We didn't do enough

[bergholt]

Here's the number of list changes for each club this off-season:

6: Fremantle
7: North Melbourne, Port Adelaide
8: Essendon, GWS, Hawthorn, St Kilda, Sydney, West Coast
9: Adelaide
10: Collingwood, Geelong, Gold Coast, Richmond
11: Melbourne, Western Bulldogs
12:
13: Brisbane, Carlton

Most of the clubs who finished down the bottom had lots of list changes. We didn't. We had the same number as the two grand finalists. Shouldn't we have worked harder at the trade table and draft to turn over the list quicker? Plenty of dead wood still left.

[chook23]

we elevated a few rookies rather than delist them which contributed to the total list change (or lack of)

[Con Gorozidis]

we elevated a few rookies rather than delist them which contributed to the total list change (or lack of)

Yep. 4 rookie elevations I guess was what stopped us making more changes. A good thing in a way if our Rookies are showing something.

Schneider, Simpkin & Siposs probably the luckiest to still be there.

[dragit]

Berg's, more incite than insight here my friend...

Probably need to look at a few years worth of data, you can't bring in a dozen new players each year or you would have no-one with any experience.

In 4 years we have added 35 players to our main list:

Milera
Saad
Ross
Markworth
Newnes
Webster
Lever
Maister

Roberton
Lee
Hickey
TDL
Saunders
Murdoch
Wright
White
Pierce
Dunell

Delaney
Savage
Longer
Bruce
Billings
Dunstan
Acres
Curren

Membrey
McCartin
Goddard
McKenzie
Lonie
Minchington
Templeton
Shenton
Weller

[St Ick]

35 in 4 years is a massive overhaul in anyone's language

[stinger]

35 in 4 years is a massive overhaul in anyone's language

others would trade every other experienced player we have...leaving us with a bunch of kids who would get smashed every week......we would be on the bottom until the 22nd century.ffs...

[bigcarl]

A lot of ours are kids though. Gotta give them some sort of chance to develop. In the meantime, I'm glad players such as Farren Ray are still on the list. He's a good professional footballer imo.

[plugger66]

We only got in 6 unproven AFL players. We promoted too many rookies IMO and took 2 recycled players in the rookie draft. At least 2 or 3 players short of what I thought was an ideal number. Probably wont make a difference because they could be the next LJ conners but when you are bottom of the ladder I would be hoping for a fluke Milne or Fisher.

[bergholt]

Berg's, more incite than insight here my friend...

Possibly true!

Probably need to look at a few years worth of data, you can't bring in a dozen new players each year or you would have no-one with any experience.

True. But I'm not saying we dump Dempster and Fisher and replace them with 0 gamers, that would be ridiculous. I'm saying there are a few guys on the list who are odds on not to make it, and that rather than hanging onto them in the desperate hope that they turn into players, they could have been replaced by some combination of rookies and more experienced recycled players.

For instance, Melbourne this year dumped a bunch of unfulfilled 23 and 24 years olds like Blease, Strauss, Tapscott, Nicholson. They replaced them with guys with AFL experience: Lumumba, Garlett, Frost and Newton. Pretty simple way of keeping the list competitive while you rebuild, and I don't see much downside to it.

Would we have lost anything if we'd replaced Minch with Petrenko? Or Simpkin with Cam Delaney? (That would have actually made the list younger.) Instead we took the route of hanging onto everyone except the completely obvious and replaced them pretty much entirely with kids. That means we'll be bottom next year and probably the year after, which gives us a huge cultural challenge when we're "ready" to start winning again.

I'm just not sure that's the right strategy.

[kosifantutti]

Where do the stats come from?

We drafted six new players to the club. Do you count Membrey and Saad to get 8?

[saintspremiers]

we elevated a few rookies rather than delist them which contributed to the total list change (or lack of)

Yep. 4 rookie elevations I guess was what stopped us making more changes. A good thing in a way if our Rookies are showing something.

Schneider, Simpkin & Siposs probably the luckiest to still be there.

And Lee.

That's 4 that should've been dumped.

Our rookies are a joke. Schneider could park in a disabled spot half the time and Saad is a speck bet at best.

