Analysis Port Undertaking a rebuild ... Or a Renovate?

[sobrave]

Over the last four years, Port, while not in the same tier as these clubs, has become such a club, and has followed a similar list-management strategy. Through trading and free agency, we have picked up players like Polec, Ryder, Dixon, Watts, Motlop, Rockliff, and Lycett, while at the same time working damn hard (often to the ire of certain supporters) to position our self so as to maximize our drafting, picking up the likes of Atley, Drew, Bonner, SPP, Marshall, and now Rozee, Butters, and Duursma.

you can literally do this with every single other club.
polec = gone
ryder = injured half the time
dixon = good moments but overall disappointing
watts = lol
motlop = jury's still out here
rockliff = failure so far but hopefully this year he can deliver something
lycett = could be a serviceable ruckman

atley = 0 result
drew = 0 result
bonner = goes alright
spp = got everyone excited at the beginning and then again has failed to deliver. almost make or break this season.
marshall = good signs
new guys = every club has high hopes for their draftees.

 

[Duck Farmer]

Rebuilding awareness.

 

[Pappagallo]

Maybe it’s a Renaissance?

 

[chiwigi]

When the coach say he doesn't know how we'll go because we have so many new players, you can't deny it's a rebuild!

 

[edgie]

Is it like how I'm replacing the manifold and carby and exhaust on my 253 but the engine remains the same?

 

[Butters Made Me Do It]

We're building our post-Hinkley first 22

 

[Damon_3388]

OK, I am going have a whinge!

I am just so peeved off at constant snipes at the club that we have undergone a rebuild, or as some have snidely insinuated; A rebuild by "stealth." So I decided to put this in a new thread.

This is a ridiculous statement, and in my opinion shows little understanding of how lists work, or are constructed. I have been a serious Port supporter & followed Aussie rules footy for some 40 years now, and I am pretty sure I know what a "rebuild" is ... having seen it occur many times. I will start this off with an article by Jake Niall in the age. This article clearly spells out what constitutes a rebuild, and even lists clubs that have, or havent been going down that road.

https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl...rebuilder-clarkson-draft-20180421-p4zaxv.html

So lets look at it ............

A team rebuild, as it is generally understood in context, is when you clear the decks & start from the bottom up. This involves going to the draft over a number of years, and completely changing the spine of you team, building it around new marquee players. EG: That is what St Kilda, Brisbane, Carlton and Melbourne etc, have done, and its taken them many years to do it having to bottom out, and in many cases, they are still not there.

A team renovation, on the otherhand, is very different. While a rebuild involves using the draft to rebuild a young team up, a renovation involves forsaking the draft, and targeting specific players your team needs to improve. This through a combination of trade, free agency, and the draft. These are clubs like WC, Geelong, Hawthorn, Collingwood, and in recent years Richmond, that are attractive destination clubs, who have specialized in this.

Over the last four years, Port, while not in the same tier as these clubs, has become such a club, and has followed a similar list-management strategy. Through trading and free agency, we have picked up players like Polec, Ryder, Dixon, Watts, Motlop, Rockliff, and Lycett, while at the same time working damn hard (often to the ire of certain supporters) to position our self so as to maximize our drafting, picking up the likes of Atley, Drew, Bonner, SPP, Marshall, and now Rozee, Butters, and Duursma.

All the while Port have been able to maintain a very stable group of players that formed the spine of our 22, slowly adding better depth, and targeting key players.

This is just NOT a rebuild!!! This is a targeted strategy of regenerating the list, without sacrificing the core. Each year of this strategy through the last 4 years, Port has remained a "top 8" side, and last year was viewed as a top-4 side. That fact that Port failed in finals, or failed to reach finals, had NOTHING to do with a so-called list rebuild! The list was fine, the gameplan, selections, and arguably coaching, was the failure!

Just as an example, Richmond, who between 2013-2015 had made the final 8 (5th twice), and were touted to go deep. Yet during those same three years they moved on 25 players off their list. However if you take a closer look, their spine remained constant. They were building better depth around a solid core, and in 2017 it clicked. Its interesting that in 2016, after a bad start, angry supporters were calling for a rebuild ... something the club rejected outright.
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/...n/news-story/d921e58e881169eaca12eef36da6059e
They were correct ... There was no rebuild at Richmond, they won the flag the following year!

