffs managed to turn pick 50s into something decent.

His selections in the past 5 years in the first round have been nothing short of abysmal. You can't seriously stuff up that many first round picks and just blame coaches.

Aside from Thilthorpe, every other pick had the sense of Hamish trying to be just so much cleverererer than other list managers rather than taking the common sense selection - YOU DONT SPECULATE IN THE FIRST ROUN HAGGIS

Nice revisionist history.

Milera, Fogarty, Gallucci, McAsey all went where they were expected to go.

Jones might have been a bit of a reach but was expected to go in the back half of the first round. McHenry probably was but was right at the upper of his expected range. Thilthorpe was a 1-5 player.

These are Hamish "speculative picks" in the first round:

Doedee, and Pedlar.

Doedee when fit has been a gun, though in a very easy role. Pedlar looks damn promising at this point.

Coaches are more to blame then anything else. They control development and no one is going to make it just because they're a first rounder. Our inability to give Fog blocks of games, Gallucci getting shunted in a graveyard role etc has been a big problem in our side, on top of us going for broke to get a premiership with Pyke and co. in charge. Hamish finding worthwhile players later on shows he's quality, though he certainly has a black spot with his drafting, being those small, fast and potentially silky midfielders. He's so far 0/2 on that front.

 

[baldandbroke]

Some data attached on ladder positions since Adelaide entered the comp

Here we are against the gold-standard since 1991 ... Hawthorn.

Notice the sustained rise came a few years AFTER the big valley?

 

[GrommoT]

Was probably McHenry trying to punch on with Dixon

 

[Jcpdragonx]

I think people are worried about the rebuild because after the last 6 years of drafts, we really don't have any players that look like taking this team forward in a meaningful way.
And we constantly see our senior midfield get slaughtered every week with no one ready to replace them

These have been our best picks over the past 5 years

Butts (39 RD)
Sholl (64 ND)
McPherson (40 - ND)
Himmelberg (51 ND) - may have gone backwards though

Every single high pick we're either holding onto hope, have underperformed or bust. 2020 looks optimistic. As great as Thilt looks, Logan was a bulletproof option but gotta come back in 4 years.

 

[Jcpdragonx]

Nicks also said hately had a different defence then What he worked on with the giants, and that the crows are a slightly different in that way, and will take some time for hately...
Not sure sitting him in the sanfl for a month is the answer, rather than learning on the run in the AFL structure, and what he has to do defensively considering the line up yesterday gave up 190 marks to port and looked very undersized compared with ports mids.
Would much rather see hately getting a game then Seedsman

Laird was running rings around him in the intraclub. Can see why he needs to improve some areas but he still offers more a lot more than Shoenberg

 

[Brenton Davy]

I'd keep Keays too. We've got him on the list.

However we need to understand that he has no relevance whatsoever to us rising up the ladder.

Richmond have won 2 premierships with quite a few Keays type role players. Yes they also have plenty of elite talent but that talent doesn’t win premierships without the two way running role players.

That’s the reality of team sports.

 

[Mutineer]

Are the official histories going to be rewritten to acknowledge Hamish as a fraud who speculated draft after draft and got bailed out by the fact that our previous coaching staffs managed to turn pick 50s into something decent.

His selections in the past 5 years in the first round have been nothing short of abysmal. You can't seriously stuff up that many first round picks and just blame coaches.

Aside from Thilthorpe, every other pick had the sense of Hamish trying to be just so much cleverererer than other list managers rather than taking the common sense selection - YOU DONT SPECULATE IN THE FIRST ROUN HAGGIS

That is just uninformed claptrap...None of McAsey, Jones, McHenry, Gallucci, Fogarty or Milera were 1st round speculative picks...Everyone of them were talked about as prospective 1st round picks in the run up to their respective drafts....Tom Doedee is the only one that anyone would class as speculative.

A couple of them may have gone a pick or 3 higher than was the general consensus but speculative they were not...In Fogarty's case he was expected to go considerably higher than where he was eventually taken...He was actually in Pick 1 discussion coming into the season but the well publicised meniscus issue obviously hindered his progress.

 

[Mutineer]

These have been our best picks over the past 5 years

Butts (39 RD)
Sholl (64 ND)
McPherson (40 - ND)
Himmelberg (51 ND) - may have gone backwards though

Every single high pick we're either holding onto hope, have underperformed or bust. 2020 looks optimistic. As great as Thilt looks, Logan was a bulletproof option but gotta come back in 4 years.

