Game Day The 2025 Draft Day Thread

[UseR2006]

And a song to sing as we watch,

Hey Matty Clarke by Kevin (Random260) Wilson :

Hey Matty Clarke you campaigner, where the **** is Sharp
I’ve looked at all these other spuds and there’s no one that I like
I wrote you a ****ing letter and posted about it twice
You dopey ****ing Richmond fart, you forgot my ****ing Sharp

If I wanted a stupid ruckman type, I would’ve bloody asked
And this half back flank and temu mid, you can shove right up your arse
You’ve stuffed the bloody order up, it’s enough to make you spew
But it’s not just me who’s snakey, SGIO is dirty too

Next time I come to see ya, I’m going to punch you in the guts
And I’ll sack the other recruiting knobs and kick Toddy in the nuts
You just wait 'til next year when you go back to the draft
And me and me little GIO come stomping through the door
And we'll say, yeah, you wait for it

Hey Pyke and Woosh you smell his breath
And check his bloodshot eyes
And don't listen to him eagles fans 'cause he tells ****ing lies
He's just a ****ing useless campaigner and he's not even very bright
'Cause the stupid ****in' w***er, forgot me ****in' Sharp

Hey Matty Clarke you campaigner, where the **** is Sharp
I’ve looked at all these other spuds and there’s no one that I like
I wrote you a ****ing letter and posted about it twice
You dopey ****ing Richmond fart, you forgot my ****ing Sharp

A Quick Ai rendition: https://suno.com/s/blQP3cSnulhqYb5g
It's funny how it interrupted the lyrics XD

 

[Hook461123]

Had to sleep on the draft before commenting. Was pissed we missed Evans and Banfield like everyone else.
Does seem to be a list management mistake. No way HJ, Cripps, Owies or Barnett should be on our list ahead of Evans and Banfield.

Listening to the Clarke interviews, it seems we had a set number of 18year olds that we wanted to take, and we stuck to our talent rankings. He couldn't really answer the Cripps rookie list question put to him by Goss. The feeling I got from it was that we didn't want too many young players on the primary list and we wanted the flexibility to add another mature age rookie in the rookie draft/SSP rather than another teenager. Seems a weird decision though
It does appear we have been pretty inflexible with our thinking. Considering Brisbane gave up a pick to get Evans in the 30's it shows what a lot of posters thought that he should've been a priority. The fact he was local to me, and I really wanted to see him develop at the Eagles adds to the disappointment.

Happy with the actual players we got and there are still a number of good rookie selections left. If we pick up someone good today it may still work out.
I do hope we take a player as Clarke did mention the SSP train on scenario about 4 times which has me slightly nervous. I don't have a lot of faith in him atm.

We no doubt got better this draft though and added some key pieces to the rebuild. All 5 players selected in the ND are high upside players.

 

[Bender_]

Need a life jacket just to read the utter tsunami of bed-wetting in this thread.

 

[Jumpoff Joey]

Glad I stayed off the forum last night.

Few beers at varsity came home and watched the replay

BOB / NHH / Greeves left undrafted, Philipou had to wait a while, which makes me think we don't have a ****ing clue.

So many clubs passed on players rated in the top 40 for names of players I never heard following this thread over the last year.

As for our kids, I find it hard to believe this is a mistake because we didn't have enough list spots. Maybe we didn't rate Evans and Banfield. It's not rocket science; if we wanted these kids, we would have made sure we had the spots and the points.

Wish Evans luck, he will be the new Dev and should be developing nicely in the twos with a club that sets very high standards, and competition is fierce.

Wish Banfield luck with playing at a bum ass club and that dickhead Lyon.

If they're good enough, they will come home. We just need to make sure we check in and keep talking to them.

 

[Ilkka Sinisalo]

I do rate the voice of reason approach and know that in isolation your point makes sense.

Guess I'm just annoyed that the above two moves you've mentioned (Cripps/Barnett) would have cost us nothing but Barnett.

