VFL Game Day Footscray v Essendon

[Nicholas61]

I have to agree, I've seen alot of players over the last 2/3 years in our squad that have me scrathing my head.

A lot of the same issues as seniors - poor disposal, decision making and non defensive players. Smartt looked good - quick, attacks the contest, can kick and took an overhead mark. Exact sort we need in the seniors.

 

[DERO]

Just got to the ground for the very first VFL match I’ve ever been to. Why do you guys do this.

Up above row h?

 

[Zach Package]

I have to agree, I've seen alot of players over the last 2/3 years in our squad that have me scrathing my head.

Yeah the VFL cohort is seriously underwhelming and unfortunately you could see it coming. I didn’t like last year’s cohort and this is worse.

Feels like we’re half way between going for proven players that have fallen out of the system and developing from within and actually doing neither.

 

[ghostdog]

Jay Davey with point of the year after really good body work from Vigo.

Tsatas not doing good, hard, clean stuff and is on track for 30+ if he plays the full game.

Hately somehow has 3, just keeps bobbing up in the right spot.

39-29.

Not doing?

 

[ghostdog]

Good to see the VFL team are trained to play like the seniors by giving up a goal on the siren. Takes a lot of team training drills to become experts at getting that right.

Maybe it actually will, because we did train for red time scenarios quite a bit.

 

[Zach Package]

Not doing?

Typo, he was certainly doing all that stuff

 

[eth-dog]

Hately and Smartt are great. O'Neill is a good state league player. The rest, eh...

 

[Old Campaigner]

Did they want a big cleanout to start fresh with a bunch of players who have The Edge?

 

[ant555]

Did they want a big cleanout to start fresh with a bunch of players who have The Edge?

They have edge just limited skills

 

[Yoda_]

Yeah the VFL cohort is seriously underwhelming and unfortunately you could see it coming. I didn’t like last year’s cohort and this is worse.

Feels like we’re half way between going for proven players that have fallen out of the system and developing from within and actually doing neither.

what's frustrating is we have nearly always had one superstar VFL guy. Be it Dan Coghlan, Josh Freezer, Ben Duscher. The guys at the moment are seriously underwhelming (not talking former AFL guys)

Furthermore, the Essendon District Football League is apparently one of yer strongest metro leagues and the Bendigo Football League has always given us some decent players as well.

Right now, the VFL is a part time collaboration

 

[Zach Package]

what's frustrating is we have nearly always had one superstar VFL guy. Be it Dan Coghlan, Josh Freezer, Ben Duscher. The guys at the moment are seriously underwhelming (not talking former AFL guys)

Furthermore, the Essendon District Football League is apparently one of yer strongest metro leagues and the Bendigo Football League has always given us some decent players as well.

Right now, the VFL is a part time collaboration

It would seem the focus has shifted to it being a full blown AFL Dev side, but I think you still need enough cattle to be able to play players in positions and learn properly.

There are guns for hire everywhere and they’re going elsewhere at the moment, whether it’s a pay thing or something else I dunno but it’s pretty disappointing.

Getting Hately to come over from SA was actually a pretty big coup but that’s one bloke.

 

[ant555]

what's frustrating is we have nearly always had one superstar VFL guy. Be it Dan Coghlan, Josh Freezer, Ben Duscher. The guys at the moment are seriously underwhelming (not talking former AFL guys)

Furthermore, the Essendon District Football League is apparently one of yer strongest metro leagues and the Bendigo Football League has always given us some decent players as well.

Right now, the VFL is a part time collaboration

You are right. Right now we are 3 good reliable VFL players short. They have gone too young again. Now a lot of these blokes have been around the under 18 systems but they are too raw and nearly all of them have played under 10 games of VFL footy. Throw in the fact we also play 4 or 5 inexperienced guys from our list and it compounds the issues.

I would not say it is part time but they are just trying to develop too many guys.

