Careful folks....some "counter arguments" here are bordering on personal attacks....

Play nicely please.

Great post Indie.

No need for slanging when we have a diligent post that prompts good discussion of the situation.

I agree with what you say SB re retaining players as a stop gap, a bridge... but I don't believe Indie is supporting Pagan anywhere in his post (not directly), but moreso trying to create a situational analysis of the ruck trading/drafting period over the last 5 years .

For me, I don't buy the 2002-2007 trade situation was exclusively the period we failed to snag a ruckman; I believe there is was, and still is a cultural issue that Carltonians (selectors/board/MC) and many other footy scholars have with ruckmen.

I always thought that Street was fair game for us when he was the 3rd ruckman for Geelong, and that we should have made a play for him way back then, when Allan was injured and Prenders was rucking. Why? Because he was the only huge ruckman with a bit of heart (and a similar physique to Harry Madden) and who was around back then. I was spewing when Doggies got him. Why? Because I value the necessity for a very tall ruckman....and believed if he was half as good as Madden, then at least we wouldn't be bleeding from the ruck.

That's where the problem starts. Many didn't value the need for a genuine ruckman till it was too late...and you're very naive if you can't see the need for a good ruckman in the modern game, let alone yesteryear.

If anyone believes Cloke (195), McLaren (196) and Ackland (196) are good ruckmen, then go on believing them. They are not ruckmen, they lack size, and don't make up for that shortfall around the ground, and they don't give our midfielders an advantage, in fact our ruckmen are a liability for out midfielders.

Rightly or wrongly, I wanted Leuenberger and Wood before the choices we made. Again, because I hold the value of a good ruckman very high indeed. In a list of 44 players, generally there are only 4 of them on it. Now have a look at our situation since Matty Allan was selected. Pitiful. It's too late to select 3 x 200 cm ruckmen on our list in 2007 when they wont fill our giant whole in the ruck for 3-5 years.

Like the previous 7 years, we are in desperate need for a genuine ruckman to fill this whole over the next 2-3 years...not Kruezner, not Hampson, not Aisake and not Jacobs....a ready made ruckman!!

I believe we should have made a BIG play for Sandilands too, when his contract was up....that's the Carlton thing to do...go for the best and the best already have a job.

If we don't target a real readymade ruckman, then we'll be hearing all the excuses in the book as to why we don't, and that wont help the situation. This is a hard call; but desperately needed one....assuming they aren't out there, then we are going to see much of the same year after year as our kids (ruckmen) take the necessary time required for them to grow and develop.

Very sad situation.

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Everyone looks good in Navy Blue

Sorry Boss

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If you allow the Government to change the Laws in an emergency
They will create an Emergency to change the Laws

I'll deal with your reasoning regarding the rucks. I won't even touch on Manton and Beaumont because I can't, for the life of me, see how they are relevant to a thread on rucking.

I just can't see how you thought that McKernan and Allan should have been retained in preference to tradeing for Barney. When they were traded away in late 2003, the were both on borrowed time.

As it was, McKernan put in 14 forgettable games in 2004 for the Roos. Try to find any Roos supporter who was happy with his year. He had gone backwards in 2003, and his form in the ruck was wildly inconsistent. He was leaping early, so early in fact that he'd be back on the ground by the time the ball dropped.

Allan was a serious injury risk. He also insisted on a multi-year contract with a big guaranteed salary. As it was, he went on to have a good year for Essendon* in 2004, playing 20 of 24 games. But the following year, he played only 1 and was gone at the end of the year.

Both McKernan and Allan would have been on very healthy contracts if we'd kept them - say $400K or so. Given our large financial commitment to Kouta, we couldn't have realistically brought in French. After we got rid of McKernans and Allan and we brought Barney over, we still needed to go to the senior players to ask them to take wage cuts to overcome salary cap pressure. Even if it were possible to afford 3 of them, I doubt if Barney would have come over with 2 senior ruckmen at the club. He was willing to come mainly because he knew he'd finally have a shot at being the undisputed No. 1 ruckman. Allan was never one who enjoyed sharing rucking duties as his battles with Porter showed. We couldn't have satisfied both Barney and Allan.