Am never usually too upset with say hindsight analysing our drafting and realising we could have picked player X who ended up developing really well - it's not an exact science and environment IMO is a massive impact. Not melting over Allen for this reason, think he could be great.

But for a club who've taken the "Give everything the 85% effort approach" let alone 110% it's just a frustrating capoff to something that was already frustrating in the Cripps/Barnett situation but worth holding off on melts over until we saw how the draft played out. Now that we've seen how it's played out, it's been the worst case scenario regarding bids, I think it's fair to be annoyed in a blanket sense at our list management which has led to the drafting outcome.

Agreed our picks in isolation were fine but we could have done very little and risked not much at all (Barnett) to be in a far better position - not the absolute end of the world but when a bunch of 'not the end of the world' stuff adds up you do become an 85% effort club and not a 110% effort club.

Yeah this is where I'm at. I'm certainly not a person who flies off the handle at the club for every perceived screw-up; I had lots of fun laughing at people melting over stuff like "why didn't we get pick 40 instead of pick 43 for Chesser" and other incredibly nitpicky nonsense during the trade period. But there were a couple of pretty glaring stuff-ups in the draft. One, making it obvious that they wanted Addinsall which spurred GCS into a flurry of live trades to accumulate points, and then not following through completely with the squeeze on GCS by failing to extract maximum points for bids on Uwland and Patterson. If you really value the player - and it certainly seems like they did by all of the late mail projecting Addinsall to us and then trading a second rounder to move up one spot - then don't telegraph your plan and then half-ass the bids at the start of the draft.

Then there's allowing Banfield and Evans to walk due to the absence of a list spot, a problem which was widely identified on this board and could have been rectified by moving somebody very unlikely to get poached (Cripps, Barnett, Johnston, whoever) to the rookie list. Even if they didn't feel that Banfield and Evans would get drafted, there was no harm in doing this.

I guess it's like that video someone posted of a guy breaking down our clearance work. There just seemed to be no coherent approach to clearances. Like the opposition clearly had a plan of who to tap to, who would get the outside ball from the clearance, and our mids were just all running to the ball and creating free men everywhere. A lot of this just feels like a glaring lack of attention to detail, and it's pretty disheartening that a bunch of mouth-breathers on an internet message board can pick out issues that seemingly catch our coaches and management by surprise.

 

[PremiershipNo4]

Club has brought in three players as rookies plus Starc because our age profile is too young.
There is a tipping point when we are too young.With a dozen new players this year i suspect Evans and Banners were unlikely to get games anyway.

Sorry mate, you can’t call that out as a reason.
We have not only bought in the experienced Starcevich, but also the experienced Young and the experienced Dev and the experienced McCrae, and the experienced Schoenberg.
Our list is not too young!
At the end of next season when we say goodbye to Cripps and Cole I wonder how much they would have contributed for the year. We could have had 2 very talented kids developing in the WAFL with 10 years ahead of them.

 

[ghostbat12]

i agree with you.
We could have delisted Cripps and Barnett but still might have gone BPA rather than picking up Banners and Evans.
That's what it is all about. We did what we stated we would. Only five picks (stated that we didn't want to get to young with our list already very young)
We also gave no assurances we would pick up any of our academy/father sons.
To do so with our picks we would have had to use pick 13 on Williams and the last two on Evans and Banners.
It would mean we miss out on Lindsay and Allen who might turn out better players.

yes but some on here hyped up these players all year to a point of obsession.

worthy discussion would have been Allen/Tyler vs Banfield/evans. But no-one cares about that type of discussion.

 

[Elite Pete]

Read some things about NHH and Greeves not getting picked up because they interviewed very poorly. From a mod on one of the boards, Saints one I think. They didnt elaborate too much but said Greeves came across as a FIGJAM.

A bit of FIGJAM isnt too bad but I guess there is a limit for recruiters.

