AFL Player # 3: Darcy Parish

[Beerfish]

Contract Status: Unrestricted free agent 2028 or 2029
My Boy Draft 2024: Pick 18, doug85

 

[DERO]

1) There is no reason to believe Parish is the sort of character Cotchin was.

2) Even if makes a change mentally, he has neither the speed nor endurance to be anything more than a plodder when it comes to defensive running.

We'll never know now that Stringer has left. They could have gone on walks together.

 

[The Donners]

Alright run through it

He’s not agreeing to trade to any of the 8 interstate sides - just had a young kid.

Carlton, Melbourne, North, Bulldogs don’t need an inside mid. Richmond is going in another direction.

Hawthorn you could squint and make an argument for, but the way they play and spending money elsewhere id guess probably not.

Geelong, Collingwood and St Kilda probably the 3 options you could’ve made a case for. But these days such a long contract doesn’t secure you any sort of asset - in fact, it’s seen as a burden to his new team to have to take that on.

Having a kid doesn’t stop you from relocating and the “encumbered” club can pay part of an outgoing player’s salary to entice opposition clubs.

 

[jdstorm]

Having a kid doesn’t stop you from relocating and the “encumbered” club can pay part of an outgoing player’s salary to entice opposition clubs.

If we’d have to pay a huge amount of salary to get a pick that’s likely to produce a player both worse then Parish and have to pay Parish salary there’s little value in doing that.

At minimum Parish is a former AA mid in the prime of his career who’s adding competition for best 22 spots and selection pressure.

If teams are asking you to give him away you don’t have to. Can just hold and potentially have him rack up 50 a game in the VFL as injury cover. Then trade him in 12 months if he wants to leave.

Just because the rosters unbalanced doesn’t mean we have to turn into Gold Coast and give away perfectly good players we can easily afford

 

[cAsEy_18]

Having a kid doesn’t stop you from relocating and the “encumbered” club can pay part of an outgoing player’s salary to entice opposition clubs.

It doesn’t, but speaking as someone with a young kid myself, you want to have things settled, be close to family/your support base etc…
There is zero chance with a 2-3 month old at home and life set up here that Parish would have been intrigued if Essendon went to him and said “Hey, have you thought about WA?”

 

[HirdsTheWord]

Parish avoids physicality. Hates to engage with an oppo and stoppage because it stops his momentum getting the footy himself.

Most his tackles are gang tackles or repeat stoppage tackles and too many the oppo still gets his hands free to handball. People will speak to his improving tackle numbers but he’s is no where near the level that we need him.

I don’t see him as overly team orientated either. Would definitely run harder two ways if that was the case.

Parish is smart though, he knows that possessions = personal accolades. Every time you run defensively thats energy spent not getting the ball. You only have so many petrol tickets in a game.

All stars know this but parish isn’t anywhere near as damaging when he does win it offensively.

the guy won an AA selection as an inside mid.

when healthy he is one of the best contested mids in the game.

the suggestion he doesn't like contact, is utterly stupid.

 

[Agronomus]

Trent Cotchin would have been of similar age when he was celebrated to change his game style

Why cant Parish be the same?

Comparing Parish to Cotchin doesn't help your argument

 

[Agronomus]

the guy won an AA selection as an inside mid.

when healthy he is one of the best contested mids in the game.

the suggestion he doesn't like contact, is utterly stupid.

It's not so much he doesn't like contact, he just can't handle it. Has he ever broken a tackle ever?

 

[Chief Hopper]

If we’d have to pay a huge amount of salary to get a pick that’s likely to produce a player both worse then Parish and have to pay Parish salary there’s little value in doing that.

At minimum Parish is a former AA mid in the prime of his career who’s adding competition for best 22 spots and selection pressure.

If teams are asking you to give him away you don’t have to. Can just hold and potentially have him rack up 50 a game in the VFL as injury cover. Then trade him in 12 months if he wants to leave.

Just because the rosters unbalanced doesn’t mean we have to turn into Gold Coast and give away perfectly good players we can easily afford

Id have said the same for keeping Stringer.

 

[jdstorm]

Id have said the same for keeping Stringer.

I think it’s a perfectly reasonable position in some ways.

The other issue is how do you get different results if you bring essentially the same group back.

Think Jake leaving was a Win/Win/Win even if it was a smaller win for us then Jake/GWS.

Hard to see a mutually beneficial outcome for any of our other players given our season imploding

 

[hurlygurdy]

I think it’s a perfectly reasonable position in some ways.

The other issue is how do you get different results if you bring essentially the same group back.

Think Jake leaving was a Win/Win/Win even if it was a smaller win for us then Jake/GWS.

Hard to see a mutually beneficial outcome for any of our other players given our season imploding

This is the issue in a nut shell. How do you get a different result? You get it by the development of the group together on and off the field. If you change too much, you lose the coherence previously gained. We were close to being good this year, not a lot needed to change. With the age profile of the team the main job really was and is to avoid going near the panic button. But the fans demand panic.

