White Winmar wrote:
Doesn't the Crows' continued competitiveness warrant a slightly deeper inspection than it currently gets? They have remained competitive and look to be churning over a new batch of players who should ensure they remain so, eg. Vince (Who they stole out from under our noses), Tippett, Dangerfield, Hentschel, Obst et al. How do they keep doing it? How have they remained competitive without top ten draft picks in all but 2 years since they've been in the competition? The conventional wisdom would say they should've "bottomed out" a couple of times, but still they keep challenging.
Here endeth the rant!
Do they? While they haven't bottomed out, they haven't really been contenders. Plus one difference of them compared to us is that they have not traded or taken nearly as many as recycled players as us.
Its like no one can ever say anything bad about Saints or they are a terrible journo and know nothing about football.
I think what everyone is failing to realise is the fact that sure we have some good up and coming talent in Geary, Armo, Steven, McEvoy etc. But other teams who have had lower picks and not traded as many as their picks have much better talent coming through. Its only natural that after being up the top for 5 years (and hopefully a few more years to come) that our youth won't be as strong as other teams. Sure there are teams like Adelaide, Geelong and Sydney who have stayed up without rebuilding. But Geelong have had a lot of success through the Father-Son picking up Ablett, Scarlett, Hawkins and Blake. And Sydney are now going towards the bottom after a long period at the top, and Adelaide as I explained above.
Now lets just see some young players from other teams and compare it to our list. The teams I'll be using are teams already in the 8, so teams out of the 8 will most likely have even better quality youth. Also I won't include late picks who haven't proved anything. Eg. Cahill, Heyne etc.
Quality Players u/23 in Top 8 teams:
Saints:
Armitage, Geary, McEvoy, Stanley, Steven, Lynch.
Hawthorn:
Birchall, Ellis, Dowler,
Franklin, Muston, Renouf, Lisle,
Rioli, Roughead, Shoenmakers, Whitecross.
Collingwood:
Beams, Brown, Cloke, Dawes, Dick,
Pendlebury, Reid, Sidebottom, Thomas.
Carlton:
Austin, Bower,
Gibbs, Hampson, Henderson,
Joseph, Krezuer, Robinson, Warnock, Yarran,
Murphy.
Essendon:
Dempsey, Daniher, Gumbleton,
Hurley, Houli, Hooker, Lonergan,
Monfries, Neagle, Myers,
Pears, Reimers,
Ryder, Zaharakis.
So if you look at it, you'd expect in about 3-4 years when our 00/01/02 core are into their 30's, we are going to struggle. I think this is what Emma is kind of getting at. While clubs already have their under 23's playing huge parts in their team, our are struggling for a game. You could say its because our team is too strong to break into, but if we had a Pendlebury or Hurley in the VFL, theres no doubt that they'd be in the squad.
Also the OP states that we are one of the only clubs who are getting kids not from the TAC comp etc. One this is quite naive to think we are the only club doing this, you'd be surprised how many clubs are looking at other players. Eg. Jurrah last year with Melbourne.
And two who exactly have we recruited that weren't out of the TAC cup? As far as I remember all our draftees last year (lynch, heyne, cahill, stanley, smith) were all out of the TAC comp. Sure we got Walsh out of Ireland, but we defiently aren't the only team to get talent from there.
But I'm quite happy that we are trading picks now, because I want that premiership and don't care if we have to spend time down the ladder in a few years to pay for it.
