No one on TBV was getting $2 million over 3 years to make the right decisions.
Perhaps we should have saved the money and got TBV to screw it up.

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

I think that is the key for a lot of us. I can't remember too many of us complaining when we won those 10 games and the 2005 NAB cup. I remember Wallsy on 5AA, proclaiming how good Pagan was. It seemed a good idea at the time.

I still do not have much of an issue with it as it served it's purpose. I agree with you marciblue that a more balanced approach could have been taken (Martyn coming to mind), but it was really shuffling deckchairs on the Titanic, we were in for years of pain due to the cheating and drafting incompetence regardless of the approach Pagan took.

Really?
Was their no quality kids left when we drafted Bowyer?
What about Chambers or Longmuir? Was their no one left then?
What early picks did we use on Fisher, or Betts, or Bentick, or Jackson, or Thornton, or Carrazzo?

Sorry but that argument has been exposed plenty of times.

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

How many of those have deficiencies or are A-graders?

Surely you jest?
How many have deficiencies?
I'm tipping not as many as Bowyer, Longmuir and Chambers.
But thats just my opinion.

Should we only use picks on kids without deficiencies ?
I'm tipping we'd have no kids if that was the case.

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

For what?

Clubs go either way plenty of times and the results vary. For every Davey there's a Julian Rowe, a Matthew Davis, Eckerman, Stribling, Veale, Cam Croad, Austin Lucy... it goes on.

Everyone else passed on Pearce in the rookie draft.

To use a metaphor, you see the occassional unveiling of a diamond in the rough and become fascinated by the sparkle.

Talent and committment make an AFL footballer, and you'll find the guys who have become successes through the lower rungs of the drafting process have done so by showing something they didn't seem to have before in one of those categories.

It's a bit of dumb luck, like us getting Eddie Betts or Anderson or Benjamin or Thornton or Carrazzo. Pieces fell into place and they were on our list. The club have erred on the side of caution with late selections rather than behaving recklessly as you continually suggest, whether you mean to or not.

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29 different attributes,
And only 7 that you like;
20 ways to see the world,
Or 20 ways to start a fight.

Yeah but BV, you're suggesting it's a given we'd pick the RIGHT late picks. That doesn't take into account there's 15 other clubs who have the opportunity to take the RIGHT pick.

I'm assuming it wasn't Wayne Hughes recruiting back then? It was Shane O'Sullivan? Perhaps he wasn't as good a talent spotter as Hughes appears to be? Perhaps the kids available didn't have good backgrounds? You know, like Pagan's current request for good upstanding young men only.

I don't disagree with you re the wrong balance - I just don't agree with your serendipitous "were there no good kinds left etc".

That may have been the wrong context for the use of serendipitous but I'm leaving it in anyway!

I wish over our entire drafting history we had concentrated on youth rather than recycling. Though you need to get it right as 2000 showed and also the strike rate is lucky to be one in two over a few years.

In the 03 draft when we got so many retreads the first was Scotland at 35 which has proved a good choice. C'wood chose Brent Hall with the pick and he has been delisted. Next was Mott at 57 (when Rischitelli and Ben Hudson were still available) and then Bowyer at 63, Bannister 69, ADL 72, Kenna 75. The only sides picking after 63 were us and the Tiges who got Hartigan Tuck and Raines (gulp). But it is easy in retrospect. There are lots of young players who haven't made it from that draft.

In general I'd rather use all choices on youth in the hope that occasionally you will get a Raines or Richitelli with late picks. But we were in a position where we might have gone belly up without the 10 wins in 04 and the preseason cup in 05. I wish we had got Rischitelli and Raines, but then again no one else rated them very highly.

At least now it appears we won't be going down the recycled road. Smorgo's 24 or under policy, tho criticised, is a good way of trying to focus on youth and the long term rather than the immediate.

Man I was hoping like hell we’d get Rischitelli in 2003. He played with my wife’s cousin at the Jets for a couple of seasons and was a standout for them in ‘02/’03. Both of them were evenly matched in talent but Michael just kept growing. Ran into him the other week at this cousin’s 21st and boy has he put on size! Just seems to be developing really well footywise and seems a good bloke as well.

This is also one of my criticisms from that ’03 recruiting drive, some of the missed kids in those late selections is really disappointing. Passing on Raines to get Kenna, oh boy…

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C'mon Blueboys!

i think HTP may be alluding to the comment collo made before going in to negotiate pay cuts with a whole bunch of "senior" players (kouta, campo. whitnall etc) in order to get under the TPP. a journo stuck a mic in collo's face on the way in and collo said something about it being interesting if we could not field a side in 2003 (?) (ie if the cuts weren't accepted by the players ...)

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... an eagle flew out of the night. he was something to observe, came in close i heard a voice, bending stretching every nerve, had to listen had no choice ...

This site is amazing.

How can a thread about the genuine good news that has been reported in the Hun and Age turn into yet ANOTHER thread about the recruiting flower ups of the past?

Flower.

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Cer 'ch 'n alluog Blues

oh were from Tigerland...............

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Oompa loompa doompety dee
If you are wise you'll listen to me

hahaha

it's too bad it doesn't happened the other way when we get bad news

Hey if nothing else, I was pretty pleased to see a return of SHOCK HORROR

That expression was pretty big once.

Just like Wake Up Australia, that should be used more too.

If we win on the weekend, can we have the headline "WAKE UP AUSTRALIA - CARLTON ARE BACK"?

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If meat is murder then yoghurt must be burglary
GO YOU BIG RED FIRE ENGINE
Move aside Kouta, Lance etc - you're holding us back... from entering the under 18s

I love SHOCK HORROR Headlines! Luv 'em!

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Oompa loompa doompety dee
If you are wise you'll listen to me

..indulging in retrospective drafting speculation is a game of "what ifs", and that'll just lead to madness.. ..lookit, there's just as much chance of us folding as going ahead if we didn't go the retread route a few yrs back.. ..and if we progressed, it's doubtful we would have progressed that far ahead anyways, but we may have gone ahead just enough to not pick up murphy, russel, kennedy, and gibbs, to name just a few.. ..instead, we salvaged and momentarily at least stopped the rot in '04, won the '05 pre-season cup, banked a very handy check, scored desperately needed sponsors and also managed to then in a slightly better club position look towards rebuilding the list.. ..of course you can argue we did it a year too late but we're all very happy with the young guns we have now no..??.. ..and there's no doubt that we're now definately heading in the right direction, who knows where we'd be if we didn't do what we've done..

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..if you can't be good, be good at it..

In all honesty though, the three players you've mentioned were probably the only 3 half-decent retreads we drafted...

Got a decent year out of Teague *and some good news for the year watching a player - albeit not so skilled and fast - show a bit of balls in the backline*, McGrath was serviceable at best but probably still did better than Campo has done at Essendon* - and Diggers played with a bit of passion... may have been past it, but I still enjoyed him kicking 8-odd goals in one of the Ants finals a few years back - and he was the Ants leading goalkicker last year...

...

*crickets*

C'mon, thats a fair achievement!

Hear hear!! Well said, Halford, was thinking the same thing as I read through the thread.

When I read the papers this morning, I was thinking to start a thread called 'Good News Week', but was beaten to it!! How good has it been this week to see a heap of positive articles on the mighty Navies??!!

'Carn the Blues!!!

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Mens sana in corpore sano.

Bring back the laurel wreath logo!!!

Speaking of Tigerland, Trent Knobel or Eddie Betts you be the judge.
Cheers Terry -we owe you one.

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Green Shooter