What you have to ask yourself is how would the players we selected would have gone at other clubs.

Would Cook have got a look in at Sydney or any strong club.

Would Gysberts been a better player at Collingwood

Would Strauss have been a regular at Hawthorn

Would Blease get a regular game at Geelong

Would Bennell get a regular game at West Coast

Would Morton have survived more than a couple of seasons with any top 8 club except one that had the ability to double his size

This is the problem, there are plenty that we've picked that simply wouldn't get a look in elsewhere and would have been offloaded after a few years. Some say that they were taken where they were expected to but exactly who expected Morton to be still 50 kgs after 5 years of AFL training? There are plenty of top 20 recruits that never make it it's just that the other clubs have made better selections with their other picks, we haven't.

We've been so interested in our number one selection that the rest have been almost anti climactic.

That's where you get your balance, stuff up the first perhaps but stuff up first and second then you have a problem.

I've been thinking about this. When we picked Morton, Blease, Bennell et al, our main mids were Junior, McLean, Moloney & Jones - all (at the time) purely inside mids (and a time when mids were predominantly either inside or outside), and fairly one-dimensional at that. So at the time we needed to build our outside midfield and recruited players who were purely "outside"..

Then, one by one, we discarded our ageing inside mids, for various reasons, leaving us with Jones and some young kids. So we had to turn the Mortons & Benells into something they never were going to be in the first place.

It's the whole problem with recruiting individuals, rather than recruiting to build a team - the latter is what the good clubs do. Which is why they'll get a lower draft pick who ends up slotting smoothly into their midfield and doing better than someone we've picked who shows more at U18 level but we don't have a place for them in the side.

I'm confident that Roos & Taylor et al can get it right.

Any news on Jack signing?

Seems to have gone quite again...

Any news on Jack signing?

Seems to have gone quite again...

Is on the Toyota bus at the moment

PM24.. I make no such suggestion that there is no partnership of sorts about all this. What I do assert is the element with the greatest influence and overall effect is what comes from the player himself. if he has no real will to aspire, to grow, develop , "insert word/cliche of choice " then nothing the club does good , or bad, will have much impact.

I seriously wonder at times whether he ( JW) really wants to be out there. That it to say , indeed question , his voracity for the contest. I hope he finds it.

Fair enough, I can respect that view. It is just our perceptions that differ.

2nd and 3rd efforts are what I am talking about and in most games I have seen they are non- existent! I relish the fact he will stay and can improve, but that improvement can only come from increasing his fitness levels and a genuine hard go at every contest, with extra effort where needed!