would like to get variety of opinions as to how and why clubs (not just melbourne) have/ become or hold there standing in the AFL, I have my own opinion but would like more knowledge and others opinion.

Our success cycle was ridden on a path covered with tacks after which it fell down a 50 foot embankment and on to a truck route where it was pulverised by B doubles until Peter Jackson stopped to collect it.

He gave it to Paul Roos to see if there were any parts worth salvaging.

Edited August 31, 201410 yr by jabberwocky

In the current game free agency is the key. It's pretty pathetic that an A grade player walks out on a bottomclub and in return all you get is some 'potential' rookie. Who are they learning from these rookies? The other kids?

The AFL screwed that one up. They'll be forced to use their priority pick powers in the future as in 3 years none of the top sides will have moved anywhere and neither will any of the bottom sides have moved up. The Power are an anomaly but they'll never get over the top 4.

It's making for a boring comp.

There was a theory of cycles of success and rebuilding. It used to be that you had X amount of years up the top and then your success plateaued to varying degrees. You turned the list over and would then launch another attack on the premiership with a new generation of stars leading the way with some older hands giving guidance.
Let me guarantee to you that this theory is obsolete.
While free agency is the law of the land, expect the strong teams of today to remain strong well into the future and teams at the lower end will continue to bleed players to the Hawthorns and Sydneys of this world.

Free agency may well have made the gap between top club and feeder club so large that some clubs may be doomed to living in the lower half of the ladder and simply developing players for the top clubs to grab just as they reach their peak. These lower clubs will need to get everything right, have a huge slice of luck and hope the top clubs make some bad decisions and have a horror run of injuries just to have a remote shot at success, much less have any sustained period of success.

I suspect if we revisit this thread in 5-10 years the only clubs who aren't at the pointy end now which may be then are GC and GWS, as designed by the league.

In the current game free agency is the key. It's pretty pathetic that an A grade player walks out on a bottomclub and in return all you get is some 'potential' rookie. Who are they learning from these rookies? The other kids?

The AFL screwed that one up. They'll be forced to use their priority pick powers in the future as in 3 years none of the top sides will have moved anywhere and neither will any of the bottom sides have moved up. The Power are an anomaly but they'll never get over the top 4.

It's making for a boring comp.

You don't just get a rookie, you also get space in the salary cap to lure other FA or out of contract players - if the FA qualification was reduced from 8 years to 6 it would open up more players on the market and make it easier for clubs to use their freed up salary cap space to more effect. As it stands with FA so restricted the free space is next to useless as there are limited players available to poach. That's the theory anyway.

GC & GWS stuffed the cycle, simple really. The timing of FA on top of this has been a total disaster for clubs trying to rebuild.

There have been a total of 162 finals 'appearances' since 2005 - 81 games. (not counting the GF replay)

Of those appearances, 102 have been by just six teams. That's 63%.

The bottom six teams in those nine years since 2005 (not including Western Sydney or Gold Coast) have a total of 20 appearances.

Or 12%.

Twelve.

And how will 2014 complete those numbers?

For the top 6 of the decade;

Collingwood, West Coast and St Kilda have dropped out of finals.

Hawthorn, Geelong, and Sydney are in the top 4.

A minimum of 7 appearances, assuming they lose all possible games.

Of the bottom 6;

Richmond, Essendon and North Melbourne fill out the bottom 8.

It's a good year for the bottom clubs, with at least 4 appearances in finals.

This season could push the bottom-6 share up as high as 15%!!!!! OMG! Equalisation totally works!

Yeah, I think the 'cycles of success' thing is obsolete now. St Kilda and the Bulldogs were the last teams to ride it.

Now there is just fluctuation and key factors, like the changes at Port - there was no cycle, there was just an injection of competent people.

And that's how things were before Free Agency has begun to really bite.

GC & GWS stuffed the cycle, simple really. The timing of FA on top of this has been a total disaster for clubs trying to rebuild.

This.

The AFL has unwittingly destroyed the success cycles.

Our offloading of any semblance of senior talent dropped us out of the cycle anyway, but now it's virtually nonexistent.

