Sorry to harp on about recruiting, but it's because I believe its the single most important aspect of the football department, and therefore critical to our team's fortunes.
Anyway, understandably there's a fair bit of angst amongst supporters given our performance over the last three rounds (to say nothing of most of the last three decades), which has shown up our obviously list deficiencies in pretty much most areas (geez we are lucky to have Richo).
Jack Hill the blind miner, and now even Mike Sheahan, should now be able to recognise that our recruiting over the modern era has not been world's best practice.
By way of background, it will surprise you not to know that after Clinton Casey authorised spending those millions in 2003/2004 beefing up the coaching department to try and help poor old Danny, on the rationale it was a coaching rather than list problem, that the resultant end of year loss of $2.2m led to a dramatic CUT in football dept spending.
Obviously what should have happened was a recognition that we were hopelessly under-resourced in this important area and more money and staff were required to select the right players, rather than leaving it to Greg Miller sticking his finger in the air, which was pretty much all it was back then. The results of that failed strategy, if you can call it that, can be clearly seen in the important drafts of 2004-2005, in particular.
Anyway, after Clinton moved aside the club under Gary March has finally and very belatedly moved to rectify this in 2008, to the point where I understand we now have three full time recruiting personnel, and the infrastructure is also being upgraded.
Now this probably still means we are under resourced vs our competition but at least we have hauled ourselves up from rank amateur status to be now actually in the game.
We should therefore be able to reduce the clangers (we all know who they are) and increase our selection percentages, which should also translate into increased confidence to penetrate deeper into the draft with more picks.
Well I certainly hope so anyway.
Bad news is that the list restructure, as always, is gonna take some time.
The point of this rant is to give a view on why we are where we are, and hopefully provide some balance against some of the more extreme theories (adverse culture, wallet-hating, etc).
The club will have difficulty admitting the mistakes of the past because current senior administrators will not want to heap blame on the honest if not mis-guided performance of foot soldiers in the past (some of whom provided their time and effort for nothing).
Past and current administrations, as do supporters, want the best for the Tigers - unfortunately our path to professionalism has just been that much slower than everyone else.
I don't think we are fully there by any means but as Dyer Disciple and others continue to note, off-field we now are vastly improved, which should give all supporters hope and required patience to stick with the Tiges for the long term.
Anyway, understandably there's a fair bit of angst amongst supporters given our performance over the last three rounds (to say nothing of most of the last three decades), which has shown up our obviously list deficiencies in pretty much most areas (geez we are lucky to have Richo).
Jack Hill the blind miner, and now even Mike Sheahan, should now be able to recognise that our recruiting over the modern era has not been world's best practice.
By way of background, it will surprise you not to know that after Clinton Casey authorised spending those millions in 2003/2004 beefing up the coaching department to try and help poor old Danny, on the rationale it was a coaching rather than list problem, that the resultant end of year loss of $2.2m led to a dramatic CUT in football dept spending.
Obviously what should have happened was a recognition that we were hopelessly under-resourced in this important area and more money and staff were required to select the right players, rather than leaving it to Greg Miller sticking his finger in the air, which was pretty much all it was back then. The results of that failed strategy, if you can call it that, can be clearly seen in the important drafts of 2004-2005, in particular.
Anyway, after Clinton moved aside the club under Gary March has finally and very belatedly moved to rectify this in 2008, to the point where I understand we now have three full time recruiting personnel, and the infrastructure is also being upgraded.
Now this probably still means we are under resourced vs our competition but at least we have hauled ourselves up from rank amateur status to be now actually in the game.
We should therefore be able to reduce the clangers (we all know who they are) and increase our selection percentages, which should also translate into increased confidence to penetrate deeper into the draft with more picks.
Well I certainly hope so anyway.
Bad news is that the list restructure, as always, is gonna take some time.
The point of this rant is to give a view on why we are where we are, and hopefully provide some balance against some of the more extreme theories (adverse culture, wallet-hating, etc).
The club will have difficulty admitting the mistakes of the past because current senior administrators will not want to heap blame on the honest if not mis-guided performance of foot soldiers in the past (some of whom provided their time and effort for nothing).
Past and current administrations, as do supporters, want the best for the Tigers - unfortunately our path to professionalism has just been that much slower than everyone else.
I don't think we are fully there by any means but as Dyer Disciple and others continue to note, off-field we now are vastly improved, which should give all supporters hope and required patience to stick with the Tiges for the long term.
