The author here seems to feel that there's more risk involved in drafting ruckmen and KPP's than midfielders which is more or less the general view taken over the past decade and a half.

The underrated zone where real value lives; how to avoid early mistakes: Inside the AFL draft

"A potential key position player at the age of 18 is going to be further away from his physical prime than a midfielder, particularly since mids don’t need to fill out with quite as much muscle.

"Rucks and KPPs also require skills that must be trained against fully-grown men - which is impossible at an early age - whereas the endurance and speed required in the midfield can be brought from the underaged ranks into the elite game."

Of course, every once in a while, a tall KPP ruck or KPP comes along as the exception to the rule. Luke Jackson at #3 from two years ago is one of them.

 

It’s a raffle if you don’t take into account the mental aspect of a recruit. If you ignore that, and just go by needs, position, and even performance, you are throwing darts at the board with your eyes closed.

The most important attribute of what makes an AFL player great, or even good, is not determined by the position he plays.

 

 

28 minutes ago, KingDingAling said:

It’s a raffle if you don’t take into account the mental aspect of a recruit. If you ignore that, and just go by needs, position, and even performance, you are throwing darts at the board with your eyes closed.

The most important attribute of what makes an AFL player great, or even good, is not determined by the position he plays.

 

 

It’s probably more of a raffle in 2021 than it has been since the early days of the draft. There are so many unknowns about and a few scream out to be selected. At the end of the day, it’s the midfield that’s safest.

11-20 v 6-10 is an interesting debate but a good question is whether 11-20 go better because they get drafted to good teams. They’d be a way to sort that based on ladder position over a span of years to see if it holds true.

There’s been an adjustment on key forwards recently I think. Teams aren’t as smitten with them and don’t feel as desperate to get them. The standouts like the King brothers still go early, maybe not as early as they should, but others have fallen. There’s less blind faith in getting big guys, but their scarcity will still make them super valuable.

Positional value is certainly worth considering. One dimensional inside mids (even big body ones) seem to have dropped a lot recently too. Teams have never been all that keen on lock down defenders. And rucks stopped being early picks apart from Jacko a fair while ago.

It pays to zag against the trends though. Jackson is proof of that. 

I think North have found a couple of nice options in Curtis Taylor and Eddie Ford drafting the mid sized half forwards who often fall because teams doubt their usage at AFL level, where half forwards must be defensive workers more than flashy. Then again, North haven’t won many games with those 2 yet! 

Small forwards have really risen in value and Jason Taylor admitted as such when we took Kozzie. Not only did he think Koz and Weightman were special prospects but he talked about just how valuable pressure smalls are to the modern game. 

On the other hand, the 2020 draft: 

1. Jamarra Ugle-Hagan (Western Bulldogs) 
2. Riley Thilthorpe (Adelaide) 
4. Logan McDonald (Sydney) 
6. Denver Grainger-Barras (Hawthorn) 
8. Nik Cox (Essendon) 
10. Zach Reid (Essendon) 

2 hours ago, DeeSpencer said:

I think North have found a couple of nice options in Curtis Taylor and Eddie Ford drafting the mid sized half forwards who often fall because teams doubt their usage at AFL level, where half forwards must be defensive workers more than flashy. Then again, North haven’t won many games with those 2 yet! 

Fritsch goes alright too 

I think that there are a few levels to this.

Firstly, it's really difficult to measure the quality of the contributions of each player drafted. There's no overarching, unifying metric which approximates how valuable a player has been (like, for example, WAR in baseball). All metric are imperfect but 'games played' is especially so. As an example Robbie Gray was drafted at pick 55 in the 2006 draft, won a Coach's Award in 2014 and was AA 4 times, won 3 B&Fs. On the other hand, David Mackay was drafted at 48 in the 2006 draft and his career highlight was the one game where he was awarded one Brownlow vote for his 23 possession game against Melbourne in 2015.

Robbie Gray has played 255 games and David Mackay has played 248. Games is an imperfect metric for player value.

