Key position strategy disaster

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DockerLand1

DockerLand1

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Feb 3, 2008
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Melbourne
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Fremantle
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South Fremantle
With our brilliant talent scouts saying wait fit the "Super Draft" to pick up a bunch of Key Position forwards we are now finding that most f the talent will be midfielders ( apart from Daniher ).

http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/good-but-not-quite-a-super-draft-20120704-21hm7.html

Now that we have neglected this particular area for SO many years in the draft ( last 5 in my count )it looks like we are going to have to pay a mercenary like Cloke a million dollars a year to be our shining light up forward ( besides our beloved Pav ) and wait to see if our first pick ( which will probably be in the early 20's ) will be a good enough key forward option.

Chances are that we will go with the "best available" option again and end up with another Pitt instead of a Darling. In the meantime our midfield during 5 years of high draft picks has managed to produce Fyfe, Hill and hopefully Morabito ( injury permitting-Please God he deserves a break ) but little else.

Our rookies have produced better results on the midfield with Barlow, De Boer, Lower whilst our policy of picking up Key Position players as Rookies has produced nothing, not one player! We do not even have one player that is developing on our list that could be described as a key position forward.

Our key position players are Pav and Elvis and they are amazing servants of the club but both 30 plus with nobody of their size and skill to move into the forward role. The roving ruckman role experiment has failed. We have barely kicked over 100 points all season we get smashed by teams like the Hawks and Eagles with multiple key position forwards.

The writing is on the wall and as clear as day. We will never do anything as club in September/ October until we have key forwards who kick goals. For our recruiters who have driven us down this road to Hell, I hope that that you are fired ASAP and that you burn there very quickly.

I await to get shouted down as usual, every that i comment on this issue. That is all....
 

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Not one player? We've picked up several through the draft and trade period in the past several years.

Dawson, Silvagni, Clarke, Griffin and Keplar are all capable of being best 22 when fit and firing, while Faulks and Anthony and Houghton were also picked up.

I suppose if we ignore the "best available" approach, we could always pick up talls instead. Such quality recruiting would have picked up Aaron Black instead of Nat Fyfe, Darling intead of Pitt and Josh Bootsma instead of Hayden Crozier.

Which would you prefer? Going by those selections, I think we've come out miles in front.
 
IAMJUNGLEMUFFIN said:
Not one player? We've picked up several through the draft and trade period in the past several years.

Dawson, Silvagni, Clarke, Griffin and Keplar are all capable of being best 22 when fit and firing, while Faulks and Anthony and Houghton were also picked up.

I suppose if we ignore the "best available" approach, we could always pick up talls instead. Such quality recruiting would have picked up Aaron Black instead of Nat Fyfe, Darling intead of Pitt and Josh Bootsma instead of Hayden Crozier.

Which would you prefer? Going by those selections, I think we've come out miles in front.
Click to expand...

I agree with your post. The bolded bit becomes debatable though. Of course the brilliance of Fyfe weighs heavily in our favour, but Darling for sure would have been the better selection for us especially given our needs. Bootsma is having a pretty fine debut year at Carlton too, but Crozier is looking a bit special too. Is Bootsma really going to get to KPP size, or is he more going to be a mobile tall? But there was an opportunity to fill a need which we did not take.

I guess for me that is a 2:1 success rate, and in draft history you would be doing pretty well with that wouldn't you?
 
What's the height difference between Bootsma and Darling? 1 cm? You'd think he'd have that covered before too long, the kid still looks very coltish, unlike Darling who was probably shaving at 16 (which also relates to the debate over Pitt, but we can leave that for another day).

But yeah, at this point in time it appears as if the numbers are in favour of the current approach. That's not going to stop the few hindsight heros on here who cry about not picking Darling.
 
Nickos66 said:
Pitt needs a beard, then he'll go some way to fulfilling his potential.

Darling would've been shaving at 12-13 and look at him go!

If Pitt is to have a beard he'll need to begin shaving sometime soon, maybe the club can pitch in and buy him a Lynden Dunn Mo temporarily until he's got something worth showing..
Click to expand...

Perhaps Mundy and Crichton can pitch in with those supremely thick and manly hirsute face carpets they tend to wear. That has to be worth at least 5 tackles a game.
 
IAMJUNGLEMUFFIN said:
I suppose if we ignore the "best available" approach, we could always pick up talls instead. Such quality recruiting would have picked up Aaron Black instead of Nat Fyfe, Darling intead of Pitt and Josh Bootsma instead of Hayden Crozier.
Click to expand...
Fyfe > Black
Darling > Pitt
Crozier/Bootsma played 3 and 5 games. Impossible to say yet.

Pretty even actually.

I think it is (and should be) always a juggle between best available and needs.

I think the main problem is, that Darling looks so much a combination of both, while Ptts fails to deliver yet...
 
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