Our Moneyball type rebuild has failed.

[Vazelos]

I don't think you can assess it in its entirety until after 2018 season when we see what free agent picks come up.
We will know then what top end talent they have attracted and had a better look at Mc Cartin as well.
Top players also make B graders better as they win more contests, players can gamble to start running forward of the ball, Mids get released in better areas and forwards start enjoying better delivery.
Then we will know where we are at heading towards the planned window we started with Pelchen.
We have done well with our trading but not so well in the draft.

[WellardSaint]

I don't think you can assess it in its entirety until after 2018 season when we see what free agent picks come up.
We will know then what top end talent they have attracted and had a better look at Mc Cartin as well.
Top players also make B graders better as they win more contests, players can gamble to start running forward of the ball, Mids get released in better areas and forwards start enjoying better delivery.
Then we will know where we are at heading towards the planned window we started with Pelchen.
We have done well with our trading but not so well in the draft.

The part I have put in bold is quite insightful,
as I'm sure most on here would agree.

High quality players have a double effect, as with fewer turnovers+elite decision making (from them) the B-Graders in the team have an easier run at the ball.
It's exactly why some of these Swines play so well, off the back of quality players.
Put some Swines into a Lions or Blues (or our!) team, and their B-Grade status will be plainly obvious.
I think it's why a player like Savage is where he is at out club.
He was an emergency in a Hawks' GF team, but put him in ours, and he's not bad, but he's not a potential premiership player in our team- ever.

[Teflon]

Talk about an overreaction.

The club continues to build. We have some good talent we have developed ourselves: Webster, Ross, Gresham, Newnes, etc. We have also brought in some good players from elsewhere, most of whom are still young and developing.

As I have posted often enough on this forum, our main problem ATM is that we don't have much depth, especially outside the midfield. We have desperately missed Membrey over the past two games. We also really missed Longer against the Bombers and Gilbert last night. That's the stage we're at: we are good enough to beat just about anyone on our day, but we need everything to go right, especially up forward.

I still see a lot of upside, if we can recruit well over the next two years.

Just bring back GT hey??
It's this attitude of "it's all ok we are trending in right general direction" which is why this club is least successful in the league - we don't demand success and truly embrace any snippet of it (which is why we quickly overrate players).
It's endemic

[Teflon]

I don't think you can assess it in its entirety until after 2018 season when we see what free agent picks come up.
We will know then what top end talent they have attracted and had a better look at Mc Cartin as well.
Top players also make B graders better as they win more contests, players can gamble to start running forward of the ball, Mids get released in better areas and forwards start enjoying better delivery.
Then we will know where we are at heading towards the planned window we started with Pelchen.
We have done well with our trading but not so well in the draft.

Great post.

[Proph3t of egan]

????
Membrey - tick
Bruce - tick
Savage - tick
Steele - will be massive tick

The problem? Clearly Hamil as forward coach, fitness coach, possibly richo himself, time to move on rooey and monty - We HAVE the talent time to question how we develop it before its too late.
I got a bad feeling Acres Gresham Billings even lonie would all be the best yougsters in league if they were at geelong or hawks or swans.

add roberton and weller to that as well

[saintsRrising]

I don't think you can assess it in its entirety until after 2018 season when we see what free agent picks come up.

We will know then what top end talent they have attracted and had a better look at Mc Cartin as well.
Top players also make B graders better as they win more contests, players can gamble to start running forward of the ball, Mids get released in better areas and forwards start enjoying better delivery.
Then we will know where we are at heading towards the planned window we started with Pelchen.
We have done well with our trading but not so well in the draft.

That is one reason why I am worried. The original plan was to land gun FAs now. However clubs have gotten smarter about not letting players become FAs, and in particular Unrestricted FA's. so over thae last year the talk from our management on this has softened so that it now also includes to land a gun by trade. You would imagine that our draft pick swap with the Hawks and initiated by Bains was to enable this,

So right here and now the FA cupboard is not well stocked. In terms of quality there is only Dusty and Rockliff left. Dusty is also a Restricted FA, and so Richmond can chose (or not) to match any offer.

So also right here and now it means that to get a real gun, that you more likely to have to trade for it. At present the cupboard is thin here too and that means Kelly and Lever.

So are a chance at landing a star. But that is only a chance and those 4 players all have other suitors including the clubs that there are at. You can bet that the Hawks are not just sitting on the sidelines waiting to see what happens. They will be into the FA market in particular as their trading position is not good. And the Hawks resurgence in the last part of the season means that they will unfortunately for our aspirations retained their Destination club positioning somewhat. I could for example easily imagine that Rockliff will land at the Hawks from 2018.

