Roast Geelong can't develop young players

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Dangerousfield

Dangerousfield

Premiership Player
Veteran
Oct 11, 2012
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AFL Club
Adelaide
As part of my research into the Crows slow rebuild I thought I'd check out high ranking teams lists. First team I checked out was perennial finalists Geelong.

What I found with Geelong was really surprising, they have an abysmal record of developing their own players. Others may want to offer suggestions but I can only find Brandon Parfitt, Jack Henry and Gyran Miers as juniors they have developed into a quality regulars.

I have not counted Tim Kelly, Tom Stewart or Sam Menegola who were all 23 years old when they were drafted.
 
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They haven't had a good record in recent times, Fogarty, McCarthy, Cockatoo, Clark, Kreuger are all elsewhere. Not one Geelong player would be in the best 20 in the competion under the age of 23.
 
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JackFlash said:
They haven't had a good record in recent times, Fogarty, McCarthy, Cockatoo, Kreuger are all elsewhere. Not one Geelong player would be in the best 20 in the competion under the age of 23.
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Just checked the best 22 under 22 for the 2021 season and you are right

B: Brandon Starcevich (Brisbane Lions), Sam Taylor (Greater Western Sydney), Wil Powell (Gold Coast)
HB: Changkuoth Jiath (Hawthorn), Jordan Ridley (Essendon), Isaac Quaynor (Collingwood)
C: Bailey Smith (Western Bulldogs), Sam Walsh (Carlton) (c), Jack Lukosius (Gold Coast)
HF: Shai Bolton (Richmond), Aaron Naughton (Western Bulldogs), Zac Bailey (Brisbane Lions)
F: Kysaiah Pickett (Melbourne), Ben King (Gold Coast), Max King (St Kilda)
R: Luke Jackson (Melbourne), Andrew Brayshaw (Fremantle) (vc), Adam Cerra (Fremantle)
I/C: Jaidyn Stephenson (North Melbourne), Oscar Allen (West Coast), Tom McCartin (Sydney), Trent Rivers (Melbourne)
 
Our strategy for remaining competitive has been to fill holes in the sides using mature-age trade-ins, FAs and state league players. Prior to the last couple of years, we traded out substantial amount of draft capital to enable this and displaced young players from the list to accommodate the recycled players. Very few youths have come along at Geelong, but Chris Scott is unwilling to even try. He won't even give games to most of them.

A guy like Constable racks up 30+ disposals in a game and gets dropped. Narkle has a few games similar but can't get a look in. Clark wasn't given games because he likely wasn't dour enough for Scott and Scarlett after a good first year.

We haven't drafted many quality young players and we give few young players time to develop in seniors. We've also been quick to trade youth away to accommodate the acquisition of older players. Whether a young side could develop under Chris Scott is likely something we'll never know, because he's never been in that position. In his entire 11-year career, only an immensely small number of players have started as an 18 year old with him and progressed into a consistent, best 22 player under his system. Quite incredible, really.
 

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Biggy_Boy said:
Our strategy for remaining competitive has been to fill holes in the sides using mature-age trade-ins, FAs and state league players. Prior to the last couple of years, we traded out substantial amount of draft capital to enable this and displaced young players from the list to accommodate the recycled players. Very few youths have come along at Geelong, but Chris Scott is unwilling to even try. He won't even give games to most of them.

A guy like Constable racks up 30+ disposals in a game and gets dropped. Narkle has a few games similar but can't get a look in. Clark wasn't given games because he likely wasn't dour enough for Scott and Scarlett after a good first year.

We haven't drafted many quality young players and we give few young players time to develop in seniors. We've also been quick to trade youth away to accommodate the acquisition of older players. Whether a young side could develop under Chris Scott is likely something we'll never know, because he's never been in that position. In his entire 11-year career, only an immensely small number of players have started as an 18 year old with him and progressed into a consistent, best 22 player under his system. Quite incredible, really.
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Interesting about Scott. I never knew about this.

Contrast to someone like Sheedy who used talent scouts to scour the local Essendon leagues for young talent and was very aggressive in his determination not to let them be pinched by other clubs.

And it’s a very long list of players ..
 
