Well who is the current equivalent of Crawford, hodge, Mitchell, Croad, Sewell, Brown, Bateman, Osborne, Williams, Ladson and Campbell, who were the 2008 premiership players on the list prior to the 2004 draft.
Now not all of those mentioned were superstars, and only the first 4-5 were front liners.
Exactly my point.
In 2004 people were lining up to say Hawthorn's list was shit and that they had very little, if any youth coming through.
Hodge was still being pilloried as a
draft bust on bigfooty.
Mitchell was seen as a run-of-the-mill inside mid to the point where opposition
fans genuinely argued Daniel Harris was a superior player.
Sewell was a rookie listed player who played 6 unassuming games off half back. No one knew who he was.
Ladson(8 games), Campbell(14), Osborne(17) and Bateman(13), Williams(21) were all youngsters, who didn't have any fanfare.
Clinton Young was yet to join the rookie list.
Croad wasn't on Hawthorn's list.
Guerra was about to be delisted by St Kilda.
The same people lining up to say those blokes were not going to amount to anything are probably in here saying the same thing about Sicily, O'Brien, Howe, Lovell, Hardwick, Cousins, Hartung, Brand and whoever else they know on the Hawthorn list in 2017. It's what bigfooty does.
Granted no one thought a premiership was happening anytime soon in 2004, I would argue the current list is in even worse shape than that. But just say, for instance it isn't and it's on par with 2004, this is what happened next in 2004:
Got roughy, franklin and Lewis in the first 7 picks, 3 club legends in the 2004 draft. Not bad for 'speculative' draft picks.
Then further high picks in burchill and rioli made the side even stronger.
From that basis some canny recruiting from other clubs (Gilham and Dew), great coaching and a bit of luck landed a flag way ahead of what anyone thought possible in 2008.
So the differences to then and now are very obvious, you don't have any picks available anywhere early in this years draft, so chances of finding 3 future or current a graders at the end of the season are slim to none.
Hawthorn have Burton, Hardwick, Sicily and O'Brien who are looking like good future prospects, add a couple of the Academy players who are highly regarded, the youngest Langford(supposedly the best of the lot) and a solid pick at 35 and who knows where we are sitting in 3 years time. The possibility of Hawthorn finding good players is not that far fetched, and with more avenues, I'd argue, it's possibly easier.
Things can change extremely quickly. I'm not saying they will, but they can, and I don't understand why people get so upset by Hawthorn supporters suggesting that the direction of the club can be turned around in a couple of years with a few shrewd pick ups a FA or two and good trade.
Now I know there is free agency now and there wasn't then, but to find 3 a grade free agents would cost a crap load of money and they would all be at least in their mid 20s and on fairly decent money.
It's hard to know what Hawthorn have planned. How hard they go at a big fish, or whether they go for a couple of lesser lights. We've had a 'big fish' thread on the Hawk board for sometime ever since a couple of ITK posters suggested that Hawthorn had big plans for 2017 and 2018 trade/FA periods, and it's thrown up plenty of musings, proposals, thoughts and predictions as to what that could actually mean.
The other option is to bundle up players to get early picks, but that may translate to a first and second rounder at best, and further gut what current talent is there.
Clarkson is notorious for backing in his troops to come good, often to his detriment(see the first half of this year). He will move players on if he thinks they don't fit, or that their time is running out, but I can't see him moving on players like Gunston, Rioli or Breust for the chance at an early pick. It's not his go at all.
I will not be at all surprised if we head to the draft with the 2nd rounder we already have, and nothing earlier, while we trade away a couple of fringe players for 2nd and 3rd rounders. This will of course have Bigfooty bemused.
I've seen it time and time again with clubs thinking their infallible just because of who they are and what has happened in the past.
Hawthorn moving on Mitchell and Lewis is the very opposite of a club sitting back thinking that they'll just stay good forever without much thought.
That was a very bold move, and one which could be huge for the club going forward should JOM come good like Burgoyne did after his shakey start. Tom Mitchell is certainly having a great first season.
It never works like that, otherwise Fitzroy would of remained a super power, we would of never gone down the ladder and Essendon wouldn't of tried a dodgy supplements scheme to keep up.
Ahh, Hirdy. To think he did all that because "I hate them(HFC) more than anything", then proceeded to lose to Clarkson by an average of 12 goals a game while sending them to the brink of oblivion. Bless him.
2008 was the footballing equivalent of catching lightning in a bottle, you will realize how great an achievement it was as time goes on. Landing 3 club legends in one draft is probably a 1 in 50 year occurrence, at best.
No arguments here, and we got them up and playing great footy very early in their careers. Franklin kicked 7 in an EF as a 20yr old, 73 goals for year. Roughead with 40. Probably the best young duo the game has seen.
We've certainly not got much of a chance of bringing in 3 players like that this year from the draft, but with a kid like Burton who is playing his 20th game of football at any level since August 2014, developing as well as he is after missing so much footy, there's plenty to suggest that we might find them in other ways.