Brief Analysis of our national draft history 1991 to 2008

[FreddyFlintstone]

Hi all,

Bit of time on my hands and looking at other draft threads, thought I might do a bit of investigation on our history in the national draft.

Categorised into picks 1-29, 30-59, 60+, then looked at how many games we've got out of them, in groups of 0-25, 26-50, 50+

Why? I wanted to see how our drafting of lower picks stacks up against the higher picks, seeing that the next couple of years of drafting is essentially screwed (exceptions being Wally, Libba & maybe Hunter Jnr's)

The info I reckon is most important is highlighted, and some of it is very obvious. I think the most interesting info comes about when I remove the 3 picks in the 30-59 range from the 1999 "superdraft"(for us anyway), when we picked up Gia (32), Hahn(37) & Gilbee(43) and it clearly shows that over the journey, we have been better at getting more out of our later picks than we have of our mid range. When looking at the raw data, you must take into consideration we have had nearly double the amount of picks in the 30-59 range than we've had in the 60+ range. This is a distinct area which can be improved upon, and I'd dare say the footy department would already be all over this.

Remember this is national draft only. Preseason, rookie, midyear etc are not included.

You may find interesting, you may think rubbish, either way here it is

Picks 1-29
Total games 1959
No of players 28
Average games per player 70
Games breakdown
0 to 25 - 8(28.57%)
26 to 49 - 7(25%)
50+ - 13(46.43%)

No longer on list - 16(57.14%)
STILL PLAYING - (42.86%)


Picks 30-59, *Without 1999 group
Total Games 1218, *724
No of Players 42. *39
Avg games per player 29. *19
Games Breakdown
0 to 25 - 32(76.19%), *32(82.05%)
26 to 49 - 2(4.76%). *2(5.13%)
50+ - 8(19.05%), *5(12.82%)

No longer on list - 31(73.81%), *31(79.49%)
STILL PLAYING - 11(26.19%), *8(20.51%)


Picks 60+
Total Games 573
No of Players 22
Avg games per player 26
Games breakdown
0 to 25 - 16(72.73%)
26 to 49 - 3 (13.64)
50+ - 3(13.64)

No longer on list - 18(81.82%)
STILL PLAYING - 4(18.18%)


I suppose it would make more sense when compared to the rest of the competition, but really I couldn't give a shit about other teams, and I don't have a long attention span, so would probably give up pretty quickly. I just think it shows that we're really not too bad at picking the exceptions in the "left overs".

Couldn't find info from prior to 1991, but if I had, then a Mr Chris Grant would have been included and my argument would have been further justified.

Got info from Footy Wire - God I hope it's accurate

Hope I haven't bored you too much (well, not as much as I was in order to do this).

Feel free to comment

cheers

FF

 

[murphy2bedabest]

Looking at when the draft started in 1987?? there was alot of hit and miss in those early years, once some money was put into drafting thats where it became more hits then misses, not just our club it will only get better, well after the next 5 years anyway with the GC and GWS coming in.

Yes we have gained the gems late in the Draft and Rookies over the years, Grant @ 105 Lake in the 70's Cross 56 Morris Boyd Picken and Harbrow all as Rookies with so many others.

People also forget that we picked up Leon Cameron with our first pick in the Grant draft Johno was at pick 10 same as Brown, Murphy came @ 13 in 1999.

we all know who we got 2000-09 and the misses we have had Power McMahon Walsh.

Which ever way you look at it we have built a side that can win the Premirship in 2010, we now IMO have the right mix and with some luck in 2010 should go close (atleast making the GF)

 

[Spiritof82]

Looking at when the draft started in 1987?? there was alot of hit and miss in those early years, once some money was put into drafting thats where it became more hits then misses, not just our club it will only get better, well after the next 5 years anyway with the GC and GWS coming in.

Yes we have gained the gems late in the Draft and Rookies over the years, Grant @ 105 Lake in the 70's Cross 56 Morris Boyd Picken and Harbrow all as Rookies with so many others.

People also forget that we picked up Leon Cameron with our first pick in the Grant draft Johno was at pick 10 same as Brown, Murphy came @ 13 in 1999.

we all know who we got 2000-09 and the misses we have had Power McMahon Walsh.

Which ever way you look at it we have built a side that can win the Premirship in 2010, we now IMO have the right mix and with some luck in 2010 should go close (atleast making the GF)

Yo can also throw in high picks such as Wight, Williams and Faulkner as big fails/misses as well.

