Past recruiting biting club

[Life Long Saint]

To be honest, I suspect that player development is way more important that drafting.
You're judging this kid v that kid based on a small sample size of performances. They all have skills that are excellent and some that need work.
What you do with them once they're in the system matters more.

[B.M]

Can’t develop lack of talent

[Life Long Saint]

Can’t develop lack of talent

But you can destroy talent with poor development.

BTW, who have we taken with an early pick that lacked talent?

[B.M]

Jury is out on a few still

Historically we have drafted plenty of duds

[Ghost Like]

So has every other club B.M.. Ask any supporter of another club. This is one metric we seem to align with others.

Development??? Another question.

[SydneySainter]

You can’t afford to get pick 1 wrong, especially as badly as St. Kilda did. That kind of damage can’t be undone.

[Life Long Saint]

You can’t afford to get pick 1 wrong, especially as badly as St. Kilda did. That kind of damage can’t be undone.

McCartin was unlucky with concussions. The boy can play and was more than capable as a key forward.
Petracca was a greater need for the club than McCartin, and we probably should have drafted him at pick 1.

[B.M]

That, and he was/is a better player!

No one is saying Paddy was/is a poor player

Just it was an atrocious decision to select him at No 1

[Saintmike65]

That, and he was/is a better player!

No one is saying Paddy was/is a poor player

Just it was an atrocious decision to select him at No 1

Paddy being a diabetic made it even more puzzling!

[SaintDippa]

Hindsight is great. It's all in the development and teaching. Who is to say Bont at Sainters wouldn't now be a forum boo boy?

[Wayne42]

According to the Emma Quayle article that was posted on here, Emma was at the Saints recruiting meetings, Richo wasn't keen on drafting Paddy but
wasn't able to get Elshaug or Finnis, amongst others, to agree with his concerns. I don't blame Richo for that blunder.

Good to see Paddy doing well as a defender in Sydney.

Paddy a defender, Hind a back flanker, who'd have thought, well, not the Saints.

I wouldn't be using Melbourne as a drafting yard stick, they spent years getting it wrong before they worked it out.

Wasn’t it Elshaug and Armeet Bains that we’re doing all the blowing up of reasons to select McCartin? Also some overweight character ( don’t know his name). In the video Richo was the one asking the hard questions about Paddy, he didn’t appear to be convinced. However the recruitment ‘team’ seemed to hold sway in the decision making. That video is possibly still on the archives of the Sainter.com site.

Loris, this is the article i was referring to from Emma Quayle.
https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/ins ... j2ybw.html


Here is a snippet from the end of the article about Full Forwards..

"There's an alternative view to this, which I don't necessarily agree with," said Finnis. "You could say Boyd changed the game and that if you're a club like us trying to build momentum and grow, then you have to pay overs to get those sorts of players in. So are you better off drafting players who are going to have more of an impact in the short term? Players who can get us to a point where we have to pay less overs to get people in because we're more competitive? Because you risk losing guys these days. You risk losing them because they might not want to wait around for four or five years like they used to."

"I know where you're coming from," said Richardson. "I'm just thinking, in my mind, that it's 2018, 2019, 2020 for us. I want us to make the right decision and get the best player for us given everything we've just discussed. I don't think we can ignore what happened with Boyd and I agree with Trout. We're not going to win one unless we have one."
"That's what history says," said Elshaug. "Hawthorn had Roughead and Franklin and Gunston. Geelong had Hawkins, Mooney and Podsiadly. Brisbane had Brown, Bradshaw, Lynch.

We had our chance, too, but now here we are. And one of the reasons that's happened is because we spent all our money on too few players. We spent it on 10 players, and it left a big gulf. We had 55 per cent of the money going to 10 players."
"More," said Bains. "Just over 60 per cent."
"So you can see why we don't think we should go out and spend a lot of our money on just one player. Paddy's here, and we have the pick, and we're picking him."