The problem with tanking ...

[Sekaj]

There were quite a few reasonable discussions/debates on this board as to whether the Crows should effectively tank a season when it became apparent that it would not be in a position to realistically compete for a premiership.

The whole basis of this argument was that tanking would provide the club with an opportunity to pick up potentially an elite talent that would drive the club closer towards its next flag.

I think Neil Craig raised a valid point against this sort of strategy in the past which may have been lost amidst all the chatter.

What Craig said was basically this: Deliberately failing to field your most competitive side each week where winning is not your priority will provide you with a very poor indication of where exactly your side is at in terms of its development.

If you set out to win and be at your competitive best each week, even if you fail, at least you will understand the areas of improvement that need to be addressed and developed.

This not only applies to the club as a whole but to each individual player. If a player is out there playing at his best but is still not able to perform, the club will know that the player will need to be developed further in which specific areas or at worst, moved on as he may not be up to the standard required for AFL football.

What we have seen from a certain club that quit midway through the season last year is that they completely overestimated the ability of their side believing that all they had to do was to reload for another assault on the top 4 in the following year.

Had they instead continued to push hard for a finals berth, some home truths about the squad may have been revealed last year instead where hard decisions could have been made rather than the club and their supporters having to be rudely awakened to the shortcomings of their side this year.

 

[crowman86]

Well said and totally agree. Tanking is pointless at the best of times let alone the next few years with compromised drafts coming up.

 

[absolutezero]

The thing is how do you know number 1 draft pick is going to be a gun - it's still a gamble and massive gamble to compromise playing to the best of your ability just for the top draft.

Waste of time.

 

[pjcrows]

I don't support the idea of tanking - going in with the attitude to lose - to gain a very low draft pick. But if the season is gone, I'd support the idea of playing kids to see where they're at. There's a big difference between the two.

 

[spexau]

Good thread.

Which is why all head recruiters have their own lists of players they want to draft in an order which is specified toward their club. You identify the best talent that will fit the requirements of your current squad and assess whether they can develop into AFL grade footballers. After that it's all luck whether you are able to select them in the draft and they do turn out to be good players.

Being able to rebuild and redevelop with out bottoming out seems like an impossible feat but it just requires clever use of resources and good man management.

 

[twentydollarnote]

nah if go through the recent drafts and pick the best player in that mid-late teens range it becomes apparent pretty quick that you're not going to build a premiership side with those players unless you trade, which we also dont do. Its blind luck we've managed to snag dangerfield and walker as potential 'elite' talents.

 

[Vader]

nah if go through the recent drafts and pick the best player in that mid-late teens range it becomes apparent pretty quick that you're not going to build a premiership side with those players unless you trade, which we also dont do. Its blind luck we've managed to snag dangerfield and walker as potential 'elite' talents.

We got lucky with Walker. Lucky that he chose us over all the other clubs. Our recruitment team recognised his talent long before draft day.

There's no luck at all with Dangermouse. They identified his talent and rated him higher than pretty much any other club. Nobody else had him in their top 10 - but we did.

Credit where it's due - Rendell & his team have done a great job since taking over from Fantasia.

 

[Mego Red]

nah if go through the recent drafts and pick the best player in that mid-late teens range it becomes apparent pretty quick that you're not going to build a premiership side with those players unless you trade, which we also dont do. Its blind luck we've managed to snag dangerfield and walker as potential 'elite' talents.

It's hardly blind luck. Give Rendell some credit.

Dangerfield and Davis were both early picks, and Walker was recruited outside the draft.

 

[twentydollarnote]

We got lucky with Walker. Lucky that he chose us over all the other clubs. Our recruitment team recognised his talent long before draft day.

There's no luck at all with Dangermouse. They identified his talent and rated him higher than pretty much any other club. Nobody else had him in their top 10 - but we did.

Credit where it's due - Rendell & his team have done a great job since taking over from Fantasia.

yeah its still lucky though, great work by rendell and co to recognise it, but its a miracle that sort of player was overlooked by that many clubs, certainly hasnt happened very much in past drafts which is presumably what the club was looking at when they decided on our rebuilding strategy.

 

[cmndstab]

Two things go against tanking in my mind, one general and one specific to the Crows.

1) Though you pick up a great player or two, you take the young kids you already have and teach them terrible habits by tanking. You're telling them that they are not good enough - we need other kids to make up for their lack of talent. You don't punish them for poor matches, you don't tell them that if they don't tidy up on skill errors or go in sufficiently hard for the ball, that you will be dropped and someone who can do more for the team will be brought in. Teams like Richmond and Fremantle have shown over the years that even when talent is brought in, they just have a losing mentality - they find ways to lose matches because it's almost become a mental habit to not stay focused for 100% of the match. Whenever you accept mediocrity, you ingrain that into a young kid's mind and it stays there for his whole career.

