2015 Wooden Spoon Predictions

[slashin_velvet]

I thought about North when I was wondering about this recently and I guess it depends on when you consider "youth" ends, but if you went by the currently 23yo and younger group, North have Ziebell, Cunnington, McDonald, Atley, Brown, Mullett, Bastinac, Jacobs, Turner, Macmillan, Dumont, Durdin, Wood, Garner, Vickers-Willis, Daw, etc and that's a pretty solid and largely proven group right there, who are all currently under 24yo (or at least were as of the start of the year- I went with all those born in 1991 or later), so they have a lot of good young talent that you would bank on going forward. They apparently haven't traded their 1st or 2nd picks in any of the last 7 drafts, so with that being the case you would expect they would have a pretty useful group there.

Its easy when you set an arbitrary cutoff. You make it 1992 instead of 1991, and you lose Bastinac, Ziebell, Cunnington, MacMillan and Daw.

 

[aussierulesrules]

Indeed, but you have to draw a line somewhere and I think if you're still only 23yo you're not considered to be in your prime years yet and many still aren't "proven" by that age, who will still go on to have a really good career (especially "talls"), so I think that is a decent cut-off point. Most of your career is still likely to be ahead of you at that age if you're going to make it, with potentially 8-10 years of your best footy ahead of you. 23yo and under is also the number most were talking about on here when this "youth" topic was being discussed recently, so that's another reason I went with that age group being the cut-off, to keep it in line with those discussions.

 

[Collingwoodity]

You have one of the worst youth in the comp. Saints would be a fraction behind Carlton

Saints have better youth than Carlton. It's not even marginally better. It is comprehensively better.

 

[rustyg70]

None of which are reasons for carlton to go backwards, besides waite of course. All other factors you listed influenced our 2014 season and we were closer to the 8 then a spoon then.

Ummm, no you weren't.
You were 5 games off 8th spot and only 3 from the spoon.

 

[slashin_velvet]

Saints have better youth than Carlton. It's not even marginally better. It is comprehensively better.

Whilst I actually agree with this - that youth played for most of the year with some reasonable senior support, and got beat consistently through the season. As Gold Coast have shown - you need a balance of youth and experience. Saints seem to have less experience going into 2015, than they did the year prior. Whilst they might be slightly better, I still see them with spoon in hand.

 

[Forward Press]

Whilst I actually agree with this - that youth played for most of the year with some reasonable senior support, and got beat consistently through the season. As Gold Coast have shown - you need a balance of youth and experience. Saints seem to have less experience going into 2015, than they did the year prior. Whilst they might be slightly better, I still see them with spoon in hand.

They haven't lost any of their key senior players apart from Lenny Hayes (and some like Riewoldt had very good seasons indicating there is still a bit left in them), and their youth now have one more season under their belts. I only see them going up.

 

[chunkylover53]

Brisbane should finish ahead of Carlton. We boast an excellent midfield and our defense conceded the second least amount of goals during the second half of the year, but due to our age profile and developing list were still prone to the odd blow out. Our tall forwards are still developing but they'll be getting top notch delivery from our midfield and as long as they can provide a big body to bring the ball down our mozzie squad can keep the scoreboard ticking over.

We play Carlton twice next season, both of which I'm confident Brisbane can win.

So, if stats such as 'least amount of goals scored in the second half of the year' count as 'reasons why we will improve' for Brisbane; why doesn't Carltons second half of the year results count?

We pushed Hawthorn, Geelong x2 and Freo. Rolled North who played in a Prelim. All of this was done with a lengthy injury list.

I love it how when teams like North or Richmond have a season with a bunch of close losses, everyone believes they will improve due to winning more of those games, but when Carlton do it - it's completely ignored.

You have one of the worst youth in the comp. Saints would be a fraction behind Carlton

Ignorant comment.

Like I said our youth stocks aren't great but the foundations are there. Menzel, Graham, Cripps, Yarran, Jones, Buckley, Byrne, Bell, Jaksch, Whiley and Holman have either shown something at AFL level or are developing very well through the VFL. I suggest you read some of HARKER 's VFL reports throughout the year if you're so interested in the Carlton list. Very balanced and fair assessments of all players every week.

