Meh, it's all about development to me.
We haven't gotten steals at any of our picks.
Arguably a lot of our players had unappreciated talents, but it's been their development at Hawthorn that has made them, and our team great.
A massive amount of talent is drafted by all clubs, each year, the differences are in the development.
???
Stratton, Puopolo, Brad Hill, Smithy and Hartung send their holiday season best wishes.
I think
some of our talent identification over the last five or six years with having very poor picks indeed, has been nothing short of superb.
We also can make total balls up of developing players as we have done with Schoey, and both Lowden and Grimley are hardly examples of a great development program. Also we have wasted many good draft picks when we had lots of them to waste, on failures like Little, Dowler, Muston, Thorp, Renouf & Morton, just like many of the worst clubs do today viz. GWS & demons..
Sure our development looks good simply because we have the results on the board.
However, this might be due the following facts:
i. we have had really poor draft picks over the since 2008 due to:
a. ladder position i.e. finishing 1st, 9th, 7th, 3rd, 2nd, 1st and 1st
b. the rorts of the expansion clubs and other drafts rorts like deliberate tanking by filth like GWS and the demons which has been re-enforced by getting obscene FA compensation
c. having to trade whatever good picks we have had to fill the massive holes left by the crumbling edifice of Pelchanism i.e. we have expended almost all of our top picks to trade in stars and key role players: Burgers, Gibson, Hale, Gunston, Lake, McEvoy & O'Rourke, which is not a bad thing in itself if you value winning flags but we have used picks 9, 18, 25, 41, 27, 24, 46, 21, 41, 19, and 40 in acquiring these players, they were probably great value trades in retrospect!
ii. as a result of i. over the period from 2008 onwards the highest picks we had were: 16, 19, 24, 28, 31, 33, 34, 38, 38, 39, 41 etc.
iii. as a result of ii. we have had to make the most of developing what ever we could get with these mediocre selections and try and make the most of picks in the highly speculative range of 45 to 70
iv. as a result of iii. we have given most of our draftees 4 or 5 years to prove themselves including those who did not make the grade e.g. Dowler, Muston, Morton, Savage, Grimley, Lowden (6 years), & Hallahan.
v. the policy of iv. was the only practical approach the club could adopt as the only alternative was to turn these type of players more quickly which meant having to use even more highly speculative picks post pick 70 or even more rookie elevations, just to keep our senior list numbers up, instead we have used the rookie list judiciously for higher turnover and project players whilst giving many of the promising rookies several years to prove themselves as well, first as rookies and later on the senior list
vi. due to v. out of pure necessity we have invested far more development years into players picked up post first round than any of the other clubs have done, and given this investment in longer term development it will by necessity, occasionally pay off with players like Duryea, Suckling, Bruest, Langford and Litherland who have taken several years to bloom.
The simple fact that we are effectively forced to spend the extra years giving these later picks and rookies 4 or 5 years to develop and have reaped some significant rewards from this approach
may make our development system look superior to what it actually is.
In contrast to this approach I can only think of three players drafted post 2008 as kids that were given only two or three year to prove themselves at the hawks, namely, Williams, Lisle and Kelly.
Perhaps our development is not that fantastic but it may be due to a combination of elite level talent identification for later round players, giving most of our draftees and rookies players a long time to develop, and a dash of good old fashioned luck.