Bit of a misleading statement there considering he has had 5 first round picks since then 07 with none being better than pick 15. Its far far too early to tell on both Thurlow and Lang. So basically he has had 3 first round picks that we can look at since Selwood/Taylor. 1 was a resounding failure, 1 looked to be just as good as Selwood/Taylor and the jury is still out on the 3rd.
2008 - #15 - Mitch Brown - Failure
2009 -Pick #17 - Daniel Menzel - looked to be an absolute gun. Played 18 games and cemented himself in Geelongs 2011 premiership side in his second year picking up a rising star nomination and 3 brownlow votes in round 22 against Collingwood. Then did his ACL in the qualifying final and has had 4 Reco's since then. This looked to be a brilliant pickup at #17.
2010 - Pick #15 - Billie Smedts - Has played 33 games across 4 years on Geelongs list. Will need a big season in 2015 to justify his selection on the list.
2011 - No first round draft picks.
2012 - Pick #16 - Jackson Thurlow - 10 games across two years.
2013 - Pick #17 - Darcy Lang - 1 game in 2014.
Plenty of good talent was selected after those players, Taylor himself was pick 17.
Our picks in those years were, per:
2008 - #10 - Phil Davis (Players available after Geelongs pick: Shuey, Ballantyne, Trengove, Zaharakis, Redden, Beams, Hannebury, Sloane)
2009 - #13 - Daniel Talia (Fyfe, Bastinac, J. Carlisle, Gunston, S. Reid)
2010 - #14 - Brodie Smith (Atley, I. Smith, Darling, Parker)
2011 - #27 - Sam Kerridge
2012 - No first rounder (Grundy, Kennedy, Broomhead, Hrovat)
2013 - #23 - Matt Crouch (Certainly too soon to judge)
Certainly I think our recruiters work stacks up, in fact better with similar picks, over that same period of time.
I'm not saying Wells is a bad recruiter, not by a long shot, just that his work of late is nothing special, certainly his work in the first round is nothing to write home about. In fact his better picks of late seem to be his later picks. He's picked guys like Motlop, Horlin-Smith, Guthrie, Duncan, Christenson and Vardy. Geelong's success was very much built off the back of excellent drafting in the early 2000's, very astute trading, some Father-Son Guns and an absolute elite culture.