Axis of Bob

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.

Using your analogy, if a person is walking down the road then a car driver should aim at them because it isn't their fault if kill a pedestrian when there are cars around. In that scenario, that driver would rightly go to jail. It is upon those people to take reasonable actions to avoid inflicting serious harm on the other person. Streets are dangerous places where over 1000 people die each year. We try to manage roads so that people don't pay with their lives, in the same way that we manage the laws of the game so that people don't get picked off away from the play and spend the next 2 months being fed through a straw.

I wonder if that will comfort him for the next month or so as he spends his match days running sets of 400m by himself.

Oh no, not our second round pick (would have been pick 41) and our end of second round James Jordon compensation pick (would have been pick 45)!!! Won't somebody please think of the children!

Didn't do any preseason due to his foot injury. Came into the AFL team off just a couple of half VFL games (where he also struggled) and people are surprised that he is struggling to get involved. Running is a very important part of playing AFL football and Petty hasn't been able to do any due to a long term foot injury. If you can't run then you can't play.

10 goals to 2 in the second half and only gave up 5 goals all match. Demonland can be the absolute worst sometimes.

At the point of contact with the player (who is contesting the ball), Greene was not contesting the ball. Your words even say this, that he was "up and until it was deflected and a collision was imminent". As such, when the offence occurred, Greene was not contesting the ball and therefore committed a reportable offence. He has two options once he is jumping at the ball: 1) Contest the ball, or 2) stop contesting the ball and protect the player who is still contesting the ball. He chose to stop contesting the ball and made no effort to minimise the harm to the other player's head. That's a reportable offence.

If he was contesting the ball then he wouldn't be in the brace position, he would be reaching for the ball. GWS can try to argue that he's contesting the ball but it'll only need that one photo of him bumping the head with his arms tucked in to show that he wasn't. Just because he jumped with the intention of contesting the ball doesn't mean he was contesting the ball when he bumped into the face of his opponent. If the player he was jumping to was Jesse Hogan or a small child then he wouldn't have braced himself to bump, he would have shown some form of protection. A collision of some kind may have been inevitable but bracing yourself to bump your opponent with your shoulder was not inevitable. If one person is contesting the ball and the other isn't, then the responsibility for the collision lies with the non-contesting player. Greene messed up by not trying to protect the player contesting the ball and, at best, treated the player contesting the ball with negligent indifference.

If he marked it then he would have been contesting the ball, which is legal. Bumping the face whilst not contesting the ball is reportable.

The hit rate on category B rookies is very low, but the hit rate on the dregs of under 18/VFL/country league players is also low. Recruiters aren’t trying to draft VFL players, they’re drafting potential AFL players. There are heaps of guys who can play VFL but have a ceiling that is almost worthless at AFL level, so drafting any of them is a waste of time and resources. Recruiters can be pretty certain what they’ll get with those players, with the range of potential outcomes being very narrow. At least drafting a 206cm kid who hasn’t played much before exposed you to a very wide range of outcomes, some of which might include being a valuable AFL player. Whilst the average category B rookie will be much worse than a state league player, the likelihood that they’ll be a valuable AFL player is probably significantly higher. Jason Taylor isn’t a VFL recruiter, he’s an AFL recruiter.

I have similar thoughts but probably for slightly different reasons. Since the evolution of tactics in AFL, from an '18 one on ones' style before the mid-2000s, we now have an ability to refine the gameplan far more to suit the philosophies of the coach and the personnel they have available to them. In that time (last 20 years) pretty much every good team has set that balance of attack and defence in a similar way ... except for us. 2005 Sydney - defensive gameplan with great forwards (Hall, O'Loughlin, Goodes etc) and undersized defenders (Barry and Bolton) 2006 West Coast - attacking gameplan with great defenders (built around Glass and Wirrpanda) with ordinary forwards (Hansen and Lynch) 2000s Geelong - attacking gameplan with great defenders (Scarlett, Enright, Mackie, Milburn, Harley, Taylor/Egan etc) with comparatively ordinary forwards (Mooney, N Ablett, then smalls like Johnson etc) 2000s Hawthorn - defensive gameplan with great forwards (Buddy and Roughy) and undersized/ordinary defenders (Gibson, Gilham, Lake, Spangher etc). 2010s Richmond - defensive gameplan with great forwards (Riewoldt, Dusty, Lynch) and comparitively ordinary defenders (Rance for 2017, but just Astbury, Broad, Grimes, Vlastuin thereafter). 2023 Collingwood - attacking gameplan with great defenders (Moore, Quaynor, Howe, Maynard etc) and a bad forward line (Mihocek, Elliott, McStay). We have been different, with our strength being our amazing defence (May, Lever), ordinary forward line but still going for a defensive gameplan. The reason why this is mismatched is because the marginal gain of May and Lever is small when you set up your team to protect them whilst, at the other end, you're asking JVR and Ben Brown to compete against the odds all game (which they aren't really good enough to do). As an example, Richmond beat Geelong in the 2020 GF because the game was tight and congested, with scoring difficult. At 3/4 time they led 46-44 (7 goals to 6), so it was hard to score. In the last quarter they kicked 5 goals to win it (Prestia, Lynch, Dusty, Riewoldt, Dusty). Between Dusty, Riewoldt and Lynch, they kicked as many goals as Geelong did. Defending was easy with the extra numbers - kicking goals against those extra numbers was hard and that's why Richmond's best players were the ones to do it. Conversely, Collingwood could get relatively easy goals in 2023 (Hill, Elliott, Michocek, Ginnivan, McCreery and Frampton had 19 contested possessions between them - about 3 each on average) because they kept numbers forward and relied on their more talented defenders to win the difficult contests. You don't need to make the job easier for your good players because they're going to win you more of those really important contests (like Dusty against 2 opponents, or May one on one against Curnow), so they don't need as much support. But if you can then use those extra numbers somewhere else to make it easier (like supporting Astbury in defence, or playing an extra forward to allow Ben Brown a 1-on-1 and space to lead) then you're helping them enormously. May and Lever may help a defensive plan reduce the opposition's score by 20 points, but an attacking plan could help our forwards kick 30 extra points because they need that extra help a lot more than May and Lever do. tldr; Teams usually create game plans to add support where they need it most, trusting their best players to play well without support. We've given May and Lever too much support when they don't need it, and I am happy that we're now giving that support to our forwards (who do need it). Also sorry it was so rambling!