Autopsy Why does Chris Scott hate the Tigers so much?

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Feb 4, 2008
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very much so

I do recall Dimma being quizzed about our recruiting strategy and not going for a "big fish"

he responded saying (and I think this will be close to a direct quote but cant recall when) if you go for a "big fish" you invariably lose a few the other way

and that crystalised something in my mind , we were competitive then , we had developing big guns but we didn't have the list depth
outside our top 25 the others were long term injured or young project players that weren't AFL ready

the recruiting needs for both top 22 and list depth are constantly changing due to unexpected retirements and young players failing to reach the levels required and losing players to free agency

and our recruting guys seemed to have transitioned from list building to list maintain very seamlessly


Interesting since the recycled hacks policy was abandoned, the club has had a few clearly discernible strategies and seems to be entering each trade/draft period with a clear target group in mind, sometimes two such groups. I am sure there were strategies before that but they are not as easy to distinguish from the strategy of “we like the look of this kid so let’s take a punt on him,” or, “we need some mature bodies for nothing, let’s grab whatever is available."

In 2014, top pick Ellis aside, the club mainly focussed on untried pacey small players in Menadue, Butler, Castagna, Short, Lambert, Drummond. Three remain on the list, three were essentially delisted. No trades were made in 2014, no recycled recruits, a clear departure from previous policy.

In 2015, athletic and fast players were targeted for a range of positions and roles. Rioli, Markov, Broad, Chol, Moore were brought in, along with a big trade for the quick Yarran. There is a hint of a secondary strategy for mature mids with Marcon and Townsend brought in. Some hits and misses, some as yet undecided.

In 2016 we went all in at the trade table to bolster the midfield with some quality stocks. Nankervis, Prestia, Caddy were brought in and Graham drafted. All strong and tough players who could add muscle where it was needed in the midfield. All of those remain and are thriving but if only two of them worked out then it still would have been a reasonable haul, three you’d be delighted. All four you are delirious. There is a clear secondary strategy there to bolster the small forward stocks, thus Bolton and Stengle. One remains, one is gone.

In 2017, the clear strategy was to target tall and key position players for the future. So you get Coleman-Jones, Balta, Miller. The secondary strategy is small players who use the ball well. Baker, Higgins, Naish. All remain at the club. Within a year or two, perhaps only two will remain from each group.

In 2018, we principally go for big bodied or tallish mids, Ross, Collier-Dawkins, Turner. To this group Pickett was added in the 2019 mid season draft.

In 2019, we seem to have come up with the approach of targeting a range of future mids and runners but also targeting club’s academies where the clubs with the discount on the players slightly curiously didn’t match our lowish bids.*

Along the way we have filled an immediate obvious need with Lynch, and grabbed a highly talented bargain in Stack who wasn’t necessarily part of a target group.

So what is the benefit of targeting a group of players with similar attributes together?

- it increases your chances of getting what you are after in that draft/trade period. If Butler doesn’t make it you have a chance with Castagna, if Balta doesn’t make it you have a chance with Miller, if Higgins doesn’t make it you have a chance with Baker and so on.

- it creates competition for roles from day one arrival at the club.

- it allows you to focus on the development of groups of similar players at the same time, perhaps reducing coaching resources devoted to your new intake.

- It makes it easier to assess who is better out of Butler and Castagna, Higgins or Baker, because you don’t have to adjust for different stages of development. Say Butler has been in the system 4 years and Castagna two and Butler is slightly but noticeably better than Butler, who do you keep, who do you trade? If however they were both brought in together and one is noticeably better than the other, then it is easy to assess.

- It probably reduces the anxiety around whether a certain individual player will work out. We are getting two and three chances at hitting pay dirt with every role we target. Therefore if a top pick like a Rioli, Bolton, Higgins, Collier-Dawkins or Dow don’t work out, it may not be a huge deal.

So we have kept Bolton, moved Stengle on, kept Castagna, moved Butler on, kept Graham, moved Miles on, kept Chol, moved Moore on.

Consequently we have healthy experienced and developing stocks of rucks, medium backs, running backs, inside mids, outside mids, key forwards, medium forwards, and small forwards. But for the unforeseen Rance retirement you would also say the same for key backs, but that remains a shallow area for now.


* The theorist in me wonders about these three picks, Nyuon, Martin, Cumberland. The Nyuon pick there must be some chance the Saints in trading for Butler and with little ammunition left after a range of other trades have said to us can we interest you in anything in our academy? A deal may have been struck for us to be able to use our lower than market value Butler pick by targeting Nyuon with an assurance from the Saints they wouldn’t match, as a sweetener to the Butler deal. Just a theory.

* The Martin and Cumberland recruitment from the Lions academy you would have to get a bit more creative to find some potential collusion there, but maybe it had its genesis 12 months earlier. The desperate GCS traded Miles and C Ellis for a relatively minor pick upgrade in return. The curious incident of Jarryd Lyons being allowed to go from GCS to Brisbane as a delisted free agent happened at the same time. Could it be Brisbane, brimming with quality youth but desperate for another mature mid, agreed to allow the Tigers some favours from their academy in the next draft, thus two very decent looking players in Martin and Cumberland come to us without Brisbane interfering. It suits us and the players also to bring the two from one place together to help them transition. The same going back the other way, Suns pick up two players coming together to help settlement and retention.
 
'THE GIFTED ONE'

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mopsy

Premiership Player
Jan 1, 2005
3,856
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RICHMOND
Interesting since the recycled hacks policy was abandoned, the club has had a few clearly discernible strategies and seems to be entering each trade/draft period with a clear target group in mind, sometimes two such groups. I am sure there were strategies before that but they are not as easy to distinguish from the strategy of “we like the look of this kid so let’s take a punt on him,” or, “we need some mature bodies for nothing, let’s grab whatever is available."

In 2014, top pick Ellis aside, the club mainly focussed on untried pacey small players in Menadue, Butler, Castagna, Short, Lambert, Drummond. Three remain on the list, three were essentially delisted. No trades were made in 2014, no recycled recruits, a clear departure from previous policy.

In 2015, athletic and fast players were targeted for a range of positions and roles. Rioli, Markov, Broad, Chol, Moore were brought in, along with a big trade for the quick Yarran. There is a hint of a secondary strategy for mature mids with Marcon and Townsend brought in. Some hits and misses, some as yet undecided.

In 2016 we went all in at the trade table to bolster the midfield with some quality stocks. Nankervis, Prestia, Caddy were brought in and Graham drafted. All strong and tough players who could add muscle where it was needed in the midfield. All of those remain and are thriving but if only two of them worked out then it still would have been a reasonable haul, three you’d be delighted. All four you are delirious. There is a clear secondary strategy there to bolster the small forward stocks, thus Bolton and Stengle. One remains, one is gone.

In 2017, the clear strategy was to target tall and key position players for the future. So you get Coleman-Jones, Balta, Miller. The secondary strategy is small players who use the ball well. Baker, Higgins, Naish. All remain at the club. Within a year or two, perhaps only two will remain from each group.

In 2018, we principally go for big bodied or tallish mids, Ross, Collier-Dawkins, Turner. To this group Pickett was added in the 2019 mid season draft.

In 2019, we seem to have come up with the approach of targeting a range of future mids and runners but also targeting club’s academies where the clubs with the discount on the players slightly curiously didn’t match our lowish bids.*

Along the way we have filled an immediate obvious need with Lynch, and grabbed a highly talented bargain in Stack who wasn’t necessarily part of a target group.

So what is the benefit of targeting a group of players with similar attributes together?

- it increases your chances of getting what you are after in that draft/trade period. If Butler doesn’t make it you have a chance with Castagna, if Balta doesn’t make it you have a chance with Miller, if Higgins doesn’t make it you have a chance with Baker and so on.

- it creates competition for roles from day one arrival at the club.

- it allows you to focus on the development of groups of similar players at the same time, perhaps reducing coaching resources devoted to your new intake.

- It makes it easier to assess who is better out of Butler and Castagna, Higgins or Baker, because you don’t have to adjust for different stages of development. Say Butler has been in the system 4 years and Castagna two and Butler is slightly but noticeably better than Butler, who do you keep, who do you trade? If however they were both brought in together and one is noticeably better than the other, then it is easy to assess.

- It probably reduces the anxiety around whether a certain individual player will work out. We are getting two and three chances at hitting pay dirt with every role we target. Therefore if a top pick like a Rioli, Bolton, Higgins, Collier-Dawkins or Dow don’t work out, it may not be a huge deal.

So we have kept Bolton, moved Stengle on, kept Castagna, moved Butler on, kept Graham, moved Miles on, kept Chol, moved Moore on.

Consequently we have healthy experienced and developing stocks of rucks, medium backs, running backs, inside mids, outside mids, key forwards, medium forwards, and small forwards. But for the unforeseen Rance retirement you would also say the same for key backs, but that remains a shallow area for now.


* The theorist in me wonders about these three picks, Nyuon, Martin, Cumberland. The Nyuon pick there must be some chance the Saints in trading for Butler and with little ammunition left after a range of other trades have said to us can we interest you in anything in our academy? A deal may have been struck for us to be able to use our lower than market value Butler pick by targeting Nyuon with an assurance from the Saints they wouldn’t match, as a sweetener to the Butler deal. Just a theory.

* The Martin and Cumberland recruitment from the Lions academy you would have to get a bit more creative to find some potential collusion there, but maybe it had its genesis 12 months earlier. The desperate GCS traded Miles and C Ellis for a relatively minor pick upgrade in return. The curious incident of Jarryd Lyons being allowed to go from GCS to Brisbane as a delisted free agent happened at the same time. Could it be Brisbane, brimming with quality youth but desperate for another mature mid, agreed to allow the Tigers some favours from their academy in the next draft, thus two very decent looking players in Martin and Cumberland come to us without Brisbane interfering. It suits us and the players also to bring the two from one place together to help them transition. The same going back the other way, Suns pick up two players coming together to help settlement and retention.


Just one or two points
It was patently clear at the time and it was debated from the outset of Hardwicks tenure that we were taking way too many mature recruits weather that was from other afl clubs or other leagues.And it was hotly debated that we werent targeting quality proven players or untried mature players who ticked the right boxes.
We were not utilising the rookie draft on younger players and our n/d recruiting could best be described as ordinary.To top it off we were targeting ordinary stop gaps and re rookiing blokes we had delisted.

None of this hindsight it was hotly debated at the time.

Just look at 2009 Cousins always a very short stop gap, Mitch Farmer who we got for trading Schulz!!!!!!!. Nahas rookie, Gourdis was re rookied after being delisted, Polak was rookied after his head injury, Roberts was a mature recruit from an other league. We almost took the same number of mature players as we did in the nd. We took 7 in that draft and we ended up with two Martin and Dave Astbury who we nearly got rid of in 2016.In effect we found just two long term players out of 14.

2010 Gourdis was rookie elevated lol, Grigg we got for knicks and Houli ended up in the psd we also took a Jackson special in Hislop and drafted Derickx from the wafl.
Youngsters we took were grimes PSD, Conca, Batchelor, Helbig, and McDonald.Only Grimes remains and Conca was a polarising player with those who thought him okay and those who thought him a dud. Imo one youngster and two mature recruits.
It stayed pretty much the same until the end of 2014.

Fmd its a whose who of duds
2011 I maric a decent get, A maric, Brad Miller lol and S morris, . kids taken nd Ellis, Elton Arnot Again just one decent kid and he polarises everyone as well in B Ellis. More mature players taken than kids.

2012 Chaplin, A Edwards, Knights, Petterd, Stephenson, Lonergan ND Vlastuin, McIntosh McBean, McDonough Got a good kid in Vlastuin McIntosh a role player and again we bought in more Mature players than kids.

2013 Banfield, Gordon, Hampson, Miles, Lloyd, Thomas.ND Lennon Gordon a mature pick, Lloyd another mature pick that was our nd haul.