 

[aussierulesrules]

Things would have to go horribly badly for them this year for Carlton to get the spoon. Unless Mick has completely lost it, he ought to be able to extract a decent output from that group if they don't get crunched by injuries, especially now that he will have more the sort of team he has been wanting, including personalities-wise. That said, it's not necessarily that easy to see where the goals are coming from. Don't see too many teams having sleepless nights worrying about how to stop their forward line. I'm guessing Walker will be switched there, Henderson played there a lot and Menzel needed to kick 40 goals, if they are to threaten to make the finals.

Saints have better youth than Carlton. It's not even marginally better. It is comprehensively better.

I think some still think it's 2011 or 2012 when talking about our young group, but we started rebuilding our list way back in 2011 and now have 30 on our lists who are under 24yo, with a big chunk of them having come from the first 3 rounds of the last 4 drafts and others having been traded in who also cost us picks in that range, so something would have to be horribly wrong if we didn't have a lot of young talent there! The fact we just re-signed an AFL record 19 of them and upgraded all 4 off our rookie list probably tells a bit of a story as well.

I drew up a comparison recently just to show how our 23yo and under group (who have played a combined total of 522 AFL games) compared with Carlton's (237 games total), when some were suggesting that theirs was better than ours, but when you look at the cold hard numbers and facts, I don't think even Gillo would go on with that sort of argument!:

http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/threads/carlton-2015.1084087/page-25#post-36509488

They look to have us well covered in the 24-30yo age bracket though, which is why they really ought to finish higher than us this year, all things being equal, and might even make the 8.

 

[davis_756]

Ummm, no you weren't.
You were 5 games off 8th spot and only 3 from the spoon.

We lost 10 games by 15 points or less, 2014 was as bad as that list could perform

 

[davis_756]

The issue is people can't see where the improvement will come from. On the other hand they can see where all of the other teams will improve.

Its a ridiculous assumption to assume all sides will improve, its a tainted viewpoint based on what people want to see nothing more or less.

 

[rustyg70]

We lost 10 games by 15 points or less, 2014 was as bad as that list could perform

Nice try.
You lost 7 by under 15 points.
Won 2 by under 15,
and had 1 draw.

and 2 of those losses were to teams that finished below.

 

[slashin_velvet]

Nice try.
You lost 7 by under 15 points.
Won 2 by under 15,
and had 1 draw.

and 2 of those losses were to teams that finished below.

You're last point is actually a key point - we lost a lot of games last year that we shouldnt have. That either suggests we are a bad team, or had a bad year. Most supporters think the latter, whilst most opposition think the former.

We played well during the season against good teams, however we only rocked up for 3 quarters. Key examples - Rd 1 vs Port - we were underdone due to our offseason injury list and number of surguries, Rd 13 vs Hawks where we were up during the 3rd quarter and only down by 5 pts at 3qtr time - got smashed in the last qtr, Rd 17 vs Sydney where we were 7 points down at half time, only to let them kick 10.4 to our 0.1 in the 3rd.

We were underdone last season and constantly chasing our tail. With our key players still in a healthy age bracket (25-30), and some promising youth coming through, I would be shocked for us to get the spoon. We wont win the flag - we may not make finals.....but we wont win the spoon.

 

[rustyg70]

You're last point is actually a key point - we lost a lot of games last year that we shouldnt have. .

Going by that logic, Collingwood should have been in the 8.
We lost to the Gold Coast and the Dogs.

 

[chunkylover53]

Going by that logic, Collingwood should have been in the 8.
We lost to the Gold Coast and the Dogs.

Not an outrageous statement.

 

[TedDougChris]

The Saints are playing a lot more kids though who will naturally improve.

But as we've seen with Melbourne, GWS, GCS and to a lesser extent the Saints and Dogs - kids improve at different rates at different times. Some kids who you think will fail end up great and vice versa.

You'd expect GWS and GCS to show significant improvement (due to recruitment and the gradual ageing of their lists), which is why Melbourne, Dogs and Saints are the leading candidates for this discussion - just due to the sheer volume of kids and their reliance upon them.

