There's a difference between youth, talented youth and AFL standard talented youth, generational talent, where do we fit ?

[Tzatziki_Man]

A mate and I debated this the other day whilst watching the Carlton Richmond match.

There's no doubt we have youth,

- Smith, McAullife, Fawcett and Seth Campbell are teenagers.

- Dow, Ralphsmith, Blight, Bauer, Trezise, MJR, Sonsie, Banks, Gibcus, Clarke, Gray, Clarke, Green and Tom Brown are all 22 and under.

- Ross, Ryan, Cumberland, Coulthard and Kozi all under 24.

That's twenty three of our AFL listed players under the ages of 24. There's plenty of youth, but how good is this youth?

Many of our players are stricken with injury, many showed nothing when fully fit, others without the chance.

From my perspective, Jacob Blight showed more in one game than I've seen from the majority of players on that list. If I Was to rank them all, in order of who I'd want to keep the most to the least. I'd rank them as such, (keep in mind I haven't factored in fantasy improvement, just from what their development looked like, injury taken into account)
Key
S tier is your potential franchise player, best player in the comp, in contention for a brownlow, Coleman, etc)

A tier is your top bracket of club players, potential Dark horses for best and fairests, possibly even club leading goalkicker).

B tier is your premiership team, excellent players who would excel in the secondary tier, players who are immensely important for a premiership team

C tier are your under 100 afl gamers, those who spent their careers in and out of the team, battlers, who will probably be delisted eventually and 'not work out'

D tier are your lottery picks, psd, late round pick, kitchen knives, the players who spend most of their time in the vfl, might player 20 games or be awarded many in afl level if there are injuries

S Tier - No One (this is your Reid, Sheezel, Daicos tier)

A tier - No One (This is your Dempsey, Wilson, McDonald level)

B tier - Blight, Gibcus, Ryan, MRJ, Campbell, Ross, Kozi, McAullife

C tier - Ralphsmith, Banks, Sonsie, Dow, Clarke (could be b tier, have seen more from Campbell on the wing though and much younger)

D tier - everyone else (think ben nason

Ben Nason

Age

35

Ht

179cm

Wt

79kg

Pos.

Fwd

Career

Season

Last 5

D

11.3

3star

K

7.1

3star

HB

4.2

3star

M

3.3

3star

T

2.3

4star

G

0.7

4star

No current season stats available

D

13.0

4star

K

9.0

4star

HB

4.0

3star

M

4.2

4star

T

3.2

5star

G

0.6

3star

)

So personally, I think we have youth... plenty of it, but no youth that could usher in a new era. I think the next two years are huge, we need some genuine excitement and it will come from drafting our own Sheezel, Mckercher, king type.

Anyway, that's just my opinion, what are yours ?

 

[panatha1908]

You have summarised it well but I think that is why many of us are for trading out players for picks. I know all picks don't work out, but reiwoldt, rance, cotchin martin were top 20 picks. I advocate getting as many top 20 picks this year as we can and beefing up development. The youth we do have will probably and hopefully be the role players to the relent drafted this year and next year.

 

[WATiger86]

We’ll have a top 2 pick this season and need to use it wisely

 

[Cam Payner]

We’ll have a top 2 pick this season and need to use it wisely

If we play our cards right we could have up to half a dozen in the top 30 including 2-3 in the top 10 and/or a couple next year as well....

 

[Bird Man]

without FS and academy support it will take 6-8 years with the afls compromised system.

either embrace USA style trading and draft systems or enforce a clean draft with no father-son. Also get rid of compensation picks

 

[tigerdan]

It's all navel gazing until they get a few years in the system.

We are in a weird spot in that we are in full rebuild mode not so much that we wanted to give up and try again, but that injuries ****ed us up the ass.

But there's a silver lining because we shrewdly loaded up on picks for this year's draft and there's a real possibility we'll be thrown some good picks if the players everyone talks about decide to bail.

I just hope the honchos remember what happened to the Bummers when they flogged everyone off after the 2001 GF loss. They ripped the guts out of the team.

Ask this question after the draft this year, or better year, 2-3 years from now, as that's what will (or will not) set us up for the next flag tilt.

