POBT
Brownlow Medallist
I think it is impossible to stuff up a rookie draft. It is a good year if you find 1 rookie who goes on to to become a senior player. It is a very good year to find 2. To find 3 as we did last year is an exceptional result. But the expectations for finding players in the rookie draft should be quite low. The vast majority of players selected are going to end up not playing a senior game. Sherminator, if you gave a list of those interstate players that you rate highly, I'm sure that someone could come up with a whole list of reasons why that player won't make it. All of the players in the rookie draft were overlooked for a reason. The pass rate in rookie drafting is very low, IMO.
I'm not sure how it can be said that we stuffed it up. Clubs are picking players who are theoretically behind 80 other players in their age bracket. The level of talent has to be fairly even at that point. That means you are looking for intangibles or distant potential, hardly scientific data on which to base a decision. It becomes intuitive rather than evidenced based. A recruiter might be relying on a quarter of footy played in March, a throwaway line in an interview, a tip from another coach, knowing that a player's sibling grew 3 inches at age 19. It is hardly stuff that a recruiter's performance can be judged on. "Stuffing it up" would require us to overlook players that are likely to be substantially better than those we selected - I don't think anyone could argue that has occurred.
The National and Rookie Drafts indicate that interstate clubs thought pretty highly of the Queensland talent this year. Both Fremantle and Port took Queenslanders with fairly early picks even though they could have chosen to take any player from across the country. That gives some indication that the talent in Queensland was OK. I am sure that if the club saw an interstate stand-out player, that they would have taken him. I suspect that they simply liked the homegrown talent too much.
We have taken a mix of "best available" (Dzufer, Kiel), "project players" (Tippett, Clouston) and existing list players (Corrie and Hamill). I am pretty happy with that mix.
I'm not sure how it can be said that we stuffed it up. Clubs are picking players who are theoretically behind 80 other players in their age bracket. The level of talent has to be fairly even at that point. That means you are looking for intangibles or distant potential, hardly scientific data on which to base a decision. It becomes intuitive rather than evidenced based. A recruiter might be relying on a quarter of footy played in March, a throwaway line in an interview, a tip from another coach, knowing that a player's sibling grew 3 inches at age 19. It is hardly stuff that a recruiter's performance can be judged on. "Stuffing it up" would require us to overlook players that are likely to be substantially better than those we selected - I don't think anyone could argue that has occurred.
The National and Rookie Drafts indicate that interstate clubs thought pretty highly of the Queensland talent this year. Both Fremantle and Port took Queenslanders with fairly early picks even though they could have chosen to take any player from across the country. That gives some indication that the talent in Queensland was OK. I am sure that if the club saw an interstate stand-out player, that they would have taken him. I suspect that they simply liked the homegrown talent too much.
We have taken a mix of "best available" (Dzufer, Kiel), "project players" (Tippett, Clouston) and existing list players (Corrie and Hamill). I am pretty happy with that mix.
