I'm torn...

[The Fireman]

Looking at what we have now wouldn't you like to see at least another top pick ? so that next year when Paddy hits his straps he will have even more talent around him. I want us to motor on next year and beyond.

Everyone would love more top picks. BUT you just do not get them for nothing. You get them for being bad, for going backwards for stuffing up other things including your other selections.

What I want is for us to be doing all the other things very well, as that is the only way to achieve success.

I want to keep picking up players like Bruce and Sinclair.

I want to see a good gameplan and structure rolled ou (and I am already seeing that).

I want to see a coach bonding with his players

I want to see the playing group show esprit de corps

What I don't want to see is a rabble thinking that the only way forward is through playing bad to win the draft lottery. Speaking of big lottery winners....most end up worse off!

How do you expect our current players to develop and grow if all they are being shown is how to lose?

then we agree except ofcourse the showing our players how to lose aspect...I never advocated that. If you look back you will see that it doesnt bother me as much when we lose atm

[saintsRrising]

showing our players how to lose aspect...I never advocated that.

And how exactly do you propose to get the very low draft picks without losing?

[The Fireman]

showing our players how to lose aspect...I never advocated that.

And how exactly do you propose to get the very low draft picks without losing?

as opposed to not worrying about it as much atm ?

[Bunk_Moreland]

showing our players how to lose aspect...I never advocated that.

And how exactly do you propose to get the very low draft picks without losing?

as opposed to not worrying about it as much atm ?

I tend to agree. I haven't been as upset about us losing over the past couple of years.

There is a big difference between understanding where our list is and expectations of winning and wanting the team to lose.

I dont think Fireman want the team to lose, whereas Citywest is advocating that we lose ten more matches this year.

I know Fireman personally, and I know his passion for the Saints and I also know he is a realist. He wants a successful STKFC.

I do disagree with the premis that we need to lose more so we can get a good dp especially this year when the top six to eight are all pretty good. For example Parish has been touted as a No.1 pick by some where terry Wallet had him @ number 11.

We got a potential gun with Goddard @ pick 21 last year when he was touted as a top five during the year.

We chose X and Raph @5 and 8 respectively and while good players were never elite. Same with Luke Ball when compared to Hodge or Judd.

Dal Santo was pick 13, Sam Fisher pick 55, Acres 17, Dunstan 18, McKenzie 22, Bruce 48, Sinclair rookie.

We can get an elite with FA. The new rules means we will be able to use 105% of the SC this and next season, 500k more than any other club maxed out on SC @ 100%. We can spend over a million more on player than we did this season.

We are cashed up and can get OOC's or FA's. We are looking at Sloane (unlikely) Sheil (gun and still unsigned), Treloar (gun and still unsigned) and the GCS whole list because they are a basket case and all want to come home.

We can come fifth last, still land a quality young player and add FA's and OOC's.

We dont need to tank, it doesn't work, look at Carltank, and Melbourne. Both trainwrecks as far as their lists and playing culture go.

our list needs to be topped up by some quality, but that quality will walk into a team that knows it has the ability to come back from long way back as it has done twice in the last month. this is a good confidence builder and any player looking to move would look at a Saints team thats up and coming rather than a Carlton or a Melbourne who have no heart or playing culture at the moment.

Also as I know Fireman personally and I am a coward, I dont want to disagree with him

[The Fireman]

lol @ the coward bit.

exceptional post Joff. sums it up.

all on here want the same thing.

[satchmo]

Also as I know Fireman personally and I am a coward, I dont want to disagree with him

He's probably 16 years old and 60kg. If he gives you any grief I will slap him around for you.

[MC Gusto]

Great post joff you've hit the nail

Of course losing doesn't hurt as much at the moment because it doesn't cost as much; it is essentially a lot less important. What is important and always will be is winning. Tanking is f***ed and proven time and time again not to work. Sides that learn to win during their development periods inevitably become successful teams

I do not buy in to the need to finish bottom or near enough to guarantee picks. There is literally nothing guaranteed about the numbers you pick at... Good drafting (and a bit of luck) will secure great players at any number - including rookie drafts!

