The Rebuild of Melbourne's List - Mongrel Punt Article

Thanks for posting - good article, a reminder that list building seems to be like Sara Lee, layer upon layer. I would also include Peter Jackson as CEO who persuaded Paul Roos ( and$$$) to come to the Demons

In the past you could almost guarantee we would stuff up our draft night choices and then compound the problem with an appalling development program. These days we pick the right players and then bring them along like a top club would. Just missing the training facilities to make us the best in the business 

Great article mate. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks EO, that was an entertaining read.

This puzzles me though:

It’s a little alarming to think that from the 2005 Draft all the way to 2012 – just five players are on Melbourne’s list: Among those are Max Gawn, Tom McDonald and Nathan Jones. 

The fourth would be Jetta, but who is the fifth?   

7 minutes ago, Demonstone said:

Thanks EO, that was an entertaining read.

This puzzles me though:

It’s a little alarming to think that from the 2005 Draft all the way to 2012 – just five players are on Melbourne’s list: Among those are Max Gawn, Tom McDonald and Nathan Jones. 

The fourth would be Jetta, but who is the fifth?   

Dunno AVB?? Nah, can't be him.

8 minutes ago, Demonstone said:

Thanks EO, that was an entertaining read.

This puzzles me though:

It’s a little alarming to think that from the 2005 Draft all the way to 2012 – just five players are on Melbourne’s list: Among those are Max Gawn, Tom McDonald and Nathan Jones. 

The fourth would be Jetta, but who is the fifth?   

Viney.

2 minutes ago, A F said:

Viney.

I keep thinking Viney is 23.... 

2 minutes ago, Engorged Onion said:

I keep thinking Viney is 23.... 

Haha, yeah, I still remember that Port game in Round 1 of 2013 with Neeld. It was Jack's first game, we were pummelled of course and Jack allegedly went a few so called senior players at the time after the game. A very deflating day that.

Edited September 2, 20213 yr by A F

While the recruiting team have done a brilliant job this past few years, most of it still comes down to player development and culture. We seem to have got this right now, but it was trash 10 years back. You can’t tell me that Spargo, Sparrow, Jordan etc are more talented than Watts, Trengove, Grimes etc. It’s nearly all down to development, so thank god were now making the most of the talent we’re bringing into the club!

1 hour ago, Lord Travis said:

While the recruiting team have done a brilliant job this past few years, most of it still comes down to player development and culture. We seem to have got this right now, but it was trash 10 years back. You can’t tell me that Spargo, Sparrow, Jordan etc are more talented than Watts, Trengove, Grimes etc. It’s nearly all down to development, so thank god were now making the most of the talent we’re bringing into the club!

I disagree, I think it's a mixture of recruitment, development and culture. If you don't recruit those with the biggest drive and best habits (ie not Watts), you could have the best development and culture in the game, but it wouldn't necessarily lift an individual like that.

I also think it's system too. Our coaching staff, in particularly Goodwin, has built such a solid system that the young guys merely need to play a role. They don't need to star. So when they're drafted, they benefit from the development coaches and pathways, and the culture that they're embedded within, but when they're finally ready, unlike previous years, they're not asked to star. They're asked to play a simple, clearly defined role. 

1 hour ago, Lord Travis said:

While the recruiting team have done a brilliant job this past few years, most of it still comes down to player development and culture. We seem to have got this right now, but it was trash 10 years back. You can’t tell me that Spargo, Sparrow, Jordan etc are more talented than Watts, Trengove, Grimes etc. It’s nearly all down to development, so thank god were now making the most of the talent we’re bringing into the club!

Now we've got strong leaders like May and Lever around the club directing the kids in game.
They know exactly where they should be and what they should be doing.
Something that was sorely lacking for such a long time.
Talk about fast tracking development.

Reminds me of this sort of stuff.

 

Thanks EO that was a great read and I agree with above comments that it all started with Peter Jackson the architect of our rise getting Paul Roos and a great recruitment team and the beat goes on.!!!