So, if we'd gone the way you suggested SB, we would have had 1.5 ruckmen in 2004, and none in 2005. Barney delivered 4 years of honest labour. I can't see how you could argue that retention of McKernan and/or Allan would have been part of a longer term development. That would have been the shortest-term solution ever adopted.

As you say, the blame game has been covered previously regarding the 2002 and 2003 draft. I won't bother to rehash the question of whether the Board should or did have an influence in recruiting more experienced players to sustain the club's financial position by retaining members and sponsors, or the question of whether our recruiting network was sufficiently resourced to allow us to pick smokies late in the draft with any reliability.

But it seems to fair to conclude that you don't feel that the club missed out on any ruckmen in the 2002 and 2003 draft. That's the point I was trying to make as to our common ground.

Your argument is that the drafting in 2002 and 2003 laid the foundations for the failure to draft a good junior ruckman in 2004 and 2005 (in addition to Aisake). That's an interesting point. I don't agree with it, but that's certainly one line of thinking. I will leave it at that, not because I'm being dismissive of it, but rather that it would hijack the thread - converting if from one focussing on ruck recruiting to a general one concerning our drafting over the period.

Sorry Indie, I deleted the post before you finished your reply.
I thought it was going over old ground and removed it.

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

Should I delete my post BV?

Indie, French came over for 2003 and directly competed with Allan and McKernan for a position in the 1's. I remember a game at Dandenong for the Bullants where both French and Allan were toughing it out in the freezing cold whilst McKernan was elevated to the seniors with limited form.

But no doubt about it, we hit 2003 with a number of ageing ruckman and nothing happening under that level. In hindsight we are extremely lucky that Frenchy became serviceable for 2004-2006, as during 2003 he played a number of games for the Bullants.

As for Allan being retained Sydney, well, he was broken down for years already by that stage. With all of the deregistration and injury noise surrounding him, the only way he was ever going to show some form was to have a new lease on life. I think we did well to trade Allan for something of albeit limited value, and the Bombers were needy at the time. Allan's 2 years were more than he should have got for he was struggling the entire time. There simply was no option to keep him.

I don't subscribe to the view that the 2003 turnovers were a mistake. The Outs almost all had to go - its just the Ins that were the problem (part of the problem anyway, but hey, other Clubs knew that didn't they?) The Club was faced with an ageing list and a salary cap issue - we had to clear some of the senior players. Some of them were still useful, like Beaumont, but Manton, Allan and Murphy had run their race and were now a drag on the team. To keep them around in some form of notional leadership or seniority role belies their inability to perform at that level anymore. Hulme is irrelevant as he played on in 2004 but his groin got the end of him.

As far as this ruck debate goes, as I said before we were indeed lucky that French's tireless work ethic at least provided some upside. We all knew we needed a ruckman but we also needed more mids, KPPs, flankers etc. We needed everything for our list was woeful.

One option I hoped they considered was the trading of a mid-tier player in 2004 or 2005 for another pick, with which to nab a ruckman. But I dont think many would disagree that the continued late-pick piecemealing of this important position was a failure - to me, Deluca was worth a shot given his mobility, but how many late picks / PSD picks (Cloke, Ackland, Bryan, McLaren) did we really need to attempt before biting the bullet?

True - I'd managed to forget that until you reopened old wounds

in the Ottens trade Richmond wanted 2 top 10 picks, at one stage weren't we part of a 5 club deal that saw us going to trade pick 9 and 25 for three picks in the top 30 (12, 20 & ??) as well as recieving Harding from the Roos. If this deal had gone through, you would think that we would have been in a position to get a young ruck with the extra pick. I believe that Essendon* pulled out of the deal at the 11th hour and it all fell on its ass...