Finally it slowed in 2014 we took Taylor freakin Hunt as a f/a and rookied Lambert. ND C Ellis, Menadue, Drummond, Butler, McKenzie again just one success in the nd with Butler and he is now gone.

2015 Townsend, A Moore, Yarran, Marcon and we elevated Lambert. Rioli, Markov, then we took mature player Broad effectively using just two picks on young players in the nd.

Exactly when did we stop taking recycled hacks.

Imo not until 2016when Francis Jackson was demoted.The club imo had no faith in the ND until then, thats why so many mature players were taken and up to then our list was awfully unbalanced.

Since 2016 i think what we are doing much better is targeting quality proven players and lesser mature players who tick enough boxes, players who are just lacking opportunity.
 

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AuntyBlindEye

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Jul 19, 2019
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Maybe the question is why so many Tigers supporters have an obsession and hate for Chris Scott and Geelong?
Like, if Scotty is any of 'bitter', 'arrogant', 'salty', 'jealous', whatever, why are you all concerned? Especially those who are obsessed with Geelong and have been putting them down for more than a decade.
The bitterness of some who post on her towards Dangerfield is moronic and indeed laughable.
Two wrongs make a right.
 
Feb 4, 2008
12,967
27,948
Melbourne
AFL Club
Richmond
Just one or two points
It was patently clear at the time and it was debated from the outset of Hardwicks tenure that we were taking way too many mature recruits weather that was from other afl clubs or other leagues.And it was hotly debated that we werent targeting quality proven players or untried mature players who ticked the right boxes.
We were not utilising the rookie draft on younger players and our n/d recruiting could best be described as ordinary.To top it off we were targeting ordinary stop gaps and re rookiing blokes we had delisted.

None of this hindsight it was hotly debated at the time.

Just look at 2009 Cousins always a very short stop gap, Mitch Farmer who we got for trading Schulz!!!!!!!. Nahas rookie, Gourdis was re rookied after being delisted, Polak was rookied after his head injury, Roberts was a mature recruit from an other league. We almost took the same number of mature players as we did in the nd. We took 7 in that draft and we ended up with two Martin and Dave Astbury who we nearly got rid of in 2016.In effect we found just two long term players out of 14.

2010 Gourdis was rookie elevated lol, Grigg we got for knicks and Houli ended up in the psd we also took a Jackson special in Hislop and drafted Derickx from the wafl.
Youngsters we took were grimes PSD, Conca, Batchelor, Helbig, and McDonald.Only Grimes remains and Conca was a polarising player with those who thought him okay and those who thought him a dud. Imo one youngster and two mature recruits.
It stayed pretty much the same until the end of 2014.

Fmd its a whose who of duds
2011 I maric a decent get, A maric, Brad Miller lol and S morris, . kids taken nd Ellis, Elton Arnot Again just one decent kid and he polarises everyone as well in B Ellis. More mature players taken than kids.

2012 Chaplin, A Edwards, Knights, Petterd, Stephenson, Lonergan ND Vlastuin, McIntosh McBean, McDonough Got a good kid in Vlastuin McIntosh a role player and again we bought in more Mature players than kids.

2013 Banfield, Gordon, Hampson, Miles, Lloyd, Thomas.ND Lennon Gordon a mature pick, Lloyd another mature pick that was our nd haul.

Finally it slowed in 2014 we took Taylor freakin Hunt as a f/a and rookied Lambert. ND C Ellis, Menadue, Drummond, Butler, McKenzie again just one success in the nd with Butler and he is now gone.

2015 Townsend, A Moore, Yarran, Marcon and we elevated Lambert. Rioli, Markov, then we took mature player Broad effectively using just two picks on young players in the nd.

Exactly when did we stop taking recycled hacks.

Imo not until 2016when Francis Jackson was demoted.The club imo had no faith in the ND until then, thats why so many mature players were taken and up to then our list was awfully unbalanced.

Since 2016 i think what we are doing much better is targeting quality proven players and lesser mature players who tick enough boxes, players who are just lacking opportunity.

Within the great pantheon of fractional glass identification Mopsy, I would say you are a glass half smashed kind of guy. 😂😂

We got loads of our flag players from the National Draft. We got a few that were recycled and also some as mature players who were not previously listed, and some young rookies, even a redemption story. We traded well for a small handful. Picked up one high tariff free agent. Ok we had to turn a few over in these categories to end up with the right ones, but which club doesn’t?

Hawthorn were obviously very successful during 2012-2016 in particular. So they obviously drafted way better than us, right? Well, go through their draft hauls from after their gun drafts in the early 2000’s. Try from 2005 onwards, let’s say the next 11 drafts up to 2015. They drafted 90 odd players in that time. How many of them have played 100+ games for Hawthorn(or look nearly certain to?) Birchall, Guerra, Suckling, Rioli, Whitecross, Schoenmakers, Shiels, Breust, Stratton, Duryea, Smith, Puopolo, Ceglar, Sicily, Hardwick. 15 in 11 years at a highly successful club. So they are getting about 1.35 players per year out of average 8 drafted to the club who are going on to play 100+ games for the club. And this was during and in the lead up to a highly successful period for the club. If you look through some of the Hawks inbox over those years there are some shocking names in there, as we might expect at any club.

What did Francis Jackson/Richmond come up with during the same period who played 100 games for the Tigers - or almost certainly will? I have not included someone like Soldo here despite thinking he is now a good bet to play 100+ for us due to him having only played relatively few games to date.

White, Riewoldt, Edwards, King, Cotchin, Rance, Vickery, Martin, Astbury, Grimes, Conca, Houli, B Ellis, Vlastuin, Mcintosh, Short, Castagna, Lambert, Rioli, Broad. 20 players. From I think 94 selections. So Jackson is getting about 1.8 players per year he has drafted to go on and play 100+ matches for the Tigers. I think Jackson may have had six top 10 picks to work with in that period where the Hawks had only three, which they used on M Thorp, X Ellis and B Dowler.

Do you think the most successful team in that period, Hawthorn, drafted better than we did over the period Jackson was largely responsible? Are there other clubs you can show who did better with equal or less, or relatively better? I would say despite us going down a few wrong tracks over the course of those 11 seasons, we did really well relative to most other clubs.




Richmond premiership teams


2017 Premiership

13 of our premiership 22 came to us through the National Draft, 12 of them, all bar Graham before you say Francis Jackson was demoted.
3 came to us untried by other clubs in the other drafts, Castagna, Lambert, Grimes, all before the “demotion."
3 were more or less castoffs by other clubs, Grigg, Houli, Townsend, all arrived at the club prior to the “demotion."
3 came in trades that essentially cost us a first, second and third round draft pick in the 2016 draft.

So we drafted in 15 of that premiership team before 2016.

2019 Premiership
10 players came to us through the ND, only Bolton drafted post the “demotion."
7 players came to us through other drafting mechanisms, only Pickett and Baker of those after the “demotion."
1 player Houli essentially a castoff, before the “demotion."
3 players we traded for in 2016 also played in this flag.
1 free agent in Lynch.

We drafted 14 of that premiership team before 2016.
 
Last edited:

mopsy

Premiership Player
Jan 1, 2005
3,856
6,488
Other Teams
RICHMOND
Within the great pantheon of fractional glass identification Mopsy, I would say you are a glass half smashed kind of guy. 😂😂

We got loads of our flag players from the National Draft. We got a few that were recycled and also some as mature players who were not previously listed, and some young rookies, even a redemption story. We traded well for a small handful. Picked up one high tariff free agent. Ok we had to turn a few over in these categories to end up with the right ones, but which club doesn’t?

Hawthorn were obviously very successful during 2012-2016 in particular. So they obviously drafted way better than us, right? Well, go through their draft hauls from after their gun drafts in the early 2000’s. Try from 2005 onwards, let’s say the next 11 drafts up to 2015. They drafted 90 odd players in that time. How many of them have played 100+ games for Hawthorn(or look nearly certain to?) Birchall, Guerra, Suckling, Rioli, Whitecross, Schoenmakers, Shiels, Breust, Stratton, Duryea, Smith, Puopolo, Ceglar, Sicily, Hardwick. 15 in 11 years at a highly successful club. So they are getting about 1.35 players per year out of average 8 drafted to the club who are going on to play 100+ games for the club. And this was during and in the lead up to a highly successful period for the club. If you look through some of the Hawks inbox over those years there are some shocking names in there, as we might expect at any club.

What did Francis Jackson/Richmond come up with during the same period who played 100 games for the Tigers - or almost certainly will? I have not included someone like Soldo here despite thinking he is now a good bet to play 100+ for us due to him having only played relatively few games to date.

White, Riewoldt, Edwards, King, Cotchin, Rance, Vickery, Martin, Astbury, Grimes, Conca, Houli, B Ellis, Vlastuin, Mcintosh, Short, Castagna, Lambert, Rioli, Broad. 20 players. From I think 94 selections. So Jackson is getting about 1.8 players per year he has drafted to go on and play 100+ matches for the Tigers. I think Jackson may have had six top 10 picks to work with in that period where the Hawks had only three, which they used on M Thorp, X Ellis and B Dowler.

Do you think the most successful team in that period, Hawthorn, drafted better than we did over the period Jackson was largely responsible? Are there other clubs you can show who did better with equal or less, or relatively better? I would say despite us going down a few wrong tracks over the course of those 11 seasons, we did really well relative to most other clubs.




Richmond premiership teams


2017 Premiership

13 of our premiership 22 came to us through the National Draft, 12 of them, all bar Graham before you say Francis Jackson was demoted.
3 came to us untried by other clubs in the other drafts, Castagna, Lambert, Grimes, all before the “demotion."
3 were more or less castoffs by other clubs, Grigg, Houli, Townsend, all arrived at the club prior to the “demotion."
3 came in trades that essentially cost us a first, second and third round draft pick in the 2016 draft.

So we drafted in 15 of that premiership team before 2016.

2019 Premiership
10 players came to us through the ND, only Bolton drafted post the “demotion."
7 players came to us through other drafting mechanisms, only Pickett and Baker of those after the “demotion."
1 player Houli essentially a castoff, before the “demotion."
3 players we traded for in 2016 also played in this flag.
1 free agent in Lynch.

We drafted 14 of that premiership team before 2016.
Wow where to begin?

Okay i only went as far as 09 because that is when Hardwick came to the club and we had a new regime of sorts. its also a yr Hawthorn missed the 8 after winning a premiership.
Hawthorn were very succesful from 08 to 2015 not just 12 - 15. I think it important to recognise 08 in this debate because it altered entirely the direction they took for the next 5 or 6 years.
In 08 they had a strong list that remained in a window. It needed some tweaking but it was strong hence their emphasis became more focused on mature players than the nd.
so lets just go from the end of 09 to 2015 for now. Im happy to go back to 2005 later if you wish. But for now Our beginning under Hardwick to 2015 which just happens to be the last yr Francis the dud Jackson was in charge, the Earnst and Young report saw Jackson get the flick in sept 16.Mathew Clarke was made national recruiting manager and was in charge for the 2016 trade draft period.
Im talking just ND picks here atm, lets do them for starters and work our way thru the trades, F/A's rookie promotions later if you wish.

So from 09 to 15 Hawthorn utilised just 22 nd picks compared to our 31. This alone would suggest we would have more hits than them. On top of that because the hawks were generally trading away good picks for mature recruits because they were very much in a premiership window we generally had not only more nd picks but better ones. This is indisputable.

Hawthorns first picks from 09 - 15 compared to ours were bare in mind this is my opinion but id say under whatever criteria you put to it it would be fair and close.