By the way, just as a final nail in this ridiculous assertion of a rebuild, simply because we have turned over fringe players ... Over the next four, Richmond traded/delisted/retired a further 31 players, all while winning a premiership & being touted a top-4 premiership threat this year!

Now compare this to Port...

Port, over the last three years has moved on 24 players, either retired or delisted (not including special category in Dan Flynn and Johann Wagner) ...
Kane Cornes, Tom Logan, Mitch Harvey, Andrew Moore, Jarrad Redden, Jay Schulz, Mason Shaw, Sam Russell, John Butcher, Sam Colquhoun, Kane Mitchell, Alipate Carlile, Paul Stewart, Cam O Shea, Jack Hombsch, Jasper Pittard, Dom Barry, Emmanuel Irra, Jake Neade, Jimmy Toumpas, Will Snelling, Lindsay Thomas.

Look at the names! This was a clean out of the fringe & depth ... failed depth in fact! Hence the need to replace them, very similar to what Richmond did. This is NOT a rebuild!

"What about Polec & Wingard?" I hear some goose say. Well, unless you still have your head buried in your kiddies sandpit, we all know that they were required players that the club was willing to keep. Both tried to test the club with threats of looking elsewhere, and Port didnt blink! This is NOT a rebuild!

The final argument...

"But we have 11 changes in our team from last year! So, it has to be a rebuild!" .... Is what some of the experts here have written.

So from the last game in 2018 ...
Lienert - Injured
SGray - Dropped
Frampton - Dropped
Farrell - Dropped
Howard - Dropped
FIVE players that would/could have played if fit, or in form. Then we had THREE more in Hartlett, Dixon & Broadbent out of that team, who will play when they come back from injury

So that makes EIGHT players who either played in that last game, or would have if fit, that are all still on our list, and can contend for selection when fit

OK, so of the others not playing in Rd 1 we have:
Wingard - left
Polec - left
Hombsch - Delisted
Neade - Delisted
Pittard - Moved on

A rebuild?

Seriously?

Why can't it just be a "build"? Or "staying competitive"? Or "just there"? Or no term at all?

 

[Damon_3388]

How long do you expect it to take our youngsters to develop?

Given how quickly modern draftees play and develop and the ability to top up using free agency and trade I think people are way over stating the cliff.

4-5 years for them to hit their peak.

In 2 years the guy's I mentioned (plus Broadbent, Hartlett, Dixon) will probably be gone. We aren't winning anything in the next few years with a core group of 20-22 year olds. It can happen but it's unlikely.

I'd say for most players (there are obviously exceptions), their peak is 25-29 years old, which if they're drafted at 18, is usually their 7th-11th season. You'd hope a player (health/fitness/unforseen circumstances permitting) starts making serious inroads towards being the final product when they're at that 22-24 year old range (4th-6th season), though.

 

[LFC2010]

Hinkley ball 4.0.1

 

[Kiss from a Rozee]

I think the concept of rebuild is outdated. Our list management has literally just been taking the chances that are on the table with a view towards a) strengthening our best 22 in the short term, while b) improving the longevity and quality of the list in the long term.

We’ve utilised all three sources of high quality incoming players very well (free agents, trades, and the draft) over the last few years, with each year having a very clear strategy and some clever tactics (eg trading up to pick 5 for Rozee while getting Mayes, trading down to 14 and 18 to get Marshall and SPP)

Most if not all clubs would be doing similar I’d think, although Hawthorn seem to have ignored the top end of the draft in order to bring in players hitting their prime, which is probably going to result in them bottoming out massively at some stage.

 

[Janus]

As soon as free agency came in and the veterans cap was abolished the paradigm of list profiles being a linear curve went with them. The reason for this was due to the fact that once a player served 10 years on the same list, half his salary could be counted outside the cap. So it made sense for players to remain with the same club.

Now you’ll see lists where there are a few older star players supplemented by a group of free agents on big coin (whether attained from other clubs or retained by their own club) and then a whole bunch of kids in that 1st-7th year bracket (18-25).

You give the players you want to keep a long term deal and let the others walk into free agency.