Will say the three sides we have played so far have had more AFL listed players than us. The Dogs where strong enough to leave Montgomery out of yesterdays side.

I have to say that I do like these young blokes better than the lot we had in 2021. There seems to be a few more that have something to work with. The only issue is like 2021 they will take all season to show the improvement and then we have to keep them together. The fact that we could not keep building on the improvement of Cootee / Bernacki / Rasinac and co hurts. They where all getting into the 40 game range. No we are starting again.

 

[Yoda_]

You are right. Right now we are 3 good reliable VFL players short. They have gone too young again. Now a lot of these blokes have been around the under 18 systems but they are too raw and nearly all of them have played under 10 games of VFL footy. Throw in the fact we also play 4 or 5 inexperienced guys from our list and it compounds the issues.

I would not say it is part time but they are just trying to develop too many guys.

Will say the three sides we have played so far have had more AFL listed players than us. The Dogs where strong enough to leave Montgomery out of yesterdays side.

I have to say that I do like these young blokes better than the lot we had in 2021. There seems to be a few more that have something to work with. The only issue is like 2021 they will take all season to show the improvement and then we have to keep them together. The fact that we could not keep building on the improvement of Cootee / Bernacki / Rasinac and co hurts. They where all getting into the 40 game range. No we are starting again.

I would love to know how the workings of Box Hill continue to grow in unison with Hawthorn. They continually pump out teams that compete. Richmond as a standalone is easy to see, how central they are to everyone, ditto Collingwood.

We'd be most similar to a North Melbourne, location > competition wise ( ? ).

As someone said earlier, we are stuck between developing a young core and competing with mature bodies.

 

[eth-dog]

what's frustrating is we have nearly always had one superstar VFL guy. Be it Dan Coghlan, Josh Freezer, Ben Duscher. The guys at the moment are seriously underwhelming (not talking former AFL guys)

Furthermore, the Essendon District Football League is apparently one of yer strongest metro leagues and the Bendigo Football League has always given us some decent players as well.

Right now, the VFL is a part time collaboration

EDFL premier would be behind VAFA A Grade, Eastern, Northern and around the same level as VAFA B Grade.

Bendigo is up there with O&M, Ballarat, GFL and Gippsland as one of the strongest country leagues.

 

[Happyskeret]

EDFL premier would be behind VAFA A Grade, Eastern, Northern and around the same level as VAFA B Grade.

Bendigo is up there with O&M, Ballarat, GFL and Gippsland as one of the strongest country leagues.

It’s a shame. This is what makes the Geelong footy club so good imo is their local league. Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t a lot of our baby bombers 93 team come out of our local league?

 

[Gumby2Hurley]

Blood Roberts in a couple weeks against the eagles

 

[nipst@r]

Excuse ignorance but is our vfl team affiliated with essendon league and a particular u18 team. Not familiar with current set up but remember the bendigo attempts. Is it one of the reasons why team struggles as not as strong local or under 18? Also explains why the Bendigo affiliation attempts few years ago. Or do we tap into St kevs, private school pathways more.

not sure if still the case but the stronger teams had great affiliations, was a given in the east of pathways etc. Good local player either offered to have a crack at box hill or players coming back with Box Hill experience. Box Hill- Eastern league and ranges. Geelong vfl- Geelong league etc.

 

[eth-dog]

Excuse ignorance but is our vfl team affiliated with essendon league and a particular u18 team. Not familiar with current set up but remember the bendigo attempts. Is it one of the reasons why team struggles as not as strong local or under 18? Also explains why the Bendigo affiliation attempts few years ago. Or do we tap into St kevs, private school pathways more.

not sure if still the case but the stronger teams had great affiliations, was a given in the east of pathways etc. Good local player either offered to have a crack at box hill or players coming back with Box Hill experience. Box Hill- Eastern league and ranges. Geelong vfl- Geelong league etc.