So as I wrote in the OP :


The Saints have been beating the drum for a while about creating a huge war-chest to land some guns. Well the time is now, and unless a genuinely good gun or two is landed in this trade period I genuinely fear for the competitive future of the Saints. So hopefully Bains and Co can deliver on all the hype.


We have built a war-chest to spend now on a gun. But will we? We desperately need to land a star, or two by FA/Trade, and have well and nailed our colors to this mast.

We are however kidding ourselves if we think that we are a destination club that will easily attract what we need. The available star player pool is small, and many clubs want what is on offer.

[Con Gorozidis]

Our recruiters are second rate hacks.
Bains is a vanilla boys club robot who makes poor decisions.

[Con Gorozidis]

????
Membrey - tick
Bruce - tick
Savage - tick
Steele - will be massive tick

The problem? Clearly Hamil as forward coach, fitness coach, possibly richo himself, time to move on rooey and monty - We HAVE the talent time to question how we develop it before its too late.
I got a bad feeling Acres Gresham Billings even lonie would all be the best yougsters in league if they were at geelong or hawks or swans.

add roberton and weller to that as well

Savage is not a tick. Very ordinary footballer.
Roberton is over rated on here.
Weller is ordinary.

We are way too eager to over rate our players.

[Impatient Sainter]

Our recruiting at the draft has been particularly poor for the last 10 years and continues to be IMO.

[Sainternist]

What's with the Moneyball analogy?

I don't see how our list management can be compared with Billy Beane's style of shaping the Oakland Athletics' team last decade. No one on this forum even follows baseball, so they wouldn't have a bloody clue.

[Con Gorozidis]

What's with the Moneyball analogy?

I don't see how our list management can be compared with Billy Beane's style of shaping the Oakland Athletics' team last decade. No one on this forum even follows baseball, so they wouldn't have a bloody clue.

Agree
Poor analogy.
Our strategy is very orthodox.
We just have poor recruiters. Poor list manager.
The whole organisation is bog average from the President down to the boot studder.

[WellardSaint]

What's with the Moneyball analogy?

I don't see how our list management can be compared with Billy Beane's style of shaping the Oakland Athletics' team last decade. No one on this forum even follows baseball, so they wouldn't have a bloody clue.

Agree
Poor analogy.
Our strategy is very orthodox.
We just have poor recruiters. Poor list manager.
The whole organisation is bog average from the President down to the boot studder.

White Winmar, as an insider at the club for years, says Elshaug is not a good recruiter and has made mistakes.
He speaks from experience and not speculation, so his opinion carries weight.
Our club can't develop players, like others have said, at Geelong or Bombers, Acres and Billings would already be stars.
At the Saints, nahhhh

[Sainternist]

What's with the Moneyball analogy?

I don't see how our list management can be compared with Billy Beane's style of shaping the Oakland Athletics' team last decade. No one on this forum even follows baseball, so they wouldn't have a bloody clue.

Agree
Poor analogy.
Our strategy is very orthodox.
We just have poor recruiters. Poor list manager.
The whole organisation is bog average from the President down to the boot studder.

White Winmar, as an insider at the club for years, says Elshaug is not a good recruiter and has made mistakes.
He speaks from experience and not speculation, so his opinion carries weight.
Our club can't develop players, like others have said, at Geelong or Bombers, Acres and Billings would already be stars.
At the Saints, nahhhh

We've had Elshaug onboard since RL first took over. Seems ridiculous that we've hung onto him, particularly in light of the recruiting during RL's tenure.

[Con Gorozidis]

Brisbane are closer to a flag than us. Think about it.

McStay
McLuggage
Berry
Andrews
Hipwood
Mathieson
Cox
Witherden

If we had youth like that we would all be over the moon.

[WellardSaint]

Brisbane are closer to a flag than us. Think about it.

McStay
McLuggage
Berry
Andrews
Hipwood
Mathieson
Cox
Witherden

If we had youth like that we would all be over the moon.

I don't know any of those players,
but yes, we won't win a flag in the next 10 years.
The coaches have no clue, they hang their hat on the odd win (GWS, Tigers and Hawks) and tell themselves they're on the right track
based on delusions.

