Axis of Bob

I see Langford as being much more ‘in the eye of the beholder’ than most, so this makes sense. Some will see the things he does really well and others will see some holes. It’ll be interesting to see where he goes on the day.

Why is this so important that it needs a different thread to the existing CP thread?

He’s a very JT style of player and I suspect we’d pick him if available, however I’m dubious that he’ll be available at pick 5 TBH.

I guess Tom Stewart is going to need a new lawyer then!!

Drink!

If ANB wants to go home then we should shake his hand and wish him well. He’s earned the right to be sent off with a minimum of fuss and our best wishes.

It’s the players that nominate for either a 6 month or 18 month contract as part of entering the mid-season draft, not the clubs. The length of Kentfield’s contract is irrelevant to the club’s thoughts because Kentfield nominated for the draft with a 6 month contract. Source: https://play.afl/sites/default/files/2024-05/2024-MSRD-Information_FAQs.pdf

Kentfield is a ‘big boy’ forward who does his best work when he can physically dominate opponents. These types of players usually take a lot of time because, no matter how big you are at 18, you can’t play like that against mature players until your body matures as well. It’s different for a key forward like Cadman etc who can rely on athleticism to get separation from his opponent. He’s much more akin, in style, to Tom Hawkins where he’ll likely have a long term strength advantage over opponents but it will take time until that eventuates. Until then you’re likely to get good effort, small glimpses and inconsistency based on his match up. This is what we saw with Hawkins, who was a dominant junior and much more developed at the same age. Most of these types of players will require more development to be AFL players than athletic key forwards like, say, Jamarra or Cadman. Judging this type of player based on two months is silly.

It's a tough game to play into the wind when you're down 23-5 in clearances. We've lost the top end of our AFL midfield, so we see that lack of depth for inside midfielders the most at VFL level, particularly when you're up against genuine quality like Sanders and Macrae.

I wasn't talking about the teaser! 😁

Very presumptive of you to make that judgement of them, DS.

I find it so hilarious that you are a poster that basically only comments on a single issue and that, of all the possible issues to get heated about, drafting a developing young key forward with a nothing pick in the mid season draft is the issue you’ve chosen. The world is a weird place.

My understanding from what Taylor has said in interviews is that the recruiter will give those doing the trading (footy boss, list manager, etc) the players that they project to be available at each point in the draft so that they can understand the value that they are dealing with when trading picks. The recruiting team is not the trading team and Taylor has little to do with it aside from providing information about potential draftees. I have no problem with discussions about list managing/drafting/trading etc, but when you provide a provocative title specifically tying the performance to a single person then I think it's important to understand the role that this person actually plays. As for the last line, if you want to post your thoughts without comment then set up a blog. I appreciate the effort that you've put into it to stimulate conversation .... but you can't get upset that what you've put out for discussion is being discussed. I was hoping I was providing positive contributions to the discussions, even if part of that questioned some of the things that you said.

Why are you providing a rating of trades in a thread ostensibly about Jason Taylor, who is our recruiter? It's like complaining to the bootstudder about corporate hospitality. Taylor has been on record before saying that the top 3 were McCartin, Petracca and Brayshaw, and we would have selected whichever players were left at 2 and 3. Lever was going to be the target, AFAIK, for pick 10 which we were trading Trengove to Richmond for (but subsequently failed his physical).

Just another one here because I missed it the first time around. GWS had picks 1 and 2, and whiffed on pick 1 (Tom Boyd) and selected Kelly at pick 2. Kelly is a very good player and a very good pick, but Tom Boyd played 9 games and was out of GWS at the end of the year. He only played 61 games in total and, barring one glorious half of football, was a total bust. Hawthorn chose Billy Hartung two picks before Zach Merrett. How come they get a pass on that whilst Taylor doesn't for selecting Salem 17 picks before him, even though Salem has been a high level player in the competition for many years whilst Hartung was not? If Melbourne was a 5/10 in 2013, what ratings would you give to GWS, Bulldogs, Carlton, Essendon and Hawthorn in 2013?

Interesting. You talk about one player from each of those teams in the 2013 drafts, which is very convenient because each of those teams only really drafted one good player! The only possible exception is GWS, who also drafted Rory Lobb (who went home) and Cam McCarthy (who went home) with top 30 picks. They selected the 5 players you mentioned with picks 2, 4, 13, 26 and 56, so we only had access to Cripps and Merrett (over Salem) and Sicily (over Jay Kennedy-Harris). Placing Taylor behind GWS and Bulldogs because he didn't draft Kelly or Bontempelli is disingenuous. Those 4 clubs (GWS, Bulldogs, Essendon and Hawthorn) plus us selected 40 players between them that draft (we drafted 7 of them, including 4 rookie picks). There were 10 of those 40 players that played as many games as Jetta after being drafted. The 4 players you mentioned, Rory Lobb and then 4 players drafted by Taylor (Salem, Hunt, Harmes and Jetta). And only 7 of the remaining players played more than Jay Kennedy-Harris! The strike rate from those other 5 teams (with, generally, much better picks) was 19% chance of getting a 'Jetta+' players and a 41% chance of getting a 'Kennedy-Harris+' player. Melbourne had 57% 'Jetta+' and 71% 'Kennedy-Harris+' rate. From picks outside the top 39, where we had 1 successful pick, there were only 4 'Jetta+' players .... and we had 3 of them (the other was Sicily). I think a 5/10 rating is silly. Team/ND picks (all others rookies/PSD) players selected. Yellow are players selected that played as many games as Jetta, Blue are those that played as many as Kennedy-Harris.