Doedee!!

 

[Mismatched]

Are the official histories going to be rewritten to acknowledge Hamish as a fraud who speculated draft after draft and got bailed out by the fact that our previous coaching staffs managed to turn pick 50s into something decent.

His selections in the past 5 years in the first round have been nothing short of abysmal. You can't seriously stuff up that many first round picks and just blame coaches.

Aside from Thilthorpe, every other pick had the sense of Hamish trying to be just so much cleverererer than other list managers rather than taking the common sense selection - YOU DONT SPECULATE IN THE FIRST ROUN HAGGIS

I think some serious questions need to be asked regarding our recruitment/development/list management over the past 5-6 years.

I’m not sure whether Hamish is necessarily the one to blame, he has made some odd choices, but sometimes I think he’s also been hamstrung by the talent available. The last few drafts, I think our picks have fallen in awkward positions, part of its bad luck, part of it some average list management.

I do worry though that we seem to have this capacity to completely destroy the confidence of our early draft picks. Milera, Fogarty, Gallucci, Jones, McHenry, McAsey all seem to be completely bereft of confidence. There’s the old saying that “once you’re drafted, draft position doesn’t matter...” It seems like we’ve taken that a step further and almost beat our early draft picks over the head with it. We bring them in and almost try to complete reinvent them as footballers.

Is our development team too overly critical of minor flaws and too obsessed with teaching “team football” that these players lose all confidence in their natural game?

These guys seem to come into our squad as borderline best 22 already, but then are forced to play out of position or in the tough half forward role, destroying their confidence in the process, whilst our average senior players get gifted the more desirable, easier roles.

You watch Butters vs Jones yesterday and wonder, if roles were reversed, would Butters have succeeded in our environment? Probably not. Would Jones have succeeded in Port’s?

 

[hey shorty]

These have been our best picks over the past 5 years

Butts (39 RD)
Sholl (64 ND)
McPherson (40 - ND)
Himmelberg (51 ND) - may have gone backwards though

Every single high pick we're either holding onto hope, have underperformed or bust. 2020 looks optimistic. As great as Thilt looks, Logan was a bulletproof option but gotta come back in 4 years.

Ironic you say "we've gotta come back in 4 years" but you've written the last 4 years off

 

[Jcpdragonx]

Ironic you say "we've gotta come back in 4 years" but you've written the last 4 years off

Talls take longer, pretty simple mate.

 

[AmericanCrow]

We stink

 

[hey shorty]

Talls take longer, pretty simple mate.

All players in a development system as poor as ours take longer.

 

[Golumless]

These have been our best picks over the past 5 years

Butts (39 RD)
Sholl (64 ND)
McPherson (40 - ND)
Himmelberg (51 ND) - may have gone backwards though

Every single high pick we're either holding onto hope, have underperformed or bust. 2020 looks optimistic. As great as Thilt looks, Logan was a bulletproof option but gotta come back in 4 years.

Mind you, I don't think this is a bad thing. If you can get players later in the draft to boom, it should make life a lot easier elsewhere. It gives coverage for some bad luck to happen to your first rounders (i.e. Milera now missing two seasons in a row due to injury) without it causing your side to stall out.

I'd probably have Schoenberg in this list as well. Newchurch if he can fix some defensive deficiencies could also find himself here very quickly.

 

[Crom14]

Not sure what my fellow Crom supporters were expecting from the weekend, we are literally at step 1 of a rebuild going up against a side that will unfortunately be very much around the mark. To put the two sides into perspective, Port had nearly 1000 games of experience against the side we put on the park, and we had 12 players who have played less than 10 games/not even made their debut. Success isn't going to come overnight, we're not going to see much success until the likes of Sholl, Schoenberg etc have played around 40-60 games. We can't expect these boys to be superstars after a handful of games. Strap yourselves in for a few years of pain, but also get excited to see these kids come in and show us why we should be optimistic for the future xo

 

[Golumless]

I think some serious questions need to be asked regarding our recruitment/development/list management over the past 5-6 years.

I’m not sure whether Hamish is necessarily the one to blame, he has made some odd choices, but sometimes I think he’s also been hamstrung by the talent available. The last few drafts, I think our picks have fallen in awkward positions, part of its bad luck, part of it some average list management.

I do worry though that we seem to have this capacity to completely destroy the confidence of our early draft picks. Milera, Fogarty, Gallucci, Jones, McHenry, McAsey all seem to be completely bereft of confidence. There’s the old saying that “once you’re drafted, draft position doesn’t matter...” It seems like we’ve taken that a step further and almost beat our early draft picks over the head with it. We bring them in and almost try to complete reinvent them as footballers.