[resaintlee]

Looking at our wins and losses this year our win against the Eagles was special and the loss against the Dogs disappointing. What I am getting at, all other losses have been against bigger bodied teams. I suppose having Jake gives us something, but until our players can contest and tackle without being thrown around we will continue to struggle. Sometimes they look like rugby players waiting to be taken down. See the difference at Hawthorn this year.

[Con Gorozidis]

Looking at our wins and losses this year our win against the Eagles was special and the loss against the Dogs disappointing. What I am getting at, all other losses have been against bigger bodied teams. I suppose having Jake gives us something, but until our players can contest and tackle without being thrown around we will continue to struggle. Sometimes they look like rugby players waiting to be taken down. See the difference at Hawthorn this year.

We lost against the Eagles dude. 19 point loss.

Funny how our memories trick us.

Also Richmond are playing this year with a less experienced and younger side than us- and they are 4th. Same goes for Melbourne. Also younger than us all season.
So I dont think we can use the age of our list as an excuse any more.
We just arent very good I'm afraid.

[Johnny Member]

????
Membrey - tick
Bruce - tick
Savage - tick
Steele - will be massive tick

The problem? Clearly Hamil as forward coach, fitness coach, possibly richo himself, time to move on rooey and monty - We HAVE the talent time to question how we develop it before its too late.
I got a bad feeling Acres Gresham Billings even lonie would all be the best yougsters in league if they were at geelong or hawks or swans.

Ticks?


Hmmm, we're clearly not hard markers.

[saintsRrising]

What's with the Moneyball analogy?

.

The point I was trying make by that is that the Saints have taken a value approach to recruiting over quality.

We have traded off low picks for multiple picks and/or player combos and the Saints have gone for many rough diamonds. Also players who supposedly have slipped in the draft, but whom our recruiters believe were steels. We have not had many out-performs from either category.

Now yes it does make sense to churn through players to find good ones. But we have overdone the quantity over quality process where it costs us good draft picks to get them.

Saad, Milera, Hickey, White, Wright, Tom Lee.....

Hopefully Freeman will come good, but even their the club went for value by getting an injured player at a discount.

By contrast the cheap pick ups from other clubs have been a lot more fruitful: Robbo, Weller, Membrey. Even Brown as a fill in full back for a couple of years.

Now this value process is also ok initially. But we have basically just reached a stage where we are swapping in one ok player for another. To take the next step and push for Top 4 we now need to be swapping in some elites and very good players for some ok players.

[Moods]

Too many average types, no guns, apart from Carlisle, yet.

Carlisle is SO over rated on here it's not funny. He is too weak for such a 'big' man and picks and chooses when he goes for the ball. If he was a star he would be taking 10+ intercept marks every game like a Fisher or a Demspter used to (not once in every 6 or 7 games).

I'm afraid I concur with this. My bomber mates warned me that he oozes talent BUT he's a sook who can't b relied upon. The longer the year goes, the more accurate that prophecy looks.

[ace]

The St Kilda rebuild has been built on trying to get players that others have passed on, that we believe are better value. Our recruiters have tried to be too clever and while there have been some successes, overall the result lacks quality. There have been some successes, but on the whole our draft picks are an under-perform. And remember too that we let BJ and Dal go to get extra picks. And so this under-performance is worse as it is from a basis of having more picks. We have traded dearly to get young rucks in, but neither are good ruckmen.

No BJ and Dal had to go because of the salary cap.
We had allowed 10 players to take more than 60% of the salary cap.
That meant our bottom six - the guys who lost us premierships - were VFL standard at best.
We had no money left in the cap to import genuine talent.
Unfortunately Luke Ball, Goddard and Dal became accustomed to the big bucks and there was no way their agents were going to accept a hefty pay cut.
Someone had to go, the club off loaded expensive players who could generate draft picks.

The problem was our recruitment staff were well below average before this time, still below average below average at that time, and still are below average.
They are better deal makers than they are in assessing player potential.

[ace]

Too many average types, no guns, apart from Carlisle, yet.

Carlisle is SO over rated on here it's not funny. He is too weak for such a 'big' man and picks and chooses when he goes for the ball. If he was a star he would be taking 10+ intercept marks every game like a Fisher or a Demspter used to (not once in every 6 or 7 games).

I'm afraid I concur with this. My bomber mates warned me that he oozes talent BUT he's a sook who can't b relied upon. The longer the year goes, the more accurate that prophecy looks.