The upside from this strategy is obvious - it just takes time to realise...

 

[TedDougChris]

They haven't lost any of their key senior players apart from Lenny Hayes (and some like Riewoldt had very good seasons indicating there is still a bit left in them), and their youth now have one more season under their belts. I only see them going up.

Hayes out and Fischer back in - some gains and some losses. Depends how long the older guys can defy father time. Brad Johnson had only missed a handful of games in a decade until his unfortunate achillies injury - was done by the end of the year. Sides like the Dogs, Saints and Melbourne can less afford senior guys missing games - that'll most likely be what decides the last few ladder spots this year.

 

[slashin_velvet]

Going by that logic, Collingwood should have been in the 8.
We lost to the Gold Coast and the Dogs.

Most would have tipped for them to be in the finals based on form prior to the gold coast game. The question then follows - did Collingwood lose those games due to being a bad team? Or did they have a bad run/game?

 

[rustyg70]

Most would have tipped for them to be in the finals based on form prior to the gold coast game. The question then follows - did Collingwood lose those games due to being a bad team? Or did they have a bad run/game?

No, we were pretty shit those games.

 

[slashin_velvet]

No, we were pretty shit those games.

Which is probably the perspective of most Carlton supporters who think we were uncharacterisically bad against some very average teams - particularly compared with some of the passages of play we had during the season. It comes down to being able to quickly turn that around.

 

[BOMBERS 4 LIFE!!!!]

Hah, Essendon getting pick 1 if their team is obliterated and charged as drug cheats?

Um, no. You'll get more draft sanctions and be locked out of the first round for a few years. You'll be lucky to get a few priority picks at the end of the first round in a few years.

No chance the club has already been punished by the AFL.

The AFL won't allow one of their biggest money making clubs be anchored to the bottom of the ladder for years they learnt that mistake with Carlton.

 

[Dez!]

None of which are reasons for carlton to go backwards, besides waite of course. All other factors you listed influenced our 2014 season and we were closer to the 8 then a spoon then.

Going backwards isn't the issue, it's teams steamrolling past you that will be the problem.

 

[TedDougChris]

No chance the club has already been punished by the AFL.

The AFL won't allow one of their biggest money making clubs be anchored to the bottom of the ladder for years they learnt that mistake with Carlton.

Club has been punished for governance breaches - not yet punished for doping infringements.

There is no way, the AFL will allow a club who gets punished for doping infringements to profit from this by getting the #1 draft pick,. There are other clubs who are rebuilding who will need the assistance. They will have learnt from the mistakes of the GCS and GWS introductions - and the subsequent impact on rebuilding sides.

As others have indicated, if this occurs (still an IF) - you'll most likely end up with a end of first round compensation selection rather than Pick 1.

 

[BOMBERS 4 LIFE!!!!]

Club has been punished for governance breaches - not yet punished for doping infringements.

There is no way, the AFL will allow a club who gets punished for doping infringements to profit from this by getting the #1 draft pick,. There are other clubs who are rebuilding who will need the assistance. They will have learnt from the mistakes of the GCS and GWS introductions - and the subsequent impact on rebuilding sides.

As others have indicated, if this occurs (still an IF) - you'll most likely end up with a end of first round compensation selection rather than Pick 1.

And EFC won't be a rebuilding side?

 

[TedDougChris]

And EFC won't be a rebuilding side?

Nope - just a side temporarily interrupted. The majority of players will return (as I said earlier - IF the worst happens) - only a few will retire etc. So it'll just be progress interuptus - so no justification for a #1 pick.

 

[Topkent]

- You have no depth.
- Far too reliant on Judd whose body isn't as reliable as it used to be.
- Only decent target up forward was Waite and he's no longer there.
- Outside of Menzel there's no standout youth there.
- Malthouse isn't the man for Carlton to rebuild with, the game has flown right by him.

Stupid saying the game has flown by him, won a premiership 4 years ago and was out of the system for 2 years?
He still knows a ****load more than the majority of the coaches in the AFL, he basically pioneered the front press and yet the games gone past him?
Stupid