 

[Bulldog Joe]

Yo can also throw in high picks such as Wight, Williams and Faulkner as big fails/misses as well.

How does Wight qualify as a high pick.
Round 4 pick 49 with 36 games would be at least par for his draft position and ahead of the figures listed in the OP for his draft range.

 

[paul scholes]

Yo can also throw in high picks such as Wight, Williams and Faulkner as big fails/misses as well.

Wight isn't an early pick,Faulkner was ordinary and let's be honest injuries haven't let us have a fair assessment on Williams. Just hope if Tom gets through some here will publicly apologise. Somehow I doubt it.

 

[dogwatch]

Good effort FF, but I think ignoring what other clubs have done misses the point. The draft (or rather the three drafts - National, Pre-Season & Rookie) are probably the best opportunities on the calendar for clubs to gain a tactical advantage over others. That is, the drafts are fundamentally competitive events.

So it would make sense to do some analysis of how we compare with other clubs. I agree with you it's fairly tedious but I'll have a look myself if I get time and get back to you.

Another point is that there are a number of ways to slice and dice the stats. Number of games played is useful but it doesn't distinguish too well between the good players and the outstanding. eg Paul Hasleby and Chris Judd were both taken with top 3 picks and have both played close to 200 games but there's a gulf between them when you consider their value to the team. Hasleby is certainly a very handy player but Judd is an out and out match winner. Unfortunately you can't use Brownlow votes either because they don't really go to the best and fairest these days. They usually go to midfielders from the winning side and aren't a good indication of the value of deep defenders or deep forwards, or those who regularly play well in a losing side.

Anyway it's a good way to keep amused during the off season.

 

[dogwatch]

OK Freddy here's some of the analysis I've done so far but I still haven't done any other clubs. (Who do you reckon would be a good first club for comparison? Collingwood?)

I've broken the picks up with a bit more granularity - 1-16, 17-32, 33-48, 49-64, and 65+. These ranges correspond roughly to each round of selections in the draft (but not exactly because of priority picks, etc).

Range ==== Picks ==== Avge #Games Played
1-16 ......... 23 ........... 79.2
17-32 ....... 24 ........... 44.2
33-48 ....... 26 ........... 19.1
49-64 ....... 26 ........... 15.9
65+ .......... 27 ........... 32.8

TOTAL ...... 126 .......... 37.1

Observations from the above:

• Generally it follows the success rate you'd expect with the draft order, EXCEPT when you get to 65+. We seem to have done very well with late draft picks. This is partly explained by the skewed effect of Chris Grant (pick 105, 340+ games) and Brian Lake (pick 71, 140+ and counting). However even if you take those two out we still average around 16 games for our remaining 65+ picks which means we are doing just about as well with those as we are with our 3rd and 4th round picks (33-64).
• There's also no big difference in success rate between our third and fourth round picks.

The problem is that there are so many variables that make this sort of analysis a very crude measure of success. I mentioned a few in my previous post. Others are:

• A single outstanding player (like Chris Grant, 341 games or Johnno, 349) can really distort the averages when the subject group is so small.
• The father-son rule really stuffed up the logic of high draft picks, at least until they changed it last year. When you can get Gary Ablett and the like for a third round pick it makes comparisons between clubs or eras pretty suspect.
• I think rookie elevations used to be outside the national draft. Now they are part of it (like Picken and Mulligan this year). These mostly proven players will make every club's 65+ picks look even better over the coming years.
• A number of rules have changed over the 20-odd years of the draft (the above two are good examples but by no means the only ones) which makes comparison between now and say early 1990s drafting very problematical. Twenty years ago there was no such thing as a rookie draft but now it is an important avenue of recruiting.
• There are also changes in drafting trends. For instance there used to be more picks taken at 65+ in the first 10 years of the draft than there are now. When was the last time there were over 100 picks (as in Chris Grant's year)?
• How can you assess the value of say a Callan Ward or a Shaun Higgins when they are still in the early part of their career? At present you would have them worth only 25 and 50 games each but we expect them to be 200 gamers.
• It would therefore seem better to exclude anyone still playing, but that just skews it the other way - if you have a great recruiting year (eg 1999) you only get to report on the players whose careers finished early (eg Patrick Wiggins) but not those still going (eg Gia, Murphy).
• Trade-outs really stuff up the stats as well. For instance we traded Nathan Brown (a first round pick) after he had played 100+ games but he ended up playing close to 200. So perhaps his real value should be all games he played, even for Richmond.