 

[SplintWhisky]

A mate and I debated this the other day whilst watching the Carlton Richmond match.

There's no doubt we have youth,

- Smith, McAullife, Fawcett and Seth Campbell are teenagers.

- Dow, Ralphsmith, Blight, Bauer, Trezise, MJR, Sonsie, Banks, Gibcus, Clarke, Gray, Clarke, Green and Tom Brown are all 22 and under.

- Ross, Ryan, Cumberland, Coulthard and Kozi all under 24.

That's twenty three of our AFL listed players under the ages of 24. There's plenty of youth, but how good is this youth?

Many of our players are stricken with injury, many showed nothing when fully fit, others without the chance.

From my perspective, Jacob Blight showed more in one game than I've seen from the majority of players on that list. If I Was to rank them all, in order of who I'd want to keep the most to the least. I'd rank them as such, (keep in mind I haven't factored in fantasy improvement, just from what their development looked like, injury taken into account)
Key
S tier is your potential franchise player, best player in the comp, in contention for a brownlow, Coleman, etc)

A tier is your top bracket of club players, potential Dark horses for best and fairests, possibly even club leading goalkicker).

B tier is your premiership team, excellent players who would excel in the secondary tier, players who are immensely important for a premiership team

C tier are your under 100 afl gamers, those who spent their careers in and out of the team, battlers, who will probably be delisted eventually and 'not work out'

D tier are your lottery picks, psd, late round pick, kitchen knives, the players who spend most of their time in the vfl, might player 20 games or be awarded many in afl level if there are injuries

S Tier - No One (this is your Reid, Sheezel, Daicos tier)

A tier - No One (This is your Dempsey, Wilson, McDonald level)

B tier - Blight, Gibcus, Ryan, MRJ, Campbell, Ross, Kozi, McAullife

C tier - Ralphsmith, Banks, Sonsie, Dow, Clarke (could be b tier, have seen more from Campbell on the wing though and much younger)

D tier - everyone else (think ben nason)

So personally, I think we have youth... plenty of it, but no youth that could usher in a new era. I think the next two years are huge, we need some genuine excitement and it will come from drafting our own Sheezel, Mckercher, king type.

Anyway, that's just my opinion, what are yours ?

This is a great look and I feel that you have shown the important list point. One thing to note is that a lot of our Youth have been speculative picks when we were up and about and have not had time to develop in the AFL. A lot of those on the C tier could be high B tier if they were given the chance to get to 50 games ASAP.

Look at our list at the end of 2011. We had 14 players 24 and under who had 40+ games. At the end of this season we will have 4 (Mansell, Kosi, Ross, Hugo). Looking at the 25 & above crowd at the end of the year I am able to clear some spots


I have for this group
6 delistings/retirements (red line through)
2 Potential trades off the back of what Tiger71 has said (Highlighted)
2 Wishful trades (Blue underline)

That is 10 potential open spots. If we can fill that with lets say 3 or 4 from the top 30 of this draft and maybe then use some of our back end picks or surplus to try and get some younger talent that has had some exposure at other clubs (I would like to think that maybe we could target a Reef McInnes or maybe a Devon Robertson). If we end up with a core of four fresh 18/19 year olds and then trade in 1-2 young players who are <24 and have played 40 games and then 1-2 who are 25 - 26 with over 50 games then we can start to look like a group that can grow.

The issue is that if we go to the draft heavily, our trading strategy has to be "Cheap with Fantastic Leadership and culture".

 

[skinnyP]

Ben Nason

Ben Nason

Age

35

Ht

179cm

Wt

79kg

Pos.

Fwd

Career

Season

Last 5

D

11.3

3star

K

7.1

3star

HB

4.2

3star

M

3.3

3star

T

2.3

4star

G

0.7

4star

No current season stats available

D

13.0

4star

K

9.0

4star

HB

4.0

3star

M

4.2

4star

T

3.2

5star

G

0.6

3star

was good

 

[Cam Payner]

Ben Nason was a good laugh

e.f.a

 

[skinnyP]

e.f.a

What?