I would never hope or advocate for a loss no matter the circumstance.

[The Fireman]

Also as I know Fireman personally and I am a coward, I dont want to disagree with him

He's probably 16 years old and 60kg. If he gives you any grief I will slap him around for you.

Bully....

[satchmo]

Also as I know Fireman personally and I am a coward, I dont want to disagree with him

He's probably 16 years old and 60kg. If he gives you any grief I will slap him around for you.

Bully....

Good. We understand each other.

[SENsei]

I'm sure what CityWest or any of us on here wants has no direct correlation on game day to team performance.

The wins and losses will take care of themselves as per the competition and as per the effort shown on any given day. Give me 100% effort 100% of the time and I will be a very happy football watcher. Win or lose.

[saynta]

I'm sure what CityWest or any of us on here wants has no direct correlation on game day to team performance.

The wins and losses will take care of themselves as per the competition and as per the effort shown on any given day. Give me 100% effort 100% of the time and I will be a very happy football watcher. Win or lose.

plus one

[Teflon]

. No surprises that side was build off the back of top draft picks and a champion at 1.

Nice fairy tale. But the team was built on more factors thtn just draft picks. The team was a blend of picks and:
* a core of very good players from the 97 tilt
* the Blight effect that helped us gain very good players like GTrain and Hamill
* some good mid-tier picks ups from other clubs like Voss, Powell etc

What a load of cliched nonsense
Do tell me how many games were won by the onfield presence of Thomas/Butters as we drove up the ladder in early 2000's?

THE POINT (again conveniently ignored), we achieved access to a decade long champion not by finishing 9th with good mediocre efforts but by being cellar dwellers and getting access to the first pick in that draft. Of course it's not the only factor in the rise but blind freddy knows that and I don't deal in cliches

That young saints side was driven off the back of high end draft picks from Roo, Kozzie, Clarke, Ball, Goddard et al - don't delude yourself Brett Voss was the key ingredient that's semantics

[Teflon]

Last wooden spoon of Premiership teams
2014 Hawthorn 1965
2012 Sydney 1994
2011 Geelong 1958
2010 Collingwood 1999 Josh Fraser dropped before 2010 finals
2006 West Coast ----
2004 Port Adelaide ----
2003 Brisbane 1998 Des Headland played in 2002 Premiership
2000 Essendon 1933
1999 North Melbourne 1972
1998 Adelaide ---
1995 Carlton ----

1966 St Kilda 1955

Finishing last and developing a losing culture is obviously the key to success.

That's definitive!!
Now how bout a list of Premiership sides without top drafted players just to round out the biased opinion!!

[Teflon]

I think Chris Pelchen would say he wants to see the team give great effort week in week out whatever the win loss record.
This whole idea that this is a natural extension of the strategy is a total crock. We turned over our playing list for younger kids and performance suffered as a whole we all knew that was going to happen. Now that we've turned over the list, having re-generated 75% of it, these quality kids are starting to learn how to win we have supporters who want that to be held back in some way to continue to get earlier picks. Early picks were a function of turning over the list - Underperformance for early picks is not a key plank in a list management strategy, its a by-product. In fact continued underperformance probably means you haven't done a very good job in recruitment.

And yet still nobody has addressed the potential cost to the club for ongoing poor on-field performance. A club that based on the 2014 accounts, read in isolation, is effectively insolvent*. Has anyone who extolls this "let's not win too much" theory even considered that fact? How many more $+1mil losses can the club withstand?
We consistently bang on about wanting more earlier draft picks but don't fully comprehend the consequences that comes with that for the club.
*Obviously comes with big caveats.

They say "stock up on A-grade midfielders" but it makes no sense logically, morally or financially. How quickly we forget Lenny went at #11.
Successful clubs don't talk like this - losers do. You don't like the truth so what? Deal with it.

Successful clubs in recent times (see Swans) buy their A grade talent - we aren't and have never been a successful club financially or in Premierships so what utter nonsense to pretend the playing field is level
Our off field financial success has to be sustainable to translate financially - for that you need a very very good list complete with top end stars - show me a successful club without AGrade talent??