Yeah, none of that happens anymore. 90% of the metro VFL Listers are from VAFA A Grade, NFNL D1, EFNL Premier. That's been the case for around 15 years or so. And most country recruits are from Ballarat/Bendigo/Geelong/Gippsland (although that is more geographically based with us, Dogs, North going Bendigo/Ballarat, Geelong, Werribee and Willy GFL, etc).

 

[nipst@r]

Yeah, none of that happens anymore. 90% of the metro VFL Listers are from VAFA A Grade, NFNL D1, EFNL Premier. That's been the case for around 15 years or so. And most country recruits are from Ballarat/Bendigo/Geelong/Gippsland (although that is more geographically based with us, Dogs, North going Bendigo/Ballarat, Geelong, Werribee and Willy GFL, etc).

Yeah I wonder if box hill still get the best pick of rangers, efnl to invite down. Either way box hill would be a lot closer to the talent in a strong league like efnl than essendon would be.

Geelong vfl coach and falcons coach are brothers and the falcons coach was on sen talking about players who don't get drafted and will let his brother know which one to keep a eye on.

Other factor is the reduced overall appeal of vfl compared to a good cash wage at a local club.

We tend to say on this board it's not our list and drafting why our vfl team struggles so be interesting thoughts on why vfl team looks pretty mediocre as well.

We shpuld be able to attract better vfl players purely by being a bigger club with better facilities than most others.

 

[faible]

Yeah I wonder if box hill still get the best pick of rangers, efnl to invite down. Either way box hill would be a lot closer to the talent in a strong league like efnl than essendon would be.

Geelong vfl coach and falcons coach are brothers and the falcons coach was on sen talking about players who don't get drafted and will let his brother know which one to keep a eye on.

Other factor is the reduced overall appeal of vfl compared to a good cash wage at a local club.

We tend to say on this board it's not our list and drafting why our vfl team struggles so be interesting thoughts on why vfl team looks pretty mediocre as well.

We shpuld be able to attract better vfl players purely by being a bigger club with better facilities than most others.

Short answer is likely that we've simply neglected the VFL for a while now. Not being overly proactive about signing and retaining VFL players so we've had a revolving door of kids. Even this season we've brought in 2 or 3 good VFL players, turfed out basically everyone else we had, and are running around with a heap of young VFL kids, young AFL kids, and a couple of experienced guys.

Meanwhile a club like Geelong has had a pretty good success rate of developing and drafting guys through their VFL side over the last decade or so.

 

[nipst@r]

Short answer is likely that we've simply neglected the VFL for a while now. Not being overly proactive about signing and retaining VFL players so we've had a revolving door of kids. Even this season we've brought in 2 or 3 good VFL players, turfed out basically everyone else we had, and are running around with a heap of young VFL kids, young AFL kids, and a couple of experienced guys.

Meanwhile a club like Geelong has had a pretty good success rate of developing and drafting guys through their VFL side over the last decade or so.

Probably correct.

That answer though really doesn't give me confidence at club level we are turning things around.

 

[eth-dog]

Yeah I wonder if box hill still get the best pick of rangers, efnl to invite down. Either way box hill would be a lot closer to the talent in a strong league like efnl than essendon would be.

Geelong vfl coach and falcons coach are brothers and the falcons coach was on sen talking about players who don't get drafted and will let his brother know which one to keep a eye on.

Other factor is the reduced overall appeal of vfl compared to a good cash wage at a local club.

We tend to say on this board it's not our list and drafting why our vfl team struggles so be interesting thoughts on why vfl team looks pretty mediocre as well.

We shpuld be able to attract better vfl players purely by being a bigger club with better facilities than most others.

Not really. 10 players in the EFNL, one of which was originally recruited from the VAFA D2.

Most Falcons players end up at Werribee actually.

 

[faible]

Probably correct.

That answer though really doesn't give me confidence at club level we are turning things around.

I think in the last year or two we've started to rethink it, but then they basically started all over again this year so yeah.

They do at least seem to have better resourced the coaching element as far as I can tell.