 

[faible]

This is the issue in a nut shell. How do you get a different result? You get it by the development of the group together on and off the field. If you change too much, you lose the coherence previously gained. We were close to being good this year, not a lot needed to change. With the age profile of the team the main job really was and is to avoid going near the panic button. But the fans demand panic.

I don't think we've panicked all that much.

We've delisted a number of senior guys who weren't going to be part of the future, and were in most cases at best 'AFL standard' but with no real scope for anything further, and likely would decline - Heppell, Hind, Kelly all played a decent number of games this year, where most of their best games were decent but not amazing (Heppell had the best, but also had poor ones).

Stringer is clearly still an AFL standard player, but is a disruptive 'fit' for our forwardline, and at an age where he's unlikely to be part of an EFC Premiership side, so we offered him a contract commensurate with his value to EFC (1 year) and he made the decision to move elsewhere.

This opens up a number of spots in the Best-23 each week for guys that have upside and should be reaching an age where they're able to contribute each and every week; Reid, Perkins, Cox, Hayes, Hobbs, Roberts and Tsatas should all be pushing for a spot each week, and Kako as a small forward should be in the frame as well given they can often contribute quite young.

Ridley, Parish, Shiel, Wright, Duursma all had injured impacted seasons, SEH looked like he deserved an AFL opportunity and should have a full pre-season, Bryan will be another pre-season stronger and Setterfield (if fit) still provides a taller midfield option.

We might be slightly worse than our 2024 best, but we also had plenty of games where we simply weren't very good anyway, and shouldn't be worse than those.

 

[jdstorm]

This is the issue in a nut shell. How do you get a different result? You get it by the development of the group together on and off the field. If you change too much, you lose the coherence previously gained. We were close to being good this year, not a lot needed to change. With the age profile of the team the main job really was and is to avoid going near the panic button. But the fans demand panic.

Agreed. We only really had one sensible path forward and it appears the club has decided to be competent.

I don't think we've panicked all that much.

We've delisted a number of senior guys who weren't going to be part of the future, and were in most cases at best 'AFL standard' but with no real scope for anything further, and likely would decline - Heppell, Hind, Kelly all played a decent number of games this year, where most of their best games were decent but not amazing (Heppell had the best, but also had poor ones).

Stringer is clearly still an AFL standard player, but is a disruptive 'fit' for our forwardline, and at an age where he's unlikely to be part of an EFC Premiership side, so we offered him a contract commensurate with his value to EFC (1 year) and he made the decision to move elsewhere.

This opens up a number of spots in the Best-23 each week for guys that have upside and should be reaching an age where they're able to contribute each and every week; Reid, Perkins, Cox, Hayes, Hobbs, Roberts and Tsatas should all be pushing for a spot each week, and Kako as a small forward should be in the frame as well given they can often contribute quite young.

Ridley, Parish, Shiel, Wright, Duursma all had injured impacted seasons, SEH looked like he deserved an AFL opportunity and should have a full pre-season, Bryan will be another pre-season stronger and Setterfield (if fit) still provides a taller midfield option.

We might be slightly worse than our 2024 best, but we also had plenty of games where we simply weren't very good anyway, and shouldn't be worse than those.

Honestly it would be embarrassing if we were worse than last season. We were so bad in transition. That competence in that area should make us a significantly better side.

Wether we move up the ladder? No idea lots of teams in our range bought in players and would be expected to move up. (Freo, Pies, Suns, Saints) while we on the surface went margainly backwards and are bringing in replacement level guys and later picks to fill out the list.

 

[Call Me Cake]

Honestly it would be embarrassing if we were worse than last season

Nope. We will have one of the most, if not the most, inexperienced teams out on the park next year, and this is understood by many and further exemplified by the pruning of dead weight this off-season (and hopefully not the end of it).

Anyone with any sense of football will know that with inexperience on the field comes with a higher chance of being inconsistent. It's as simple as that.

However, what it will provide is a more fruitful path for our future and it'll be a further stepping stone to exponential growth, and the roots of all of it date back to the end of 2022.

Not to jinx anything but the fact that there's stability off the field for the first time in a long time and a pretty united front in the running of the club should mean that our main goal is to let the on-field stuff progress as it should, and the actions we see being taken are the natural process of that.

 

[Rick Ross]

Agreed. We only really had one sensible path forward and it appears the club has decided to be competent.



Honestly it would be embarrassing if we were worse than last season. We were so bad in transition. That competence in that area should make us a significantly better side.

Wether we move up the ladder? No idea lots of teams in our range bought in players and would be expected to move up. (Freo, Pies, Suns, Saints) while we on the surface went margainly backwards and are bringing in replacement level guys and later picks to fill out the list.

I feel like we’ll be endlessly debating coach’s the “resultist” metric in 2025.

Are we better (base upon performance indicators) but don’t win as many games?

Does a drop in wins / ladder mean we are actually worse - which is fair cop as it’s metric on which people play finals.