 

[banzai]

without FS and academy support it will take 6-8 years with the afls compromised system.

either embrace USA style trading and draft systems or enforce a clean draft with no father-son. Also get rid of compensation picks

I think we just accept that it's going to take that long. It took 10 years from when we got Cotch and Jack last time to challenge for a flag. If you look at Carlton from when they got Weitering at pick 1 in 2015 it took 8 years to play finals.

I think as long as you accept that, you eventually get there. It's when you try and get there sooner it can all go wrong. I'd happily move any player over about 23 years old on our list that gets us a first rounder.

What would be the point of holding all of Rioli, Baker and Bolton? Theyve played pretty much all season and we have 2 wins. We will only be bringing in 18 year olds the next few seasons, while players like Nank, Vlas all get old we aint getting any better for a while. This is what we have. Given we've only won 2 games, we also cant really get much worse, so id be loading up on as many picks as possible.

As for the generational talent, Gibcus is still easily the best hope of the youngsters we have. He just needs a bit of luck with injury the next few years.

 

[banzai]

without FS and academy support it will take 6-8 years with the afls compromised system.

either embrace USA style trading and draft systems or enforce a clean draft with no father-son. Also get rid of compensation picks

Being a big vic club clearly has advantages though. We got Prestia even though we were terrible in 16. He was good enough to pick any club he wanted. Then obviously we got Lynch for free and won 2 more flags.

We just need to do the hard work for 5-6 years, load up with young talent, when we start moving up the table the crowds will come back and we can easily recruit stars to finish off our list.

 

[Lsta062]

A mate and I debated this the other day whilst watching the Carlton Richmond match.

There's no doubt we have youth,

- Smith, McAullife, Fawcett and Seth Campbell are teenagers.

- Dow, Ralphsmith, Blight, Bauer, Trezise, MJR, Sonsie, Banks, Gibcus, Clarke, Gray, Clarke, Green and Tom Brown are all 22 and under.

- Ross, Ryan, Cumberland, Coulthard and Kozi all under 24.

That's twenty three of our AFL listed players under the ages of 24. There's plenty of youth, but how good is this youth?

Many of our players are stricken with injury, many showed nothing when fully fit, others without the chance.

From my perspective, Jacob Blight showed more in one game than I've seen from the majority of players on that list. If I Was to rank them all, in order of who I'd want to keep the most to the least. I'd rank them as such, (keep in mind I haven't factored in fantasy improvement, just from what their development looked like, injury taken into account)
Key
S tier is your potential franchise player, best player in the comp, in contention for a brownlow, Coleman, etc)

A tier is your top bracket of club players, potential Dark horses for best and fairests, possibly even club leading goalkicker).

B tier is your premiership team, excellent players who would excel in the secondary tier, players who are immensely important for a premiership team

C tier are your under 100 afl gamers, those who spent their careers in and out of the team, battlers, who will probably be delisted eventually and 'not work out'

D tier are your lottery picks, psd, late round pick, kitchen knives, the players who spend most of their time in the vfl, might player 20 games or be awarded many in afl level if there are injuries

S Tier - No One (this is your Reid, Sheezel, Daicos tier)

A tier - No One (This is your Dempsey, Wilson, McDonald level)

B tier - Blight, Gibcus, Ryan, MRJ, Campbell, Ross, Kozi, McAullife

C tier - Ralphsmith, Banks, Sonsie, Dow, Clarke (could be b tier, have seen more from Campbell on the wing though and much younger)

D tier - everyone else (think ben nason)

So personally, I think we have youth... plenty of it, but no youth that could usher in a new era. I think the next two years are huge, we need some genuine excitement and it will come from drafting our own Sheezel, Mckercher, king type.

Anyway, that's just my opinion, what are yours ?

Agree except that Ryan is C-tier and not B-tier IMO.

I don’t see Tom Brown on your list, but he is probably the only possible A-tier player from the current youth group. Even then, he might also be a B-tier only because he’s a tad bit soft. Still a promising player though.

I’m not sure if we’ll get that S-tier player in this year’s draft, but we should get at least one over the next two years hopefully. We definitely should be getting at least an A-tier player though.