2) The Crows have shown over the past couple of years under Rendell's reign that they are willing to be a little off-kilter with the rest of the competition when picking first round draft picks. Dangerfield and Davis were widely considered to be bolters and yet Danger is looking the goods, while Davis is fetching promising reviews so far. From what we've heard from Rendell, they rated these two players higher than almost anyone else in their respective drafts, so tanking wouldn't have done us much good there. Once you enter the second round it's not so important - pick 20 isn't that much better than pick 28, and you've already had a first round pick before the tanking club gets their early second round pick so it's not as though you're missing out on someone special without a chance to do something about it. Once you get beyond the second round it's a crap shoot anyway - club's lists are so dramatically different by that stage that 10 picks may not make a difference.

 

[twentydollarnote]

It's hardly blind luck. Give Rendell some credit.

Dangerfield and Davis were both early picks, and Walker was recruited outside the draft.

yeah it is, walker as vader points out picked us and the type of talent dangerfield looks to be is very unusual to go that late in the draft. Wasnt critisitising rendell i think hes great, more the clubs strategy.

 

[RealSlimShady]

Well said.

Have you read "The Draft"? The way in which Hawthorn went about their rebuilding is the way you do it, not tanking and relying on draft picks like Carlton have done.

 

[twentydollarnote]

i think our strategy was to avoid what hawthorn have done. I dont see a lot of difference between hawthorn and carlton either one just got luckier with its picks and is better run off field.

 

[Geoffa32]

i think our strategy was to avoid what hawthorn have done. I dont see a lot of difference between hawthorn and carlton either one just got luckier with its picks and is better run off field.

Did Hawthorn actually tank, or just not good enough. Carlton tanked. There were games in previous years the Blues should have won but didnt. But Hawthorn were just poor. Same with Geelong. I dont think tanking has assisted either side.

I would hate to go to games knowing our team is not in it to win it. Luckily we dont have to worry about this as our club knows the value of winning games is better than a speculative pick on an 18 year old kid.

Our recruiting is building a team, not individuals. Look across the field and in key roles are kids under 24. As these guys start winning more games it builds a winning culture. When these kids hit their peak they will know how to win games.

 

[relapse]

We got lucky with Walker. Lucky that he chose us over all the other clubs. Our recruitment team recognised his talent long before draft day.

There's no luck at all with Dangermouse. They identified his talent and rated him higher than pretty much any other club. Nobody else had him in their top 10 - but we did.

Credit where it's due - Rendell & his team have done a great job since taking over from Fantasia.

I would say that not a lot of clubs have invested much time in the NSW scholarship scheme and with there being various country leagues it would be hard for clubs to devote time and money in the hope of finding a player out there. We were just lucky that Walker was in our backyard. Broken Hill had always had very close links to Adelaide and I think that the AFC focussed their search in that area more than anywhere else.

Wasnt Walker was put on a scholarship back when James F was at the club ??

The reason why nothing much was said about him was that the club was worried about opposition clubs (or should I say one particular club and/or one advertiser reporter) from trying to find a way to nullify the Crows having the ability to automatically select him. Lets not forget that Anderson pulling the Bryce Gibbs ruling was due either to Port or Rucci advising the AFL that the criteria was met even though we were using the same criteria that Port used with Ebert, the crows then tried to get the ruling change which led to the ridiculous redrawing of the FS criteria. The club smartly played down any publicity about Walker and only advised the AFL just before the deadline of the clubs intention of selecting him (it was that quiet that many of the board were worried that the crows weren’t going to be selecting him).

 

[cmndstab]

Wasnt Walker was put on a scholarship back when James F was at the club ??

Yes - after initially turning him down though (Due to injury)

 

[Elder van Berlo]

What we have seen from a certain club that quit midway through the season last year is that they completely overestimated the ability of their side believing that all they had to do was to reload for another assault on the top 4 in the following year.

Had they instead continued to push hard for a finals berth, some home truths about the squad may have been revealed last year instead where hard decisions could have been made rather than the club and their supporters having to be rudely awakened to the shortcomings of their side this year.

Had a very similar thought when I was watching the 3rd quarter shambles at the G yesterday (by the way, we're not the only SA club with massive 3rd quarter issues - Port have been blown away by Richmond and Collingwood, and would have been further smashed by Sydney if they didn't kick 2.7 in the 3rd, but I digress)

Anyway I was thinking to myself that this is a team that has learned to roll over when the heat gets turned up a bit. It has always been a characteristic of theirs to a degree, but if you look back to their GF year in 07, they pulled a lot of wins out of the fire and were pretty mentally strong. Now, with virtually the same group of players, they seem to think that it's acceptable to just disintegrate and in each of their games since the Showdown have let the opposition kick a lot of goals in a row with minimal pressure.

You just have to wonder whether subconsciously, a message got through last season that mediocrity is ok, and that the players really don't push themselves that hard to win at all costs, now that it actually matters again.

But then again, they do exist to win premierships. The Creed says so. So make up your own mind...

