And in respect of drafting ruckmen in the u18 draft - well we picked batson in the rookie draft and he was no good. Would carlton be in any different position if it had picked mcintosh in the top 10 like north did, or laycock in the top 20 like Essendon* did, or carteledge. The fact is that we have tried to pick up some ruckmen via alternative means - as the crows have also done with hudson and matthew clarke, but the fact is we have been unlucky and havent found a ruckmen.

If u look around the league, the majority of ruckmen are not playing for the club that drafted them:

Adelaide - crow, hudson
richmond - simmonds, stafford, knobel
stkila - gardiner, brooks
hawthorn - everitt
sydney - jolly
west coast - cox was a rookie, just like batson was.
Bulldogs - peter street
Essendon* - who knows who there ruckmen is???
melbourne - jeff white

And we should all remember that justin madden was a reject when he came to carlton....

In conclusion, we are all frustrated at not winning the ruck position for the last 4 or so years. But good ruckmen are rare and good ones can pop up from different sources, and we just need to get lucky with one source. Unfortunately that has not occurred yet. Hopefully we draft tippert and he is the special one to lead us to the ruckmen's holy land!

The problem isn't that we recruited Ackland, per se.

It's the fact that we've put ourselves in the position where we had to recruit someone like Ackland.

But this doesn't seem to be a new problem at Carlton. Remember when SOS finally hung up the boots and it was almost like the shock of the century. When SOS was 30ish, we were throwing away picks for flankers like Mansfield and crocks like O'Reilly, instead of trying to recruit the guy who'd take his place when he retired.

Just like we should be recruiting Fev's replacement in the next year or two - the time to do this is BEFORE the need arises.

John M



That's my favourite Post of the week.

Well put John.

Plant the seeds today for tommorrow's harvest. Succession plans that are well planned, are usually well thought out and usually work.

I dont agree at all with this list. It is extremely pesamistic, and alot of it is unsubstanciated or untrue.

Have not read all the posts from page 12 to 18 but the bottom line is Gibbs will go number one (99.9% sure)
So what does Carlton do about the ruck situation.I guess the bottom line is we have so many holes to fill and we cant do them all at once. Ackland is a stop gap .He is not a long term solution to our ruck problems but hey we will get Gibbs and we still may pick up a guy around pick 17 19 or 35.

Remember when SOS finally hung up the boots and it was almost like the shock of the century. When SOS was 30ish, we were throwing away picks for flankers like Mansfield and crocks like O'Reilly, instead of trying to recruit the guy who'd take his place when he retired.

Just like we should be recruiting Fev's replacement in the next year or two - the time to do this is BEFORE the need arises.

Drop Bryan and elevate Aisake. Send Aisake the message that his time will come sooner than later...so he gets on with the training required for that position with gusto over the preseason.

We didn't get him for 'free'.

He is costing us a 3 year contract, cash, and a spot on our list.

That is not free.

I really hope he does well.

last year he had about 250 hitouts, this year he didn't have that great of year and got 202 hitouts. Our second best was Dylan Mclaren with 110 hitouts so i think he is not a bad pick up, i mean his better than nothing.

So BV, who would you have got, and at the expense of which current player?

The only one I can think of is Russell, and I'm not entirely convinced he won't make it. Otherwise I reckon we've recruited pretty well since we've been able to play at draft time again.

I was keen to get Maric in 04 with our second round pick but I understand that they went for Hartlett instead. I'm not here to bag the recruiting staff as I believe they do a good job.
But lets not pretend that we couldnt get a ruckman. We chose not to.
In 04, we could have taken Cameron Wood instead of Russell. We overlooked Maric and DeLuca to take Hartlett and we took Saddington in preference to Brad Moran who won a NRS nomination this year.
All of those players would have played senior football for us this year..

But lets not pretend that we couldnt get a ruckman. We chose not to.
In 04, we could have taken Cameron Wood instead of Russell. We overlooked Maric and DeLuca to take Hartlett and we took Saddington in preference to Brad Moran who won a NRS nomination this year.
All of those players would have played senior football for us this year.

Blind Freddy could see that we've been lacking a ruckman for many years yet we chose to continually take short cuts instead of developing one.
Unfortunately blind Denis was our list manager instead of blind Freddy.

Cant argue with that

Did Wayne Hughes rate Russell ahead of Wood?

Russell and Hartlett would have both played footy this season if Hartlett was fit and we need Hartlett to stand up as much as we Deluca. And I don't see why we should have invested in a ruck if Hughes didn't rate them as high.

The Hartlett selection was sound because our list was crying out for a KPP at the time and we weren't loaded up with young tall KPP. Moran is a different matter altogether since Cazzesman said we weren't even intending to use that Saddington pick.

The Dogs dug deep in the draft to get talls and ended up overpaying for duds such as Walsh, Wells and Williams(injured). And now they've given up pick 59 for McDougal when he couldn't get a game ahead of Lynch ans he's soft. I don't see the logic in saying picking player X was a poor decision after only two years because they not a ruckman, but rated as the best player on offer by our recruiters.

Will Blackwell's selection ahead of Moran be questioned as well!

Why didn't we take Ryder if we're that desperate for a ruck and this is how you recruit players?

Lets take Leuenberger ahead of Gibbs since we need a young ruckman and hindsight has shown we were wrong to draft what we viewed as the best player on offer.