Hot Topic The Rebuild

[Lore]

I agree with all of this. Will say though once you start bringing up players drafted 8-12 years before a top 4 appearance it sort of flies in the face of a typical rebuild timeline blueprint that people use for a club to go from shit to genuine contender. Richmond benefited from Martin being that superstar (their only top 5 pick over a period of 10 years before their rise to the top 4 in 2017) but most clubs aren't going to structure/plan their rebuild over 10 years and history shows most that go on to win flags don't.

In the 5-7 years before a top 4 appearance they're developing their picks whether it's pick 7 or 15, they unearth late gems, they bring in hole-filling role-player/stars and siphon former high picks from elsewhere - which probably explains why Rayner is the only #1 pick to win a flag at the same club that picked him in over 20 years.

If you go to draft guru and go to the team list page for the premiership teams in their premiership years, you can see who really contributed in that season (not just the last game) through the number of games played that season, and on the right side of that table has when and how each of them were drafted. You do need to dig a little bit deeper on players that might have been traded in, but it gives you a fair idea. There’s also an overall list build picture thing which can be interesting.

Not every premiership team goes through a full scale build though. Geelong and Hawthorn’s successes from 2007-2011 and 2008, 2013-2015 respectively was founded in the 00 and 01 drafts, and the more I’ve looked at it previously, 7 or so years to start to get success is about right because that’s how long it takes for your drafted talls to start hitting their peak.

They had some older senior players already on their list with not so distant experiences of finals which helped them in the development phase, and then became the carrot for new coaches and trade targets alike with the right attributes to help them keep building.

They had the accident of history that slowed down or prevented their opponents’ rebuilds too, but that prolongs success and lowers the competitiveness of the league as a whole. It doesn’t build the list for you.

With regard to Richmond building through the GC and GWS years, the core of their 2017 premiership was built from the foundation of the 2006-2009 drafts, so 8-11 years to start to experience success. It took them a little longer as a result of the accident of history, and analysing their list needs to be viewed in light of the picks that were actually available to clubs that weren’t expansion or academy picks. The pick numbers are skewed af from 2010 onwards, and the ability to attract those better players back from the northern states as free agents became pivotal for a list build over more recent years, whereas recycled players hadn’t necessarily been the preferred strategy between Fremantle’s entry to the league in the 90s and the accident of history that forced clubs to find another way to build.

It’s all a bit more nuanced than a cookie cutter rebuild that you can do the same way someone did it 5, 10, 15 years ago. The league simply didn’t have a draft-based mechanism until 35 years ago, and the early years weren’t really a robust national draft. Essendon hasn’t had success since the draft and salary cap started working…

So the way that the national draft works and the context it works within has changed considerably over the years, with many player movement and salary cap rules introduced with one off concessions for this or that club, priority picks for the other club, and so on.

The best strategy for building a list isn’t the same strategy one build to the next, or one club to the next, because the system doesn’t work the same for everyone and we all have to find different ways to maximise the possibilities that the rules allow for at any given time.

Hawthorn Playing List for 2008 - Draftguru

www.draftguru.com.au

Geelong Playing List for 2007 - Draftguru

www.draftguru.com.au

Richmond Playing List for 2017 - Draftguru

www.draftguru.com.au

Collingwood’s 23 list is interesting because it’s built around a core from the 2011 and 2014 drafts, but most of them were traded for bikkies after being drafted to the northern states, rather than Collingwood taking those picks to the draft originally.

List Build Picture for Collingwood 2023 - Draftguru

www.draftguru.com.au