Rookie Watch

[stuie 7,374]

This seems pretty spot on to me, probably the easiest part of the decisions Mahoney will be making this offseason.

Short version:
Max King - Delist
Viv Michie - Delist
Joel Smith - Re-rookie
Josh Wagner - Elevate
Mitch White - Re-rookie

Rookie watch: Who should be kept, who should be cut?

 

Edited July 20, 2016 by stuie

[old dee 23,788]

It is a bit early for me stuie I will give White a few more weeks but the others yes.

[Demon Jack 6,909]

No real surprises there if these are the changes that come at the end of the year. Shame that Max King hasn't been able to kick on after he showed some good form as a tall forward last year. Wagner has been very solid this year and deserving of a spot on the main senior list. I'm also looking forward to see how Joel Smith develops next year.

[whatwhat say what 22,747]

Gee Michie has been a disappointment.

 

Really expected him to be best 22 when he came over from Freo.

[old dee 23,788]

7 minutes ago, DemonAndrew said:

Gee Michie has been a disappointment.

 

Really expected him to be best 22 when he came over from Freo.

Sadly a VFL player he was worth the gamble but is not an AFL player

[Maldonboy38 6,402]

I agree with you Stuie, your list is spot on.

Joel Smith is a really interesting one for me. There is something about the way he plays (I have only seen him on limited game time in the Casey replays) with his movement, vision and play-reading that suggest he could very well make it as a player. But persevere with him as a rookie at this stage. 

[jnrmac 20,060]

1 hour ago, DemonAndrew said:

Gee Michie has been a disappointment.

 

Really expected him to be best 22 when he came over from Freo.

There have been so many of these players over the years that look great when trade time comes around but never do anything. Brent Prismall, Jack Hannath...we were having conniptions here about missing out on these futures stars. The reality is very few discards go on to do anything great. They might plug a gap for a short while...Mitchie is one of those for mine, Ben Newton another.

[MadAsHell 4,212]

List looks pretty much spot on to me.  Although I wouldn't be surprised if White is also promoted.

[Wiseblood 24,637]

3 minutes ago, AngryAtCasey said:

List looks pretty much spot on to me.  Although I wouldn't be surprised if White is also promoted.

If White finishes the season strongly then, yes, I could see him being promoted.  He's only played 3 senior games so far though and last weekend he went missing.  Hasn't done enough to earn promotion yet.

List is pretty spot on Stuie.  I'll echo those who feel Michie has been a disappointment.  We didn't give up much to get him but I really thought he could become a handy player for us.  Never got close to it really.

[Tough Kent 2,137]

Is there any real need to promote Wagner? I agree he looks a player but he has parts of his game that he needs to work on to ensure he is best 22 next year. Spots on the main list are like hen's teeth.

Edited July 20, 2016 by Tough Kent

[Demons11 7,009]

1 minute ago, Tough Kent said:

Is there any real need to promote Wagner? I agree he looks a player but he has parts of his game that he needs to work on to ensure he is best 22 next year. Spots on the main list are like hen's teeth.

For a bloke to hold his spot since coming in, deserves to be rewarded for it. 

[DeeSpencer 25,687]

16 minutes ago, Tough Kent said:

Is there any real need to promote Wagner? I agree he looks a player but he has parts of his game that he needs to work on to ensure he is best 22 next year. Spots on the main list are like hen's teeth.

We've got more spots on the main list available than players to fill them. He'll be promoted.

If we had decent options to replace them and ways to get out of a few contracts we could move on up to a dozen from the senior list. That won't be the case but there's still going to be more than enough spots. 

In fact I could see us taking 38 main list and 6 rookies next year because after the early 4th round of the draft you may as well take extra rookie players as a cheaper price than more late round picks.

[DeeSpencer 25,687]

I'm not convinced Mitch White will be kept on. I really like his kicking and the way he competes but he's very slow and I'm not sure a slow medium sized defender has a great future at AFL level. If we get Hibberd and Melksham, Lumumba gets healthy and plays on, Joel Smith comes on, then White might struggle to ever play games and his development will suffer. It would be a tough call but it wouldn't completely shock me.

Similarly Max King has had another injury interrupted and underwhelming year where he's been poor in the ruck and hasn't exactly stood out forward either, but if you were ever going to give a guy one more year it would be a ruckman right? 

Would redrafting King for one more year on the rookie list (or even promoting him) instead of keeping either Dawes or Pedersen change much? We know Dawes and Pedersen are only stop gaps who are unlikely to play well consistently. If it's not King we are going to need to grab a mature 2nd ruck/forward somewhere at this years trade/draft process and they are very hard to find.