Is our development team too overly critical of minor flaws and too obsessed with teaching “team football” that these players lose all confidence in their natural game?

These guys seem to come into our squad as borderline best 22 already, but then are forced to play out of position or in the tough half forward role, destroying their confidence in the process, whilst our average senior players get gifted the more desirable, easier roles.

You watch Butters vs Jones yesterday and wonder, if roles were reversed, would Butters have succeeded in our environment? Probably not. Would Jones have succeeded in Port’s?

I've never found Milera to be one who has been bereft of confidence. Just someone who was more suited to a different (and considering the complaint, ironically easier) part of the ground then he was playing in. McHenry is the same in that regard. That kid is confident to the point he's reckless (thinking of that goal he kicked in the trial game, and a few times he's been stung biting off more than he can chew).

Jones does absolutely fall into this category though. He looks like the weight of expectation with being the high draft pick, and the key plank the club needs to build around has just crushed him. I'd argue he'd probably be a damn handy player at a club like Port. McAsey might also be in this category, but he could also be a 2nd-year KPD who just needs more time to transition to AFL level. The lesson there is to never draft a KPD as a top 10 pick.

Fogarty is just an unknown at this point.

 

[Mismatched]

Nothings as bad as it seems, or as good ......today we suffered from poor structure, created by our talls not producing

Tex was woeful at getting to contests .....Frampton, I don't know what he was doing ....and the expected woes of our KPD's were well documented B4 the game

Lose your spine, and your running players can't run with confidence ......we also had a lot of experience in the SANFL today, one shouldn't understate this

One of my takeaways from the game was that I worry with Tex in that forward line, that especially whilst under pressure, our midfield/defenders become too Tex-centric. It doesn’t matter whom we pair with him, be it Fogarty, Thilthorpe, Himmelberg, Frampton... they’re going to struggle, because we’d rather try and get it to Tex, no matter how bad a position he’s in, rather than lower the eyes and find the right option. Tex has never been a “bomb it on his head” type player anyway. His best footy has always been when able to lead up to the ball carrier.

We can criticise Frampton and co for not getting near it, but is it because they’re not running to the right places, or is it that Tex is too much of a presence in that side that our forwards just won’t be able to get a go until he’s gone?

From what I could tell on the Tele, Aliir just seemed to plant himself a few meters in front of Tex and we’d kick it straight to him every time.

If you want to see how a footy club can ruin a player look no further than the AFC and Chayce Jones.

For the love of god, tell the kid to see ball and get ball. Simple as that. He is the fittest bloke on the list and he gets cast aside in preripheral roles. Play him on the ball and throw the structures/defensive actions out of the window for a while. Back to basics FFS. Otherwise, dont pick him. Infuriates me.

Needs a good 2 months of SANFL football as a midfielder. We drafted him as a midfielder, go back and play as a midfielder, don’t worry about getting selected, just remember how to find the footy.

Our current predicament doesn't rest on one player, or one current coach (because they're basically all new). It rests on a decade or more of club-wide mediocrity, blind faith in "senior players" and lack of consistent and targeted youth development/game exposure. This is the result - it hits all at once. The sporting example of "a stitch in time saves nine".

Agreed.

Usually when a coach gets the sack, the team has had at least 1-2 average years, whereby they’ve got a some games into the younger players and obtained a few higher draft picks to bring in talent. Pyke’s last 2 years we were still hell for leather chasing a top 8 spot, playing all the senior players, with very few young players getting any realistic opportunities to develop.

Nicks’ first season as coach was effectively that initial dip year that is usually weathered by the incumbent coach. Not only that as well, Nicks was stuck with the same sub-par football department.

Very little that happened last year had anything to do with Nicks, he managed turn things around a little towards the end of the year which was good.

Quite frankly, this year should be effectively seen as Nicks 1st season as coach. We have a completely new coaching panel, that is going to take some getting used to, as well as simply sorting our list out.

I fear we'll play our experience and also target a number of Keays equivalents in a desperate attempt to stay semi-competitive. And every move like that moves us further away from getting better

Senior players who don't cut it are a cancer. They infect the next generation

The worry I have is Nicks coming out already and apparently trying to delude himself into thinking bringing Kelly, Mackay and Lynch back into that side will make an iota of difference. Kelly and Mackay play about the easiest positions on the ground, positions we have plenty of young players begging for opportunities in these roles.