Weak, I was so disappointed with our teams game, especially our insipid midfield, but my highlight was when Buddy tried to run through Carlisle.
Carlisle put his shoulder into Buddy and Buddy went down on his back like a sack of spuds.
The shocked look on Buddy's face as he was on the way down was priceless.

But I have to concur that Carlisle does not look like he is not going 100% hard for the ball.
I would prefer to see him appear to be playing for his life rather than playing for a pay cheque.

The sort of desperation that Lonie showed when (I think it was) Dunstan too far out played on and kicked for goal.
Lonie was 10 metres behind a Sydney giant but he willed himself to and around in front of the giant.
Tiny Lonie's shepherd turned what would have been a touched into a goal.

[Vazelos]

I don't think you can assess it in its entirety until after 2018 season when we see what free agent picks come up.
We will know then what top end talent they have attracted and had a better look at Mc Cartin as well.
Top players also make B graders better as they win more contests, players can gamble to start running forward of the ball, Mids get released in better areas and forwards start enjoying better delivery.
Then we will know where we are at heading towards the planned window we started with Pelchen.
We have done well with our trading but not so well in the draft.

The part I have put in bold is quite insightful,
as I'm sure most on here would agree.

High quality players have a double effect, as with fewer turnovers+elite decision making (from them) the B-Graders in the team have an easier run at the ball.
It's exactly why some of these Swines play so well, off the back of quality players.
Put some Swines into a Lions or Blues (or our!) team, and their B-Grade status will be plainly obvious.
I think it's why a player like Savage is where he is at out club.
He was an emergency in a Hawks' GF team, but put him in ours, and he's not bad, but he's not a potential premiership player in our team- ever.

Wellard Saint its evident we are a blue collar team in need of some real class...
In my opinion we have traded well but our draft performance have been average to good at best...
Not many hits in that department so we have built a list to get out of the bottom 4 and mid table but its where we are at the moment...
We have to exit Roo and Joey which is always painful and Mc Cartin has to come into this team which is always going have some short term pain in the beginning.
Its amazing what some real class ( Kelly) and/or a match winner like Dusty would do to this team..
Look at Dangerfield at Geelong as an example...
This summer will be a defining period thats for sure with our 2 picks in the 1st round...

[Legendary]

Interesting to compare the 2009 GF side with the side that played against the Swans.

B: S. Baker, Z. Dawson, J. Blake
B: J. Webster, N. Brown, J. Geary

HB: S. Gilbert, S. Fisher, J. Gram
HB: S. Savage, J. Carlisle, D. Roberton

C: F. Ray, N Dal Santo, C. Jones
C: B. Acres, J. Steven, J. Newnes

HF: L. Montagna, N. Riewoldt, B. Goddard
HF: L. Montagna, N. Riewoldt, J. Billings

F: S. Milne, J. Koschitzke, A. Schneider
F: J. Gresham, J. Bruce, J. Lonie

Foll: M. Gardiner, L. Hayes, L. Ball
Foll: B. Longer, S. Ross, L. Dunstan

I/C: A. McQualter, R. Clarke, S. Dempster, S. King
I/C: J. Steele, K. Stevens, J. Sinclair, R. Marshall


The 2009 team had seven truly elite players: Riewoldt, Montagna, Dal Santo, Goddard, Hayes, Milne, Fisher. You could argue the toss on a couple more, but those seven were in the best 50 in the AFL.

The 2017 team has one (and possibly two) truly elite players: Steven (and possibly Ross).

Across the board, the 2017 side has more quality and far more potential for development. In my opinion, it's a more even spread.

But we are lacking elite talent. Really lacking elite talent.

[Bernard Shakey]

The biggest concern is the number of players that have gone back in their development, and others who are just treading water.

Those who have gone back.

Riewoldt
Montanna

Steven
Hickey
Weller
McCartin
Wright
McKenzie

Those who have treaded water.

Acres
Dunstan
Billings
Newnes
Lonie
Sinclair
Longer

Those who have improved

Maybe Roberton
Maybe Gresham

Its a scary scenario.

Most of the players mentioned were players we thought would improve. They haven't.

When the club does their review at the end of the year, this is what they need to do.

Jack Steven is a concern - yes, he's being tagged, but wasn't Steele, and Stevens suppose to spread the load?

No, its not happening.

Roo and Joey easy targets.

Steven, Hickey, Weller and McCartin have all carried injuries.

Billings, Sinclair, Longer and probably Acres have improved dramatically.

Robbo and Gresh have treaded water.

Have you not noticed Seb Ross? He will win our B&F by a mile!