[Bitter but optimistic 22,239]

5 minutes ago, DeeSpencer said:

I'm not convinced Mitch White will be kept on. I really like his kicking and the way he competes but he's very slow and I'm not sure a slow medium sized defender has a great future at AFL level. If we get Hibberd and Melksham, Lumumba gets healthy and plays on, Joel Smith comes on, then White might struggle to ever play games and his development will suffer. It would be a tough call but it wouldn't completely shock me.

Similarly Max King has had another injury interrupted and underwhelming year where he's been poor in the ruck and hasn't exactly stood out forward either, but if you were ever going to give a guy one more year it would be a ruckman right? 

Would redrafting King for one more year on the rookie list (or even promoting him) instead of keeping either Dawes or Pedersen change much? We know Dawes and Pedersen are only stop gaps who are unlikely to play well consistently. If it's not King we are going to need to grab a mature 2nd ruck/forward somewhere at this years trade/draft process and they are very hard to find.

Bit hard on Pedo I reckon. He was going well and doing a good job as forward/ruck but was unfortunately stopped by injury and illness.

[Biffen 12,943]

6 hours ago, Bitter but optimistic said:

Bit hard on Pedo I reckon. He was going well and doing a good job as forward/ruck but was unfortunately stopped by injury and illness.

Perhaps DeeSpencer is a fan of Senator Hynch?

[RalphiusMaximus 6,048]

Silly mistake in the article regarding White.  He's on his last year as a rookie.  We either promote him or cut him loose. 

[Tough Kent 2,137]

6 hours ago, RalphiusMaximus said:

Silly mistake in the article regarding White.  He's on his last year as a rookie.  We either promote him or cut him loose. 

You can have 3 years on the rookie list. He's only had 2.

[daisycutter 29,613]

21 hours ago, jnrmac said:

There have been so many of these players over the years that look great when trade time comes around but never do anything. Brent Prismall, Jack Hannath...we were having conniptions here about missing out on these futures stars. The reality is very few discards go on to do anything great. They might plug a gap for a short while...Mitchie is one of those for mine, Ben Newton another.

and the DWOTW award goes to jnrmac for "conniptions" - congrats keep up the good work

[old dee 23,788]

15 minutes ago, daisycutter said:

and the DWOTW award goes to jnrmac for "conniptions" - congrats keep up the good work

Come on dc you are not trying hard enough I now only take notice of 7LA's from now on.

[John Dee 445]

Wagner is a first year rookie. The club has shown in the past that, no matter how you perform, they keep you as a rookie for the full two years. This will move his upgrade into next year. Michie is also a first year rookie who would normally be retained but I wouldn't be at all surprised if he was delisted.

White has run out of rookie options and a hard decision will have to be made. I will leave that up to the club.

King has shown glimpses but nothing to indicate that he will be retained.

Smith is in his own category; he will be retained.

[Deespicable 2,726]

Interesting all the hard calls on Viv - I actually think he's put himself ahead of a cluster of likely delistings from the main list.

The fact that his skills are so clean means that he also provides great value at VFL level - helping forwards by being so precise with his kicking.

Yes, he's proven a tad slow to make it in the middle at AFL level, but he has shown he can dominate VFL games, probably even more so than Grimes, Trenners and Newton.

I can see about 8 players delisted off the main list before him and we may need his experience at VFL level.

White is young and developing, even if his game against St Kilda was a major fail. He should be contracted for another year.

King's now had three years to make progress and whilst he's skillful for a big, he's just not strong enough and needs to be moved on.

Smith is a keeper - has some special attributes.

Wagner should be on the main list and signed up for three years, although the arrival of Hibberd will make life harder for him.

 

[DeeSpencer 25,687]

19 minutes ago, John Dee said:

Wagner is a first year rookie. The club has shown in the past that, no matter how you perform, they keep you as a rookie for the full two years. This will move his upgrade into next year. Michie is also a first year rookie who would normally be retained but I wouldn't be at all surprised if he was delisted.

White has run out of rookie options and a hard decision will have to be made. I will leave that up to the club.

King has shown glimpses but nothing to indicate that he will be retained.

Smith is in his own category; he will be retained.

Not true. Vanders last year was promoted straight away. 

We've had similar players to Viv who have been dropped back to the rookie list then delisted. 

[DeeSpencer 25,687]

22 hours ago, Bitter but optimistic said:

Bit hard on Pedo I reckon. He was going well and doing a good job as forward/ruck but was unfortunately stopped by injury and illness.

Plays well for a bit, gets an injury, looses fitness and he's stuck back at Casey. He's 29. Dawes is 28. They both don't have a lot more to give. I'd be surprised if we took both of them in to next year and I don't know where we will find an upgrade from. 