Players wanted the ability to move clubs in search of a premiership and get paid what they would have as a veteran...just earlier, and with another club if they chose.

That’s why losing Wingard and Polec doesn’t mean s**t. It just means we didn’t rate them as being worth the cap space we would have had to spend.

Look at it this way. The minimum salary for draft picks is something like $110k + $5k per match. That means Rozee, Butters and Duursma would get a maximum of $200k each as there’s no way they are going to play every game of a long season.

So for the cost of one Jared Polec get $600k, we get 3 young players getting a combined total of $600k.

Burton gets Pittard’s money ($400k) and Lycett gets Wingard’s money ($600k).

So not only did we strengthen our list by getting more high quality players, we did so while still retaining a low salary cap spend so this year or next year we can continue to retain our players and attract free agents by using the draft as a salary cap banking system.

You’ll know when we’ve got a decent list when we aren’t in the bottom three for salary cap spend.

 

[Jakksynn]

From the 22 in our prelim appearance less than five years ago we have 8 survivors on our list. Hawthorn, who in that 5 years has conducted a rebuild and haven’t hid that fact, have 9 survivors on their list. It absolutely has been a rebuild.

 

[TeeKray]

It's all semantics.

No, we're not rebuilding in the sense that Carlton or Gold Coast or St Kilda are - that requires you to reach a point where by accident rather than design, you have a list that basically sucks across all ages and positions.

But we are rebuilding in the sense that only 8 of the 22 who played in our last winning final in 2014 are still on our list. We have 4 debutants this weekend and 2 further players new to the club. And in amongst the rest of the team are a mix of young and older players who have only been added to the team in the last 12-24 months - SPP, Bonner, Rockliff, Motlop, Watts, Marshall, Houston, etc. Call it what you want, but that's change on a large scale and if anyone wants to call it a rebuild, I certainly won't object to it.

 

[Kiss from a Rozee]

I think my issue with the term “rebuild” is that in the AFL it’s almost synonymous with completely giving up on contesting finals, let alone a premiership in favour of tanking for high draft picks (encouraged in the past by priority picks).

You actually needed zero list management skills to gamble on the draft for a few years and see where it takes you. Hawthorn, Collingwood and Richmond all exploited this to perfection while for Melbourne and Carlton it hasn’t paid off... yet.

Port Adelaide doesn’t rebuild that way, and although it meant we contested for a flag against a doped up Geelong in 2007 it definitely feels like a missed opportunity now.

 

[Butters Made Me Do It]

It took so long for the three extra wins we had in 2000 to stop biting us in the arse.

 

[Kiss from a Rozee]

It took so long for the three extra wins we had in 2000 to stop biting us in the arse.

I honestly can’t tell if this is sarcasm or not because I don’t know enough about that draft/trade period :/

We would’ve drafted Justin Koschitzke or Didak and maybe not Kane Cornes is my guess?

 

[Butters Made Me Do It]

If we finished lower than St Kilda (we were even halfway through the season), we couldve had Riewoldt and Didak. Priority picks being given the arse is the best correction the AFL has made.

 

[Kiss from a Rozee]

Even getting Koschitzke could’ve been incredible I reckon, he was very unlucky with injuries so his career at Ports might’ve been huge.

Reiwoldt though... having Tredrea and him in the same team from 2001-2007 would’ve had the AFL coming up with all sorts of rule changes to stop us going back to back to back to back to back...

 

[Butters Made Me Do It]

hypotheticals are great fun. imagine also adding 17yo Pavlich (or Corey Enright who shouldve been our radar) for a third rounder in 1998 instead of Adam Morgan.

 

[Interstater]

Should we find ourselves in the position of finishing bottom 4 and doing a full rebuild, I'm sure the AFL will add teams from Taiwan and Tasmania and give them the first 30 draft picks.

Are we serious about winning a premiership for our older players, 2 more days until we start to find out.

 

[raptalia]

OK, I am going have a whinge!

I am just so peeved off at constant snipes at the club that we have undergone a rebuild, or as some have snidely insinuated; A rebuild by "stealth." So I decided to put this in a new thread.

