Big Danny G wrote:
BUT, as much as i agree with all your points, your taking them to the extreme by saying we should've just gone with young talent. .
I didn't say that.
I said, as a bare minimum, we shouldn't have picked Bannister and Bowyer, (and, I wouldnt have made the Johnson/Harford trade) = 3 more kids (but, Clarke, McGrath, Teague and Morrell come in)
and
I wouldn't have traded to Longmuir and Chambers.... not to take 2 more draft picks, necessarily, but because they could only swallow matches from the likes of Simpson, Davies etc..... Chambers is honest, but no star.
or without Johnson, Bannister and Bowyer on the list, THAT opens up places for Chambers et.al to come onto the list in 2004.
When you get talent, you have to develop it. You can either be proactive, or dump the kid in the seconds and FORCE him to make your decision inevitable.
Having such a poor list, we need to be proactive about our development.
Its hard to develop your young players when you keep putting mediocre 25 year olds in their way. We've got to sit down and think "ok.... this Justin Davies can play, when everything works for him. How can we make it work? what can we work on?"
then you develop a plan.. either a run in defence if he needs to learn to be accountable.... or to tag someone in the middle.... or give him a specific role somewhere else on the ground (ie, tagging attacking defenders).
Instead, after he's picked Bannister, Johnson, Chambers etc etc etc... there's little room for Davies. Sporn's also lost the plot, of late, because he's never been settled. Is he a HBF? is he a wingman? a tagger? a 3rd tall?
I wouldn't think Sporn was a worse player than Bannister. Why wasn't Sporn given those tough tagging jobs? Was there any reason to pick a tall defensive mid with good motor who can't kick and isn't smart.... when we already have Sporn? And they're about the same age? Then where does Sporn play?
Now they'll both either be chopped or traded at the end of the year. No value out of either, because they competed for the same development time.
If you run a company, and you develop a succession plan for leadership roles.. Sporn's never had one. What Pagan should have done was sat down with the Sporns/Davies of the team and tell them the heats on, now, but that he has faith in them to produce.. and see if they do.... not undermine their confidence by bringing in several players who play their positions.
If their attitude is wrong on the track, and he has no faith in them, they shouldn't even be on the list and he should have traded them last year when they might have had some value. You don't keep players on the list just so you can ultimately delist them without putting in any effort.
I think Pagan has an old-fashioned approach to people-management that hasn't done us any favours. There are rules in the AFL that don't allow you to just fire all your employees and hire 40 superstars. He had to make do with the talent he had, and he placed hardly any faith in it. Not only that, but he brought in a whole new division of players who are only as good, or worse, than the players he already had.... at the expence of a young-bracket pushing up.
Say what you want about the decision to bring in the recycleds..... but we're staring at another spoon this year (or at least a low finish), and most of his imported gang are facing the chop.
AND THAT'S what history will record his people/list management by.
Pagan panicked and made mistakes... but its not too late to start correcting his errors.
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