[dragit]

For instance, Melbourne this year dumped a bunch of unfulfilled 23 and 24 years olds like Blease, Strauss, Tapscott, Nicholson. They replaced them with guys with AFL experience: Lumumba, Garlett, Frost and Newton. Pretty simple way of keeping the list competitive while you rebuild, and I don't see much downside to it.

I'm comfortable if we aren't looking to Melbourne for recruiting inspiration.

They have brought in players like Byrnes, Gillies, Dawes, Roden, Michie - while letting go Martin, Pettard, Moloney, Rivers, Morton, Silvia,

You have to remember that Frost cost them pick 23 & a 28 year old Lumumba - Mitch Clark.

We've had our fair share of average mature players brought in from other clubs, and I think the reason we let Gwilt &

The downside to stocking up on average seasoned players is that they take games and experience away from our next core and they take up a valuable spot on our list.

I am absolutely stoked we didn't go for any of Hunt, Petrenko, McKernan.

Our middling 20 - 24 year old players will be gone in the next 2 years, I wouldn't worry about that too much.

[bergholt]

We drafted six new players to the club. Do you count Membrey and Saad to get 8?

Yep. They weren't on our list last year so they're new to the list. For comparison, Brisbane have 13: Robinson, Beams, Christensen, McGuinness, Beasley, Clayton, Dawson, Hammelman, Watts, McGrath, Evans, Andrews, C Hanley.

[gringo]

I think we have cleaned out so much recently there is only really untried kids and veterans. No point making changes for the sake of it. The only guys that really could have gone are Siposs, Markworth and Simpkin and Schnides is really only there as a back up. Most of those haven't really had opportunity and were pretty line ball. I'm pretty happy with what we did overall.

[SaintPav]

we elevated a few rookies rather than delist them which contributed to the total list change (or lack of)

Yep. 4 rookie elevations I guess was what stopped us making more changes. A good thing in a way if our Rookies are showing something.

Schneider, Simpkin & Siposs probably the luckiest to still be there.

And Lee.

That's 4 that should've been dumped.

Our rookies are a joke. Schneider could park in a disabled spot half the time and Saad is a speck bet at best.

That's pretty harsh. You're like a dog with a bone with Lee and you may end up being right but he still needs a year or two.

[bergholt]

I'm comfortable if we aren't looking to Melbourne for recruiting inspiration.

Fair point, but it could be argued that we're getting close to Melbourne circa 2007-2010. Look at them during that period:

2007
OUT: Pickett (204 games), Bizzell (163), Johnstone (160), Brown (146), Ward (136), Godfrey (105)
IN: 10 guys with no experience + John Meesen (4 games)

2008
OUT: Yze (271 games), White (268), Holland (191)
IN: 10 guys with no experience

2009
OUT: Robertson (228 games), Whelan (150), Wheatley (135), McLean (94)
IN: 8 guys with no experience and Joel Macdonald (80 games)

2010
OUT: McDonald (264), Bruce (234), Miller (157)
IN: 9 guys with no experience and Robbie Campbell (116 games)


That's 37 new players in and a lot of experience out over a short period - pretty similar to our last few years.

Admittedly there's not a lot of stars there and they didn't have many other options. They had early picks and pumped games into guys that didn't make it: Chris Johnson, Simon Buckley, Michael Newton, Daniel Bell, Paul Johnson, Addam Maric, Aussie Wonaeamirri, Liam Jurrah, Jamie Bennell, Ricky Petterd, etc. Not to mention the early picks themselves: Morton, Grimes, Watts, Scully, Trengove, Gysberts, Lucas Cook. I guess you could say that it was bad luck that their early picks were in years where the consensus number one pick didn't turn out to be a star, but they made recruiting mistakes as well.

The same could happen to us. We've got rid of a lot of experience, we've replaced it with a bunch of kids, and our number one pick wasn't even a consensus choice! Let's hope we've recruited well but at this point we could easily end up going down the same path. If we don't, Nick Riewoldt will be pretty much the sole reason for it - him hanging on is a godsend.

[Sainternist]

No problems with the list management this off-season. I'm pretty content with the moves made. Not a lot of deadwood on that list now.