We're in a vicious cycle now thanks to FA, we're [censored] so no one good wants to come, good players leave, we get shitter and so on and so forth.

You don't just get a rookie, you also get space in the salary cap to lure other FA or out of contract players - if the FA qualification was reduced from 8 years to 6 it would open up more players on the market and make it easier for clubs to use their freed up salary cap space to more effect. As it stands with FA so restricted the free space is next to useless as there are limited players available to poach. That's the theory anyway.

That argument will fly when a big name player decides to take the dollars over team success, at which point everyone will lament the loss of loyalty in the game, when a Patrick Dangerfield chooses an extra 100k over staying with the crows etc. Until that point you'll have clubs like Geelong/ Hawthorn/ Sydney coming out praising their cultures which allow them to pay unders for top talent developed within the club by selling them the idea of team success, while paying overs to pry big names/ young guns from other teams.

Unfortunately, in the climate we're in team success is seen as the ultimate goal and money is second.

We are clearly at a disadvantage, but we can come through this if we draft successfully. We would be in a much different position now if we drafted Dangerfield, Naitanui, Shuey, Beams, Sloane, Martin, Cunnington, Fyfe, Carlisle, Darling, Wines etc. We will get opportunities again but we can't fritter away our draft picks year after year.

We are clearly at a disadvantage, but we can come through this if we draft successfully. We would be in a much different position now if we drafted Dangerfield, Naitanui, Shuey, Beams, Sloane, Martin, Cunnington, Fyfe, Carlisle, Darling, Wines etc. We will get opportunities again but we can't fritter away our draft picks year after year.

yeah if we drafted all of those blokes we'd have a great team. Pity we only get a couple of picks.

^^^ Correct. We are in this [censored] now because the previous CEO was working from a self penned template that was a complete disaster.

We recruited the wrong kids. The chances were there.

We have worked hard to remain in the shiteful cycle.

^^^ Correct. We are in this [censored] now because the previous CEO was working from a self penned template that was a complete disaster.

We recruited the wrong kids. The chances were there.

You love Schwabby WYL,

admit it and move on.

You love Schwabby WYL,

admit it and move on.

I am big on singalongs on the Land to ease tension.

I propose this one for WYL and Schwabby (he did actually have an account on here when he came on to tell the plebians off so he is more than welcome to join in).

You love Schwabby WYL,

admit it and move on.

I would love to cross paths with the aforementioned. Yes indeed.

We are clearly at a disadvantage, but we can come through this if we draft successfully. We would be in a much different position now if we drafted Dangerfield, Naitanui, Shuey, Beams, Sloane, Martin, Cunnington, Fyfe, Carlisle, Darling, Wines etc. We will get opportunities again but we can't fritter away our draft picks year after year.

True, if we got lucky and pulled 3 or 4 A graders out the lottery it would turn us around but that is the problem. The draft is a lottery, FA isn't, you know well and truly what you are buying by the time they have played 8 to 10 seasons.

I don't know about cycles but I get the feeling we have gone full circle back to the 70's and 80's where the top clubs just bought themselves premierships by raiding the SANFL and WAFL. I remember watching the state games vs SA or WA and everytime you saw some young gun playing out of his skin the commentators would mention that he had already signed with the Hawks or Carlton to come across the following year. Right through the 70's and 80's the finals were played out by the Tiges, Blues, Hawks, Bombers with the 10 year rule giving North a crack. I read somewhere that Norm Smith predicted our demise in the mid 1960's for just that reason that MCC would not allow the MFC to pay the money to bring in the talent from interstate. Norm as usual was spot on!

I believe we have recreated the same environment through FA, the state based AFL academies and the increased abilityof any player out of contract to take a better offer. The tools supposed to equalise things, the draft order and salary caps just won't do the job.

The draft is not a lottery, we need to get over this woe is me [censored] and take responsibility for where we are. We have money in our salary cap let's test the loyalty of some of these other clubs players. We under resourced our recruiting and FD we had a poor head recruiter in place for too long and failed to develop the talent we did get through the doors. We are in no worse position than North yet they seem to do OK and actually got a decent FA (Dal Santo) across last year.