This is a ridiculous statement, and in my opinion shows little understanding of how lists work, or are constructed. I have been a serious Port supporter & followed Aussie rules footy for some 40 years now, and I am pretty sure I know what a "rebuild" is ... having seen it occur many times. I will start this off with an article by Jake Niall in the age. This article clearly spells out what constitutes a rebuild, and even lists clubs that have, or havent been going down that road.

https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl...rebuilder-clarkson-draft-20180421-p4zaxv.html

What happens happens and I am not sure I would get too hung up about the terms used in the media. Rebuild or renovation I just hope it works.

There is no doubt that we are restructuring and the process started immediately after round 23 in 2018. According to Justin Westhoff the players were all interviewed one on one by the Coach and he laid it on the line. Some players accepted the challenges laid down and some clearly did not. Those who didn't found other homes and we replaced them and to me that is part of the attrition that has to happen in a successful AFL club.

As has been posted by others any resurgence isn't simply a case of rejigging the list. We need to see a clear improvement in the form of high profile imports such as Rockliff, Motlop and Watts. In addition players like Boak and Ebert need to recapture the form of past years.

I have mixed feelings atm. There have been a few good signs on the park and off field Ken has demonstrated that he wants to get tough with underachievers and players who do not do the team thing. Hopefully this is not a passing phase and Ken will continue as he has started.

 

[El_Scorcho]

It's all semantics.

No, we're not rebuilding in the sense that Carlton or Gold Coast or St Kilda are - that requires you to reach a point where by accident rather than design, you have a list that basically sucks across all ages and positions.

But we are rebuilding in the sense that only 8 of the 22 who played in our last winning final in 2014 are still on our list. We have 4 debutants this weekend and 2 further players new to the club. And in amongst the rest of the team are a mix of young and older players who have only been added to the team in the last 12-24 months - SPP, Bonner, Rockliff, Motlop, Watts, Marshall, Houston, etc. Call it what you want, but that's change on a large scale and if anyone wants to call it a rebuild, I certainly won't object to it.

Came here to post exactly the same thing. It's like every thread on the main board that uses the word "elite". The OP is clearly displeased that people are using the word rebuild because he's got a set definition of the word and he doesn't think we fit into that.

We moved on some of our most talented players to get to the top of a draft. We're certainly not expecting Rozee, Butters or Dursma to be AA level players in the next year or two, so i'd suggest we've shifted our focus from now to 2022 onwards.

That doesn't mean we aren't trying to win now, and we're not trashing the whole list, we're just positioning the list so we have a talented group peak at the same time, and by the makeup of the list currently that time will be about 2022/23

 

[David Puddy]

Haven't read the other comments, but I think the term "rebuild" is not really relevant in the AFL anymore.

People thought West Coast were going through a "rebuild" last season after Mitchell, Priddis, etc retired. Won the premiership.

People thought Richmond were going through a "rebuild" in their premiership season after finishing the previous season in 13th.

I think we have enough experienced players in the best 22 (Jonas, Hartlett, Wines, Rocky, Ryder, Lycett, Boak, Gray, Hoff, etc) to mix with our new group of kids to really push and do something this year. Have some faith, people. It's round 1.

 

[Andre]

It took so long for the three extra wins we had in 2000 to stop biting us in the arse.

No no and just no. The clubs that have deliberately tanked over the years to get multiple low picks during the priority picks era (as opposed to more strategic shorter term drop like Collingwood, Hawthorn and West Coast) were Carlton, St. Kilda and Melbourne. It’s no coincidence none of these have achieved any success. You cannot tell players (and coaches and fans by exetension), that it’s ok to not try and then turn around and say ‘Now try! And don’t give in when it gets tough!’.

Ports fight back across the backend of the 2000 season setup our 2004 flag. We may have been s**t since then, but we never tanked and we never should. It takes over a decade to recover from that attitude. You need to have cleaned out all the players and coaches who have been tainted by the belief ‘it’s good to fail’.

I am sure if we’d gone done that route of failure we’d still be waiting for our first flag. No Port fan should ever regret not tanking or want us to. Of course regret not getting a priority pick when we were non-tanking s**t, because ‘The Vics have used it, what you thought it was for you to Port? LOL!’.

 

[Rising Power]

Grand Designs or Changing Rooms?