Universal Love Our list is actually fcken lit, fam *chef kissy fingers*

[Forzaport]

There’s enough quality on the list right now to be challenging. We actually have a very good mix of quality senior players and quality kids. I ****ing hate that we have been consistently told by our senior coach that we’re not good enough. FFS get a senior coach who isn’t antagonistic towards the supporters and who has a positive winning mindset and we’d instantly improve our on field results.

 

[El_Scorcho]

Rozee, Duursma, Bergman, Drew, Mead and Williams will all be capable of switching between forward and midfield.

You get your star midfielders through FA. This is where Fantasia comes in - who I wouldn't trade for but I sure would like for free. This is why Norf lost out on Gaff and Kelly - they didn't have the other parts for these guys to just plug in and elevate the rest of the team. That's what Essendon tried to do when they went after Stringer, Saad, Smith and Shiel - and it would have worked had their list been populated by better players.

I'd be targeting the likes of Hately in the coming trade period for this reason.

Then you work on guys like Rankine and Stephens the same way North worked on Polec.

Is there another Fantasia that I've missed or are you suggesting Orazio Fantasia is a star midfielder here?

 

[Pablo Escobar]

I think the club must know our current plodding midfield won’t win us a GF. They must be building towards a Drew/SPP/Atley/Houston core and hoping all our exciting draftees can develop to provide the power running and class we need around them. Hopefully we can snag a Hately or similar, a couple of KPP’s, and a small fwd, in the next year or two complete the puzzle. Hopefully Wines can snare us a piece of the puzzle next trade period.

 

[Kiss from a Rozee]

So much this.

We went into the trade/draft period needing to find an A-grade, high production midfielder, KPF, KPD and small forward.

You aren’t going to fill four needs in one National Draft tho, unless you absolutely knock it out of the park (eg 2006 for us). Which means IMO there are a few different ways to approach the draft.

IMO our approach this year has been to focus on one the strengths of the draft and target players of a similar type.

So for mine our biggest need is match winning goal kickers. We have Robbie Gray and Connor Rozee and that’s really it. Dixon as well to some degree but meh.

We need a player or two who can score from forward stoppages, who can take contested marks, who can take a two-on-one situation and not only win it but score a goal.

If we took one player who might be able to do that - let’s say Bergman - and take a defender and midfielder in Gould and Devon Robertson. Then yes we have targeted all our needs, but unless we nailed it we know one or two of those players won’t come on and we’ll still have a gap. And we mightn’t find out for years where that gap is.

So the strength of this approach is that we reduce a lot of the uncertainty around our draft. We can be pretty confident that at least one of these guys will become a goal kicker for us down the track, and then focus on different needs in a different draft or through different means.

Not every draft has to use the same strategy, and every approach has it’s own benefits and drawbacks. The downside here is we haven’t taken best available at every pick - obviously Mead was best available but not the other three - which means we’ve probably missed out on great players. Kemp and Gould are probably the obvious ones. And we could have gone hard for KPDs (Kemp, Worrell and Gould was my ideal draft coming in).

I’m not saying we nailed the draft, I have no idea about that. Just trying to argue for the strength of following a clear strategy.

As an aside it also makes your decisions a lot easier if you are targeting the best of a type at each pick. Much easier to decide who is better between Georgiades, Williams and DeKoning than picking the best of about 20 players.

Sorry that’s a bit all over the place, I’m finally learning that it’s bloody impossible to write anything coherent longer than a couple of sentences on mobile. Not that it stops me posting anyway

 

[Janus]

Is there another Fantasia that I've missed or are you suggesting Orazio Fantasia is a star midfielder here?

Don't judge him based on what he does at Essendon where they don't have any inside mids at all.

 

[robbo1981]

Who are our 3 2nd rounders tied to next yr ? 1 is us I think Collingwood is another gws the 3rd?

 

[Schulzenfest]

Don't judge him based on what he does at Essendon where they don't have any inside mids at all.

Dylan Shiel is a better inside mid than anyone we have on our list.

 

[PJ Power]

Dylan Shiel is a better inside mid than anyone we have on our list.

Merrett and Heppell ok too

 

[Schulzenfest]

Merrett and Heppell ok too

Merrett is very outside though. He's like Sam Colquhoun if Sam Colquhoun was good.

 

[El_Scorcho]

Don't judge him based on what he does at Essendon where they don't have any inside mids at all.

The transition from solid small forward to elite midfielder isn't unprecedented, but this is wildly speculative.

 

[Janus]

Dylan Shiel is a better inside mid than anyone we have on our list.

I disagree. I think his best role is as inside/outside mid where he can get on the outside. Go to the Essendon board and see what they believe they are missing and they'll tell you that it's a genuine inside mid.

 

[sobrave]

The title of this thread is triggering me

 

[Duck Farmer]

I think the club must know our current plodding midfield won’t win us a GF. They must be building towards a Drew/SPP/Atley/Houston core and hoping all our exciting draftees can develop to provide the power running and class we need around them.

If we're building around Drew and Atley we're in trouble.

 

[El_Scorcho]

I disagree. I think his best role is as inside/outside mid where he can get on the outside. Go to the Essendon board and see what they believe they are missing and they'll tell you that it's a genuine inside mid.

This is fine.

