Part 3 - Jason Taylor - Visionary or overrated - 2015

Part 3 of the series that looks at each of Jason Taylor's draft years and trades and swaps that influence his hand. 

2015

Draft 6/10 Pre-draft pick swaps: 7/10 Trades: 3/10

Another year when we fared pretty well at the draft, but ultimately our list-management trading (Todd Viney was still in charge I believe) let us down a bit. 

That is not to say then footy manager Josh Mahoney, who seemed to oversee the new area of pick swaps, didn’t do well. I mean this was the first of several years where we made pre-draft swaps which back then were revolutionary to a degree. Mahoney seemed to cotton on to the draft points rules pretty early and went to work with the developing interstate clubs.

Somehow we got pick 3 from GC, after swapping them picks 6 and 29. The downside was that we also offloaded our first rounder for the 2016 draft but that year wasn’t rated so highly.

We also managed to move up to pick 7 after offering GWS our picks 10 and 43 and 64, which helped them with points because they had a few academy kids on the way. I doubt we wouldn’t get such a great deal today. Maybe the Giants felt sorry for us, given we were taking Tom Bugg off their books.

It is difficult to follow the paper trail as to how all this happened but it did and we emerged with two early picks (3&7) again which became 4 and 9 because of academy kids - Mills (3), Hopper (7). 

When it came to draft night, there is no doubt that the choice of Clayton Oliver with pick four (it was three but Mills being a Swans academy made it four) will go down as one of Taylor’s best pieces of work. Olly couldn’t even make the Vic Country side earlier that year and I suspect Taylor was watching when he played for Richmond reserves later in the season and dominated and his final six TAC Cup games were sensational – from memory I think he polled three votes in five of them to win the Morrish Medal.

It was still a ballsy call by Taylor to pick him.

Firstly there was the stigma that would have come from past coaches and Vic Country bosses who would have told the stories to Taylor of how he was an overweight kid and not good enough for their side, let alone an AFL one.

Then there was the powerful Vic Metro movement who would have told him that Darcy Parish was a quality kid – the obvious choice for us. To be fair Parish is a pretty, handy midfielder, but Olly developed at a rate of knots and has won four B&Fs for us – I think by any reckoning it was an inspired choice by Taylor. 

Sure his off-field indiscretions in 2023 may have tempered our ratings of him slightly, but he’s proven to be almost as good an upgrade pick as Bont was for the Dogs.

But Taylor’s judgment of bigs, particularly in 2015, may not quite win the rave reviews that he’s won in the midfield area.

At that point we’d all lost faith in Chris Dawes holding his marks and the pressure on then youngster Jesse Hogan was immense. Taylor took three stabs at bigs, junior star Sam Weideman, who’d been injured for much of his pre-draft year, then way down the order he punted on ruckman Mitch King, who was another Murray tap prospect and left-field Stingrays pick Liam Hulett.

Weideman always seemed to have the right attitude, and had the occasional standout game, but given Carlton snared two Coleman Medallists that year with Harry McKay (pick 10) and Charlie Curnow (pick 12), so it is hard to make a case that we fared well in this particular draft – Olly aside.

Nor did we fare well in trades. The Pies stole Jeremy Howe and gave us back a small hard-working forward Ben Kennedy, who was great at VFL level, but not quite quick enough to dominate at AFL level.

We also gave up our second rounder for Jake Melksham, who has been a very serviceable addition, but not in 2016 when he spent his first-year out under the Essendon ban. Tom Bugg added some grunt (Callum Mills might use another rhyming term), but he wasn’t a world beater and to be fair, was never going to be. He did do one incredible shut-down job on Sidebottom that I recall though

4 Clayton Oliver – Four best and fairests in a golden era for our club makes Clayton a great of our club, even though he’s going through some hard times at the moment. From day one he had such an innate ability to read the game and his quick hands and peripheral vision made him a standout midfielder. I remember going to an intraclub game out at Casey pre-2016 and you could hear and see the excitement coming from Goodwin on the sidelines just watching what the 18yo was doing.

In 2021 and ‘22 his game went to a new level because he took things on himself, often breaking lines with his dash. This season he seems to have regressed back to that quick sideways dish to avoid errors and his “see ball, get ball” mantra has been lost a little as he follows other stars such as Cripps and Butters into a contest, rather than being the instigator. His inability to stick and hold tackles has also hurt, but that may be because of his thumb injury. Whether he can get back to being that fearless big-bodied extractor will likely determine if our season ends on a good note.

9 Sam Weideman – It is rumoured Tubby showed Jesse Hogan tapes of both the Weid, Curnow and McKay and Jesse liked what he saw of the Weid, who was a standout bottom-aged forward who was injured for much of his draft year. Curnow (pick 12) had misbehaved a bit in his draft year and was viewed more as a potential big-bodied midfielder back then, so you can understand why we overlooked him, although McKay (pick 10) had serious height and upside with his pace for a big bloke. Weid did have some great moments, remember the 2018 finals series when Jesse was injured, but he never quite developed into the star that we’d hoped and surprisingly we never tried to turn him into a defender either. From all reports I’ve had, he is a super bloke, maybe he was just a tad slow on the lead, but he had great vision and nice kicking skills. I’d actually be quite happy if we rookied him at season’s end (Essendon will delist him) and offloaded some of our other talls.

42 Mitch King – not sure why we needed another development ruckman given Gawny was already an icon and we had rookied Max King two years before and there were a handful of handy draft picks to come including one current standout skipper – Jordan Dawson (pick 56) - along with handy defenders such as Blake Hardwick (44), Werribee’s Sam Collins (55) and Nathan Broad (67).

46 Liam Hullet – Another tall forward prospect who had played a few games with Dandenong Stingrays, but wasn’t on any draft lists other than ours apparently. He looked the part with a strong body and he was a nice kick, but he just did not have enough pace to make it at the highest level.  

6 Rookie draft - Josh Wagner – A nice left-footer plucked from Queensland. He was a handy hard-working half-back, who managed 42 games for us and a couple of memorable tackles – one on Gary Ablett when he was at the Suns I seem to recall. 

We also upgraded Joel Smith, who was starting to show some good signs, off the category B list and re-rookied Vic Michie. 

At this far down it’s all a bit of a lottery as to who comes on, but there were a few rookie gems unearthed by other draft gurus – Sydney’s Tom Papley, Essendon’s Tippa and Port’s Dan Houston stand out - and we did overlook another Aspley product in Mabior Chol, who has taken a long time to come on, but would fit our list profile perfectly now. So there’s probably at least six clubs who would reckon they did better than Taylor that year. 

Interestingly, and this is with the benefit of hindsight (a wonderful thing), for the third successive year Geelong’s most-celebrated draft guru Stephen Wells failed to really unearth a gem from his haul – Sam Menegola (pick 66) being the closest thing to a revelation down at the Cattery.