- Mar 14, 2011
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- AFL Club
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Why do you constantly twist the truth.You don't need a million draft picks to win a flag. Melbourne are the last club that has had access to masses of draft picks, it's looking like an outlier. Collingwood and Geelong won the last 2 flags. Both are sides with a huge amount of old players with incredible cohesion and experience. Both have had very few high draft picks in the last decade.
Richmond were literally where we were sitting just off the good sides finishing ninth every year but building cohesion and experience.
Interesting conversation I heard on SEN recently, didn't hear who the guy was but he was saying that sides are choosing to try to overpay now for FAs and experienced trades because when Tasmania comes in you want a good solid core to stay up. Sides just off the pack won't be able to use drafting to move forward and thin lists will struggle to make up ground.
Mediocrity for 15 years isn't going to be fixed by selling good players to get picks. We've done that and got nothing from it except more mediocrity. When they say this draft is even it means guys taken at 15 won't be that different from guys taken at 5. It doesn't have a top 10 that are seriously better than the guys later in the draft. To me it sounds like a foolhardy plan.
To me we are mediocre now because we have a really thin group between 22 and 26 yo, because we failed to draft 4 to 8 years ago. Culling the better players from that age group is exactly how you make more holes down the track. In 4 years we won't have Hill, wood, Sinclair, Wilkie, Howard, Marshall, Steele, Ross, Membrey, Webster etc. They'll either have finished up or at the end.
Our group that will be our older core are Cordy, Hunter Clark, King, Battle, Higgins, Stocker, Dow, Paton, Bonner, Sharman, Allison and Hall. King, Battle and Higgins are the only ones that look like above average talent and Sharman is pushing towards it.
The pies landed a generational talent via FS in Nick Daicos. They had a good base similar to us. They added a game changing talent.
The cats landed arguably 2 top 10 players in the league in Cameron and Dangerfield. They have also been able to stockpile picks behind generational talents going back to the mid 2000s.
We have neither the generational talent of a Daicos or landing top 10 players.
It has to be the draft and it has to be pouring draft picks in.
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