Some posters obviously can't comprehend the problem we were faced with in 2002 in regard to the playing list. We were that far behind the rest of the comp because of the pathetic recruiting practices of the previous 10 years we were always going to be in trouble. Then you add the penalties and, voila, here we are 5 years later........

Had we recruited pick 75+ as 18 year olds instead of ready made players in the 2003 draft, you would have seen massacres that would make a St Kilda supporter cry.

Yes, it was a stop gap, but one that was absolutely essential. We had deficiencies in every area of the game and ruck was one where we were holding on grimly.

If you want to play the hindsight game, let's look at why we recruited Russell instead of a project ruckman. The answer is - because we didn't know we'd get Murphy and Gibbs in the subsequent drafts. I'm sure we wouldn't have taken that size player if the future was known.

If Ackland was available and went to, let's say the Hawks, as a #2 ruckman and florished in a further advanced side we'd be screaming that we didn't do what was necessary to get a developed ruckman, and instead gambled on youngsters with no guarantees.

I have no doubt about that.

After picking up Andrew Walker at pick 2, we re-entered the draft at pick 35.
Not pick 75.
Perhaps you should concerned with your own comprehension.

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

Duke are you talking Massacres like the one that happen a week or so back or are you talking about a different kind of massacre . Please explain yourself because this person who doesn't understand what shape the list was in back in 2002 has a hard time determining one type of massacre from another

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If you allow the Government to change the Laws in an emergency
They will create an Emergency to change the Laws

Guys the worse decision the club made was moving on players such as Beaumont, Hulme, Manton, Murphy etc... People will jump up and down about this post but it tore our club apart at the time.

Pagan needed to do this as the "senior" players weren't thrilled with his methods, no doubt, but we where always going to be pushing shit up hill from there and unfortunately it will only get better once the list is now rebuild from scratch (as has been happening) and the youngsters have the games and physicalities to take the next step.

Those decisions cost us the 5 years of hell and not just drafting.

See Geelong V Richmond from a few weeks back and think of that every other week.

Why don't you give us your Dream Team using the draft of 2002/3/4 and disgarding all stop-gap players such as Teague/Johnson/Bannister/French/DeLuca/Scotland/McGrath/Morrell etc while using the existing contracts and salary cap restrictions of the time.

Obviously it will be so easy to build a team of 18 y/o and over-priced has beens to play competetive footy every week, and into the future, that any goose could have done it. You might want to use this game as a template for building your side. http://www.footywire.com/afl/footy/ft_match_statistics?mid=1959

Don't forget to remove all the above players and even Fev as he was a dead man walking in 2002.

Spot on BV, and what happened to pick 35 ?? Traded to Collinwood for Scotland who used that to secure that household name in Brent Hall whos career spanned an amazing 1 game.

Under your policy of no rejects we could quit possibly have had Hall on our list. When word got out that Collingwood had tried trading pick 35 for Scotland, I'm tipping you'd be the first to start up the thread telling us all about it.

....or a Michael Rischitelli?

Take your blinkers off.

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

You can't say that BV. Everybody missed Rischitelli at least 3 times. If you're playing the percentages a pick like Scotland is much, much more likely than to succeed as opposed to someone who slipped to pick 80 odd and played just three games in total during 04/05. That means while Scotland was running around for Collingwood, we'd have a skinny 18 yo who weighed 65kg if we were lucky enough to snag him.

I just don't think you get it .

What was Bowyers perentage..or Johnson...or David Clarke....or Harford...or Ricky Mott?

Yep, I dont get it.

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

Bowyer was a solid body we took at pick 63 who was a fair gamble considering the state of the list. Johnson was one of our best in-and-under mids for those years who was also stronger than an 18yo. Harford was a gift, as he says himself he was the 'steak knives' in the Johnson deal. Mott was just a dud.