So I think I've talked myself out of doing any further research because the methodology is so flawed! However I'll leave you with a comparison between our picks in the first 12 years (86-97) and the last 11 years (98-08):

==============86-97===========I======98-08=========
Range...........Picks........Avge Games..I.....Picks....Avge Games
1-16 ............ 10 ........ 100.3 ..........I.... 13 ....... 62.9
17-32........... 14 ......... 45.9 ...........I.... 10 ....... 41.9
33-48 .......... 13 .......... 7.2 ............I.... 13 ....... 31.0
49-64 .......... 15 .......... 7.6 ............I.... 11 ....... 27.2
65+ ............. 20 ......... 26.1 ...........I..... 7 ........ 52.0

TOTAL ......... 72 ......... 33.0 ...........I.... 54 ....... 42.7

You can draw your own conclusions from these stats but I'd be wary about getting too excited. For instance, if you take out Johnno (1993, pick 10, 349 games and counting) then the average for that period comes down from 100.3 to 72.7 !!

One conclusion I think may be legitimate is that we are getting better at using our mid-range picks (33-64) and maybe getting smarter with our picks overall, but I'd expect other clubs would be showing the same improvement so we're unlikely to be getting an edge on other clubs out of it.

 

[Borgsta]

we all know who we got 2000-09 and the misses we have had Power McMahon Walsh.

I think the McMahon pick was a success. We got some pretty good years out of him and then got Ward for him.

 

[Tutt54]

The only really bad pick was Walsh shocker-saw him play before we got him and said ye could not play the game at top level

 

[Anja_Nees]

One of the reasons for our uneven drafting success (ie gems taken later in the draft and first round flops) is Scott Clayton recruiting methodology. He's widely regarded as the best eye for talent going around but apparently has a tendency to go on gut and wasn't one of those recruiters who would take the time to carefully evaluate a player off-field (ie go out to meet the family). He'd see a bloke, thought he could play (and most of them could) and pick him. I'm not suggesting laziness played a part, but I know that it's part of the reason the club is excited by Dalrymple. He has an entirely different approach from what I've been told.

 

[chef]

One of the reasons for our uneven drafting success (ie gems taken later in the draft and first round flops) is Scott Clayton recruiting methodology. He's widely regarded as the best eye for talent going around but apparently has a tendency to go on gut and wasn't one of those recruiters who would take the time to carefully evaluate a player off-field (ie go out to meet the family). He'd see a bloke, thought he could play (and most of them could) and pick him. I'm not suggesting laziness played a part, but I know that it's part of the reason the club is excited by Dalrymple. He has an entirely different approach from what I've been told.

Thats not true, Clayton is as thorough as anyone, I remember Addison saying he was scared shitless in his interview before the draft and had never been asked that many questions before in his life. How else could we have enforced our no DH policy.

 

[FreddyFlintstone]

Great work dogwatch.

don't throw too big a blanket over it all, as you have more than pointed out, it all becomes too skewed, and effectively irrelevant if all players are added regardless of how they got to the club.

I just looked into national draft only and discounted the rest as I had been reading some posts where some where worried that due to the GC17 compromised draft, we may be looking at our first "live" pick at somewhere around the high 50's upwards (by live pick, I'm assuming that we'll be forced into using our 1st and 2nd round picks on the young Liberatore and Wallis boys). It just raised my interest

anyway, your breakdown does show some similar results to my measly effort in terms of hitting the mark with some higher draft picks. It gives me a bit of confidence going into the next couple of drafts.

Great effort mate, maybe we might be able to collude on analysing some other topics in future.

Cheers

FF

 

[stefoid]

I reckon Sam Power was a huge stuffup.

In retrospect, Sam's basic major, major, major flaw was that he couldnt kick on the run. Sure off one step he could drill a 40m worm burner, but even at a jog his kicking action was such that he always popped up floaters that took ages to travel even moderate distances.

Now how often do you get that much time and space in todays footy that you dont have to get on your bike once you recieve the ball? hardly ever.

This affected Sams entire game plan - he was always looking to recieve out wide in plenty of space, and rather than run with the ball once he got it, he stopped and propped.

Huge stuffup by Clayton to pick a guy who at junior level was noted for his great dispsoal for some reason, but at senior level he actually had rubbish dispsoal and no other strings to his bow to make up for it.

And who came after him?

Dal Santo at 13
Kelly at 17
Gram at 19
Maquire, seaby, johnson, Cambell brown, mitchell, montagna, hansen, swan

if it wasnt for brian harris we might as well have not turned up to that draft.