We do hear a lot from clubs that their selections are also outstanding people etc. You dont want a Steven May type on your list if you can help it.

Sliding to where he has might be the reality check he needed and might be a great 1 year rookie option now?

 

[txbyhull]

Sorry mate, you can’t call that out as a reason.
We have not only bought in the experienced Starcevich, but also the experienced Young and the experienced Dev and the experienced McCrae, and the experienced Schoenberg.
Our list is not too young!
At the end of next season when we say goodbye to Cripps and Cole I wonder how much they would have contributed for the year. We could have had 2 very talented kids developing in the WAFL with 10 years ahead of them.

Brother in Christ over half our list is u21 our list is absolutely too young. You mustn’t forget that there are future drafts, we can’t go into every draft for the next couple of years with 2 or 3 list spots because everyone is still on their rookie deals

 

[ghostbat12]

Sorry mate, you can’t call that out as a reason.
We have not only bought in the experienced Starcevich, but also the experienced Young and the experienced Dev and the experienced McCrae, and the experienced Schoenberg.
Our list is not too young!
At the end of next season when we say goodbye to Cripps and Cole I wonder how much they would have contributed for the year. We could have had 2 very talented kids developing in the WAFL with 10 years ahead of them.

that is a reason.

don't we have very talented kids getting smashed in WAFL with 10 years ahead of them? And we took 5 others with likely more today. no? are you able to actually get some perspective and sit back and actually look at who you are arguing over. you are getting upset over picks that were late with many clubs not even considering ND worthy.

 

[BartBart]

Looking at the guys we’ve drafted, we’d be unlikely to draft Harper. The theme I get from our selections is that we only want elite athletes, unless they’re an elite kick (Lindsay) or a re-heated delist (no athleticism required for them).

And seemingly still don't rate centre bounce assets as a priority.

 

[Elite Pete]

After this draft haul we clearly want athletes who don’t have question marks on their kicking.

Problem is we still need to fix up our biggest issue and that winning the ball at clearance. Will be interesting to see if one of the mature recruits can help close that gap as a budget buy

 

[chaddy22]

Had to sleep on the draft before commenting. Was pissed we missed Evans and Banfield like everyone else.
Does seem to be a list management mistake. No way HJ, Cripps, Owies or Barnett should be on our list ahead of Evans and Banfield.

Listening to the Clarke interviews, it seems we had a set number of 18year olds that we wanted to take, and we stuck to our talent rankings. He couldn't really answer the Cripps rookie list question put to him by Goss. The feeling I got from it was that we didn't want too many young players on the primary list and we wanted the flexibility to add another mature age rookie in the rookie draft/SSP rather than another teenager. Seems a weird decision though
It does appear we have been pretty inflexible with our thinking. Considering Brisbane gave up a pick to get Evans in the 30's it shows what a lot of posters thought that he should've been a priority. The fact he was local to me, and I really wanted to see him develop at the Eagles adds to the disappointment.

Happy with the actual players we got and there are still a number of good rookie selections left. If we pick up someone good today it may still work out.
I do hope we take a player as Clarke did mention the SSP train on scenario about 4 times which has me slightly nervous. I don't have a lot of faith in him atm.

We no doubt got better this draft though and added some key pieces to the rebuild. All 5 players selected in the ND are high upside players.

Was it bad list management not delisting HJ and Barnett who had one year left on their contract and Owies who had two.
It definitely would be bad list management delisting players who hadn't completed their contracts.
It shows we shouldn't have extended their contracts in the first place.

 

[ghostbat12]

And seemingly still don't rate centre bounce assets as a priority.

you going back to sharp again, has that not been flogged enough already?

 

[PremiershipNo4]

that is a reason.

don't we have very talented kids getting smashed in WAFL with 10 years ahead of them? And we took 5 others with likely more today. no? are you able to actually get some perspective and sit back and actually look at who you are arguing over. you are getting upset over picks that were late with many clubs not even considering ND worthy.

