Worst ever no. 1 draft pick??

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I think it was nowhere near as systematic as it is now. Back then I thnk we were looking at the last years of picking up developed players who were guns in their league as a quick and easy way of getting good players in.
These days a good young player usually gets spotted pretty early and ends up in a colts side (league club) or training with them in some capacity and there'l be a bunch of talent scouts around too keeping an eye on who is who from that level onwards. As far as I know anyway.

Still ends up a bit of a crap shoot at times though.

Even Freo's establishment came an awkward time. If you had GC/GWS type concessions would you have picked the eyes out of the 1994 draft or prioritised established players?
 

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I went back to find the articles I remember reading at the time. I don’t think it was as clear cut amongst all recruiters as you might have expected. Seems quite a few brought up his psychologists profile as a potential negative. But then again, i suspect the split might have been different had more work gone into these guys as it was so evident early they would be gone early. I’m sure the clubs at picks 10-18 didn’t spend much time as Melbourne and st Kilda did.


You would have gone either Brayshaw or Lever iirc at 2 had Petracca been gone. So to end up with all three in the end is an amazing result.

Back to my original point- i think the saints got in their own heads and spent more times looking at potential negatives as to why they shouldn’t pick up Petracca rather than looking at him being the most talented from the draft. Also, like 00Stinger mentioned, they didn’t want to have to spend a million a year to recruit a Riewoldt replacement. So there’s that too, I guess.
We nominated Heeney before Petracca too

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Even Freo's establishment came an awkward time. If you had GC/GWS type concessions would you have picked the eyes out of the 1994 draft or prioritised established players?

I don't know, but whatever we did would possibly have been the most stupid own goal imaginable. It's in the DNA down there.
 
80s and early 90s drafts are a gag. Hutton, Hooper, Banik, Lounder, who? It had nowhere near as much emphasis as it does today. We got pick 1 in 1992 for Scott Watters who was on the fringe of our 22. Not even Collingwood would do that now.
Why was John Hutton cut in 1992? 43 goals from 18 games isn't a bad return for a season
 
Why was John Hutton cut in 1992? 43 goals from 18 games isn't a bad return for a season

I’ve posted a few times about Hutton - very interesting footy story - he was drafted #1 at 25 years of age, off the back of kicking 100 in the WAFL in 1991 - he had landed in the WAFL not long before from country footy.

Robert Walls was a big fan (must have been to drop Pick 1 on him!).

43 in 18 games sounds not shabby....but this was 1992, not 2021. Full Forwards were in their teams to kick goals and it wasn’t unusual for them to average 4-5 goals a game. Under 3 and you’re probably not much chop.

For example, in the same season, Footscray’s FF was Danny Del Re who kicked 70 over 22 games in a decent side. He is probably best remembered for being a dead ringer for Frankie Carbone from ‘Goodfellas’. My point being, there were a few knocking around the league like that at the time (even more in the 80s), so Hutton’s output as a mid-aged recruit, with a ‘100 Goal’ Reputation might simply have been not up to scratch - he kicked 16 of those goals in 2 games (fair efforts no doubt! One was in that game Geelong kicked 239!), so averaged just over 1 and half goals across the rest of season - not really up to scratch.
 
Far from the worst but Josh Fraser was a pretty underwhelming pick 1, had a decent career though.

He had a career similar to Kreuzer with a few less injuries.

In his early days you could tell Eddie wanted him to be a superstar but it became pretty apparent that wasn’t going to happen by the early 2000s and he kinda just faded away and ran out his time at GC (probably cried himself to sleep on a pile of cash).
 
He had a career similar to Kreuzer with a few less injuries.

In his early days you could tell Eddie wanted him to be a superstar but it became pretty apparent that wasn’t going to happen by the early 2000s and he kinda just faded away and ran out his time at GC (probably cried himself to sleep on a pile of cash).
Couldn't win a hitout or take a contested mark to save his life, he did have a nice ground game though for a big bloke.
 

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Cadym Beetham? hello.

McCartin worst of recent times. I still cant actually believe it.
Fat Diabetic Undersized Lead up old school forward vs 190cm agile modern beast midfielder with a badketball pendlebury background.
 

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Worst ever no. 1 draft pick??

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