The picks between Laurie and our next pick (aside from academy selections etc) were Brayden Cook, Matthew McLeod-Allison, Nathan O'Driscoll, Sam Berry, Seamus Mitchell, Caleb Poulter, Liam McMahon, and Shannon Neale.

I know, I was backing your comments up. 🙂

This is the full list of (vaguely) AFL standard key forwards selected after pick 14 in the draft prior to 2022. This ignores those that were mature players redrafted (eg, doesn't include a 27 year old redrafted Mitch Brown but does include Ben Brown, Brodie Mihocek and Jake Ricciardi). 2021- Jacob Van Rooyen (18) 2020- None 2019- Mitch Georgiades (21), Harry Jones (30), Harry Petty (37), Jake Ricciardi (51) 2018- Jacob Koschitzke (52) 2017- Oscar Allen (21), Brodie Mihocek (Rookie pick 22), Joel Amartey (rookie pick 28) 2016- Todd Marshall (16), Nick Larkey (73), Mitch Lewis (76), 2015- None 2014- None 2013- Daniel McStay (25), Rory Lobb (29), Ben Brown (47), Matt Taberner (70) Over this time period there would have been about 1000 draft pick made, of which there were only about 15 decent young key forwards drafted outside of the first half of the first round. What you see here is how rare it is to draft these types of players successfully without the best picks. Van Rooyen isn't the norm, he's an absolute exception and one of Taylor's best ever draft picks. If we get a long term forward line out of Van Rooyen and Jefferson from late first round picks then they should build Jason Taylor (another) statue.

The key position/rucks Taylor's drafted with picks inside the first 2 rounds: Weideman (9), Petty (37), Jackson (3), Van Rooyen (19), Jefferson (15), Adams (38), Whilst it's too early to judge the success of Jefferson and Adams, the strike rate is really good. Everyone will reference the Weideman pick, which wasn't the best (albeit he's had a nearly 10 year AFL career so far) but the other picks have been unbelievably good. If Jefferson continues to develop then we'll have been able to get a 10 year forward structure out of two late first round picks, which is an absolute coup. There were really only about 4 or 5 talls worth picking in the 2021 draft, 3 of which were taken before our pick, and we got arguably the best one at 18 (Van Rooyen). Outside of that we really haven't even fired a shot at taller players in the draft. We clearly don't really rate talls in the back end of the draft and haven't really tried. Each of these players were taken early in Taylor's tenture and Oscar was probably a win, whilst the others weren't. You could argue Rosman was a tall but he was really drafted as a wingman. Late ND picks: Oscar McDonald (53), Mitch King (42), Liam Hullett (46) I would argue that Taylor has bee very successful drafting talls. however many supporters have tunnel vision because of how the Weideman pick played out. It'd be an interesting exercise to see if there are key forwards drafted after pick 15/18 in Taylor's time that could eventually be considered more successful picks than Van Rooyen and Jefferson.

That first year he turned a first rounder, a 3rd, a 5th and a 6th rounder plus 4 rookie picks into three 200 game players (Salem, Harmes and Hunt), a good ordinary player (JKH), a couple of mature fringe depth players (Clisby and Georgiou), a whiff (the real Max King) and a Neville Freaking Jetta (Nev, who played 118 games after being redrafted) is an outstanding draft based on the picks he had available to him. We took 2 of the 3 best players in the rookie draft, which is pretty good when there were 53 players selected. To call it 5/10 is hilariously underselling it, like picking up three 200 gamers is just what every team does on average. Particularly with only one pick under pick 40. For context, Collingwood (who Taylor had just come from) had picks 6, 10, 85 and 77, plus a rookie draft pick. They were Scharenberg (41 games), Freeman (2), T Langdon (89), Marsh (15) and Gault (6). If you add them up it's fewer games between them than from 3 individual players we drafted (not even including Jetta), and none of the Collingwood players have been on an AFL list since Jonathan Marsh was delisted by St Kilda in 2020.

The funny thing is that Jeremy McGovern, the 4 time All Australian, didn’t even play seniors until he was 22 years old.

Big boy forward which probably gives us a complementary skill set from Schache and Fullarton. Seems less mobile than them but willing to camp under the high ball and compete, which we need. Old fashioned style of forward so I’m excited to see how his skill set translates to AF L level. Going to be an interesting Casey team with Jefferson, Brown, Fullarton, Schache and Kentfield in the same forward line!

Josh Schache played the first 4 matches of the VFL season for Casey. In that time he kicked 11 goals (1, 4, 3 and 3) and is a very good VFL forward. He has since been injured and unable to play for Casey. In those games since Schache has been missing, Jefferson has played 4 games and kicked 11 goals 7. Jefferson has struggled to do the running needed to impact the game as often the fourth tall/marking forward in the team behind Schache, Fullarton and Brown (and McAdam, and sometimes Turner). That will take time and preseasons as his body matures. But when he's being asked to do a bigger load as a key forward target, as he has been in the past 4 matches where Casey have played 2, 3, 2 and 2 tall forwards) he's stepped up and performed well. We have some capable tall forwards that can play AFL in JVR, Petty and Turner, so there's no rush to get Jefferson in. Just let him keep getting continuity as his body and tank build. It's slow, boring, but also much more likely to work.

No it isn't. He elected to bump instead of contesting the ball, and the result of that bump was a broken jaw to a player that actually was trying to contest the ball. That's a very open and shut case. I know you take pride in trying to be a contrarian but arguing in favour of more head injuries (especially a really obvious incident like this) is an odd hill to die on.