Well obviously other clubs did consider them draft worthy, as they got drafted just not by us, whatever ya reckon!

 

[Broken_Chairs]

C-

I love a good melt but this was dumb.

• Duursma & CDT were no brainers and big wins on current talent assessment.
• We rolled the dice and bet on GC letting Addinsall go - it didn't work out. Such is life.
• We forfeited a F2 (likely a pick in the 40s) to ensure if we missed Addinsall we still got Lindsay - who was clearly a tier above what remained otherwise. ESPN recognise he's already our best distributer off HB.
• Sam Allen was projecting v good before doing his ACL - no concern at pick 29
• Tylah was our top rated NGA and possible first round pick - we got him at 39, good stuff.
• Evans would have been nice, but suspect we'd only take him if he went through undrafted
• Banfield hurts. But we clearly rated more flexibility with our rookie spots than a main list spot.

Other than missing out on a couple of our late-pick club tied prospects, overall our 5 picks (especially our first 3) look really solid.

B+ at worst for mine

 

[Wedgetailed Westerner]

If we opened up another list spot or two, there is no garuantee we would have matched the Koby or Charlie bids anyways. Would have been more speculative picks.
Ill back the list team in. They had a plan and stucled to their guns.
If we pass in the rookie draft than in my opinion the club obviously wants more experience

 

[Lyyynnnchy]

A d other clubs also gave up on their NGAs. Should they have just added them at all costs instead?

Other clubs haven’t come off the worst year ever and the worst combined 3 years ever

We need to be turning over our list as much as possible while still keeping “some” mature bodies to help the kids through the transition. Keeping Cripps who is doing sweet f all, and Barnett who is lucky to be getting a game for the Beagles, is doing nothing to help this

We need to be turning over our list far more than any other team, and that is why, we should be taking the discounts on offer for our players

 

[Jootube]

Schoenberg has not cost anybody a main list spot. he is going on the rookie list.

Are you being intentionally obtuse or do you not understand the link between rookie list and main list?

If you're just stupid, you can move players from the main list to the rookie list thus opening a spot on the main list.

We've committed to Schoenberg on the rookie list which means we couldn't do that.

It's like saying I technically didn't ruin dinner because I ate 15 big macs for lunch instead.

 

[Byron_Clanger]

I love a good melt but this was dumb.

• Duursma & CDT were no brainers and big wins on current talent assessment.
• We rolled the dice and bet on GC letting Addinsall go - it didn't work out. Such is life.
• We forfeited a F2 (likely a pick in the 40s) to ensure if we missed Addinsall we still got Lindsay - who was clearly a tier above what remained otherwise. ESPN recognise he's already our best distributer off HB.
• Sam Allen was projecting v good before doing his ACL - no concern at pick 29
• Tylah was our top rated NGA and possible first round pick - we got him at 39, good stuff.
• Evans would have been nice, but suspect we'd only take him if he went through undrafted
• Banfield hurts. But we clearly rated more flexibility with our rookie spots than a main list spot.

Other than missing out on a couple of our late-pick club tied prospects, overall our 5 picks (especially our first 3) look really solid.

B+ at worst for mine

Clarke said in an interview during the broadcast last night that they were hoping both would slip through to the rookie draft but didn't, such is life. The way people have been carrying on you'd think we missed out on a Daicos type prospect AT PICK 40.

It was embarrassing the way people were carrying on during that couple hour period last night.

 

[bzparkes]

Other clubs haven’t come off the worst year ever and the worst combined 3 years ever

We need to be turning over our list as much as possible while still keeping “some” mature bodies to help the kids through the transition. Keeping Cripps who is doing sweet f all, and Barnett who is lucky to be getting a game for the Beagles, is doing nothing to help this

We need to be turning over our list far more than any other team, and that is why, we should be taking the discounts on offer for our players

We have turned over our list more than any other team.

