Interesting article today
https://www.afl.com.au/news/1072658/list-analysis-how-your-club-has-built-its-listHow our club's list was built.
What dos this say about our List Manager SOS who turned over the list and used more first round picks than any other List Manager in the last 10 years? What does it say about Trading out Draft picks? What does it say about guarantees in the draft?
No successful selections after pick 30 (for DeKoning) for SOS at Carlton. Is that normal for a List Manager? I don't think zero is. Give credit where credit is due, SOS did select Williams in the rookie draft for GWS.
SOS had to do what he had to do to play the clubs cold executioner, and I thank him for that (except for Tuohy), but as a selector, he seems to have got too many first and second round selections wrong at GWS and Carlton to be considered a guru, and its not an easy task and that Trading for players isn't such a bad thing as some seem to think.
When you see Dow was a pick 3, SPS a pick 5, OBrien a pick 10, Austin's trades for Cerra for pick 6 and Saad for pick 8 what I see and have learned from this is Trading out first round picks isn't such a big deal given you have to pay in high Picks for quality and both of those players are only around the $600K pa mark. Williams was a free hit but cost $850K pa. Lets hope Austin continues with shrewd Trading and later selections now that we will not be seeing top 10 draft picks for a long long time (hopefully).
I just wonder what we could have got if we traded late first round picks like Stocker (19), Philp (20), Cuningham (23). Then again SOS did trade pick 7 for Jaksch to GWS. Doesn't matter anymore.
The past doesn't worry me. Its gone, and we have a great list now (regardless of the fact that it took much more than 66 weeks as was toted). A great list takes time. I just hope we learn from this experience and the lesson that Drafting isn't the be all to end all, and certainly no guarantee for success. Its all easy in hindsight for posters. Austin has to be better than SOS with later selections and make the right calls when trading out players or delisting, like he did with Setterfield, Stocker, Dow, SPS, and I'm sure that decision is not his alone. Those decisions are made by a panel of experts (including he coach).
Cazzeman would know all about that, and he'd also know more about the calibre of our current recruiting staff and investment on eyes around the country and lower leagues. They are the ones we have to rely on.
Our list has never been better this century. We got to this point by making hard, but imo the right decisons. Decisions SOS would have found difficult to make given he picked some of the players we have discarded with very valuable Draft picks. Discarding Dow OBrien and Fisher were the right decisions regardless of all the frothing and dogmatic statements posters made about them last year. Some of us weren't surprised at all, and I celebrate we have the people who can make hard decisions.
Discarding Setterfield, SPS, Philp, even other first rounders like Menzel, Boekhurst, Jaksch, Watson, bloody Bootsma were all good decisions. They take up list spots and list spots are valuable and we have to keep improving our list, no matter how good we think it is.
Our next discards will be the same: hard decisons on good players, even better than Dow, OBrien SPS Fisher.
Players have to be let go, due to AFL rules, and from our current list we know they will be good ones, again, including contracted players (I'm looking at one poster who I wont mention who posted I was an idiot midseason to suggest OBrien will have to be let go despite being in contract. Rules are rules. This year we have to make decisons on last year rookies Boyd and Mirkov, just as we did with OBrien to upgrade Cottrell. That wasn't a hard decison, but hard to accept for some.
We have to keep improving our depth. I never want to see us at the bottom of the ladder as the AFL's joke ever again. Get use to hard decisions and don't be so precious about peripheral players.
We are playing for high stakes. Carlton exist to win games and win Flags...more than the next team. That's what we expect in 2024 and have done so since we won flag No 16 in 1995.
The front of the jumper is more important than the back of the jumper and dont you forget it!
Carlton is the most important name...not any surname.
Its time for another era of the Bluebagger.
We are Carlton fk the rest.
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