Jeremy Howe was a good pick.

As were Ricky Petterd, Stef Martin and Darren Jolly.

Dean Kent, Tommy Mac, Col Garland, Nev Jetta and JKH also seem to be good draft picks.

We're talking about a flawed system (the National draft) There are not so much good or bad picks but lucky or unlucky picks. It's unlikely that anything will ever change in relation to the ND in the near future.

The draft age is far too young to make any sort of accurate appraisal and even if the draft age was as high as 20, there would still be "busts" left, right and centre. As it stands, all the 17 year old's who are drafted will all show something at under 18 level but whether any of them can go on with it or not is anyone's guess. There are no guarantees.

Top end draft picks can turn out to be average or ordinary players and quite a number of late picks turn out to be gems. The same sort of thing happens every year.

With drafting players at such a young age, picking "good" players is 60-70% luck and 30-40% about having the right sort of people as your recruiters. Honestly, you could have plucked any random from 'land and they might have had more luck with our picks. That's not to say that our overall list management and our other forms of recruiting has been first rate - it hasn't.

Take the rising star Lewis Taylor as an example ... every club passed on him including Brisbane 3 times. There's a logical reason why that happened otherwise ... you could end up believing that every recruiter is incompetent.

You can't have it both ways. If you believe that the drafting system is largely flawed, how can you then blame the recruiters?

Blame the flawed system not the effects of the flawed system.

Edited September 7, 201411 yr by Macca

If the drafting age was increased and most players had a year or two playing in the VFL or equivalent then I believe that drafting would be far more accurate.

Do we really need to do this, these threads get me upset.

2008 - Prendegast's first year.

Ultimate fail.

Priority 17 Sam Blease Eastern Ranges TAC Cup Melbourne Priority 18 Luke Shuey Oakleigh Chargers TAC Cup West Coast 2 19 James Strauss Oakleigh Chargers TAC Cup Melbourne 2 20 Tom Swift Claremont WAFL West Coast 2 21 Hayden Ballantyne Peel Thunder WAFL Fremantle 2 22 Jackson Trengove Calder Cannons TAC Cup Port Adelaide 2 23 David Zaharakis Northern Knights TAC Cup Essendon 2 24 Nic Suban North Ballarat Rebels TAC Cup Fremantle 2 25 Jack Redden Glenelg SANFL Brisbane Lions 2 26 Jayden Post Western Jets TAC Cup Richmond 2 27 Sam Wright Murray Bushrangers TAC Cup North Melbourne 2 28 Shaun McKernan Calder Cannons TAC Cup Adelaide 2 29 Dayne Beams Southport QAFL Collingwood 2 30 Daniel Hannebery Oakleigh Chargers TAC Cup Sydney

If the drafting age was increased and most players had a year or two playing in the VFL or equivalent then I believe that drafting would be far more accurate.

At the expense of forcing kids to run around in an inferior competition when they could be cherry ripe to play in the seniors. The whole point of a draft is that you're taking a punt on every pick, I'd rather confine kids to running around Burbank Oval or Frankston unnecessarily just to spare the blushes of our recruiters.

I reckon it should go the other way and the draft age should be lowered but like Hogan under-age players picked aren't allowed to play seniors. The time they spend around the club could be regulated and they could have a limit on the amount of VFL games they're allowed to play but it would give them a taste of the system for a year without throwing top picks to the wolves by expecting them go out and prop up [censored] teams from Round 1 in their first year.

Would also add an extra element of strategy in that some players might not nominate at this point so recruiters would have to decide whether they drafted an excellent prospect now knowing they can't use them for a year or an older player they can drop into the senior side straight away.

There are probably 3000 flaws to this plan which I just came up with, so please feel free to list them in the space provided below.

Jack Watts?

Question should be how many have we F up!

While Prendergast was a disaster (no argument), his predecessor Craig Cameron was not much better.

agree, we have had crap recruitment/list managers for 12 years