Hawks 19, 19,24,28, 31, 33, 39
Tiges 3, 6, 9, 12, 12, 15, 15.
This generally remained the theme thru each round each yr.
Given this is the case you really would expect us to have far more hits than the hawks in the nd, but is it the case?Lets look at it'

ND hits. that is elite to servicable players
09
Hawthorn 2 from 5 picks. Stratton 46, duryea 69, both went on to be premiership players.Note their 1st pick was #39.
Richmond 2 from 7 picks. Martin 3, Astbury 35. Both went on to be premiership players.

10
Hawks 2 from 4 picks. I Smith 19, Puopolo 66. both became premiership players.
Tigers 1 from 5 picks. Conca 6. Im reluctant to put him here as i think him ordinary but he has played 100 games so there ya go.

11
Hawks 1 from 3 picks. B Hill 33. premiership player.
Tiges 1 from 3 picks. B Ellis 15. premiership player.

12
Hawks 0 from 3 picks.
Tiges 2 from 4 picks. Vlastuin 9, McIntosh 33 both premiership players. personally i dont think McIntosh a very good player.

13
Hawks 1 from 3 picks. Sicily 56
Tigers 1 from 3 picks. Lloyd 66

14
Hawks 1 from 3 picks. Howe 31
Tigers 1 from 5 picks. Butler premiership player.

15
Hawks 2 from 2 players. Burton 31, Hardwick 44.
Tiges 1 from 3 players. Rioli 15, Broad 67. both premiership players.

08 Premiership
14 came thru the nd 15 if you count Dew.
1 PSD
5 Promoted rookies.
Of all that lot only 4 were essentially from other clubs.

13
14 nd
1 psd
6 trades
1 rookie.

14
12 nd
3 rookie
7 trade.

15
13 nd
2 rookie
7 trades



Just on your 2017 2019 premiership comments
2017
12 nd
2 psd. Grimes , Houli.
5 trades. Nankervis, Grigg, Caddy, Prestia, Townsend.
Graham taken 2017

Houli and Grigg were not cast offs if i remember both were very much wanted by carlton and essendon..
Nank, Prestia and Caddy all came after 2015 and are indicative of Balmes influence and the club review. in 2016.

2019 premiership.
9 ND
2 psd Houli , Grimes,
4 Trades,
5 rookies
1 msd pickett

You talk about the demotion but never say why it happened.It happened because into his twelfth yr Jackson had not been capable of putting a list together capable of winning a final.

Fianally to finish off.
SEPT 12 Brendan Gale came out and said this in releasing the Earnst and Young review.

Ultimately the review has identified the need to get the right people in the right Roles, and to give them the clarity and structure that will allow them to focus on building a culture of success.

To this end Neil Balme has been appointed to the role of general manager - football.
He went on to say the club needs greater focus and accountability in list management and recruiting.

relating to this he went on to say Mathew Clarke has been promoted to to role of National Recruiting Manager replacing Francis Jackson.

The review clearly Identified Recruiting and List management as a problem.

Personally im not arguing about the hits and misses i know there were too many misses under Jackson but even then the real problem is the inordinately slow amount of time it was taking to get enough good players together.

Any way in answer to your last question. Do i think Hawthorn have recruited better than us? yes.
I think they have been better than us in all areas up to 2015. and id happily take that back to 2001 a yr where they finised 4th and we finished 3rd. Yet both clubs went into the wilderness so to speak.Hawthorn came out of it in 07 and we continued to wallow in mediocrity for so so long.
 
Last edited:
Feb 4, 2008
12,967
27,948
Melbourne
AFL Club
Richmond
Wow where to begin?

Okay i only went as far as 09 because that is when Hardwick came to the club and we had a new regime of sorts. its also a yr Hawthorn missed the 8 after winning a premiership.
Hawthorn were very succesful from 08 to 2015 not just 12 - 15. I think it important to recognise 08 in this debate because it altered entirely the direction they took for the next 5 or 6 years.
In 08 they had a strong list that remained in a window. It needed some tweaking but it was strong hence their emphasis became more focused on mature players than the nd.
so lets just go from the end of 09 to 2015 for now. Im happy to go back to 2005 later if you wish. But for now Our beginning under Hardwick to 2015 which just happens to be the last yr Francis the dud Jackson was in charge, the Earnst and Young report saw Jackson get the flick in sept 16.Mathew Clarke was made national recruiting manager and was in charge for the 2016 trade draft period.
Im talking just ND picks here atm, lets do them for starters and work our way thru the trades, F/A's rookie promotions later if you wish.

So from 09 to 15 Hawthorn utilised just 22 nd picks compared to our 31. This alone would suggest we would have more hits than them. On top of that because the hawks were generally trading away good picks for mature recruits because they were very much in a premiership window we generally had not only more nd picks but better ones. This is indisputable.

Hawthorns first picks from 09 - 15 compared to ours were bare in mind this is my opinion but id say under whatever criteria you put to it it would be fair and close.

Hawks 19, 19,24,28, 31, 33, 39
Tiges 3, 6, 9, 12, 12, 15, 15.
This generally remained the theme thru each round each yr.
Given this is the case you really would expect us to have far more hits than the hawks in the nd, but is it the case?Lets look at it'

ND hits. that is elite to servicable players
09
Hawthorn 2 from 5 picks. Stratton 46, duryea 69, both went on to be premiership players.Note their 1st pick was #39.
Richmond 2 from 7 picks. Martin 3, Astbury 35. Both went on to be premiership players.

10
Hawks 2 from 4 picks. I Smith 19, Puopolo 66. both became premiership players.
Tigers 1 from 5 picks. Conca 6. Im reluctant to put him here as i think him ordinary but he has played 100 games so there ya go.

11
Hawks 1 from 3 picks. B Hill 33. premiership player.
Tiges 1 from 3 picks. B Ellis 15. premiership player.

12
Hawks 0 from 3 picks.
Tiges 2 from 4 picks. Vlastuin 9, McIntosh 33 both premiership players. personally i dont think McIntosh a very good player.

13
Hawks 1 from 3 picks. Sicily 56
Tigers 1 from 3 picks. Lloyd 66

14
Hawks 1 from 3 picks. Howe 31
Tigers 1 from 5 picks. Butler premiership player.

15
Hawks 2 from 2 players. Burton 31, Hardwick 44.
Tiges 1 from 3 players. Rioli 15, Broad 67. both premiership players.

08 Premiership
14 came thru the nd 15 if you count Dew.
1 PSD
5 Promoted rookies.
Of all that lot only 4 were essentially from other clubs.

13
14 nd
1 psd
6 trades
1 rookie.

14
12 nd
3 rookie
7 trade.

15
13 nd
2 rookie
7 trades



Just on your 2017 2019 premiership comments
2017
12 nd
2 psd. Grimes , Houli.
5 trades. Nankervis, Grigg, Caddy, Prestia, Townsend.
Graham taken 2017

Houli and Grigg were not cast offs if i remember both were very much wanted by carlton and essendon..
Nank, Prestia and Caddy all came after 2015 and are indicative of Balmes influence and the club review. in 2016.

2019 premiership.
9 ND
2 psd Houli , Grimes,
4 Trades,
5 rookies
1 msd pickett

You talk about the demotion but never say why it happened.It happened because into his twelfth yr Jackson had not been capable of putting a list together capable of winning a final.

Fianally to finish off.
SEPT 12 Brendan Gale came out and said this in releasing the Earnst and Young review.

Ultimately the review has identified the need to get the right people in the right Roles, and to give them the clarity and structure that will allow them to focus on building a culture of success.

To this end Neil Balme has been appointed to the role of general manager - football.
He went on to say the club needs greater focus and accountability in list management and recruiting.

relating to this he went on to say Mathew Clarke has been promoted to to role of National Recruiting Manager replacing Francis Jackson.

The review clearly Identified Recruiting and List management as a problem.

Personally im not arguing about the hits and misses i know there were too many misses under Jackson but even then the real problem is the inordinately slow amount of time it was taking to get enough good players together.

Any way in answer to your last question. Do i think Hawthorn have recruited better than us? yes.
I think they have been better than us in all areas up to 2015. and id happily take that back to 2001 a yr where they finised 4th and we finished 3rd. Yet both clubs went into the wilderness so to speak.Hawthorn came out of it in 07 and we continued to wallow in mediocrity for so so long.

***Apologies for the long and off topic post here anyone who reads this, but I thought it was an issue well worth clearing up a bit further, and I hope people find this post of interest.

I appreciate the response Mopsy. There are some things I want to examine within your post though. First, I am not sure why you haven’t stuck to my 2005-2015 comparison as this is the period Jackson was our chief recruiter. The reason I think this is relevant is because you brought Jackson into the discussion by saying we stopped taking recycled hacks when he was replaced as chief recruiter by Clarke. So once you call the guy’s performance into question I think it is fair to compare his whole body of work against a benchmark club. By excluding 2005-2008 as you have you are excluding Riewoldt, Edwards, Cotchin, and Rance, perhaps 4 of the most important five draft selections Richmond has made in relation to our current success. No matter how you slice it, once you bring Francis Jackson’s performance into the conversation and we look at his body of work it is not right to exclude his best outcomes.

So I will go back to my objective(and I think fair) benchmark of 100 games for the club as a starting point measure of successful drafting here. We can break this group down further later. During the Jackson period, we drafted the following list of players who have played 100 games or more for Richmond or who look nearly certain to do so.

White, Riewoldt, Edwards, King, Cotchin, Rance, Vickery, Martin, Astbury, Grimes, Conca, Houli, B Ellis, Vlastuin, Mcintosh, Short, Castagna, Lambert, Rioli, Broad. (20 players)



Hawthorn came up with the following list:

Birchall, Guerra, Suckling, Rioli, Whitecross, Schoenmakers, Shiels, Breust, Stratton, Duryea, Smith, Puopolo, Ceglar, Sicily, Hardwick. (15 players)



Both clubs took roughly 90 picks in the period. I think it is fair to assume Jackson had a better array of picks to work with, but let us see if that is correct. I will list all top 60 picks both clubs took, and let’s just say after that, all picks are of roughly equal value including rookie picks because if a club really wanted to take a player who ends up at another club with a later pick than 60 they have had their chance.

Richmond array of top 60 picks 2005-2015:

2, 3, 6, 8, 8, 9, 12, 12, 13, 15, 15, 18, 19, 24, 26, 26, 26, 30, 31, 33, 33, 35, 40, 42, 44, 47, 50, 50, 51, 51, 51, 52, 55, 58, 58, 60, (all those numbers add up to 1103/36 = our average draft pick in this sample is 30.63)

As we can see:

- 36 picks in the top 60, including

- 6 x top 10 picks
- 7 x 11-20 range picks
- 5 x 21-30 range picks
- 5 x 31-40 range picks
- 5 x 41-50 range picks
- 8 x 51-60 range picks


Hawthorn array of top 60 picks 2005-2015:

3, 6, 6, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 19, 22, 22, 24, 24, 28, 29, 31, 33, 33, 34, 38, 38, 38, 38, 39, 40, 44, 45, 46, 49, 50, 50, 53, 55, 56, 56, 57, 58, 59(all those numbers add up to 1302/38 picks = Hawks average pick from this sample was 34.26.)

- 38 picks in the top 60, including

- 3 x top 10 picks
- 6 x 11-20 range picks
- 6 x 21-30 range picks
- 10 x 31-40 range picks
- 6 x 41-50 range picks
- 7 x 51-60 range picks

So:

Top 10 picks, Richmond 6 v Hawks 3
11-30 range picks, Richmond 12 v Hawks 12
30-60 range picks Hawks 23 v Tigers 18

You would have to say the Tigers had the better picks at the high quality end despite Hawks having more top 40 picks overall. Just looking at that array, you would say you would expect the Tigers to find about 2-3 extra high grade or elite players, but hold no other advantage.

Now I will attempt to grade both clubs’ 100+ game players.