But the idea that if they did have good inside mids, Orazio Fantasia would be a star midfielder?

 

[Amarula]

What makes me happy about this draft is that in going for 4 (or 5 if you include Trent B) out-&-out attacking players, we're signalling that we're prepared to "take the game on" in 2020. It's also my biggest reservation, because we have a coach who too often retreats into a defensive shell.

 

[portly]

There’s enough quality on the list right now to be challenging. We actually have a very good mix of quality senior players and quality kids. I ******* hate that we have been consistently told by our senior coach that we’re not good enough. FFS get a senior coach who isn’t antagonistic towards the supporters and who has a positive winning mindset and we’d instantly improve our on field results.

Not challenging for the GF, but yes for the rest.

 

[Moo87]

Sure, we may have just added 4 elite perennial All Australian types. I can't definitively say that we haven't.



Burton is great, as is Houston. But they'll both be 23 next year. If they're to be elite footballers, and not just very good footballers, they'll need to have breakout years pretty soon. Chad Wingard was a prodigy, but he was All Australian twice by the time he was Burton's age. If we're talking about them being elite midfielders... between them they've played about half a season in the midfield.

I feel like i'm slating them here, i'm really not. Burton and Houston are two of my favourite players. But I have a huge concern around our ability to turn talent into elite performance.

Outside of Boak and Gray who will contend again next year, who is our next All Australian?

I think Wingard is really an exception here. His early career form is nearly without peer.

Plenty of players make the jump to elite in their mid 20's and carry on from there. Gary Ablett's first 5 years didn't exactly scream "best player of the modern era", yet he's up there. Dustin Martin took around 5 years to go from flashes of brilliance to consistently producing his best. Tim Kelly debuted age 23. I think in the AFL age is given way too much importance.

 

[Janus]

This is fine.

But the idea that if they did have good inside mids, Orazio Fantasia would be a star midfielder?

It's a projection based on traits. I'm not saying Fantasia would be a star midfielder if Essendon had good inside mids now, but in the future (once he's gotten over his injuries).

 

[Grave Danger]

Who are our 3 2nd rounders tied to next yr ? 1 is us I think Collingwood is another gws the 3rd?

Dockers

 

[Tibbs]

What a crock, our list is in an awful state. But gee, these players that have played one season or just got drafted will save us. Spare me. Our only elite players are about to hit retirement age and other than ruckmen we won't have anyone on the list over 6'2.

PS. Sack Hinkley

"other than ruckmen we won't have anyone on the list over 6'2."

I couldn't resist! Six foot two equals 188cm. How about.....?

Pasini - 192
Burton - 191
Ebert - 189
Clurey - 193
McKenzie - 191
Marshall - 198
Dixon - 200
Watts - 196
Bonner - 190
Grundy - 194
Lienert - 195
Buzza - 198

Westhoff - 199

We have plenty of height, and we can add more anytime.

Ps... Westhoff will probably still be playing when you and I are dead

 

[Granny Duurs is Lovely]

I dont understand how you guys are ignoring Butters when talking about our mids of the future. He's going to become a pure mid for us in time and from what we've seen already there's good reason to think he could be elite.

We also have a genuine chance to challenge this year and next while Boak and Gray etc are still firing, because we actually dont need to fill those list needs immediately. Dixon, Bergman, Rozee, Marshall and Ebert are all strong in the air and ready to play next year.

The key part of this is having multiple aerial targets - they don't have to be super tall if they're good in the air anyway. If you can have multiple guys like this you spread the oppositions best aerial defenders and make yourself unpredictable. A forward line with Sam Gray, Robbie Gray and Butters in it at one time is very easy to defend because you have to bomb it to whatever tall target might be around .

Over the next couple years Williams and Georgiades will develop before playing those forward roles and taking over from rozee/Ebert as well as ensuring Westhoff/Buzza arent used as forward targets next year.

We've done a really good job drafting in my eyes because we've found the future, and got a lot of high end picks while still giving ourselves a chance now. At the very least we need to be making finals to give these youngsters some exposure (you never win a flag on the first finals tilt).

 

[Eddie Dingle]

We actually need to start playing mote

Done

 

[Holden Hillbilly]

Who are our 3 2nd rounders tied to next yr ? 1 is us I think Collingwood is another gws the 3rd?

No round 1 pick but our own round 2 pick PLUS

Round two pick (tied to Fremantle)
Round two pick (tied to Collingwood, on-traded by Brisbane)
Round three pick (tied to St Kilda)

 

[charcolechaddy]

Okay. Where in this 'nucleus' are the centre square mids capable of matching it with the likes of Martin/Cotchin/Prestia or Kelly/Coniglio/Taranto? Where's the future KPF's to match Riewoldt/Lynch or Cameron/Himmelberg/Finlayson? Where's the KPD's to match Rance/Grimes or Davis/Haynes?

We've got a lot of talent but we don't have a 'nucleus'. In typical Port Adelaide fashion we've got the icing but we forgot to bake the cake.

Until Ken is gone we will never have system and structure.

You are right we think we can bake the cake before we put the ingredients together.

 

[JUSTWORK]

The lists not too bad, but definitely a few holes that need addressing....

Its been good enough for the last 5 years to achieve far more then what the club has. Need a new coach to extract the best from this group.