Eventually you need to slow down and consolidate so you can put actual development time into what you already have to see what you've got.

We also shouldn't be reaching for players we don't rate as high as others, simply because they're tied to us via NGA/FS. That makes no sense. Other clubs more successful than us didn't do it, why should we?

People have been complaining for years we're not ruthless enough with senior players and their contracts(I agree) yet piss their pants when we pass on club-tied players because we don't rate them as high as non-club tied players.

Pick a lane.

 

[ghostbat12]

Well obviously other clubs did consider them draft worthy, as they got drafted just not by us, whatever ya reckon!

some of those clubs (Brisbane) bypassed their own academy/NGAs, who even got drafted earlier and rated higher. So, what do they know?

 

[chaddy22]

Sorry mate, you can’t call that out as a reason.
We have not only bought in the experienced Starcevich, but also the experienced Young and the experienced Dev and the experienced McCrae, and the experienced Schoenberg.
Our list is not too young!
At the end of next season when we say goodbye to Cripps and Cole I wonder how much they would have contributed for the year. We could have had 2 very talented kids developing in the WAFL with 10 years ahead of them.

We are a very very young side compared to the top sides and if Cripps and Cole retire/delisted at the end of 2025 we will be even younger unless we bring in a free agent or suitable trade.
Everybody knows that our age profile is very poor between 23-28.
Apart from talent you need to spread your list and not be too old or too young.

 

[Elite Pete]

I love a good melt but this was dumb.

• Duursma & CDT were no brainers and big wins on current talent assessment.
• We rolled the dice and bet on GC letting Addinsall go - it didn't work out. Such is life.
• We forfeited a F2 (likely a pick in the 40s) to ensure if we missed Addinsall we still got Lindsay - who was clearly a tier above what remained otherwise. ESPN recognise he's already our best distributer off HB.
• Sam Allen was projecting v good before doing his ACL - no concern at pick 29
• Tylah was our top rated NGA and possible first round pick - we got him at 39, good stuff.
• Evans would have been nice, but suspect we'd only take him if he went through undrafted
• Banfield hurts. But we clearly rated more flexibility with our rookie spots than a main list spot.

Other than missing out on a couple of our late-pick club tied prospects, overall our 5 picks (especially our first 3) look really solid.

B+ at worst for mine

The draft haul is what is it and only time will tell. I think most would be happy with the talent levels coming in. Rates for that are pointless the day after the draft, 5 years time will tell the story.

The moves prior and during the draft can be judged but we still don’t know the full story and likely never will but you’d hope Clarke has some explaining to do to his bosses, the Ryan for nothing trade? The shortage of main list spots when there were ‘levers’ to pull….

 

[Mr Q]

Sorry mate, you can’t call that out as a reason.
We have not only bought in the experienced Starcevich, but also the experienced Young and the experienced Dev and the experienced McCrae, and the experienced Schoenberg.
Our list is not too young!
At the end of next season when we say goodbye to Cripps and Cole I wonder how much they would have contributed for the year. We could have had 2 very talented kids developing in the WAFL with 10 years ahead of them.

We have the youngest list in the competition - and this below includes all the players we've brought in in trade week and the draft. Even if we turned around and brought in Tom Mitchell now, we'd still be the youngest and most inexperienced list in the competition.

Our median age player is 22yo Jack Williams.

 

[Hook461123]

Was it bad list management not delisting HJ and Barnett who had one year left on their contract and Owies who had two.
It definitely would be bad list management delisting players who hadn't completed their contracts.
It shows we shouldn't have extended their contracts in the first place.

It's been done before. Delist with the promise to re-rookie. Cripps, and Cole both received 1yr contracts and were also options.
IMO there has been a few head scratchers in the list management over the last couple of seasons.
However, like I said I am happy with who we bought in, so will focus on that and look forward to seeing them hit training next week.