I agree with your premise though, we need to be finding our next superstars, not our next fringe 22 players. I’d rather see us taking more punts on higher risk, higher reward types, than continually going the safer “okay talent, but will try really, really hard” types.

I don’t have a problem with us grabbing someone like Murray, has some upside and KPDs are often found in the later draft/rookie draft. The issue is what’s going on with McAsey and the questions that were raised at the time about drafting a KPD so early.

 

[Deaneus!]

After watching the skills in yesterday's game I'm surprised Walker, FOG or Frampton got anywhere near it. When the disposal is as sh*te as it is, forwards have no hope. The power forwards look fantastic because they kick to the advantage of their forward and split apart the defense by short accurate kicks.

If FOG, Walker and Frampton had that they would be going alright.

Anyone notice that Walker stops and tries to body the defender out the way multiple times in a game? It's because the kick to him has been too high and long so when leading he needs to stop or he will run under the ball, the result is he is a sitting duck and the only option is to try and out body his opponent. Try being a forward with that delivery

this feels very familiar

Murray and Hinge just this season. Carlton saw cycling through delistees and recent draft misses as their solution. It's an easy trap to fall into and I hope we don't

Now that we've got the off-field better resourced I'd hope that developing our 1st, 2nd and 3rd year players will be done much better (and I'm sure it will) but if the coaches/club are hellbent on trying to keep us competitive on-field...?

we have, make the 8 and anything can happen

It's hard to overstate just how badly the previous administration and coaches f’ed up this team in search of success we never got

board seems to get away cleanly

 

[BACCS]

All players in a development system as poor as ours take longer.

Are we talking prior to this 2020? As much as people like to discuss the failings on here, they completely ignore successful development stories.

Laird
Doedee
Brown
McPherson
Talia
Atkins (yes, as much as people heap s**t on him, he played an important role in 2017)
Hartigan (same as above)
Kelly (same as above)
ROB
Lynch (he was an average player at the Saints)
McAdam
Sholl
Milera was going nicely before injury

Too early to tell with the last couple of drafts, but all have shown promising signs, albeit inconsistent. I’ve probably missed some too but one thing I’ve never been worried about (outside of 2019 when Pyke’s messaging had stagnated and our club needed a complete revamp) is our development of players, regardless of draft position. Marco Bello comes from a great background too and should bring some fresh ideas with him from a successful system.

 

[WaynesWorld19]

Just plopping this here re Nicks thoughts on Midfielders

 

[Deaneus!]

Are we talking prior to this 2020? As much as people like to discuss the failings on here, they completely ignore successful development stories.

Laird
Doedee
Brown
McPherson
Talia
Atkins (yes, as much as people heap sh*t on him, he played an important role in 2017)
Hartigan (same as above)
Kelly (same as above)
ROB
Lynch (he was an average player at the Saints)
McAdam
Sholl
Milera was going nicely before injury

Too early to tell with the last couple of drafts, but all have shown promising signs, albeit inconsistent. I’ve probably missed some too but one thing I’ve never been worried about (outside of 2019 when Pyke’s messaging had stagnated and our club needed a complete revamp) is our development of players, regardless of draft position. Marco Bello comes from a great background too and should bring some fresh ideas with him from a successful system.

you’ve named some great B graders there

 

[BACCS]

Mind you, I don't think this is a bad thing. If you can get players later in the draft to boom, it should make life a lot easier elsewhere. It gives coverage for some bad luck to happen to your first rounders (i.e. Milera now missing two seasons in a row due to injury) without it causing your side to stall out.

I'd probably have Schoenberg in this list as well. Newchurch if he can fix some defensive deficiencies could also find himself here very quickly.

I’m not sure why there’s such a focus on a players draft position after a few years in the system, it’s irrelevant to how they develop once in there.

 

[WaynesWorld19]

One of my takeaways from the game was that I worry with Tex in that forward line, that especially whilst under pressure, our midfield/defenders become too Tex-centric. It doesn’t matter whom we pair with him, be it Fogarty, Thilthorpe, Himmelberg, Frampton... they’re going to struggle, because we’d rather try and get it to Tex, no matter how bad a position he’s in, rather than lower the eyes and find the right option. Tex has never been a “bomb it on his head” type player anyway. His best footy has always been when able to lead up to the ball carrier.

This ! ......so Allir plays in front of Tex, is quicker than Tex .....so negates Tex's strength