Edited September 2, 20213 yr by DeeZone

Bernie Vince was our first decent trade for an age. He won a best and fairest. We haven't had a bust since. Superb recruitment over the past few years

I noticed a difference when Viney started. All of a sudden we were tackling with commitment. Other things happened as well. But Players couldnt avoid going in with intent when Jack showed up.

4 hours ago, DeeZone said:

Thanks EO that was a great read and I agree with above comments that it all started with Peter Jackson the architect of our rise getting Paul Roos and a great recruitment team and the beat goes on.!!!

Agree 100%.  
I hope that, should we attain the holy grail, PJ is not forgotten in the accolades. 

 

Among many others, Jason Taylor needs to be thanked for his amazing work as National Recruiting Manager of the Melbourne Football Club.

8 hours ago, Engorged Onion said:

The Rebuild of Melbourne's List - Mongrel Punt Article

I'm always wary of writers that put 'whilst' in nearly every sentence! Means they are trying too hard!

Just as an aside and something left out of the article is that Hunt has also been an important part of what we did with pick two. (Salem, Tyson and Hunt).

I don't personally think this is a particularly nuanced write-up, considering what might amount to be one of the boldest rebuilds in modern times. Roos had a simple task of stemming the bleeding and setting the basic cultural foundations, but while some peripherals remain we spent a lot of draft cookies in doing so. That includes Vince, Dawes, Lumumba, Kennedy, Frost, Melksham and Hibberd all for picks effectively in the early to mid-20s while sacrificing decent young talent - some who have been serviceable and helped lay the foundations but are not in the current team. 

The current crop is a post-Roos mini-reset, built on the strategic nous of Goodwin, Mahoney and Taylor (and probably others who should receive some credit), together with some good and bad luck. First step was to rebuild the engine room, in which we scored two serious hits (eventually) in Clarry and Trac, but they were landed on the back of high draft pics. The real genius has been in the MFC's manipulation of future trading, with a trade-up, get-em-in-early strategy for high-end talent. The willingness to then spend big on two KPFs was a masterstroke, and unheard of until now. 

Goodwin devised an exciting but flawed game-plan in his first two years as a senior coach, and then immediately identified how to fix it - almost completely flipping the script. Get rid of two two beloved members of our high-scoring forward-line and replace them with what has turned out to be two AA defenders, with the team now boasting the most staunch defence in the league. That done, with the structural basis in place, we went back to the talent pot (admittedly helped by bottoming out in 2019) and have plugged other gaps since. Taylor has nailed a number of later picks along the way. 

I'm not sure what my point is now. Maybe that the Roos era of rebuilding list-wise is still questionable (but maybe somewhat necessary). And that the actual rebuild of note has occurred in just the past three to four years, with Goodwin the visionary, Mahoney the master at the table, and Taylor getting the selections right both high and low? Consider this, 14 players in our last outing arrived at the club post-2017, with I think 9 finals debutants. This is a quick-fire rebuild. 

In all this discussion about on-field improvement, let's also recognise that we've come a long way on the administrative side, too. It's amazing how helpful a stable Board has been. 

The problems on-field at Carlton and Collingwood reflect the issues they're having in their back-of-house now. 

To be honest the aspect of this article i appreciated the most was a far more accurate description of the failed merger from our perspective. How we fought it. Up until now it’s mainly been all about how we wanted it and the hawks didn’t. So i was glad to feel some deeper truth being brought to that time. 

It’s amazing what real success can do to address ongoing narratives about the club! 

It took for us to hit rock bottom and the AFL appoint Peter Jackson for us to start breaking the shackles that have held us down for so long. Peter Jackson can't be thanked enough. Sure, he was in a paid position and all, however I think he certainly deserves Life Membership.

You read lots of comments about how we missed 4 flags by not merging with Hawthorn (but there is no guarantee that would have happened if we had), but i wonder how we would have gone if we hadn't been divided as a club, torn apart by the attempt to merge. 

On 9/2/2021 at 2:39 PM, Engorged Onion said:

 

The Rebuild of Melbourne's List - Mongrel Punt Article

Great article.