[bergholt]

No problems with the list management this off-season. I'm pretty content with the moves made. Not a lot of deadwood on that list now.

Since I seem to be chief critic at the moment, I reckon these guys could count as deadwood:

Siposs
Markworth
Simpkin
Shenton
Minchington
Schneider (r)

And these guys have a lot of work to do or they'll last two years max:

Ross
Lee
Roberton
Gilbert
Curren
Murdoch
Saunders
Weller
Saad (r)

That's 15 out of 45, a third of the list with serious question marks over them. Letting go of Jones and Dunell is briefly satisfying but that shouldn't blind us to the fact that we don't have many truly AFL standard players.

[dragit]

Pretty sure every club would perpetually have 10 - 15 guys with question marks over them…

The thing with getting rid of players is that you have to replace them with someone.

If you de-list a further 15 players, there is no chance of finding 15 better players.

Truly AFL standard players don't come in the later picks very often… they also take time, plenty of very good AFL footballers looked below standard in their first 30 games.

[White Winmar]

Unfortunately, I have to agree with a fair bit of that. The thing is, we can't just keep slashing the list and adding inexperienced players. It's a real conundrum at the moment and we have to believe that several of those you mentioned, Bergholt, will come good in the short to medium term. Unfortunately, I think about eight on your list won't make it. Logic and history tell us so.

[Sainternist]

No problems with the list management this off-season. I'm pretty content with the moves made. Not a lot of deadwood on that list now.

Since I seem to be chief critic at the moment, I reckon these guys could count as deadwood:

Siposs
Markworth
Simpkin
Shenton
Minchington
Schneider (r)

And these guys have a lot of work to do or they'll last two years max:

Ross
Lee
Roberton
Gilbert
Curren
Murdoch
Saunders
Weller
Saad (r)

That's 15 out of 45, a third of the list with serious question marks over them. Letting go of Jones and Dunell is briefly satisfying but that shouldn't blind us to the fact that we don't have many truly AFL standard players.

I think you are a little harsh on Shenton and Weller. I thought both showed some good signs in 2014. Fair call on the rest of them though. It is quite pleasing, however, that we have very few players that go into either of those two categories. With a bit of luck, there'll be even fewer at this time next year.

[gringo]

No problems with the list management this off-season. I'm pretty content with the moves made. Not a lot of deadwood on that list now.

Since I seem to be chief critic at the moment, I reckon these guys could count as deadwood:

Siposs
Markworth
Simpkin
Shenton
Minchington
Schneider (r)

And these guys have a lot of work to do or they'll last two years max:

Ross
Lee
Roberton
Gilbert
Curren
Murdoch
Saunders
Weller
Saad (r)

That's 15 out of 45, a third of the list with serious question marks over them. Letting go of Jones and Dunell is briefly satisfying but that shouldn't blind us to the fact that we don't have many truly AFL standard players.

I would think Shenton was worthy of a spot after a very good season. Most of the others are still there because we haven't seen enough to call them. Simpkin is an interesting one as he's not getting games but seems to be kept as an emergency inclusion or is kept for life after Dempster? Schneider seems to be a bit of back up if a senior leader goes down. We will lose a few seniors to retirement over the next few years so culling the older guys would be a bit silly. Murdoch and Saunders are still kids and have shown promise, if we cull them before they are given a chance we will be down a long time.

[asiu]

i know its a possible segway ,
but where do our squad of players for our imminent Reserves side come from ?
... are we operating with our 2nds in mind.

[lewdogs]

Agree that this is actually a positive. We are using the rookie draft to get in quality. I reckon we have rookied brilliantly again this year. Great way to address the depth issues we've had in the past.

[plugger66]

Agree that this is actually a positive. We are using the rookie draft to get in quality. I reckon we have rookied brilliantly again this year. Great way to address the depth issues we've had in the past.

2 out of 4 are recycled. Not sure that is using the rookie list brilliantly. Would have thought 4 new guys would be the way to go. Certainly don't need two 25 years and older. As for depth well who cares. We will win about 2 games so why does it matter. In 4 years it will matter though and neither of the 2 older guys are likely to have anything to do with the club than. Neither may the 2 taken in their place but I reckon its worth the punt when you are bottom of the ladder.