Richmond V Hawthorn

Elite - Riewoldt, Cotchin, Rance, Martin. V Rioli, Smith, (*Josh Kennedy)
Very high grade players who may not be truly elite - Edwards, Grimes, Houli, Vlastuin, Lambert V Birchall, Shiels, Breust, Sicily, Stratton
Other above average players for 100+ gamers - Astbury, Ellis, Rioli V Guerra, Hardwick, Puopolo, (*Ben McGlynn)
Average for 100+ gamers - Broad, Mcintosh, Conca, Short, Castagna, King, White V Ceglar, Duryea, Suckling
Disappointing for 100+ gamers - Vickery V Schoenmakers, Whitecross(neither ever really established themselves as first choice players over a sustained period)

I think what you see is the expected couple of extra elite players on the Tigers side. Aside from that it is quite even, though the Tigers probably have some extra younger players who could realistically move up the rankings over and above what the Hawks have.

* Make up your own mind about Kennedy and McGlynn. The Hawks drafted them in the period, but they only ever played a handful of matches at the Hawks. They were each traded away essentially for picks around 40 so the Hawks didn’t rate them highly. Kennedy in any event was a bit of a gift as a father son in the third round and Richmond/Jackson never got any such gifts in that period.

Overall, in terms of drafting meaningful players, and adjusting for the picks each club had at their disposal, I would say Richmond comes out decently on comparison. Certainly nothing to be sacking your recruiter over, and they didn’t. The Tigers picked up a couple more elite players and they are proper highly decorated elite, Brownlow Medallist, All Australian Captain, triple Coleman Medallist, Premiership captain, 5 time All Australian. Each of our elite guys has at least one of those accolades to his name. I think I am right in saying the Hawks didn’t come up with any of those from their draft haul in the period. We drafted 16 premiership players in the period, the Hawks drafted 13.

Mopsy your focus solely on the National Draft is in my opinion a red herring. It doesn’t matter how or where your recruiter gets your gun players, it just matters that he gets them. It does not matter one bit to his overall performance if he gets a Bachar Houli or a Dylan Grimes or a Nathan Broad in the National Draft or some other draft. Using pick 19 on Grimes and getting Griffiths in the pre season draft is exactly the same effect as the other way around. Your other red herring is the draft failures. It does not matter how bad a failure is, or how silly it looked at the time or how silly it looks in hindsight. If a player is not good enough to advance the club’s cause it doesn’t really matter if he is not good enough by a small margin or a large margin. All that matters when drafting is you end up with a critical mass of players good enough to get you somewhere.

However, just for interest sake, let’s also list top 30 hits and misses....

Richmond
8 strong outcomes from the 18 top 30 picks.
2 Cotchin, 3, Martin, 9 Vlastuin, 13 Riewoldt, 15 Ellis, 15 Rioli, 18 Rance, 26 Edwards
8 Outright fails: 8 Oakley-Nichols, 19 Ben Griffiths, 12 Ben Lennon, 12 Corey Ellis 24 Cleve Hughes, 26 Todd Elton, 26 Jayden Post, 30 Jake Batchelor,
2 Not good outcomes: 8 Vickery, 6 Conca though both played over a hundred games and Vickery compensation got us the Bolton pick.

Hawthorn
3 strong outcomes from 15 top 30 picks.
12 Rioli 14 Birchall 19 Smith
2 jury out. 28 Tim O’Brien 19 Ryan Burton(traded out plus effectively about pick 10 for 25yo Wingard, so maybe they got about pick 19 value back for him)
5 Outright fails: 6 Beau Dowler, 6 Mitch Thorp, 22 Kieran Lovell, 22 Beau Muston, 24 Billy Hurtung,
5 Not good outcomes: 24 Brent Renouf, 18 Max Bailey, 3 Xavier Ellis none of these played 100 games but pretty sure all played in one flag, 16 Schoenmakers and 29 Whitecross who never really established as first choice but also played in a flag each.

I think Richmond do really well on that comparison.

We have selected the benchmark club of the era here and analysed it I think fairly and carefully in this post. If you want to pick out other clubs and compare our drafting in that period with theirs, have a go at it, but if you do it along similar lines to this post it will be easier to make fair comparisons. I think Francis Jackson has been shown to have done well overall. When you consider the stories of him being only a part time recruiter and having to pay his own way on recruiting trips etc, well if he was truly responsible for all our recruiting decisions 2005-2015, he has performed miracles to not lower his colours to the much better resourced Hawks.
 
Jan 3, 2012
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***Apologies for the long and off topic post here anyone who reads this, but I thought it was an issue well worth clearing up a bit further, and I hope people find this post of interest.

I appreciate the response Mopsy. There are some things I want to examine within your post though. First, I am not sure why you haven’t stuck to my 2005-2015 comparison as this is the period Jackson was our chief recruiter. The reason I think this is relevant is because you brought Jackson into the discussion by saying we stopped taking recycled hacks when he was replaced as chief recruiter by Clarke. So once you call the guy’s performance into question I think it is fair to compare his whole body of work against a benchmark club. By excluding 2005-2008 as you have you are excluding Riewoldt, Edwards, Cotchin, and Rance, perhaps 4 of the most important five draft selections Richmond has made in relation to our current success. No matter how you slice it, once you bring Francis Jackson’s performance into the conversation and we look at his body of work it is not right to exclude his best outcomes.

So I will go back to my objective(and I think fair) benchmark of 100 games for the club as a starting point measure of successful drafting here. We can break this group down further later. During the Jackson period, we drafted the following list of players who have played 100 games or more for Richmond or who look nearly certain to do so.

White, Riewoldt, Edwards, King, Cotchin, Rance, Vickery, Martin, Astbury, Grimes, Conca, Houli, B Ellis, Vlastuin, Mcintosh, Short, Castagna, Lambert, Rioli, Broad. (20 players)



Hawthorn came up with the following list:

Birchall, Guerra, Suckling, Rioli, Whitecross, Schoenmakers, Shiels, Breust, Stratton, Duryea, Smith, Puopolo, Ceglar, Sicily, Hardwick. (15 players)



Both clubs took roughly 90 picks in the period. I think it is fair to assume Jackson had a better array of picks to work with, but let us see if that is correct. I will list all top 60 picks both clubs took, and let’s just say after that, all picks are of roughly equal value including rookie picks because if a club really wanted to take a player who ends up at another club with a later pick than 60 they have had their chance.

Richmond array of top 60 picks 2005-2015:

2, 3, 6, 8, 8, 9, 12, 12, 13, 15, 15, 18, 19, 24, 26, 26, 26, 30, 31, 33, 33, 35, 40, 42, 44, 47, 50, 50, 51, 51, 51, 52, 55, 58, 58, 60, (all those numbers add up to 1103/36 = our average draft pick in this sample is 30.63)

As we can see:

- 36 picks in the top 60, including

- 6 x top 10 picks
- 7 x 11-20 range picks
- 5 x 21-30 range picks
- 5 x 31-40 range picks
- 5 x 41-50 range picks
- 8 x 51-60 range picks


Hawthorn array of top 60 picks 2005-2015:

3, 6, 6, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 19, 22, 22, 24, 24, 28, 29, 31, 33, 33, 34, 38, 38, 38, 38, 39, 40, 44, 45, 46, 49, 50, 50, 53, 55, 56, 56, 57, 58, 59(all those numbers add up to 1302/38 picks = Hawks average pick from this sample was 34.26.)

- 38 picks in the top 60, including

- 3 x top 10 picks
- 6 x 11-20 range picks
- 6 x 21-30 range picks
- 10 x 31-40 range picks
- 6 x 41-50 range picks
- 7 x 51-60 range picks

So:

Top 10 picks, Richmond 6 v Hawks 3
11-30 range picks, Richmond 12 v Hawks 12
30-60 range picks Hawks 23 v Tigers 18

You would have to say the Tigers had the better picks at the high quality end despite Hawks having more top 40 picks overall. Just looking at that array, you would say you would expect the Tigers to find about 2-3 extra high grade or elite players, but hold no other advantage.

Now I will attempt to grade both clubs’ 100+ game players.

Richmond V Hawthorn

Elite - Riewoldt, Cotchin, Rance, Martin. V Rioli, Smith, (*Josh Kennedy)
Very high grade players who may not be truly elite - Edwards, Grimes, Houli, Vlastuin, Lambert V Birchall, Shiels, Breust, Sicily, Stratton
Other above average players for 100+ gamers - Astbury, Ellis, Rioli V Guerra, Hardwick, Puopolo, (*Ben McGlynn)
Average for 100+ gamers - Broad, Mcintosh, Conca, Short, Castagna, King, White V Ceglar, Duryea, Suckling
Disappointing for 100+ gamers - Vickery V Schoenmakers, Whitecross(neither ever really established themselves as first choice players over a sustained period)

I think what you see is the expected couple of extra elite players on the Tigers side. Aside from that it is quite even, though the Tigers probably have some extra younger players who could realistically move up the rankings over and above what the Hawks have.

* Make up your own mind about Kennedy and McGlynn. The Hawks drafted them in the period, but they only ever played a handful of matches at the Hawks. They were each traded away essentially for picks around 40 so the Hawks didn’t rate them highly. Kennedy in any event was a bit of a gift as a father son in the third round and Richmond/Jackson never got any such gifts in that period.

Overall, in terms of drafting meaningful players, and adjusting for the picks each club had at their disposal, I would say Richmond comes out decently on comparison. Certainly nothing to be sacking your recruiter over, and they didn’t. The Tigers picked up a couple more elite players and they are proper highly decorated elite, Brownlow Medallist, All Australian Captain, triple Coleman Medallist, Premiership captain, 5 time All Australian. Each of our elite guys has at least one of those accolades to his name. I think I am right in saying the Hawks didn’t come up with any of those from their draft haul in the period. We drafted 16 premiership players in the period, the Hawks drafted 13.

Mopsy your focus solely on the National Draft is in my opinion a red herring. It doesn’t matter how or where your recruiter gets your gun players, it just matters that he gets them. It does not matter one bit to his overall performance if he gets a Bachar Houli or a Dylan Grimes or a Nathan Broad in the National Draft or some other draft. Using pick 19 on Grimes and getting Griffiths in the pre season draft is exactly the same effect as the other way around. Your other red herring is the draft failures. It does not matter how bad a failure is, or how silly it looked at the time or how silly it looks in hindsight. If a player is not good enough to advance the club’s cause it doesn’t really matter if he is not good enough by a small margin or a large margin. All that matters when drafting is you end up with a critical mass of players good enough to get you somewhere.

However, just for interest sake, let’s also list top 30 hits and misses....

Richmond
8 strong outcomes from the 18 top 30 picks.
2 Cotchin, 3, Martin, 9 Vlastuin, 13 Riewoldt, 15 Ellis, 15 Rioli, 18 Rance, 26 Edwards
8 Outright fails: 8 Oakley-Nichols, 19 Ben Griffiths, 12 Ben Lennon, 12 Corey Ellis 24 Cleve Hughes, 26 Todd Elton, 26 Jayden Post, 30 Jake Batchelor,
2 Not good outcomes: 8 Vickery, 6 Conca though both played over a hundred games and Vickery compensation got us the Bolton pick.

Hawthorn
3 strong outcomes from 15 top 30 picks.
12 Rioli 14 Birchall 19 Smith
2 jury out. 28 Tim O’Brien 19 Ryan Burton(traded out plus effectively about pick 10 for 25yo Wingard, so maybe they got about pick 19 value back for him)
5 Outright fails: 6 Beau Dowler, 6 Mitch Thorp, 22 Kieran Lovell, 22 Beau Muston, 24 Billy Hurtung,
5 Not good outcomes: 24 Brent Renouf, 18 Max Bailey, 3 Xavier Ellis none of these played 100 games but pretty sure all played in one flag, 16 Schoenmakers and 29 Whitecross who never really established as first choice but also played in a flag each.

I think Richmond do really well on that comparison.