Dangerousfield said:
As part of my research into the Crows slow rebuild I thought I'd check out high ranking teams lists. First team I checked out was perennial finalists Geelong.

What I found with Geelong was really surprising, they have an abysmal record of developing their own players. Others may want to offer suggestions but I can only find Brandon Parfitt, Jack Henry and Gyran Miers as juniors they have developed into a quality regulars.

I have not counted Tim Kelly, Tom Stewart or Sam Menegola who were all 23 years old when they were drafted.
Click to expand...
Since what point in time?
 
Shane Heard said:
Interesting about Scott. I never knew about this.

Contrast to someone like Sheedy who used talent scouts to scour the local Essendon leagues for young talent and was very aggressive in his determination not to let them be pinched by other clubs.

And it’s a very long list of players ..
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Probably because it's a particular viewpoint stemming from a wildly anti-scott bias position.

Narkle and Constable were OOC in the last couple of years, free to explore DFA and trade opportunities.
No other club took them and we welcomed them back as essentially last man on the list. Constable is now at the Suns and just as likely to play seniors there as here. Narkle is staring down the barrel of a 2022 delisting.

They aren't playing because they're average. Henry, Parfitt, Holmes, Ratulogea, De Koning, Guthrie, Miers, O'Connor, Simpson, Close are all younger guys that have been given games by Scott and most are in the best team. Add in Stewart, Duncan, Bews, Blicavs, Kolodjashnij and Guthrie are all older guys who got their start and established themselves as players under Scott.

The reason that first list may not contain some out and out guns is down to supply, namely, lack thereof of high draft selections. The reason we may appear a tad sparse for up and coming talent IMO is down to diminishing returns from R1-2 selections from recruiter, Stephen Wells.

2012: Thurlow
2013: Lang, Jansen.
2014: Cockatoo
2015: N/A
2016: Parfitt, Stewart
2017: Fogarty, Kelly, Constable
2018: Clark
2019: Stephens, De Koning
2020: Holmes, Neale
2021: Conway, Knevitt, Willis

Bold are off the list. Italics would be considered successful selections.
There's the issue. The thread premise is all wrong. It should be that we have chosen poorly over a lot of years recently.
 
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Dangerousfield said:
As part of my research into the Crows slow rebuild I thought I'd check out high ranking teams lists. First team I checked out was perennial finalists Geelong.

What I found with Geelong was really surprising, they have an abysmal record of developing their own players. Others may want to offer suggestions but I can only find Brandon Parfitt, Jack Henry and Gyran Miers as juniors they have developed into a quality regulars.

I have not counted Tim Kelly, Tom Stewart or Sam Menegola who were all 23 years old when they were drafted.
Click to expand...

Our player development has actually been very good. Plenty of players have gone elsewhere, only McCarthy and Hamling improved dramatically after leaving. McCarthy was always on that trajectory at Geelong if he overcame his injuries. There's really only 1 player I feel we've failed in development, and that's Jordan Clark.

Mark O'Connor and Mark Blicavs are highlights of our player development.

We haven't drafted well though, that has been our issue.
 
Art Vandelay_ said:
They aren't playing because they're average. Henry, Parfitt, Holmes, Ratulogea, De Koning, Guthrie, Miers, O'Connor, Simpson, Close are all younger guys that have been given games by Scott and most are in the best team. Add in Stewart, Duncan, Bews, Blicavs, Kolodjashnij and Guthrie are all older guys who got their start and established themselves as players under Scott.

The reason that first list may not contain some out and out guns is down to supply, namely, lack thereof of high draft selections. The reason we may appear a tad sparse for up and coming talent IMO is down to diminishing returns from R1-2 selections from recruiter, Stephen Wells.
Click to expand...

Which is why it's important to also include the draft picks Geelong voluntarily gave up to get mature aged players to Geelong, which includes Dangerfield, Cameron, Tuohy, and Henderson for starters (all cost us first round picks and sometimes more than one). As recently as 2020 they gave up pick 30 for Shaun Higgins. Would love to sell bridges to whoever that genius was.

Geelong can't have it both ways - although the 'wildly pro-Scott bias position' would dearly love to. You can't give away draft picks - first round picks too - for mature aged players, then complain that you don't have enough picks. The club chose to go down that path. If it doesn't work it is entirely their fault.
 
