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Will Hardwick stubbornness win us or lose us a premiership?/Hardwick [Merged]
- Thread starter lamb22
- Start date
Leysy Days said:
do you think our recycled ruckman is too young? ;D
i do agree we should have redrafted at least one player we delisted.
Leysy Days said:
I am with you on the A. Edwards issue. Can't understand why you would get rid of a Morton type one year only to pick up Edwards a year later. Similar onfield flaws plus a couple of off field issues thrown in for good measure.
O.S. is a non issue, he is the parachute in case your plane catches fire. If you upgrade him from the rookie list you already have serious problems.
The others I think you need to take in context of the 5 kids taken with all of our high picks. The club needs to start putting a competitive team on the park every week. If you have a third of your list who haven't had their 21st yet it's unlikely you can find enough mature bodies to cope with the rigors of AFL footy week in week out. Do the maths Leysy, we took 5 kids this year, some are suggesting we should have taken another 3 with our other rookie picks. Do that for 3 years and you have over half your list under 21 and the GWS kids are beating you up physically.
I know you are suggesting we look more at state league players, there are a few likely types running around, but I also think that ship has sailed. A guy like Dwyer could become a good solid player for you, but Pettard has more talent in his little finger than Dwyer, just hasn't got it together for any length of time.
In summary I think perhaps we have over compensated with the retreads, but I'm not convinced we missed out on much with the spots taken up by Petterd and others.
linuscambridge said:
Yes agree we need depth, leysy just would have done it a bit differently.
The risk is, that just because you add maturity doesnt mean you necessarily add depth. they still need to be of the ability to step up & contribute meaningfully at AFL level.
How confident are we that Derikx, Edwards, McGuane, White, Petterd, Lonergan etc can step up at the drop of a hat in a big game. Maybe they will, but there's a line between being depth & having too many list cloggers we need to be careful not to cross ILO.
linuscambridge said:
You make some good sound points Linus, but not with you on this one.
There will always be guys coming through state leagues at a later age for a multitude of reasons. Look at Osborne & Martin. Guys that were playing in the EFL a couple of years ago with there mates. Decided to get serious, move to the VFL with the former being very good & outstanding with the latter. They are 22, on the improve & unexposed. These sorts will come through every year.
Will they make it, maybe not. But if they make it you have a longish-term player who can impact straight away with the added possibility of decent ceiling. If not you'll find out quickly & you go again. Keep doing this year in year out & your depth increases as does your quality.
The same exact statement can be made for sifting through other club's youngish rejects, especially guys like Petterd and Lonergan who have shown already they can perform to a certain level in the AFL. Smart organisations have been cashing in on this strategy for years in many different sports. This year in particular could be seen as a good one for such possibilities in the AFL given the reduction in list sizes and the inevitable squeeze that produced.
Disco your going through the same questions. As leysy has said Lonergan is what he is. He's not going to improve now ILO.
linuscambridge said:
Agree Linus.
Best example last year for mine was O'Hanlon.
On one side you could say playing him was great for his personal development, on the other you could say he clearly wasn't physically ready and it went towards losing us games of football that we should have won. Playing kids is great but so is playing finals football. There needs to be some balance.
Tigers of Old said:
That's the core the "play the kids" brigade are missing.
Playing kids is great, and essential, when we choose to do it to ensure it's part of their development. Expose them when we know either the match up wont be too traumatic or we know we have enough support for the kid on the park. Thats the way you develop the kids.
Throwing them in before they are ready because we have no one else and we need to make up the numbers is not the right way of doing things.
We're now in a position to choose when to blood the kids and not be forced to due to lack of depth. That's a very good position to finally be in.
zippadeee said:
I take it Zips doesn't want to put his money where his mouth is? :headscratchtigerlandishome said:
Disco08 said:
I'd say the other club would have a better handle on the players ability overall, work ethic, attitude, strengths and weaknesses.
they were delisted from clubs with depth issues just as big as ours if not bigger
what's our success rate of delisted players from clubs level or below us?
you hang your hat on grigg, houli and maric. these were all required players and would have got a contract had they not insisted on coming over.
Harry said:
How about I hang my hat on Brown, Dawson, Dew, Bradley and Ellard? All discards who have shown they can contribute in good teams.
I don't think we've taken any discards from teams placed below us in the Hartley era.
Houli was terribly performed and we weren't even prepared to trade for hm. He's a discard in any sense of the word.
Harry said:
Delisted recruits would have a much higher success rate. There are far fewer taken and quite a few who go on to play the role they were selected for. The percentage of success stories of kids taken in the rookie draft is very low.
Dew and Ellard were both delisted and redrafted. Ellard was rookied IIRC.
Hird spoke to him about staying, apparently. Doesn't change the fact they couldn't get even a 5th rounder out of us (or anyone else) in a trade for him.