Us poorer clubs MUST make use of the system - the draft has served very well in the past to suggest not using it to our advantage isn't a plank in a long term strategy is ignorant and dumb

I think Chris Pelchen would say "give me access to talent and I'll shut up!!"

[Teflon]

Great post joff you've hit the nail

Of course losing doesn't hurt as much at the moment because it doesn't cost as much; it is essentially a lot less important. What is important and always will be is winning. Tanking is f***ed and proven time and time again not to work. Sides that learn to win during their development periods inevitably become successful teams

I do not buy in to the need to finish bottom or near enough to guarantee picks. There is literally nothing guaranteed about the numbers you pick at... Good drafting (and a bit of luck) will secure great players at any number - including rookie drafts!

I would never hope or advocate for a loss no matter the circumstance.

So finish 9th and use our extensive off field development $$ aka Pies and co to transform Josh Saunders into Fyfe??

I see..

[plugger66]

I think Chris Pelchen would say he wants to see the team give great effort week in week out whatever the win loss record.
This whole idea that this is a natural extension of the strategy is a total crock. We turned over our playing list for younger kids and performance suffered as a whole we all knew that was going to happen. Now that we've turned over the list, having re-generated 75% of it, these quality kids are starting to learn how to win we have supporters who want that to be held back in some way to continue to get earlier picks. Early picks were a function of turning over the list - Underperformance for early picks is not a key plank in a list management strategy, its a by-product. In fact continued underperformance probably means you haven't done a very good job in recruitment.

And yet still nobody has addressed the potential cost to the club for ongoing poor on-field performance. A club that based on the 2014 accounts, read in isolation, is effectively insolvent*. Has anyone who extolls this "let's not win too much" theory even considered that fact? How many more $+1mil losses can the club withstand?
We consistently bang on about wanting more earlier draft picks but don't fully comprehend the consequences that comes with that for the club.
*Obviously comes with big caveats.

They say "stock up on A-grade midfielders" but it makes no sense logically, morally or financially. How quickly we forget Lenny went at #11.
Successful clubs don't talk like this - losers do. You don't like the truth so what? Deal with it.

Successful clubs in recent times (see Swans) buy their A grade talent - we aren't and have never been a successful club financially or in Premierships so what utter nonsense to pretend the playing field is level
Our off field financial success has to be sustainable to translate financially - for that you need a very very good list complete with top end stars - show me a successful club without AGrade talent??

Us poorer clubs MUST make use of the system - the draft has served very well in the past to suggest not using it to our advantage isn't a plank in a long term strategy is ignorant and dumb

I think Chris Pelchen would say "give me access to talent and I'll shut up!!"

We can buy players like every other side no matter how rich or poor we are. The salary cap assures that. The Swans have more money in their SC but the Hawks don't and they tend to top up to stay on top. If we get up the top again we can top up to stay on top as long as we get our SC right. The problem we had in 09 and 10 wasn't money. It was a SC problem. We paid our stars to much which meant we couldn't top up with good players. We had to take the dregs. At the moment our poor balance sheet isn't stopping us going for young star players, its a timing thing. If money was an issue then how did the WB get Boyd?

[Bunk_Moreland]

Great post joff you've hit the nail

Of course losing doesn't hurt as much at the moment because it doesn't cost as much; it is essentially a lot less important. What is important and always will be is winning. Tanking is f***ed and proven time and time again not to work. Sides that learn to win during their development periods inevitably become successful teams

I do not buy in to the need to finish bottom or near enough to guarantee picks. There is literally nothing guaranteed about the numbers you pick at... Good drafting (and a bit of luck) will secure great players at any number - including rookie drafts!

I would never hope or advocate for a loss no matter the circumstance.

So finish 9th and use our extensive off field development $$ aka Pies and co to transform Josh Saunders into Fyfe??

I see..

You are being purposely obtuse.

For a start we wont finish 9th, more like 14th or 15th at best.

secondly, as P66 noted it isnt finances but SC.We used 95% of SC this year and with the new rules we can use that extra 5% thereby having 105% of the SC to be used next season.