We have selected the benchmark club of the era here and analysed it I think fairly and carefully in this post. If you want to pick out other clubs and compare our drafting in that period with theirs, have a go at it, but if you do it along similar lines to this post it will be easier to make fair comparisons. I think Francis Jackson has been shown to have done well overall. When you consider the stories of him being only a part time recruiter and having to pay his own way on recruiting trips etc, well if he was truly responsible for all our recruiting decisions 2005-2015, he has performed miracles to not lower his colours to the much better resourced Hawks.

really concise and well put together, old fine eyes deserves a lot of kudos
 

JAKLAUGHING

🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆
Nov 20, 2008
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TASMANIAN DEBILS!!!
***Apologies for the long and off topic post here anyone who reads this, but I thought it was an issue well worth clearing up a bit further, and I hope people find this post of interest.

I appreciate the response Mopsy. There are some things I want to examine within your post though. First, I am not sure why you haven’t stuck to my 2005-2015 comparison as this is the period Jackson was our chief recruiter. The reason I think this is relevant is because you brought Jackson into the discussion by saying we stopped taking recycled hacks when he was replaced as chief recruiter by Clarke. So once you call the guy’s performance into question I think it is fair to compare his whole body of work against a benchmark club. By excluding 2005-2008 as you have you are excluding Riewoldt, Edwards, Cotchin, and Rance, perhaps 4 of the most important five draft selections Richmond has made in relation to our current success. No matter how you slice it, once you bring Francis Jackson’s performance into the conversation and we look at his body of work it is not right to exclude his best outcomes.

So I will go back to my objective(and I think fair) benchmark of 100 games for the club as a starting point measure of successful drafting here. We can break this group down further later. During the Jackson period, we drafted the following list of players who have played 100 games or more for Richmond or who look nearly certain to do so.

White, Riewoldt, Edwards, King, Cotchin, Rance, Vickery, Martin, Astbury, Grimes, Conca, Houli, B Ellis, Vlastuin, Mcintosh, Short, Castagna, Lambert, Rioli, Broad. (20 players)



Hawthorn came up with the following list:

Birchall, Guerra, Suckling, Rioli, Whitecross, Schoenmakers, Shiels, Breust, Stratton, Duryea, Smith, Puopolo, Ceglar, Sicily, Hardwick. (15 players)



Both clubs took roughly 90 picks in the period. I think it is fair to assume Jackson had a better array of picks to work with, but let us see if that is correct. I will list all top 60 picks both clubs took, and let’s just say after that, all picks are of roughly equal value including rookie picks because if a club really wanted to take a player who ends up at another club with a later pick than 60 they have had their chance.

Richmond array of top 60 picks 2005-2015:

2, 3, 6, 8, 8, 9, 12, 12, 13, 15, 15, 18, 19, 24, 26, 26, 26, 30, 31, 33, 33, 35, 40, 42, 44, 47, 50, 50, 51, 51, 51, 52, 55, 58, 58, 60, (all those numbers add up to 1103/36 = our average draft pick in this sample is 30.63)

As we can see:

- 36 picks in the top 60, including

- 6 x top 10 picks
- 7 x 11-20 range picks
- 5 x 21-30 range picks
- 5 x 31-40 range picks
- 5 x 41-50 range picks
- 8 x 51-60 range picks


Hawthorn array of top 60 picks 2005-2015:

3, 6, 6, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 19, 22, 22, 24, 24, 28, 29, 31, 33, 33, 34, 38, 38, 38, 38, 39, 40, 44, 45, 46, 49, 50, 50, 53, 55, 56, 56, 57, 58, 59(all those numbers add up to 1302/38 picks = Hawks average pick from this sample was 34.26.)

- 38 picks in the top 60, including

- 3 x top 10 picks
- 6 x 11-20 range picks
- 6 x 21-30 range picks
- 10 x 31-40 range picks
- 6 x 41-50 range picks
- 7 x 51-60 range picks

So:

Top 10 picks, Richmond 6 v Hawks 3
11-30 range picks, Richmond 12 v Hawks 12
30-60 range picks Hawks 23 v Tigers 18

You would have to say the Tigers had the better picks at the high quality end despite Hawks having more top 40 picks overall. Just looking at that array, you would say you would expect the Tigers to find about 2-3 extra high grade or elite players, but hold no other advantage.

Now I will attempt to grade both clubs’ 100+ game players.

Richmond V Hawthorn

Elite - Riewoldt, Cotchin, Rance, Martin. V Rioli, Smith, (*Josh Kennedy)
Very high grade players who may not be truly elite - Edwards, Grimes, Houli, Vlastuin, Lambert V Birchall, Shiels, Breust, Sicily, Stratton
Other above average players for 100+ gamers - Astbury, Ellis, Rioli V Guerra, Hardwick, Puopolo, (*Ben McGlynn)
Average for 100+ gamers - Broad, Mcintosh, Conca, Short, Castagna, King, White V Ceglar, Duryea, Suckling
Disappointing for 100+ gamers - Vickery V Schoenmakers, Whitecross(neither ever really established themselves as first choice players over a sustained period)

I think what you see is the expected couple of extra elite players on the Tigers side. Aside from that it is quite even, though the Tigers probably have some extra younger players who could realistically move up the rankings over and above what the Hawks have.

* Make up your own mind about Kennedy and McGlynn. The Hawks drafted them in the period, but they only ever played a handful of matches at the Hawks. They were each traded away essentially for picks around 40 so the Hawks didn’t rate them highly. Kennedy in any event was a bit of a gift as a father son in the third round and Richmond/Jackson never got any such gifts in that period.

Overall, in terms of drafting meaningful players, and adjusting for the picks each club had at their disposal, I would say Richmond comes out decently on comparison. Certainly nothing to be sacking your recruiter over, and they didn’t. The Tigers picked up a couple more elite players and they are proper highly decorated elite, Brownlow Medallist, All Australian Captain, triple Coleman Medallist, Premiership captain, 5 time All Australian. Each of our elite guys has at least one of those accolades to his name. I think I am right in saying the Hawks didn’t come up with any of those from their draft haul in the period. We drafted 16 premiership players in the period, the Hawks drafted 13.

Mopsy your focus solely on the National Draft is in my opinion a red herring. It doesn’t matter how or where your recruiter gets your gun players, it just matters that he gets them. It does not matter one bit to his overall performance if he gets a Bachar Houli or a Dylan Grimes or a Nathan Broad in the National Draft or some other draft. Using pick 19 on Grimes and getting Griffiths in the pre season draft is exactly the same effect as the other way around. Your other red herring is the draft failures. It does not matter how bad a failure is, or how silly it looked at the time or how silly it looks in hindsight. If a player is not good enough to advance the club’s cause it doesn’t really matter if he is not good enough by a small margin or a large margin. All that matters when drafting is you end up with a critical mass of players good enough to get you somewhere.

However, just for interest sake, let’s also list top 30 hits and misses....

Richmond
8 strong outcomes from the 18 top 30 picks.
2 Cotchin, 3, Martin, 9 Vlastuin, 13 Riewoldt, 15 Ellis, 15 Rioli, 18 Rance, 26 Edwards
8 Outright fails: 8 Oakley-Nichols, 19 Ben Griffiths, 12 Ben Lennon, 12 Corey Ellis 24 Cleve Hughes, 26 Todd Elton, 26 Jayden Post, 30 Jake Batchelor,
2 Not good outcomes: 8 Vickery, 6 Conca though both played over a hundred games and Vickery compensation got us the Bolton pick.

Hawthorn
3 strong outcomes from 15 top 30 picks.
12 Rioli 14 Birchall 19 Smith
2 jury out. 28 Tim O’Brien 19 Ryan Burton(traded out plus effectively about pick 10 for 25yo Wingard, so maybe they got about pick 19 value back for him)
5 Outright fails: 6 Beau Dowler, 6 Mitch Thorp, 22 Kieran Lovell, 22 Beau Muston, 24 Billy Hurtung,
5 Not good outcomes: 24 Brent Renouf, 18 Max Bailey, 3 Xavier Ellis none of these played 100 games but pretty sure all played in one flag, 16 Schoenmakers and 29 Whitecross who never really established as first choice but also played in a flag each.

I think Richmond do really well on that comparison.

We have selected the benchmark club of the era here and analysed it I think fairly and carefully in this post. If you want to pick out other clubs and compare our drafting in that period with theirs, have a go at it, but if you do it along similar lines to this post it will be easier to make fair comparisons. I think Francis Jackson has been shown to have done well overall. When you consider the stories of him being only a part time recruiter and having to pay his own way on recruiting trips etc, well if he was truly responsible for all our recruiting decisions 2005-2015, he has performed miracles to not lower his colours to the much better resourced Hawks.
Why isn't Magic involved in this discussion?!?!... 👍:D👍
 

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Within the great pantheon of fractional glass identification Mopsy, I would say you are a glass half smashed kind of guy. 😂😂

We got loads of our flag players from the National Draft. We got a few that were recycled and also some as mature players who were not previously listed, and some young rookies, even a redemption story. We traded well for a small handful. Picked up one high tariff free agent. Ok we had to turn a few over in these categories to end up with the right ones, but which club doesn’t?

Hawthorn were obviously very successful during 2012-2016 in particular. So they obviously drafted way better than us, right? Well, go through their draft hauls from after their gun drafts in the early 2000’s. Try from 2005 onwards, let’s say the next 11 drafts up to 2015. They drafted 90 odd players in that time. How many of them have played 100+ games for Hawthorn(or look nearly certain to?) Birchall, Guerra, Suckling, Rioli, Whitecross, Schoenmakers, Shiels, Breust, Stratton, Duryea, Smith, Puopolo, Ceglar, Sicily, Hardwick. 15 in 11 years at a highly successful club. So they are getting about 1.35 players per year out of average 8 drafted to the club who are going on to play 100+ games for the club. And this was during and in the lead up to a highly successful period for the club. If you look through some of the Hawks inbox over those years there are some shocking names in there, as we might expect at any club.

What did Francis Jackson/Richmond come up with during the same period who played 100 games for the Tigers - or almost certainly will? I have not included someone like Soldo here despite thinking he is now a good bet to play 100+ for us due to him having only played relatively few games to date.

White, Riewoldt, Edwards, King, Cotchin, Rance, Vickery, Martin, Astbury, Grimes, Conca, Houli, B Ellis, Vlastuin, Mcintosh, Short, Castagna, Lambert, Rioli, Broad. 20 players. From I think 94 selections. So Jackson is getting about 1.8 players per year he has drafted to go on and play 100+ matches for the Tigers. I think Jackson may have had six top 10 picks to work with in that period where the Hawks had only three, which they used on M Thorp, X Ellis and B Dowler.

Do you think the most successful team in that period, Hawthorn, drafted better than we did over the period Jackson was largely responsible? Are there other clubs you can show who did better with equal or less, or relatively better? I would say despite us going down a few wrong tracks over the course of those 11 seasons, we did really well relative to most other clubs.




Richmond premiership teams


2017 Premiership

13 of our premiership 22 came to us through the National Draft, 12 of them, all bar Graham before you say Francis Jackson was demoted.
3 came to us untried by other clubs in the other drafts, Castagna, Lambert, Grimes, all before the “demotion."
3 were more or less castoffs by other clubs, Grigg, Houli, Townsend, all arrived at the club prior to the “demotion."
3 came in trades that essentially cost us a first, second and third round draft pick in the 2016 draft.

So we drafted in 15 of that premiership team before 2016.

2019 Premiership
10 players came to us through the ND, only Bolton drafted post the “demotion."
7 players came to us through other drafting mechanisms, only Pickett and Baker of those after the “demotion."
1 player Houli essentially a castoff, before the “demotion."
3 players we traded for in 2016 also played in this flag.
1 free agent in Lynch.

We drafted 14 of that premiership team before 2016.
Wow where to begin?