Partridge said:
Which is why it's important to also include the draft picks Geelong voluntarily gave up to get mature aged players to Geelong, which includes Dangerfield, Cameron, Tuohy, and Henderson for starters (all cost us first round picks and sometimes more than one). As recently as 2020 they gave up pick 30 for Shaun Higgins. Would love to sell bridges to whoever that genius was.

Geelong can't have it both ways - although the 'wildly pro-Scott bias position' would dearly love to. You can't give away draft picks - first round picks too - for mature aged players, then complain that you don't have enough picks. The club chose to go down that path. If it doesn't work it is entirely their fault.
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What does any of this have to do with the thread premise? It's largely a separate discussion entirely.
The title is that Geelong can't develop players, that's false.
 
V_23 said:
The Crows' development of young players is second to none. They start training them early:

spjlPQ6.jpeg
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Spot on, especially as the Crows have had a lot better/earlier draft picks over the past 5/10 years than Geelong.
 
Whoa, I just woke up from being frozen in stasis for a decade and am only hearing about this for the first time - has there been any other threads about this? I need to know because I haven’t see anyone discuss this before.

I hope there are at least 4-5 main board threads addressing this or a similar topic soon.

Also, can anyone tell me whether the ladder is adjusted to accomodate the age and origins of players in a team? Like for example if we win 16 games in a season do we only get 12 wins’ worth of points due to these age metrics?

Is it like our home ground where if we play a game away from Kardinia Park and win our score has to get adjusted in accordance with the difference in ground dimensions to the venue we actually played at?

Asking for a friend
 
Art Vandelay_ said:
What does any of this have to do with the thread premise? It's largely a separate discussion entirely.
The title is that Geelong can't develop players, that's false.
Click to expand...
It's never been proven under Scott. He's largely been too afraid to try. Unless you're friends with (Blicavs), or related to, Cam Guthrie, your chances of getting a look in as a young player are slim. There's little incentive for young players to even "stick their hands up" in the seniors, because they'll seemingly be ignored. Narkle gets 34 touches and 2 Brownlow votes, follows up with 25 touches, and is omitted the following week (along with other youth like Holmes and Clark).
 
Biggy_Boy said:
It's never been proven under Scott. He's largely been too afraid to try. Unless you're friends with (Blicavs), or related to, Cam Guthrie, your chances of getting a look in as a young player are slim. There's little incentive for young players to even "stick their hands up" in the seniors, because they'll seemingly be ignored. Narkle gets 34 touches and 2 Brownlow votes, follows up with 25 touches, and is omitted the following week (along with other youth like Holmes and Clark).
Click to expand...


We clash on a lot of points and that’s fine this isn’t a personal attack on you.

Put yourself in the shoes of Scott for a moment.

You have just taken over a good, great side, and immediately you’ve tasted success.

What happens the next year? You want to do it again. You’ve got largely the same squad right? So naturally you’re gonna try and repeat it. Doesn’t happen, you have a down year, but the tools are largely there to have another pop. You rejuvenate, get a few new faces and you start to get elite output from arguably the most important position on the field.
You finish third and a kick away from going back to the grand final.

This trend more or less continues for 8 years, including one missed finals series but you rebound from that with a prelim appearance, and you make a grand final.

If you’re in charge of the squads that are doing that, and you’ve obviously got a very good, but not great team, that is close but not quite close enough, at what point are you going to start saying ‘well we were close with the group we have but I think the way to go is to retreat from that spot we currently have, and routinely try young unproven players who for the most part haven’t been especially elite at junior level’?

Seriously put yourself in his shoes and the shoes of the people calling the shots about list and selection.

The only team realistically we can make any comparison to is Sydney, and yes they’ve blooded a few more kids than we have but it hasn’t won them anything at this stage.
Hawthorn were up for along time and tried to do the same and it didn’t work and while there ARE promising signs for them no doubt, they’re still an unknown.

It’s a very very big call to make to gamble on unproven and speculative youth when what you have in front of you, has done as well as it has.
 

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Roast Geelong can't develop young players

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