This means we will 500k more than a 100% SC users of this year to use, and more than a million we used this year.

This means we can target OOC's and FA's with that money and also pick up a top 5 first rounder.

Dont know why this is so hard to understand. Seems crystal clear that this is what the strategy is.

[Saints94]

Citywest your not a St Kilda supporter if your contemplating weather you want to win or not.

We always want to win...

[plugger66]

Great post joff you've hit the nail

Of course losing doesn't hurt as much at the moment because it doesn't cost as much; it is essentially a lot less important. What is important and always will be is winning. Tanking is f***ed and proven time and time again not to work. Sides that learn to win during their development periods inevitably become successful teams

I do not buy in to the need to finish bottom or near enough to guarantee picks. There is literally nothing guaranteed about the numbers you pick at... Good drafting (and a bit of luck) will secure great players at any number - including rookie drafts!

I would never hope or advocate for a loss no matter the circumstance.

So finish 9th and use our extensive off field development $$ aka Pies and co to transform Josh Saunders into Fyfe??

I see..

You are being purposely obtuse.

For a start we wont finish 9th, more like 14th or 15th at best.

secondly, as P66 noted it isnt finances but SC.We used 95% of SC this year and with the new rules we can use that extra 5% thereby having 105% of the SC to be used next season.

This means we will 500k more than a 100% SC users of this year to use, and more than a million we used this year.

This means we can target OOC's and FA's with that money and also pick up a top 5 first rounder.

Dont know why this is so hard to understand. Seems crystal clear that this is what the strategy is.

We actually even have more money than that if we need it. We wouldn't be using promotional money this year the veterans list because we would be struggling to get to 95%. I reckon we would be paying about 1 to 1.5 million less than the Hawks. We have huge money if we want to use it.

[Bunk_Moreland]

Great post joff you've hit the nail

Of course losing doesn't hurt as much at the moment because it doesn't cost as much; it is essentially a lot less important. What is important and always will be is winning. Tanking is f***ed and proven time and time again not to work. Sides that learn to win during their development periods inevitably become successful teams

I do not buy in to the need to finish bottom or near enough to guarantee picks. There is literally nothing guaranteed about the numbers you pick at... Good drafting (and a bit of luck) will secure great players at any number - including rookie drafts!

I would never hope or advocate for a loss no matter the circumstance.

So finish 9th and use our extensive off field development $$ aka Pies and co to transform Josh Saunders into Fyfe??

I see..

You are being purposely obtuse.

For a start we wont finish 9th, more like 14th or 15th at best.

secondly, as P66 noted it isnt finances but SC.We used 95% of SC this year and with the new rules we can use that extra 5% thereby having 105% of the SC to be used next season.

This means we will 500k more than a 100% SC users of this year to use, and more than a million we used this year.

This means we can target OOC's and FA's with that money and also pick up a top 5 first rounder.

Dont know why this is so hard to understand. Seems crystal clear that this is what the strategy is.

We actually even have more money than that if we need it. We wouldn't be using promotional money this year the veterans list because we would be struggling to get to 95%. I reckon we would be paying about 1 to 1.5 million less than the Hawks. We have huge money if we want to use it.

Could be. My figures are based on the SC and us paying 95%, but you are correct, we aren't paying Veteran list this year, dont know how promotional money fits in the SC, but we have a minimum 1 million more to spend on SC than last season, and even more with what you point out.

problem is, use it or lose it, can carry over the underpay % more than the following season. This is why I think the FA or OOC has been fast forwarded to end of this season

[kosifantutti]

Great post joff you've hit the nail

Of course losing doesn't hurt as much at the moment because it doesn't cost as much; it is essentially a lot less important. What is important and always will be is winning. Tanking is f***ed and proven time and time again not to work. Sides that learn to win during their development periods inevitably become successful teams

I do not buy in to the need to finish bottom or near enough to guarantee picks. There is literally nothing guaranteed about the numbers you pick at... Good drafting (and a bit of luck) will secure great players at any number - including rookie drafts!

I would never hope or advocate for a loss no matter the circumstance.