Okay i only went as far as 09 because that is when Hardwick came to the club and we had a new regime of sorts. its also a yr Hawthorn missed the 8 after winning a premiership.
Hawthorn were very succesful from 08 to 2015 not just 12 - 15. I think it important to recognise 08 in this debate because it altered entirely the direction they took for the next 5 or 6 years.
In 08 they had a strong list that remained in a window. It needed some tweaking but it was strong hence their emphasis became more focused on mature players than the nd.
so lets just go from the end of 09 to 2015 for now. Im happy to go back to 2005 later if you wish. But for now Our beginning under Hardwick to 2015 which just happens to be the last yr Francis the dud Jackson was in charge, the Earnst and Young report saw Jackson get the flick in sept 16.Mathew Clarke was made national recruiting manager and was in charge for the 2016 trade draft period.
Im talking just ND picks here atm, lets do them for starters and work our way thru the trades, F/A's rookie promotions later if you wish.

So from 09 to 15 Hawthorn utilised just 22 nd picks compared to our 31. This alone would suggest we would have more hits than them. On top of that because the hawks were generally trading away good picks for mature recruits because they were very much in a premiership window we generally had not only more nd picks but better ones. This is indisputable.

Hawthorns first picks from 09 - 15 compared to ours were bare in mind this is my opinion but id say under whatever criteria you put to it it would be fair and close.

Hawks 19, 19,24,28, 31, 33, 39
Tiges 3, 6, 9, 12, 12, 15, 15.
This generally remained the theme thru each round each yr.
Given this is the case you really would expect us to have far more hits than the hawks in the nd, but is it the case?Lets look at it'

ND hits. that is elite to servicable players
09
Hawthorn 2 from 5 picks. Stratton 46, duryea 69, both went on to be premiership players.Note their 1st pick was #39.
Richmond 2 from 7 picks. Martin 3, Astbury 35. Both went on to be premiership players.

10
Hawks 2 from 4 picks. I Smith 19, Puopolo 66. both became premiership players.
Tigers 1 from 5 picks. Conca 6. Im reluctant to put him here as i think him ordinary but he has played 100 games so there ya go.

11
Hawks 1 from 3 picks. B Hill 33. premiership player.
Tiges 1 from 3 picks. B Ellis 15. premiership player.

12
Hawks 0 from 3 picks.
Tiges 2 from 4 picks. Vlastuin 9, McIntosh 33 both premiership players. personally i dont think McIntosh a very good player.

13
Hawks 1 from 3 picks. Sicily 56
Tigers 1 from 3 picks. Lloyd 66

14
Hawks 1 from 3 picks. Howe 31
Tigers 1 from 5 picks. Butler premiership player.

15
Hawks 2 from 2 players. Burton 31, Hardwick 44.
Tiges 1 from 3 players. Rioli 15, Broad 67. both premiership players.

08 Premiership
14 came thru the nd 15 if you count Dew.
1 PSD
5 Promoted rookies.
Of all that lot only 4 were essentially from other clubs.

13
14 nd
1 psd
6 trades
1 rookie.

14
12 nd
3 rookie
7 trade.

15
13 nd
2 rookie
7 trades



Just on your 2017 2019 premiership comments
2017
12 nd
2 psd. Grimes , Houli.
5 trades. Nankervis, Grigg, Caddy, Prestia, Townsend.
Graham taken 2017

Houli and Grigg were not cast offs if i remember both were very much wanted by carlton and essendon..
Nank, Prestia and Caddy all came after 2015 and are indicative of Balmes influence and the club review. in 2016.

2019 premiership.
9 ND
2 psd Houli , Grimes,
4 Trades,
5 rookies
1 msd pickett

You talk about the demotion but never say why it happened.It happened because into his twelfth yr Jackson had not been capable of putting a list together capable of winning a final.

Fianally to finish off.
SEPT 12 Brendan Gale came out and said this in releasing the Earnst and Young review.

Ultimately the review has identified the need to get the right people in the right Roles, and to give them the clarity and structure that will allow them to focus on building a culture of success.

To this end Neil Balme has been appointed to the role of general manager - football.
He went on to say the club needs greater focus and accountability in list management and recruiting.

relating to this he went on to say Mathew Clarke has been promoted to to role of National Recruiting Manager replacing Francis Jackson.

The review clearly Identified Recruiting and List management as a problem.

Personally im not arguing about the hits and misses i know there were too many misses under Jackson but even then the real problem is the inordinately slow amount of time it was taking to get enough good players together.

Any way in answer to your last question. Do i think Hawthorn have recruited better than us? yes.
I think they have been better than us in all areas up to 2015. and id happily take that back to 2001 a yr where they finised 4th and we finished 3rd. Yet both clubs went into the wilderness so to speak.Hawthorn came out of it in 07 and we continued to wallow in mediocrity for so so long.
***Apologies for the long and off topic post here anyone who reads this, but I thought it was an issue well worth clearing up a bit further, and I hope people find this post of interest.

I appreciate the response Mopsy. There are some things I want to examine within your post though. First, I am not sure why you haven’t stuck to my 2005-2015 comparison as this is the period Jackson was our chief recruiter. The reason I think this is relevant is because you brought Jackson into the discussion by saying we stopped taking recycled hacks when he was replaced as chief recruiter by Clarke. So once you call the guy’s performance into question I think it is fair to compare his whole body of work against a benchmark club. By excluding 2005-2008 as you have you are excluding Riewoldt, Edwards, Cotchin, and Rance, perhaps 4 of the most important five draft selections Richmond has made in relation to our current success. No matter how you slice it, once you bring Francis Jackson’s performance into the conversation and we look at his body of work it is not right to exclude his best outcomes.

So I will go back to my objective(and I think fair) benchmark of 100 games for the club as a starting point measure of successful drafting here. We can break this group down further later. During the Jackson period, we drafted the following list of players who have played 100 games or more for Richmond or who look nearly certain to do so.

White, Riewoldt, Edwards, King, Cotchin, Rance, Vickery, Martin, Astbury, Grimes, Conca, Houli, B Ellis, Vlastuin, Mcintosh, Short, Castagna, Lambert, Rioli, Broad. (20 players)



Hawthorn came up with the following list:

Birchall, Guerra, Suckling, Rioli, Whitecross, Schoenmakers, Shiels, Breust, Stratton, Duryea, Smith, Puopolo, Ceglar, Sicily, Hardwick. (15 players)



Both clubs took roughly 90 picks in the period. I think it is fair to assume Jackson had a better array of picks to work with, but let us see if that is correct. I will list all top 60 picks both clubs took, and let’s just say after that, all picks are of roughly equal value including rookie picks because if a club really wanted to take a player who ends up at another club with a later pick than 60 they have had their chance.

Richmond array of top 60 picks 2005-2015:

2, 3, 6, 8, 8, 9, 12, 12, 13, 15, 15, 18, 19, 24, 26, 26, 26, 30, 31, 33, 33, 35, 40, 42, 44, 47, 50, 50, 51, 51, 51, 52, 55, 58, 58, 60, (all those numbers add up to 1103/36 = our average draft pick in this sample is 30.63)

As we can see:

- 36 picks in the top 60, including

- 6 x top 10 picks
- 7 x 11-20 range picks
- 5 x 21-30 range picks
- 5 x 31-40 range picks
- 5 x 41-50 range picks
- 8 x 51-60 range picks


Hawthorn array of top 60 picks 2005-2015:

3, 6, 6, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 19, 22, 22, 24, 24, 28, 29, 31, 33, 33, 34, 38, 38, 38, 38, 39, 40, 44, 45, 46, 49, 50, 50, 53, 55, 56, 56, 57, 58, 59(all those numbers add up to 1302/38 picks = Hawks average pick from this sample was 34.26.)

- 38 picks in the top 60, including

- 3 x top 10 picks
- 6 x 11-20 range picks
- 6 x 21-30 range picks
- 10 x 31-40 range picks
- 6 x 41-50 range picks
- 7 x 51-60 range picks

So:

Top 10 picks, Richmond 6 v Hawks 3
11-30 range picks, Richmond 12 v Hawks 12
30-60 range picks Hawks 23 v Tigers 18

You would have to say the Tigers had the better picks at the high quality end despite Hawks having more top 40 picks overall. Just looking at that array, you would say you would expect the Tigers to find about 2-3 extra high grade or elite players, but hold no other advantage.

Now I will attempt to grade both clubs’ 100+ game players.

Richmond V Hawthorn

Elite - Riewoldt, Cotchin, Rance, Martin. V Rioli, Smith, (*Josh Kennedy)
Very high grade players who may not be truly elite - Edwards, Grimes, Houli, Vlastuin, Lambert V Birchall, Shiels, Breust, Sicily, Stratton
Other above average players for 100+ gamers - Astbury, Ellis, Rioli V Guerra, Hardwick, Puopolo, (*Ben McGlynn)
Average for 100+ gamers - Broad, Mcintosh, Conca, Short, Castagna, King, White V Ceglar, Duryea, Suckling
Disappointing for 100+ gamers - Vickery V Schoenmakers, Whitecross(neither ever really established themselves as first choice players over a sustained period)

I think what you see is the expected couple of extra elite players on the Tigers side. Aside from that it is quite even, though the Tigers probably have some extra younger players who could realistically move up the rankings over and above what the Hawks have.

* Make up your own mind about Kennedy and McGlynn. The Hawks drafted them in the period, but they only ever played a handful of matches at the Hawks. They were each traded away essentially for picks around 40 so the Hawks didn’t rate them highly. Kennedy in any event was a bit of a gift as a father son in the third round and Richmond/Jackson never got any such gifts in that period.

Overall, in terms of drafting meaningful players, and adjusting for the picks each club had at their disposal, I would say Richmond comes out decently on comparison. Certainly nothing to be sacking your recruiter over, and they didn’t. The Tigers picked up a couple more elite players and they are proper highly decorated elite, Brownlow Medallist, All Australian Captain, triple Coleman Medallist, Premiership captain, 5 time All Australian. Each of our elite guys has at least one of those accolades to his name. I think I am right in saying the Hawks didn’t come up with any of those from their draft haul in the period. We drafted 16 premiership players in the period, the Hawks drafted 13.

Mopsy your focus solely on the National Draft is in my opinion a red herring. It doesn’t matter how or where your recruiter gets your gun players, it just matters that he gets them. It does not matter one bit to his overall performance if he gets a Bachar Houli or a Dylan Grimes or a Nathan Broad in the National Draft or some other draft. Using pick 19 on Grimes and getting Griffiths in the pre season draft is exactly the same effect as the other way around. Your other red herring is the draft failures. It does not matter how bad a failure is, or how silly it looked at the time or how silly it looks in hindsight. If a player is not good enough to advance the club’s cause it doesn’t really matter if he is not good enough by a small margin or a large margin. All that matters when drafting is you end up with a critical mass of players good enough to get you somewhere.

However, just for interest sake, let’s also list top 30 hits and misses....

Richmond
8 strong outcomes from the 18 top 30 picks.
2 Cotchin, 3, Martin, 9 Vlastuin, 13 Riewoldt, 15 Ellis, 15 Rioli, 18 Rance, 26 Edwards
8 Outright fails: 8 Oakley-Nichols, 19 Ben Griffiths, 12 Ben Lennon, 12 Corey Ellis 24 Cleve Hughes, 26 Todd Elton, 26 Jayden Post, 30 Jake Batchelor,
2 Not good outcomes: 8 Vickery, 6 Conca though both played over a hundred games and Vickery compensation got us the Bolton pick.

Hawthorn
3 strong outcomes from 15 top 30 picks.
12 Rioli 14 Birchall 19 Smith
2 jury out. 28 Tim O’Brien 19 Ryan Burton(traded out plus effectively about pick 10 for 25yo Wingard, so maybe they got about pick 19 value back for him)
5 Outright fails: 6 Beau Dowler, 6 Mitch Thorp, 22 Kieran Lovell, 22 Beau Muston, 24 Billy Hurtung,
5 Not good outcomes: 24 Brent Renouf, 18 Max Bailey, 3 Xavier Ellis none of these played 100 games but pretty sure all played in one flag, 16 Schoenmakers and 29 Whitecross who never really established as first choice but also played in a flag each.

