Exactly this. Having the youngest most inexperienced side is a great excuse for the poor performance.
But why are we in this situation 5 years in?
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Exactly this. Having the youngest most inexperienced side is a great excuse for the poor performance.
But why are we in this situation 5 years in?
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I think the issue folks have is that there should be some more names on that list of not having played a game this year.
Guys like Murphy and McHenry should only ever play if everyone else is injured.
And players like Nank not being in the 22 at the start of the year, Curtin being under-utilised, ditto Curtin, ditto Taylor.
Ryan has showed enough to get a debut but hasn’t, and even Edward’s last 6 weeks should have got him a look in.
It’s not like we’ve been a top 8 side vying for finals and couldn’t afford to inject even more experience into upcoming guys instead of spuds.
The club is prepared to give senior players greater more time than the Cartel wants, when their form falls away (e.g. Smith). They've earned that right, after a decade of service to the club.
Other than that, they've given out plenty of opportunities - as evidenced by the stats previously provided. The only players who haven't been given an opportunity this year are 1st year kids (and a retired Sloane). Literally every other player on our list has been given the opportunity to show what they are/aren't capable of at AFL level.
You should be interested - given that you're effectively holding us to a different standard than that used by every single club in the competition.
We gutted the list to an extent rarely seen. Now the few senior players we did retain are reaching the ends of their careers. We haven't recruited many experienced players to replace them (really just Rankine & Dawson), so the aging stars are being replaced in the team by kids - significantly dropping the average age & experience of the team.
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And why the disappointment of Pedlars season stings
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McFumbles has played enough SANFL games to qualify for the finals, and hasn't been seen at AFL level since R13. As previously noted, Murphy retains his place in the team because we literally have nobody to replace him (ANB, come on down).
Curtin hasn't been underutilised, other than the game where he only played 4 minutes. He might be a midfielder, but he's a 197 cm midfielder, and tall players still take time to grow into their bodies and gain fitness.
Both of which would only make us younger & less experienced, when a lack of experience is a fundamental reason why we're finishing 15th this year.
Maybe they could have been given an opportunity, but the players they'd be replacing are only marginally less experienced. You want to have your cake and eat it too.
We have been playing the kids! We've had the least experienced team all year. We've used 39 of 43 players on our list (excluding Sloane, but including T Murray who has only been on the list since the MSD).
People keep regurgitating the "we need to play the kids more" line, and then they turn around and whinge when we don't win enough games to make the finals. They don't see the obvious contradictions in their own position, or the facts (as proven by the stats) that we ARE playing the kids, more than almost any other team.
Because our middle age 23-28 players taken from draft are failures eg Mchenry Jones
The traded in ones go ok eg hinge and keays
Ie Reid is more competent ( and lucky ) at his job than Ogilvie
At this point, with our few remaining veterans rapidly fading, we only have 2 options:
A - Recruit some more experienced players to support our youngsters (via trade or FA)
B - Wait patiently while our existing youngsters grow in age & experience
I suspect it will be a little bit from column A (ANB & Luko), and a lot from column B.
We've drafted a LOT of youngsters over the last few years, since we gutted the list in 2019/2020. We're now at the point where we can start to seriously filtering out the youngsters we think won't make it, but we needed to give them enough games to prove themselves one way or another.
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The only reason we've been forced to replace senior players with kids is because we didn't plan for the future and have stalled the rebuilt as a result
Here's an example
In 2020 we go into the season with Brodie Smith on 167 games and Josh Worrell on 0 games. What Nicks did was give Smith a further 95 AFL games, and Worrell 29 games. While not a direct replacement, by the time Nicks "retires" Smith, a defensive replacement we have for him hasn't even played 30 games.
If in 2020 we traded Smith and backed in Worrell, now at the end of 2024 our replacement is no longer a kid, but (by my maths, factoring in injuries) a 70 game player.
Let's say at the end of 2021 we go to a Rory Sloane (211 games) or Rory Laird (160 games) and say, thanks mate, you're not required in the midfield moving forward. We just drafted Luke Pedlar with a first round pick and he's a midfielder.
Instead of handing out an extra 44 games to Sloane or 86 games to Laird in the midfield, we develop Pedlar instead. He goes from our current reality of being a 30 game player in 2024, to a 60+ game player. In an alternate reality when Sloane retires (or would have retired if he kept playing) we'd have a 60 game replacement right there, not a kid, or a Billy Dowling or Zac Taylor
Maybe those decisions don't pan out, Pedlar doesn't become the player we want, Worrell doesn't succeed. But going down an alternate route means that in 2024 their replacements are ready to go AFL players.
Here's an example
In 2020 we go into the season with Brodie Smith on 167 games and Josh Worrell on 0 games. What Nicks did was give Smith a further 95 AFL games, and Worrell 29 games. While not a direct replacement, by the time Nicks "retires" Smith, a defensive replacement we have for him hasn't even played 30 games.