If we can't compete in a fully professional national comp then we may as well shut up shop.

The draft is not a lottery, we need to get over this woe is me [censored] and take responsibility for where we are. We have money in our salary cap let's test the loyalty of some of these other clubs players. We under resourced our recruiting and FD we had a poor head recruiter in place for too long and failed to develop the talent we did get through the doors. We are in no worse position than North yet they seem to do OK and actually got a decent FA (Dal Santo) across last year.

If we can't compete in a fully professional national comp then we may as well shut up shop.

Last time I looked they were playing finals. At the start of the year many were talking them up as a top 4 finisher.

We are in a lot worse position than North and have been for a while now.

Last time I looked they were playing finals. At the start of the year many were talking them up as a top 4 finisher.

We are in a lot worse position than North and have been for a while now.

Where did they finish last year? We rebuilt our list at the same time as they did and with better picks. The reason we are where we are is because of us not because of the draft or FA or the AFL or anything else.

Where did they finish last year? We rebuilt our list at the same time as they did and with better picks. The reason we are where we are is because of us not because of the draft or FA or the AFL or anything else.

I agree with this and have said it before, also that we were ahead of the Tiges but the fact is we are in a much worse position than both of these clubs at the moment.

They rebuilt there lists, we didn't.

The draft is not a lottery, we need to get over this woe is me [censored] and take responsibility for where we are. We have money in our salary cap let's test the loyalty of some of these other clubs players. We under resourced our recruiting and FD we had a poor head recruiter in place for too long and failed to develop the talent we did get through the doors. We are in no worse position than North yet they seem to do OK and actually got a decent FA (Dal Santo) across last year.

If we can't compete in a fully professional national comp then we may as well shut up shop.

Doctor I agree with your argument in general but I still say the draft is a lottery because the fact is there is no one who can predict that pick 1 will be a 10% better player than pick 2 who will be a measurable better player than pick 3 and 3 will be better than 4 etc, etc. It does not work that way at all yet the industry acts as if they can predict the order of talent. That is understandable as the recruiters earn big bucks based on this belief. No different by the way than financial investment fund managers charging us excessive fees on the myth that they can consistently beat the market. All that we do know is that on average there is likely to be more talent in the first round than the second round but you don't really know exactly for sure where the real gun players are, just that will likely be earlier rather than later. So being a lottery there is a chance a top side can still pick the best draftee at say pick 17 or 18. It has happened before.

Thanks Budge for raising this interesting topic. In the absence of any other factors clubs do go through success cycles based on the development of the playing group from recruit through to retirement. On this basis the premiership or success window seems to last about five years after that time issues with replacing player stocks usually leads to the gradual decline of the club's fortune, or the downward part of the cycle. So after premiership success a club will be among the contenders before falling away. Historic evidence in the AFL seems to generally support this broad time frame that is Fitzroy and Carlton in the early part of the last century, Collingwood in the 1930s and Melbourne in the late 1930s and 1950s. and later the emergence of North Melbourne Hawthorn Richmond and (re-emergence) of Essendon as powers However the cycle isn't exact and sometimes teams drop away suddenly due to other factors, player revolts, wars etc and sometimes clubs in decline snatch a premiership with a final gasp from the player group, as Melbourne did in 1964.

However the cycle seems to have operated under different parameters to those prevalent today. There was limits on recruitment and transfers of players between clubs under the Coulter Law and later through recruitment zones.

Sometimes the cycle can be affected by exploiting the rules that the AFL/VFL currently dictate like North did the 1970s, and as a consequence of recruiting older champions the cycle was consequently shorter, the exploitation of compensation draft picks by Carlton manipulation of the salary cap for the new State sides and the cream of young talent being allocated to the new clubs Western Sydney and Gold Coast .

Free agency is another variant of interference with the success cycle its effect will be to syphon much of the talent from weaker clubs to stronger clubs so that the less powerful clubs become nurseries and feed players in their prime to the powerful clubs. I suspect that our sport will become more like Rugby League where, players are idolised by fans while at the club but the likelihood of going elsewhere makes the idolisation a very temporary phenomena.