But beyond that, there is a lot that rings true from the article. Midfielders, especially those that are contest winners, tend to be far easier to judge at the very top of the draft. This is because their games are more developed (they win contests against similarly developed peers) and the level of projection needed is very small. You only need to look at a tape of Horne-Francis for about 30 seconds to realise that he's a gun and that his game would translate to AFL footy easily even if he made minimal further improvements. But a tall needs to beat far stronger and developed opponents in one on one contests. It takes longer for those talls to develop the strength to compete against and eventually beat these older players. It's this additional level of physical development required of the taller players to play their role at AFL level that means there is a lot more faith required that they will develop as hoped. The more 'one on one' element there is to a player's game (eg, rucks, power forwards/defenders) the more development required and hence the greater risk you take that the player won't develop as hoped. 

As for the difference between picks 6-10 and 11-20, past the top 5 you are generally dealing with players with significant flaws to their game and a lot of it will come down to what the recruiters like/don't like or what sort of risk they are willing to take. Recruiters are picking their own poison in a way. With all these picks, would you rather the tall that needs development, the speedy mid that needs to build a tank, the small defender with limited further scope, the intercept defender who isn't a great kick ..... they all have strengths but also flaws, otherwise they'd be in the top 5. 

It isn't a raffle. It's more like picking stocks. The ones up the top are your biggest companies: they're expensive but you're a lot more certain that they'll keep being good companies for a while. You're much more likely to pick an Amazon or Apple, but there's also a small chance that you pick AMP. As you get further down the draft you start getting into smaller companies: they're cheap because they're flawed or the development is really uncertain. You're far less likely to pick a winner here, but there are almost always a few diamonds to be picked from the rough, if you're lucky and know what you're looking for.

Every draft is affected by unusual factors but this one is especially so. The pandemic and the lockdowns have meant that it’s more difficult to assess many of the players. This year’s mid season draft saw some of the best ruck prospects taken in advance leaving little in the way of top end young ruck talent. The players definitely standing out are the midfielders and mid sized attackers and defenders meaning the depth for drafters goes deep into the 40s.

I have a problem with the debate around whether ruckmen and key position players should be drafted early. The discussion always seems to focus solely on risk only rather than also considering the potential reward. It seems to me that while midfielders are important, they're also relatively easy to find. On the other hand, Premiership winning teams seem to need dominant key position players as much as they need onballers. Given key position players are harder to find, the rewards from recruiting the right ones are immense. I know there's an argument that says a club can always trade for a key position player, and notably that's what we did with Ben Brown, Lever and May. But many teams have been successful because they drafted wisely for key position players such as Hawthorn with Roughead and Franklin, Richmond with Reiwoldt and Geelong with Hawkins. In other words, I think the argument that drafting onballers early is a lower risk option is true, but it ignores the other half of the equation regarding reward.    

Hawkins was a father son selection and no other club could have selected him and the bidding system was not used.

On 11/19/2021 at 12:24 PM, Axis of Bob said:

Robbie Gray has played 255 games and David Mackay has played 248. Games is an imperfect metric for player value.

Still, if you got 248 games out of a player that you drafted at #48, you wouldn't think you'd lost out.

To get real value out of the draft we should consider trading out of #17/19 to GCS who have a stack of future picks. They need to take another pick with Greenwood heading to North. I know everyone wants to open their Christmas presents early, but there is a price for that. Look at what GWS managed to receive by trading out of a similar pick last year. If GCS were to offer the GCS F1 for #17/19 plus Mel F2 we should consider it. Or #17/19 for 2xF2 & 2xF3.

If we do go to the draft, I would prefer it we go for a midfielder or small forward with our first pick. I think we have shown that we can recruit good/great key position players via trades and I think Weideman can still make it with a bit of luck. Also, Jackson is such a unique player that he (and Gawn) enables us flexibility to play a forward line with one or two other talls.

23 minutes ago, mauriesy said:

Still, if you got 248 games out of a player that you drafted at #48, you wouldn't think you'd lost out.

No doubt he was a good pick at #48. Not many people play nearly 250 AFL games. 

But was the value of his 248 games greater than Cyril Rioli's (pick 12) 189 games? Alex Rance's (pick 18) 200 games? Callan Ward's (pick 19) 248 games? Or Jack Steven's (pick 42) 192 games? These are all from the same 2007 draft.

My point is not to denigrate Mackay, who had a long and useful AFL career, but more to demonstrate that the number of games you play is not necessarily a great indicator of player value. As such, draft analyses based on that metric are going to be hard to draw really good information from.