Scodog10
Brownlow Medallist
- Thread starter
- #101
Not much for me to work with there to advance the topic, but I’ll try!
What is this suspicion based on? I’m going to speculate that you believe our younger players come on well enough v the rest of the competition, but once they reach the point of having “made it” for one reason or another they don’t take that next step. If that’s the case I think we can be better too.
I’ll use two players as examples:
Phillips has “made it”, IMO. Regardless of his “talent” if he doesn’t develop any further with his mix of traits he’ll still have a career that reaches the average length. What would you (or others) be focusing on to aid him in taking that next step in his development? For me it would be decision making because he takes an eternity to dispose of the ball or wheel and go when he’s in space (symptom). That isn’t talent related he’s in control of it and it’s likely that he’ll develop as a footballer if he plays with a bit more urgency ball in hand. It’s not a given of course that he can develop it, but if he doesn’t it only means he may struggle to take that next step, IMO. The second element are his running patterns (symptom). Man these are easy to lift with access to GPS. He’s not blessed with *speed or the smarts of Sidebottom so I think he’ll find it difficult to get in behind the zone and hit the scoreboard consistently. He’ll do it of course because his tank is elite, but I think he’ll be better, and by extension the team, served by him running more defensively (he does that to an ok level now more is always better). Again that’s not related to talent and I’ve identified two opportunities to improve in the course of writing this post.
Fasolo has also “made it”, IMO. He’s a 1-1.5 goal a game forward which in the modern game is solid. The problem is he hasn’t taken the next step in other areas of his game to elevate it to the next level commensurate with his talents. IMO, he’s definitely capable of Breust level output. What he hasn’t been able to do (and probably won’t now given his age and our system) is improve his tackling game to create repeat opportunities (symptom). His tackling dropped significantly in 2017 on his career and I have my doubts it’ll rise again. His positioning I50. How many front and centre opportunities did he create for himself last year? I remember 1 v Brisbane and if we’re comparing against the best he doesn’t get to those positions often enough (symptom). Work rate. I’ll put it on Fas here, he doesn’t work as hard or as smart as the best players, if he did he’d get to those areas ahead of his opponent more often and in so doing go to the next level (symptom).
Let’s treat the exercise as you wish in that it’s an impossibility to identify the trigger (I bet you liked that
), but right there I’ve highlighted 5 symptoms of *poor development in two individual footballers in the space of a post that’s taken 20 minutes to collate. We can all identify symptoms of poor development that aren’t related to “talent” because we all get access to game day footage and game day is almost nothing to do with talent. Now I’m not a motivational speaker, a leadership mentor or a skill acquisition coach, but because I’ve been able to identify what I perceive to be the issue what I can do is feed that data to a process manager who can work with the above *specialist to work on ways to implement those improvements. The aim is to see results sooner than 18 months in and that might be impossible, but the discussion should be around what we think can be done not so much what is (though that does need to be spoken on)... I’m thinking we won’t get Toyota level efficiency, but it can be developed.Given your focus on it I’ll direct you to my post on talent in the top 8 prediction thread. Talent isn’t quantifiable and can’t be improved on. It’s not like Madden where you walk through the door with a TQ and it can rise or fall. It’s finite so doesn’t belong in discussions on future performance. I personally believe you are trying too hard to make our results fit your hypothesis on talent not the other way around. I understand you are very consumed by the worry about our talent, but that may be affecting the balance of your arguments when it comes to our future prospects
*speed, Phillips is quick v any of us, but by AFL standards he’s not.
*poor, it might be poor to me and others like me, but you might see it as inadequate or below average. Regardless of the term it needs improvement as the organisation does overall.
*specialist, this is used very very loosely because outside of Maxwell I don’t believe we have a single specialist working at the club in development roles. walterblacknwhite added value when mentioning Hawthorn and teachers. I’m not sure it makes them specialists, but it provides them with more skills than say Boyd or Lockyer have. Boyd would no doubt have the expertise for an operational role with his MBA, but in development he’s lacking expertise and experience. Fast learners can overcome those limitations, IMO, but I don’t think we had the luxury of employing people in development that have to learn on the job. BTW there’s another symptom of poor development from further up the food chain and an opportunity to improve.
Edit: this is of course only supposition and speculation. OBVIOUSLY we can’t identify and discuss perceived issues at the club so this is again only for the purpose of pontification.
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