So finish 9th and use our extensive off field development $$ aka Pies and co to transform Josh Saunders into Fyfe??

I see..

Not a great example, Fyfe was pick 20.

But maybe we could turn Josh Bruce into Jack Watts.

[gringo]

Great post joff you've hit the nail

Of course losing doesn't hurt as much at the moment because it doesn't cost as much; it is essentially a lot less important. What is important and always will be is winning. Tanking is f***ed and proven time and time again not to work. Sides that learn to win during their development periods inevitably become successful teams

I do not buy in to the need to finish bottom or near enough to guarantee picks. There is literally nothing guaranteed about the numbers you pick at... Good drafting (and a bit of luck) will secure great players at any number - including rookie drafts!

I would never hope or advocate for a loss no matter the circumstance.

So finish 9th and use our extensive off field development $$ aka Pies and co to transform Josh Saunders into Fyfe??

I see..

You are being purposely obtuse.

For a start we wont finish 9th, more like 14th or 15th at best.

secondly, as P66 noted it isnt finances but SC.We used 95% of SC this year and with the new rules we can use that extra 5% thereby having 105% of the SC to be used next season.

This means we will 500k more than a 100% SC users of this year to use, and more than a million we used this year.

This means we can target OOC's and FA's with that money and also pick up a top 5 first rounder.

Dont know why this is so hard to understand. Seems crystal clear that this is what the strategy is.

We actually even have more money than that if we need it. We wouldn't be using promotional money this year the veterans list because we would be struggling to get to 95%. I reckon we would be paying about 1 to 1.5 million less than the Hawks. We have huge money if we want to use it.

we couldn't make minimum spend last year and had to actually apply to have a carry over amount into this years cap. The contract extensions were probably about front loading a whole lot to make this years minimum cap.

[asiu]

Us poorer clubs MUST make use of the system - the draft has served very well in the past to suggest not using it to our advantage isn't a plank in a long term strategy is ignorant and dumb

... and there endeth the Lesson.

Thank you ball boys and lamingtons.

[citywest]

All the hysteria on here is truly laughable. I don't want St Kilda to lose, I want St Kilda to win a premiership. Just one and I'll be happy. The next 3 years will be critical in determining whether we will become legitimate contenders or whether we become another Richmond or North. Do I want St Kilda to win every game they play? Of course I bloody do. But that isn't going to happen. The draft is there and we need to exploit it, especially over the next 3 years.

Our list is heading in the right direction but there is still a long way to go. Over the next 3 years we are going to have to replace quite a few players and I want to do that with the highest possible picks. Three top 5 picks and 3 more around 25ish will do nicely. Then and only then we can start targeting FA's. Follow this plan Saints and the base will be there for 10 years of proper contending (also known as having a real crack at the flag).

Once I post this reply I know that all the usual suspects will start calling me a troll or a Bombers supporter but that's ok. The worst thing though is when posters mis-quote me, that really does stink but then again this is just a Fan Forum so who cares.

[plugger66]

All the hysteria on here is truly laughable. I don't want St Kilda to lose, I want St Kilda to win a premiership. Just one and I'll be happy. The next 3 years will be critical in determining whether we will become legitimate contenders or whether we become another Richmond or North. Do I want St Kilda to win every game they play? Of course I bloody do. But that isn't going to happen. The draft is there and we need to exploit it, especially over the next 3 years.

Our list is heading in the right direction but there is still a long way to go. Over the next 3 years we are going to have to replace quite a few players and I want to do that with the highest possible picks. Three top 5 picks and 3 more around 25ish will do nicely. Then and only then we can start targeting FA's. Follow this plan Saints and the base will be there for 10 years of proper contending (also known as having a real crack at the flag).

Once I post this reply I know that all the usual suspects will start calling me a troll or a Bombers supporter but that's ok. The worst thing though is when posters mis-quote me, that really does stink but then again this is just a Fan Forum so who cares.

First thanks for dobbing me in by reporting my post. very weak but I expect that. Secondly just one simple question. If win 3 more games out of the next 6 would you want us to keep winning about every second game?