I think Richmond do really well on that comparison.

We have selected the benchmark club of the era here and analysed it I think fairly and carefully in this post. If you want to pick out other clubs and compare our drafting in that period with theirs, have a go at it, but if you do it along similar lines to this post it will be easier to make fair comparisons. I think Francis Jackson has been shown to have done well overall. When you consider the stories of him being only a part time recruiter and having to pay his own way on recruiting trips etc, well if he was truly responsible for all our recruiting decisions 2005-2015, he has performed miracles to not lower his colours to the much better resourced Hawks.
Why isn't Magic involved in this discussion?!?!... 👍:D👍
Just wondering if all 3 are the same?
Mopsy/Metric & Magic.
They all like the letter M.
Food for thought. :think:
 

Tiger71

?????? King of the Micro ??????
Sep 22, 2011
20,302
72,669
AFL Club
Richmond
***Apologies for the long and off topic post here anyone who reads this, but I thought it was an issue well worth clearing up a bit further, and I hope people find this post of interest.

I appreciate the response Mopsy. There are some things I want to examine within your post though. First, I am not sure why you haven’t stuck to my 2005-2015 comparison as this is the period Jackson was our chief recruiter. The reason I think this is relevant is because you brought Jackson into the discussion by saying we stopped taking recycled hacks when he was replaced as chief recruiter by Clarke. So once you call the guy’s performance into question I think it is fair to compare his whole body of work against a benchmark club. By excluding 2005-2008 as you have you are excluding Riewoldt, Edwards, Cotchin, and Rance, perhaps 4 of the most important five draft selections Richmond has made in relation to our current success. No matter how you slice it, once you bring Francis Jackson’s performance into the conversation and we look at his body of work it is not right to exclude his best outcomes.

So I will go back to my objective(and I think fair) benchmark of 100 games for the club as a starting point measure of successful drafting here. We can break this group down further later. During the Jackson period, we drafted the following list of players who have played 100 games or more for Richmond or who look nearly certain to do so.

White, Riewoldt, Edwards, King, Cotchin, Rance, Vickery, Martin, Astbury, Grimes, Conca, Houli, B Ellis, Vlastuin, Mcintosh, Short, Castagna, Lambert, Rioli, Broad. (20 players)



Hawthorn came up with the following list:

Birchall, Guerra, Suckling, Rioli, Whitecross, Schoenmakers, Shiels, Breust, Stratton, Duryea, Smith, Puopolo, Ceglar, Sicily, Hardwick. (15 players)



Both clubs took roughly 90 picks in the period. I think it is fair to assume Jackson had a better array of picks to work with, but let us see if that is correct. I will list all top 60 picks both clubs took, and let’s just say after that, all picks are of roughly equal value including rookie picks because if a club really wanted to take a player who ends up at another club with a later pick than 60 they have had their chance.

Richmond array of top 60 picks 2005-2015:

2, 3, 6, 8, 8, 9, 12, 12, 13, 15, 15, 18, 19, 24, 26, 26, 26, 30, 31, 33, 33, 35, 40, 42, 44, 47, 50, 50, 51, 51, 51, 52, 55, 58, 58, 60, (all those numbers add up to 1103/36 = our average draft pick in this sample is 30.63)

As we can see:

- 36 picks in the top 60, including

- 6 x top 10 picks
- 7 x 11-20 range picks
- 5 x 21-30 range picks
- 5 x 31-40 range picks
- 5 x 41-50 range picks
- 8 x 51-60 range picks


Hawthorn array of top 60 picks 2005-2015:

3, 6, 6, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 19, 22, 22, 24, 24, 28, 29, 31, 33, 33, 34, 38, 38, 38, 38, 39, 40, 44, 45, 46, 49, 50, 50, 53, 55, 56, 56, 57, 58, 59(all those numbers add up to 1302/38 picks = Hawks average pick from this sample was 34.26.)

- 38 picks in the top 60, including

- 3 x top 10 picks
- 6 x 11-20 range picks
- 6 x 21-30 range picks
- 10 x 31-40 range picks
- 6 x 41-50 range picks
- 7 x 51-60 range picks

So:

Top 10 picks, Richmond 6 v Hawks 3
11-30 range picks, Richmond 12 v Hawks 12
30-60 range picks Hawks 23 v Tigers 18

You would have to say the Tigers had the better picks at the high quality end despite Hawks having more top 40 picks overall. Just looking at that array, you would say you would expect the Tigers to find about 2-3 extra high grade or elite players, but hold no other advantage.

Now I will attempt to grade both clubs’ 100+ game players.

Richmond V Hawthorn

Elite - Riewoldt, Cotchin, Rance, Martin. V Rioli, Smith, (*Josh Kennedy)
Very high grade players who may not be truly elite - Edwards, Grimes, Houli, Vlastuin, Lambert V Birchall, Shiels, Breust, Sicily, Stratton
Other above average players for 100+ gamers - Astbury, Ellis, Rioli V Guerra, Hardwick, Puopolo, (*Ben McGlynn)
Average for 100+ gamers - Broad, Mcintosh, Conca, Short, Castagna, King, White V Ceglar, Duryea, Suckling
Disappointing for 100+ gamers - Vickery V Schoenmakers, Whitecross(neither ever really established themselves as first choice players over a sustained period)

I think what you see is the expected couple of extra elite players on the Tigers side. Aside from that it is quite even, though the Tigers probably have some extra younger players who could realistically move up the rankings over and above what the Hawks have.

* Make up your own mind about Kennedy and McGlynn. The Hawks drafted them in the period, but they only ever played a handful of matches at the Hawks. They were each traded away essentially for picks around 40 so the Hawks didn’t rate them highly. Kennedy in any event was a bit of a gift as a father son in the third round and Richmond/Jackson never got any such gifts in that period.

Overall, in terms of drafting meaningful players, and adjusting for the picks each club had at their disposal, I would say Richmond comes out decently on comparison. Certainly nothing to be sacking your recruiter over, and they didn’t. The Tigers picked up a couple more elite players and they are proper highly decorated elite, Brownlow Medallist, All Australian Captain, triple Coleman Medallist, Premiership captain, 5 time All Australian. Each of our elite guys has at least one of those accolades to his name. I think I am right in saying the Hawks didn’t come up with any of those from their draft haul in the period. We drafted 16 premiership players in the period, the Hawks drafted 13.

Mopsy your focus solely on the National Draft is in my opinion a red herring. It doesn’t matter how or where your recruiter gets your gun players, it just matters that he gets them. It does not matter one bit to his overall performance if he gets a Bachar Houli or a Dylan Grimes or a Nathan Broad in the National Draft or some other draft. Using pick 19 on Grimes and getting Griffiths in the pre season draft is exactly the same effect as the other way around. Your other red herring is the draft failures. It does not matter how bad a failure is, or how silly it looked at the time or how silly it looks in hindsight. If a player is not good enough to advance the club’s cause it doesn’t really matter if he is not good enough by a small margin or a large margin. All that matters when drafting is you end up with a critical mass of players good enough to get you somewhere.

However, just for interest sake, let’s also list top 30 hits and misses....

Richmond
8 strong outcomes from the 18 top 30 picks.
2 Cotchin, 3, Martin, 9 Vlastuin, 13 Riewoldt, 15 Ellis, 15 Rioli, 18 Rance, 26 Edwards
8 Outright fails: 8 Oakley-Nichols, 19 Ben Griffiths, 12 Ben Lennon, 12 Corey Ellis 24 Cleve Hughes, 26 Todd Elton, 26 Jayden Post, 30 Jake Batchelor,
2 Not good outcomes: 8 Vickery, 6 Conca though both played over a hundred games and Vickery compensation got us the Bolton pick.

Hawthorn
3 strong outcomes from 15 top 30 picks.
12 Rioli 14 Birchall 19 Smith
2 jury out. 28 Tim O’Brien 19 Ryan Burton(traded out plus effectively about pick 10 for 25yo Wingard, so maybe they got about pick 19 value back for him)
5 Outright fails: 6 Beau Dowler, 6 Mitch Thorp, 22 Kieran Lovell, 22 Beau Muston, 24 Billy Hurtung,
5 Not good outcomes: 24 Brent Renouf, 18 Max Bailey, 3 Xavier Ellis none of these played 100 games but pretty sure all played in one flag, 16 Schoenmakers and 29 Whitecross who never really established as first choice but also played in a flag each.

I think Richmond do really well on that comparison.

We have selected the benchmark club of the era here and analysed it I think fairly and carefully in this post. If you want to pick out other clubs and compare our drafting in that period with theirs, have a go at it, but if you do it along similar lines to this post it will be easier to make fair comparisons. I think Francis Jackson has been shown to have done well overall. When you consider the stories of him being only a part time recruiter and having to pay his own way on recruiting trips etc, well if he was truly responsible for all our recruiting decisions 2005-2015, he has performed miracles to not lower his colours to the much better resourced Hawks.

Also the missing factor that is huge, hawks recruiting department was a lot better resourced then ours. That puts in context how above the level FJ was
 

mopsy

Premiership Player
Jan 1, 2005
3,856
6,488
Other Teams
RICHMOND
***Apologies for the long and off topic post here anyone who reads this, but I thought it was an issue well worth clearing up a bit further, and I hope people find this post of interest.

I appreciate the response Mopsy. There are some things I want to examine within your post though. First, I am not sure why you haven’t stuck to my 2005-2015 comparison as this is the period Jackson was our chief recruiter. The reason I think this is relevant is because you brought Jackson into the discussion by saying we stopped taking recycled hacks when he was replaced as chief recruiter by Clarke. So once you call the guy’s performance into question I think it is fair to compare his whole body of work against a benchmark club. By excluding 2005-2008 as you have you are excluding Riewoldt, Edwards, Cotchin, and Rance, perhaps 4 of the most important five draft selections Richmond has made in relation to our current success. No matter how you slice it, once you bring Francis Jackson’s performance into the conversation and we look at his body of work it is not right to exclude his best outcomes.

So I will go back to my objective(and I think fair) benchmark of 100 games for the club as a starting point measure of successful drafting here. We can break this group down further later. During the Jackson period, we drafted the following list of players who have played 100 games or more for Richmond or who look nearly certain to do so.

White, Riewoldt, Edwards, King, Cotchin, Rance, Vickery, Martin, Astbury, Grimes, Conca, Houli, B Ellis, Vlastuin, Mcintosh, Short, Castagna, Lambert, Rioli, Broad. (20 players)



Hawthorn came up with the following list:

Birchall, Guerra, Suckling, Rioli, Whitecross, Schoenmakers, Shiels, Breust, Stratton, Duryea, Smith, Puopolo, Ceglar, Sicily, Hardwick. (15 players)



Both clubs took roughly 90 picks in the period. I think it is fair to assume Jackson had a better array of picks to work with, but let us see if that is correct. I will list all top 60 picks both clubs took, and let’s just say after that, all picks are of roughly equal value including rookie picks because if a club really wanted to take a player who ends up at another club with a later pick than 60 they have had their chance.

Richmond array of top 60 picks 2005-2015:

2, 3, 6, 8, 8, 9, 12, 12, 13, 15, 15, 18, 19, 24, 26, 26, 26, 30, 31, 33, 33, 35, 40, 42, 44, 47, 50, 50, 51, 51, 51, 52, 55, 58, 58, 60, (all those numbers add up to 1103/36 = our average draft pick in this sample is 30.63)

As we can see:

- 36 picks in the top 60, including

- 6 x top 10 picks
- 7 x 11-20 range picks
- 5 x 21-30 range picks
- 5 x 31-40 range picks
- 5 x 41-50 range picks
- 8 x 51-60 range picks


Hawthorn array of top 60 picks 2005-2015:

3, 6, 6, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 19, 22, 22, 24, 24, 28, 29, 31, 33, 33, 34, 38, 38, 38, 38, 39, 40, 44, 45, 46, 49, 50, 50, 53, 55, 56, 56, 57, 58, 59(all those numbers add up to 1302/38 picks = Hawks average pick from this sample was 34.26.)