 I remember how dark so many were on Mays so called attitude and questionable fitness levels at first.

Also Lever took a while to strut his stuff.

Fast fwd to Rivers and Petty and hey presto...a suspect back line to the best in the comp.

I like the idea of recruiting in waves. As much as he's a nufty, David King mentioned on FIRST CRACK this week that the industry thinking is you draft an elite core and bring them through together. This has certainly been our model.

The older core is May, Gawn, Brown, McDonald, Jones, Hibberd, Melksham and Jetta. We've traded in four of them and home grown the other four.

Ideally, you start with 8-10 solid older guys, but due to our recruiting and development in the 2007-2012 period, we've had to rely on slowly building that older core. Ironically, that allowed us to pick up high end draft capital to continue building that elite core.

Starting in 2012-2017, we drafted the next core. This was the core that we had to get right, but for many years the club talked about bringing through an elite group of guys together and then adding to it. That elite core is now Viney, Salem, Petracca, Brayshaw, Oliver, Langdon (at the end of '19) and Lever (at the end of '17). Throw in support players like Harmes, ANB and Fritsch (who some might argue could fit in the elite category), and you've got your middle core, driven by elite talent, that needs to get somewhere between 23-27 before they peak together. We're now seeing this.

Then, because you don't want to drop off a cliff when that middle core retires, you carefully build a younger core that can play support roles for the meantime, but have enough upside to potentially be as good. Eventually, they'll take over from the middle core, and you target the 2018-2023 recruitment periods to build this core. That core now looks like Petty, Spargo, Sparrow, Jordon, Jackson, Pickett, Rivers, Bowey, Laurie and who knows whether Hore, Turner, Rosman and Declase will make it, but if they do, you've built some nice depth across the ground. You then add an elite midfield talent like Cerra to that mix in 2021 and work out HTF you'll get an elite KPF onto your list before Brown and McDonald come to the end.

The internal thinking I'm sure is that as your two older cores propel the team up the ladder, you then start to become a destination club if you're serious, and this makes filling those holes in the younger core easier.

So Cerra now views Melbourne as the minor premier and at the very least, a prelim finalist. Maybe he can be wooed? And Ben King starts to think Melbourne is in a better window than his brother's team. Maybe he can be wooed next year?

So not only does this strategy rely on good planning from the outset, smart and excellent recruiting, and an ability to be creative at the trade table, but it relies on you becoming a destination club on field to offset the lack of trade/draft capital you'll increasingly not have at your disposal. Geelong have shown this and with perhaps a more dynamic game plan, they might have done more damage at the pointy end over the last decade.

Where we might differ slightly from a club like Geelong is that we're targeting players for our younger core (18-23), rather than targeting players in that middle core or older core. Geelong have done this because obviously FAs require only salary cap and not draft capital, so must be in FA age range to land them, but I think we've been ahead of the game for a few years now when it comes to pick trading and getting good deals done for the right players.

I reckon our long term planning may well look to continue 'topping up' the emerging core, rather than the older core.

As elite young talent is shipped off interstate, I'm sure we're tracking the talent we really rate up on the Gold Coast, at GWS and anywhere else across the country. We can then target guys in the 21-25 age bracket to extend our list's longevity. 

The next 2-3 off seasons will be fascinating.

2 hours ago, DeesignerAU said:

It took for us to hit rock bottom and the AFL appoint Peter Jackson for us to start breaking the shackles that have held us down for so long. Peter Jackson can't be thanked enough. Sure, he was in a paid position and all, however I think he certainly deserves Life Membership.

You read lots of comments about how we missed 4 flags by not merging with Hawthorn (but there is no guarantee that would have happened if we had), but i wonder how we would have gone if we hadn't been divided as a club, torn apart by the attempt to merge. 

But who know whose flags they would be anyway.  
 

One thing for sure, they would not be Melbourne Demons flags, which is just what  we are aiming for right now.  
 

I would get far more joy from that, in my early dotage, than a Melbourne Hawks or Melthorn or Hawbourne red, blue, brown and gold one or even 4.