Did Melbourne destroy itself searching for the next Neitz?

[wisedog 326]

In 1999, Craig Cameron pulled off one of the great drafting performances, selecting Green at 19, Wheatley at 20, Whelan at 50, Bruce at 64 and Godfrey in the PSD. Without a single first round draft pick, Cameron managed to pick 5 players who would all play over 100 games for Melbourne, obviously Bruce and Green played many more than that.

Along with Johnstone, Yze, McDonald, White and Brown, they would take the place of the retiring Balme-era players. However, when these players left the club at the end of Daniher's tenure, we soon realized there were very few players ready to take their place.

Only 8 players remain on the Melbourne list from the 2000 - 2005 drafts. Of those 8 players, only Jones, Rivers and Jamar could be said to be established in Melbourne's best 22. This has made the loss of Thompson such a bitter pill to swallow.

2000 -

2001 - Jamar (rookie draft)

2002 - Rivers

2003 - Syliva, Davey (rookie draft)

2004 - Bate, Dunn

2005 - Jones, Bartram

When Cameron drafted young midfielders and defenders he was quite successful: Thompson, Jones, Bartram, Rivers, Garland and Frawley were great selections. Even in 2004, we did as well as could be expected in a poor draft, taking Sylvia and Mclean.

However, looking over our other selections over these years, it seems that Cameron and Daniher were instead preoccupied with preparing for Melbourne's future post-Neitz. In 2001, Luke Molan and Aaron Rogers were taken with picks 9 and 26. In 2002, Nick Smith was taken with pick 15 and in 2004, Bate and Dunn were taken with picks 14 and 16. Miller and Newton were also taken as more speculative picks.

In addition to this, older forwards like Gary Moorcroft and Ben Holland were taken with picks 35 and 21 respectively. Other 1st and 2nd round draft picks were used to bring players such as Bizzell, Heffernan and Pickett to the club.

Unfortunately, none of the forwards Melbourne drafted ever came on and the recuits quickly fizzled out after a few seasons. In hindsight, it was a disaster waiting to happen.

Some are already viewing our 2006 - 2011 draft selections as another series of blunders, but I think we need to realize that our young players have been hopelessly exposed over the last few years. In contrast, look at the way players like Jetta and Beams have been protected throughout their development.

[DeeSpencer 23,189]

The thing about Molan, Rogers, Smith, Miller, Bate, Dunn and Newton is that none of them made it as key position players at either end of the ground, so we didn't fill in the voids in the backline either. Rivers was our starting CHB in 2004 and really has been since and it took until Frawley for us to find a consistent full back.

So I'd argue there was a need for all those talls considering we went with Sylvia and McLean in 2003 and had a decent group together of smalls for that mid 2000's period - guys like Bruce, Green, Johnston, Yze, Whelan, Brown, Davey etc.

At the end of the day if all those guys turned into something we wouldn't have kept taking more. At the same time I feel like Daniher was much more comfortable with older players coming in than blooding youth. I think some of it was club culture - he probably never felt safe enough in his own position to stick with some kids, another issue was the up and down nature of the early 00's and then the run of finals without challenging - it would have been a very difficult period to put together a distinct plan.

At the end of the day our poor recruiting and what must surely be poor development left us in big trouble come 2007 on when the likes of Neitz and White went down hill and our depth players dropped off. The problem appears our recruiting is still a way off and Bailey swung too far the other way, leaving kids getting easy games and showing talent without working on flaws stagnating the team. It also appears our experienced players from the Bailey years - Davey, Green, Moloney, Sylvia and more grew much too comfortable with substandard efforts.

[Guest]

I view the biggest mistake Melbourne made (and I am sorry to [censored] a dead horse) was going with the assumption that success was just going to follow after 2009. In 2008, the club didn't really need to tank. Simply put, it was always going to get a number one draft pick as it was just that bad. However,in 2009, a mindset was developed in which what was going on at the time was inconsequential to the club as everything would be alright in the future. All the club had to do was lose now and success would come later. There was a sense of entitlement in that it was felt because the club was bad and had high draft pick that they deserved success.

I view the end of the Daniher era as something the club should have rebounded from much more quickly. Other clubs have had down periods (Hawthorn from 2003 to 2006, Western Bulldogs 2003 to 2004) where the club was awful but they managed to get their stuff together and produce a quality team out on the field. The way these clubs did that was by not throwing the baby out with the bath water. A number of veterans were kept on board whilst kids were blooded. The kids were made to earn their games. They also had good role models to observe around the club whilst they were learning their craft. There was never any of this talk of 'wait and see how good we will be in 3 years time'. Rebuilds can happen quicker than many people think (and in Hawthorn's case was completed in three years and their era of success continues). I even remember Neale Daniher getting the club into the top four in 1998 after a horrible 1997 by observing this principle (10 players were off the list by the end of his first pre-season to be replaced with a bunch of youngsters but he kept a good core of veterans around to keep the kids honest).

I guess my argument is best illustrated by the Sydney Swans from 1996 on-wards. While they do get experienced players from other clubs, they have drafted cannily with the picks they have had. The veterans such as Bolton, Goodes, Kirk and O'Loughlin (since both retired) were kept around to show the kids coming through how things were done. The club has had three different coaches and a vastly different list since 1996 but the culture of the place has been good enough to rebound when one era ends and another begins. There is not the malaise of complacency there that existed at the MFC in 2009.

Edited July 29, 2012 by Guest

[jnrmac 19,064]

We were a shambles of a club. Massive debt and 10 CEOs in 12 years tells you that things weren't smooth off field.

[Guest]

I guess I was more focusing on the onfield.

[monoccular 16,141]

Colin - I agree with most of what you have said.

The complacency bred by the tanking era and its abject failure in lifting our performances is a very cogent reason that any suggestion that we again shhould tank in any way is total folly.

I honestly do not think that Neeld is in any way tanking this year, and his experimentation is truly a genuine attempt to asses exactly where we stand as of end 2012. Firstly who is any good, and then who is prepared to get out of their earlier comfort zones and do as they are told to he best of their ability. I think those who aren't up to it or aren't prepared to adapt to change will be shown the door. I won't go into naming names at this stage, because I am not aware of the KPIs he set each player, and I doubt if any here are either.

Sure we should get some good draft picks, but he cargo cult mentality that all we needed was Trengove and $cully, and Watts has been enormously detrimental to our club's psyche. Certainly those picks should have helped us far more than they have, but they did make "us" or many involved feel that it would be a diddle in the park once we secured them.