- 38 picks in the top 60, including

- 3 x top 10 picks
- 6 x 11-20 range picks
- 6 x 21-30 range picks
- 10 x 31-40 range picks
- 6 x 41-50 range picks
- 7 x 51-60 range picks

So:

Top 10 picks, Richmond 6 v Hawks 3
11-30 range picks, Richmond 12 v Hawks 12
30-60 range picks Hawks 23 v Tigers 18

You would have to say the Tigers had the better picks at the high quality end despite Hawks having more top 40 picks overall. Just looking at that array, you would say you would expect the Tigers to find about 2-3 extra high grade or elite players, but hold no other advantage.

Now I will attempt to grade both clubs’ 100+ game players.

Richmond V Hawthorn

Elite - Riewoldt, Cotchin, Rance, Martin. V Rioli, Smith, (*Josh Kennedy)
Very high grade players who may not be truly elite - Edwards, Grimes, Houli, Vlastuin, Lambert V Birchall, Shiels, Breust, Sicily, Stratton
Other above average players for 100+ gamers - Astbury, Ellis, Rioli V Guerra, Hardwick, Puopolo, (*Ben McGlynn)
Average for 100+ gamers - Broad, Mcintosh, Conca, Short, Castagna, King, White V Ceglar, Duryea, Suckling
Disappointing for 100+ gamers - Vickery V Schoenmakers, Whitecross(neither ever really established themselves as first choice players over a sustained period)

I think what you see is the expected couple of extra elite players on the Tigers side. Aside from that it is quite even, though the Tigers probably have some extra younger players who could realistically move up the rankings over and above what the Hawks have.

* Make up your own mind about Kennedy and McGlynn. The Hawks drafted them in the period, but they only ever played a handful of matches at the Hawks. They were each traded away essentially for picks around 40 so the Hawks didn’t rate them highly. Kennedy in any event was a bit of a gift as a father son in the third round and Richmond/Jackson never got any such gifts in that period.

Overall, in terms of drafting meaningful players, and adjusting for the picks each club had at their disposal, I would say Richmond comes out decently on comparison. Certainly nothing to be sacking your recruiter over, and they didn’t. The Tigers picked up a couple more elite players and they are proper highly decorated elite, Brownlow Medallist, All Australian Captain, triple Coleman Medallist, Premiership captain, 5 time All Australian. Each of our elite guys has at least one of those accolades to his name. I think I am right in saying the Hawks didn’t come up with any of those from their draft haul in the period. We drafted 16 premiership players in the period, the Hawks drafted 13.

Mopsy your focus solely on the National Draft is in my opinion a red herring. It doesn’t matter how or where your recruiter gets your gun players, it just matters that he gets them. It does not matter one bit to his overall performance if he gets a Bachar Houli or a Dylan Grimes or a Nathan Broad in the National Draft or some other draft. Using pick 19 on Grimes and getting Griffiths in the pre season draft is exactly the same effect as the other way around. Your other red herring is the draft failures. It does not matter how bad a failure is, or how silly it looked at the time or how silly it looks in hindsight. If a player is not good enough to advance the club’s cause it doesn’t really matter if he is not good enough by a small margin or a large margin. All that matters when drafting is you end up with a critical mass of players good enough to get you somewhere.

However, just for interest sake, let’s also list top 30 hits and misses....

Richmond
8 strong outcomes from the 18 top 30 picks.
2 Cotchin, 3, Martin, 9 Vlastuin, 13 Riewoldt, 15 Ellis, 15 Rioli, 18 Rance, 26 Edwards
8 Outright fails: 8 Oakley-Nichols, 19 Ben Griffiths, 12 Ben Lennon, 12 Corey Ellis 24 Cleve Hughes, 26 Todd Elton, 26 Jayden Post, 30 Jake Batchelor,
2 Not good outcomes: 8 Vickery, 6 Conca though both played over a hundred games and Vickery compensation got us the Bolton pick.

Hawthorn
3 strong outcomes from 15 top 30 picks.
12 Rioli 14 Birchall 19 Smith
2 jury out. 28 Tim O’Brien 19 Ryan Burton(traded out plus effectively about pick 10 for 25yo Wingard, so maybe they got about pick 19 value back for him)
5 Outright fails: 6 Beau Dowler, 6 Mitch Thorp, 22 Kieran Lovell, 22 Beau Muston, 24 Billy Hurtung,
5 Not good outcomes: 24 Brent Renouf, 18 Max Bailey, 3 Xavier Ellis none of these played 100 games but pretty sure all played in one flag, 16 Schoenmakers and 29 Whitecross who never really established as first choice but also played in a flag each.

I think Richmond do really well on that comparison.

We have selected the benchmark club of the era here and analysed it I think fairly and carefully in this post. If you want to pick out other clubs and compare our drafting in that period with theirs, have a go at it, but if you do it along similar lines to this post it will be easier to make fair comparisons. I think Francis Jackson has been shown to have done well overall. When you consider the stories of him being only a part time recruiter and having to pay his own way on recruiting trips etc, well if he was truly responsible for all our recruiting decisions 2005-2015, he has performed miracles to not lower his colours to the much better resourced Hawks.
No thank you for the reply. Fmd what else is there in this age of corona. No footy no pubs no sport stuck at home with the missus!!!!!
Its a good debate and i will reply to the above but right atm im a bit busy.

Just a heads up though from 2005 -2015 Francis had by my count and i could have missed the odd one, 18 picks at 30 or under in the ND .
Of those 18 i have credited him 9 hits and 9 misses. That may well stack up okay against most recruiters i havent done the research.

But lo and behold after pick 30 i counted 28 picks for just 5 hits and 23 misses.
For me an eleven yr history without a final win speaks volumes.
Anyway like i said i will get back to ya and hopefully keep the debate going.
If you base what our club achieved in his 11 -12 yrs then its probably the worst record in the comp.
 

Defibrillate

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Sep 7, 2014
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“No need to personally attack me just because your original post was so dumb”.

I think we just found the explanatory example in the Oxford Dictionary under the word “irony”..................................
 
Feb 4, 2008
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No thank you for the reply. Fmd what else is there in this age of corona. No footy no pubs no sport stuck at home with the missus!!!!!
Its a good debate and i will reply to the above but right atm im a bit busy.

Just a heads up though from 2005 -2015 Francis had by my count and i could have missed the odd one, 18 picks at 30 or under in the ND .
Of those 18 i have credited him 9 hits and 9 misses. That may well stack up okay against most recruiters i havent done the research.

But lo and behold after pick 30 i counted 28 picks for just 5 hits and 23 misses.
For me an eleven yr history without a final win speaks volumes.
Anyway like i said i will get back to ya and hopefully keep the debate going.
If you base what our club achieved in his 11 -12 yrs then its probably the worst record in the comp.

Mopsy I am attempting to move this discussion over to the Francis Jackson thread for the sake of thread relevance, where I have done a little more work to piece together his recruiting history so far. I may copy some of our posts over to that thread or maybe the moderators can move them across? Or we can just copy posts or parts of posts as they become relevant to the discussion over there?
 

mopsy

Premiership Player
Jan 1, 2005
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RICHMOND
RFC from 2005 - 2015 recruited a total of 110 players apologies if ive missed one here or there.

42 of those players are what i would call development/mature players or players 22 and over.
68 are obviously Juniors taken mainly in the ND. Junior player for me is a player 21 or under.

The break down goes like this

44 ND PICKS IN ELEVEN DRAFTS.

39 JUNIORS

J-O-N, Hughes, Casserley, Riewoldt*, Edwards*, Connors, Peterson, Collins, Cotchin*,Rance*, Putt, Vickery, Post, Martin*, Griffiths, Astbury*, Dea, Taylor, Webberley, Nason, Conca*, Batchelor, Helbig, Macdonald, B Ellis*, Elton, Arnot, Vlastuin*, McIntosh*, McBean, McDonough, Lennon, C Ellis, Menadue, Drummond, Butler*, McKenzie, Rioli*, Markov.

Of 39 picks those with an asterix are his hits. There Is only 12. Some of the 12 are debatable and after 09 there are just 5. Imo just 6 high quality players came into the club thru the ND in Jacksons tenure. Riewoldt, Edwards 06, Cotchin, Rance 07 fmd 4 of 6 quality players in his first three seasons, Martin 09 and Vlastuin 2012.

5 MATURE PLAYERS.

Hislop, Derickx, Gordon, Lloyd*, Broad*.

We only used 5 picks in the ND on mature players. Fmd if your Taking mature players you would need to be sure they are good players.
Only two Lloyd and Broad made it and they are hardly high quality players.

40 ROOKIE PICKS IN 11 DRAFTS.

25 JUNIORS

Graham, Howat, Clingan, Collard, Nahas*, Browne, Gourdis, Gilligan, Hicks, Contin, Westhoff, Orielly, Jakobi, A Maric, Darrou, Verrier, Turner, Wright, Heslin, Williams, Short*, Castagna*, Arnot, Soldo*, Stengle.

Of the 25 juniors taken in the Rookie draft i count just 4 hits and three of them came very late in the piece.

15 MATURE PLAYERS
Humm, King*, Silvestor, Cartledge, Howat, Roberts, Polak, Miller, Petterd, Lonergan, Stephenson, Banfield, Miles*, Thomas, Arnot,

Fmd only two of them were long term decent players.

8 PSD PICKS.

4 JUNIORS
White*, Grimes*, Gourdis, O'Hanlon.

Two out of 4 Grimes speaks for himself and i only name White because imo he was an awful player who we gifted 100 games too, how often did we do that before the arrival of Balme.

4 MATURE PLAYERS
Knobel. Kingsley, Cousins*, Houli*.

I thought Cousins was good for us although he was only ever going to be a very short term player. Houli has gone on to become a good player.

17 TRADES - F/A's - D/FA's etc.

P Bowden, Polak, McMahon, Morton, A Thompson, M Farmer, Grigg*, I Maric*, S Morris, Chaplin, Knights, A Edwards, Hampson, T Hunt,
A Moore, Townsend*, Yarran.

Three hits imo and im being kind as Townsend managed to play in a premiership and as i continually have to point out around here, not all premiership players and players who reach 100 games are neccesarily any good.

This debate started about the plethora of Mature hacks we bought to the club. there is a total of 40 mature players in Jacksons time. there are very few good mature players and i count just 9 players under Jackson who were good or better across all areas.

44 ND picks under Jackson for just 12 hits and you could argue we didnt get a high quality A grader since Martin.Although Vlastuin in recent yrs certainly makes a case.

8 PSD picks for 4 hits Grimes, Cousins, Houli and White.

Of course the 2017 side is made up mainly of Jackson picks fmd it could be no other way as he was there from 05 all the way thru to 2015 which is a life time in footy.

Do people forget the times we went up a bit only to be overtaken by clubs who had already been down it was in anyones language poor.

the above speaks for itself it took 12 yrs to put together a premiership team and there was practically no success along the way.

Two major reasons why we spent so long in the wilderness list management and recruiting Francis Jackson presided over 11 of those yr and was hardly better than the dud before him in Greg Beck.

You lot can form your own opinions from the above but if anyone dares say that the above is satisfactory then they are totally delusional.
 
Because he inherited a list that Goofy could have coached to a flag and then in the blink of an eye the worst performed professional sports team in 35 years of Australian Rules Football passed him in the blink of an eye and has humiliated his shanty town side in two finals on the way two two premierships.
TL:DR?
jealousy
 

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