Personally, I love the direction we're going. The kids are developing superbly without being gifted any games. I think they're being picked as and when they deserve it, but where a decision is 50/50 generally the young player will get the nod (eg Cook over Shirley in the early parts of the season).

This way not only do the players learn that expectations are high, regardless of ladder position, but the fans can see the development both of individual players and the team as a unit unfolding before their eyes. It has really followed a discernable path this season. After the emotion fuelled ecstasy of round 1, it's fair to say (with the exception of a couple of excellent quarters against Geelong) we were little more than a rabble from rounds 2-6, culminating in that woeful Showdown effort. After that, it was really hard to see the direction we were trying to go. But since then, bit by bit, we have been improving and even when things have gone wrong (eg Bulldogs), there have at least been signs that we were trying to do the right things. Now it's really starting to come together, and although there will undoubtedly be more blips along the way, I think the club, the players, the coaching staff and the fans will get a lot more out of the bar being set high than just rolling over when it gets too hard.

All footy clubs exist to win premierships, but I'm pretty comfortable that I can see where our next one is coming from. And it's not a no. 4 draft pick whose name I don't know yet that we have denigrated our guernsey and club culture to get our hands on.

 

[Witty Remark]

Great thread.

I agree with most posts here, however what does 'tanking' consist of these days. An earlier post mentioned playing youngsters for the sake of playing them with no accountability for perceived poor form, but what else is there attached to the tanking criteria?

Is taking injured players out early to have operations to increase their longevity in the game tanking?

What about playing a couple of players who the club is not sure where they're at? Is that tanking? Is it only perceived as tanking if you're near the bottom of the ladder? If a club in finals contention did this would it still be viewed as tanking or list management?

I also wonder what the players must think when their club's are touted in the media as 'tanking' and whether this affects the way they approach games and play etc...

I for one am glad that Adelaide have never been associated with the evil T, and can only get excited at our future prospects.

 

[KUNG FU]

Just made a post on a similar topic on the D&T board

First up, this should be a non-issue for at least 3 years with this year's narrowed and weak crop, then GC & WS's concessions.

Tanking really doesn't work very well in the AFL, especially compared to other sports that employ a lottery system or similar. In most cases when it happens it usually just involves re-prioritizing youth and development over senior 2nd/3rd-tier players. I would say in those cases, such priority changes would happen regardless of the available draft picks.

* 22 players on the field, 38 players on a senior list - depth is crucial to Aussie Rules and a few top 5 picks isn't going to cut it, see: Geelong, WCE (with the exception of 2001), Sydney, Hawthorn traded their way up the draft as opposed to Richmond, St Kilda (until this year admittedly but they've traded hard to back up those high picks), Carlton (up and down, not enough depth to carry them over the line in the hard games) - looking at Melbourne's list can you really see them getting much further
* Drafting in the AFL is always hit and miss, and the top end has only a slightly better strike rate than the latter stages
* Most draft lists differ widely, maybe speculation on my behalf, but most players in the top 10 would end up at the same if the draft order was random

 

[CaptainDangerfield]

Yes - after initially turning him down though (Due to injury)

How the hell did walker sneak under the guard of the other clubs. I have spoken to a Broken Hill bloke who reckons he was a gun when he was a kid so its not like he was a late bloomer.

 

[KUNG FU]

How the hell did walker sneak under the guard of the other clubs. I have spoken to a Broken Hill bloke who reckons he was a gun when he was a kid so its not like he was a late bloomer.

He didn't. It was only after Collingwood and another club or two put the offer on the table that Fantasia acted. Very lucky to have him at the club.

 

[twentydollarnote]

that was exactly the point he didnt.

 

[CaptainDangerfield]

He didn't. It was only after Collingwood and another club or two put the offer on the table that Fantasia acted. Very lucky to have him at the club.

I'm confused. I dont know much about the scholarship program but are you saying its up to the kid who he plays for?

 

[ltdamn]

Good thread.

The differing needs of each club and the tightness of the talent in the top 10 picks these days means that tanking is a false economy.

Rendell said he would have taken Davis (as has already been stated) even if we'd had pick 4 or 5 it wouldn't have helped.

The only benefit to tanking these days is to aim for so few wins, so consistently, that you receive a priority pick and get two cracks in the first round. But the penalty in terms of fan attendance, TV ratings, etc is so large that it's truly not worth it.

Just look at Melbourne, more tanking for higher draft picks is the answer for some of their fans, in the same way that more ice is always the answer for an ice addict even though it's killing them.

 

[Vader]

I'm confused. I dont know much about the scholarship program but are you saying its up to the kid who he plays for?

Absolutely. The really good ones will get offers from 2, 3 or more clubs. It's up to them which contract they decide to sign. Then it's up to the club to decide whether or not to take them as rookies or senior listed players once they come of age.

It's similar to the situation with kids who are eligible for multiple clubs under the F/S rule (eg D Jarman's boys). They get to choose which club they will go to, assuming that the club accepts and bids for them in the bidding war before trade week.