Short arms are hard to Swallow

[Mr Magic]

15 other clubs also rejected Swallow not just us.

He is not disimilar to 20 or 30 players that miss getting drafted every year. F Caruso won 2 morrish medals in a row and is now at Coburg, Ryan Anderson was an AIS scholarship holder and missed out on getting drafted.........also see A Horne who won the TAC cup award.

1 or 2 might make but most don't. All I can say is thank chirst the footy department has started over ruling coaches on recruiting decisions.

For Phantom a little balance to the argument is that we took Casserly instead of someone like Swallow with our last pick in that draft. I know who I would much rather, given one has pace, balance, skills and long arms and the other dosent.

 

[seven]

There seems to be this real chase on recruiting good athletes and turning them into footballers these days.
What happened to the days of recruiting good junior footballers and turning them into good league players?
When it comes to athletes, recruiting staff tend to over look their lack of skills in say kicking or marking for their ability to jump high or their fast times in sprinting.
From what I have seen this sort of thinking really doesn’t work. If the kid is a bad kick at 17 he’ll still be a bad kick at 27.
Everyone seems to be trying to chase the next Judd or Carey.
Just recruit the boys on their football ability alone. If he can run like Judd or mark like Carey then you got a winner. But those sort of players are a rare find.
that's just my thoughts. :blah

 

[GoodOne]

lol, short arms. However, it was found that Swallow also has short legs and that his arms actually start at his hips and not his shoulders, This counteracted the short arm problem and made him a prized draft pick.

Also in other headlines, recruiting officers at 10 of the 16 clubs have rushed to African jungles in search of gorillas with good aerobic fitness as it has been found that their arms actually go all the way to the ground.

 

[evo]

There seems to be this real chase on recruiting good athletes and turning them into footballers these days.
What happened to the days of recruiting good junior footballers and turning them into good league players?
When it comes to athletes, recruiting staff tend to over look their lack of skills in say kicking or marking for their ability to jump high or their fast times in sprinting.
From what I have seen this sort of thinking really doesn’t work. If the kid is a bad kick at 17 he’ll still be a bad kick at 27.
Everyone seems to be trying to chase the next Judd or Carey.
Just recruit the boys on their football ability alone. If he can run like Judd or mark like Carey then you got a winner. But those sort of players are a rare find.
that's just my thoughts. :blah

And good thoughts they are se7en.

You focussed on the problem in the bolded bit.Recruiters are forever trying to outsmart each other.Ultimately it is more often than not self defeating.They try to much to look into the future rather than looking into the now.Once they do that they are straying into the 'luck' department.

 

[The_General]

The one word I hate seeing "potential"

Elite junior footballers become AFL players. Guys who are fringe or adequate at the level, but have "potential" are huge risks usually. I don't care if he can run a 15beep test, or sub 3 sec 20m sprint, if he can't kick it, or can't find it, he's fairly useless to us.

 

[Scoop]

The pressure is on old Bevo, time to produce a third round wonder ala Swallow and Knights.

 

[yellow_and_black]

The story I hear was that Miller doesnt want people at Richmond who avoid pub shouts :hihi

 

[tigersforever06]

Andrew Swallow is miles in front of JON

Swallow looks like a footballer. From what ive seen of JON would be lucky to play for Coburg reserves

 

[Tambling Man]

What is the reason why recruiters in general look down on "footballing" types like Mitchell, Knights, Swallow, Foley, Houli etc? Is it mainly the percieved lack of improvement in them or is it because of physical limitaions like short arms or slow 20 metre sprint times?

 

[BBC]

Swallow looks like a good player. The one that looks like the one that got away is Burchall, who went at number 14.

We seem to avoid in and under grunt players with our early picks in favour of flankers and key position types.

 

[tigersforever06]

Swallow looks like a good player. The one that looks like the one that got away is Burchall, who went at number 14.

We seem to avoid in and under grunt players with our early picks in favour of flankers and key position types.

Dont forget Mitch Clark

Seriously JON vs those 3, omg makes me wanna tear my hair out at how pathetic our recuting can be at times.

Whats equally amazing is that Birchall is exactly the type of Player Wallace drools over, Tall ahtletic good disposal and composed. Birchall is somehow what they thought JON would be, except Birchall is already far far ahead

 

[Scoop]

We just need to stop looking over types who just get the ball.

At Richmond we fail to see what young footballers can do.

We look at what the cannot do and what they might do.

 

[ZeroGame]

if you look back at post of mine in PRE after 2004 u/18 championships you will see that I suggested we should rookie Swallow as a bottom ager.

he subsequently didn't get picked up in that draft and proceeded to dominate the u/18 championships the next season.

Evo - You can't rookie bottom aged players that are eligible for U/18s the following year, it's national draft, PSD or wait til next year.

 

[Obelix]

This thread raises a question for me - would Swallow have turned out as good if Richmond drafted him?

What I mean is - is our junior development program good enough to take a junior who clearly has a lot of rough edges and make him top shelf AFL player. Swallow spent the bulk of last year in the reserves working hard on developing his game. In recent times we've had the likes of Polo, Raines and Foley do the same - spend tonnes of time in the reserves working on their skills etc before taking the seniors by storm. However I can think of a handful of players who to me haven't looked like they've come on quite as well as they could have.

Is that a recruitment issue or a player development issue?

 

[pahoffm]

This thread raises a question for me - would Swallow have turned out as good if Richmond drafted him?

What I mean is - is our junior development program good enough to take a junior who clearly has a lot of rough edges and make him top shelf AFL player. Swallow spent the bulk of last year in the reserves working hard on developing his game. In recent times we've had the likes of Polo, Raines and Foley do the same - spend tonnes of time in the reserves working on their skills etc before taking the seniors by storm. However I can think of a handful of players who to me haven't looked like they've come on quite as well as they could have.

Is that a recruitment issue or a player development issue?

One might conclude that if the questioned issue related to the individual was one of talent - recruiting; if one of turning talent into performance - then development.

Each case in individual, unless they're all pointing in roughly the same direction.

 

[evo]

oops.