If in 2020 we traded Smith and backed in Worrell, now at the end of 2024 our replacement is no longer a kid, but (by my maths, factoring in injuries) a 70 game player.
Let's say at the end of 2021 we go to a Rory Sloane (211 games) or Rory Laird (160 games) and say, thanks mate, you're not required in the midfield moving forward. We just drafted Luke Pedlar with a first round pick and he's a midfielder.
Instead of handing out an extra 44 games to Sloane or 86 games to Laird in the midfield, we develop Pedlar instead. He goes from our current reality of being a 30 game player in 2024, to a 60+ game player. In an alternate reality when Sloane retires (or would have retired if he kept playing) we'd have a 60 game replacement right there, not a kid, or a Billy Dowling or Zac Taylor
Maybe those decisions don't pan out, Pedlar doesn't become the player we want, Worrell doesn't succeed. But going down an alternate route means that in 2024 their replacements are ready to go AFL players.
You can’t look at this year in isolation. How do we give kids more experience? The answer isn’t too hard.
A lot of these kids should have an extra 20-30 games in them. Now we’re blooding kids only when the veterans are on their last legs. Or even worse….playing them.
Smith should have been sent to the SANFL 20 games ago. Sloane played too long. And we’ve invested games in guys with limited ceilings.
If we hadn’t got Rankine and Dawson in, we’d still be anchored to the bottom of the table 5 years into a rebuild.
A lot of these kids should have an extra 20-30 games in them. Now we’re blooding kids only when the veterans are on their last legs. Or even worse….playing them.
Smith should have been sent to the SANFL 20 games ago. Sloane played too long. And we’ve invested games in guys with limited ceilings.
If we hadn’t got Rankine and Dawson in, we’d still be anchored to the bottom of the table 5 years into a rebuild.
Snap
I get that the Cartel are perpetually anxious to play with shiny new toys - and unwilling to cop the ladder penalty that comes along with it (therein lies the contradiction of their position).
The veterans - Smith & Sloane particularly - have been given more time than the cartel wanted, to prove that they could regain their old form. They have earned that right, through 10+ years of service to the club. The Cartel are disrespectful, which is hardly surprising given their obsession with shiny new toys.
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Now you want us to make career decisions on players? Not 3 years ago , not last year but now?
And why only young players?
As has been pointed out, we have a lack of decent players in the 23-28 year age range. This is partly due to poor drafting, but it's also largely due to the Pond Scum penalties - which cost us 3-4 players who would now be in their prime.
It is what it is, but you can't blame the 2024 selectors for events which occurred before these coaches even joined the club.
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I seem to recall you were all over Jones when we drafted him as I was with McHenry, so Hamish isn't the only one that missed if that's how you score? Mind you both have played close to the median AFL games for the pick they were taken.
GreyCrow
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I like how you think Cartel is an insult
Nobody earns the right to continued poor performances . I dont give a flying eff if I am disrespectful to Smith - he is done . No amount of gold passes can hide that stench
One thing I do know is the cartel gets a lot more things right and a long time earlier than any of the other pundits here
The veterans are being filtered out too - Smith has been in & out of the team, and hasn't played in the AFL since R19; Laird is no longer attending centre bounces; Matt Crouch has been omitted many times over the last few seasons when his form has dropped away. At the end of the day, these players have earned the extra time to prove themselves, after 10+ years of service to the club.
Why only young players? Because we filtered out most of the older players in 2019/20, so now it's the younger generation who are starting to get weeded out
It should be an insult, given how childish & stupid many of the Cartel's positions & policies are.
He earned time to prove that he was still capable of performing at the required level. He failed to do so, and has now been confined to the SANFL. The Cartel kept saying that they'd bring him back, but the selectors have consistently chosen not to do so.
I suspect his post-season review will lean heavily towards "you need to retire now", rather than "here's where we see you in 2026".
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Like how Fog should be delisted?
As I said the cartel see things a lot earlier and a lot more correctly than you ever have
But we still give them central roles and shift other players into roles that they weren’t drafted as and roles that lend themselves to inconsistent performances.
I think the general problem is we played every senior we could in the first half of the year and were still well out of the running. Then hanging on to players like Murphy, bringing Smith back only for him to get sick and be a late out to not return, Jones in a similar situation - when really giving Curtin more time, not dropping Dowling, less sub games for all the young lads and maybe giving Ryan and Edwards a taster game would have had us finish what? 15th? Right where we are anyway.
And the absolutley no one can replace Murphy is crap - if he got injured what would we do just line up with 17 on the park? We just didn't want to drop anymore senior players or drop a hard worker.
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- Jul 6, 2017
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I think this is a fundamentally incorrect statement. I think if we had prioritised our younger mids in dowling and taylor and curtin etc, in lieu of murphy, laird, smith etc this year, the 'cartel' would have been far more forgiving of a low placed finish as we could see what the club was trying to do. Swallowing a low placed finish giving laird, crouch smith, murphy priority is much harder when they clearly are not the future of the club
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