Just a random topic to pass the time here.

Was just looking at the list of list of all drafted players by MFC since 1986. One thing jumped out at me - we had 5 picks in the top 23, plus another 2 in the 30's, how did that happen? Unfortunately, not one of them really did much. Kowal played over 100 games but that's about it. Norrish and Gilbert get sent to hell in Freo for the first or second year I think?

Interesting how times change. Richmond gets slaughtered for wasting 5 top 20 picks in 2004 or 05, but look what happened to us then. I know things were a lot different 20 years ago with a more scientific approach to drafting and all clubs have these hits/misses, everyone a genius with hindsight etc etc but it would have been nice for at least 3 of the picks to do a bit more. Wonder if those picks were part of the reason we were so inconsistent through the late 90's (apart from pretty much our whole forward line being injured for 2-3 years then)

Imagine having 7 top 30 picks in a draft now/or last few years!

How many teams were in the comp? 14? So that sounds like 5 picks in the first two rounds. Recruiting through the draft was a massive lottery that far back however we probably have made a decent shake of it. Only 6 players in the draft played over 100 games for their original club, and only another 3 played 50 games for their original club.

Kowal was a solid player, who played over 100 games, which is a definite successful pick.

Norrish was a great player who we lost to Freo, he went on to be vice captain and wond a B&F; our compensation was Donald Cockatoo-Collins!

2 out of 5 probably wasn't a bad strike rate for those days of recruiting!

1989 draft is my favourite (http://demonwiki.org/1989+Draft)

Traded in Steven Clark (21 games), Trevor Spencer (3) and Michael Scott (0) then drafted..

25 - Paul Rouvray (0)

57 - Tim Moreland (0)

71 - Glenn Wilkins (0)

85 - Anthony Tohill (0)

A low day for early era drafting

So those who [censored] about BP, or CAC for that matter, now have something to compare with.

1989 draft is my favourite (http://demonwiki.org/1989+Draft)

Traded in Steven Clark (21 games), Trevor Spencer (3) and Michael Scott (0) then drafted..

25 - Paul Rouvray (0)

57 - Tim Moreland (0)

71 - Glenn Wilkins (0)

85 - Anthony Tohill (0)

A low day for early era drafting

Jeebers! No wonder it all fell in a heap for Balmey a few years later. Such a shame about Steven Clark though. He did have genuine talent.

Don't forget teams had much bigger lists in those days, so teams recruited larger numbers of players to fill out two teams to play each weekend. I have no recollection of any of the players from that draft who never got to play a senior game, but they might have ended up playing a large number of reserves games...similar to players today who play solely for Casey.

Not to mention drafted players who flat out refused to leave their home states. I suspect Rouvray in the above list fit that bill, and Tohill was of course another crack at the Irish Experiment.

Agreed that those drafts have no relevance compared to today, some of the picks and disastrous runs that clubs had (hello Brisbane, Fitzroy and Sydney) would cause rioting in the streets if clubs went through them now.

I wonder if the Bears would have been all that better off had they had the same draft/player stealing concessions as new clubs. They would have if they'd been launching the team today but in '87 they'd probably still have picked a bunch of SANFL players who told them to nick off.