[La Dee-vina Comedia 16,754]

4 hours ago, daisycutter said:

and the DWOTW award goes to jnrmac for "conniptions" - congrats keep up the good work

Wasn't sure whether DWOTW meant "DimWit of the The Week" or "Demonland Word of the Week" (or a third option I can't think of). But I'll assume the second part of your sentence is not cynical or satirical and therefore go with the second definition. Acronyms should really be avoided unless their meaning is AOK.

[Redleg 40,907]

 

Courtesy of Wikipedia.

List maintenance

Each club is allowed to maintain a list of up to six eligible Category A rookies and three Category B rookies. Up to three rookies can be retained, with the player's permission for a second or third season,^[2] with the others having to be either delisted or elevated to the primary list at the time of the National Draft. Only half of the salary paid by a club to players on the rookie list counts towards the league's salary cap.

Generally speaking, a rookie-listed player cannot be selected to play in the senior AFL competition, and must play in state-level affiliated teams, except in two circumstances:

• At the start of a season, a club can nominate up to two veterans from its senior list for salary cap reasons; if a team does not have a full quota of veterans, it can make up the balance by nominating rookies to be eligible for senior selection. These players are known as nominated rookies.
• If a senior-listed player is moved onto the long-term injury list, a rookie-listed player can be temporarily elevated in his place, becoming eligible for senior selection, while the senior player remains injured.

There are usually plenty of opportunities to enact one of these rules, so rookie-listed players who are playing well enough for senior selection are seldom deprived of the opportunity by list management constraints.

History[edit]

The rookie list was established in 1997. It was initially aimed at providing recruitment opportunities for young players, and at that time, players must have been between the ages of 18 and 23 to qualify.^[1] In 2006, this was relaxed to allow each club to recruit a rookie older than 23 if he had never previously been on an AFL list. This has since been relaxed further, and now there no upper age or experience restrictions on Category A rookies.

In 2006, "International rookies" were identified for the first time as a separate class of rookie, covering international players from any countries except Ireland, in order to protect the AFL's relationship with the Gaelic Athletic Association.^[3] The "International rookie" category has since been expanded to the broader Category B.

The relaxing of eligibility criteria have resulted a notable semantic anomaly with the rookie list: that highly experienced players may serve on a club's rookie list, even though the word "rookie" is widely understood in most sports and professions to refer to a new or inexperienced person. For example, Carlton's Heath Scotland spent his sixteenth and final AFL season on Carlton's rookie list, mostly to free up space on the club's primary list.^[4]

Before eligibility criteria were relaxed, special dispensation was granted for Adam Ramanauskas to be played on Essendon's rookie list in 2006. Ramanauskas had played over 100 AFL games for the club, but there was uncertainty over his playing future as he underwent treatment and recovery for cancer.^[5]

Future[edit]

The Australian Football League Players' Association (AFLPA) has stated a desire to abolish the rookie list, in favour of an expanded 46 player roster. The AFLPA's main argument is that rookies now have the same workload as senior players – which was not necessarily true in the early days of the rookie list – but that their pay and opportunities are much lower than that of senior players.^[6]

Most successful rookies[edit]

Some of the most successful players (having played over 100 AFL games and/or kicked over 100 goals in the AFL) originally drafted into the AFL via the rookie system^[7][8][9]are:

Michael Barlow Nathan Bassett Jarryd Blair Nathan Bock Matthew Boyd Luke Breust Dean Brogan Greg Broughton Shannon Byrnes Andrew Carrazzo Robert Copeland Dean Cox Stewart Crameri Aaron Davey Matt de Boer Michael Doughty Paul Duffield Aaron Edwards Michael Firrito Chad Fletcher Nathan Foley Josh Gibson Antoni Grover

Heath Grundy Jarrod Harbrow Pearce Hanley Leigh Harding Roger Hayden Kieren Jack Sam Jacobs Mark Jamar Mark Johnson Darren Jolly Brett Jones Tadhg Kennelly Brett Kirk Tarkyn Lockyer Nathan Lovett-Murray Heritier Lumumba Quinten Lynch Martin Mattner Nick Maxwell James McDonald Ben McGlynn Mal Michael Stephen Milne

Dale Morris Shane Mumford Mark Nicoski Michael Osborne Joel Patfull Danyle Pearce Damien Peverill Liam Picken James Podsiadly Jason Porplyzia Matt Priddis Dean Rioli Russell Robertson Max Rooke Ben Rutten Aaron Sandilands Brad Sewell Cheynee Stiller Bret Thornton Greg Tivendale Shane Tuck Clinton Young