Ron Burgundy

Personally I think we would have picked Howe at 34 irrespective of who we selected at 12. Just my view. Begs the question though - did we pick Cook and Howe because they were 'best available' or because of perceived 'needs'? I reckon Howe was picked because he was the 'best available' at that pick. His form to date backs that up. In any event, it's pretty hard for many of you to assert otherwise, given that many of you seem to think we have a glut of mid sized forwards and did not need any more (eg, Green, Petterd, Dunn, Sylvia etc). If that's the case, why else would we have picked him? Cook - 'best available' or 'need'? Don't know. The recent evidence is that, despite picking Cook, the new regime has invested heavily in recruiting hard at it talls (eg, Mitch Clark, Jai Sheahan, Leigh Williams and James Sellar). There might be absolutely nothing in this. Then again, perhaps they think we still have a major void in this area.

In my view, it is revisionism in the extreme to think that in 2007/2008, when the club was on the ropes, we embarked on a rebuild which entailed the premiership window theoretically commencing in 2015 and being thoroughly uncompetitive in the meantime. I have followed this club as intently as most others here, and I recall the methodology being to bottom out a little in order to secure some really good young talent and clean out some of the old guard, whilst retaining the existing talent on the list. Conveniently, some here are now seemingly pushing out the premiership window a little to, hopefully, allow certain picks to come on (eg Cook), even if it means not peaking the list whilst the likes of Jamar (AA), Green (near AA), Sylvia (should be AA) and Moloney (unlucky not to be AA) are running around at their peak. IMO we don't currently have enough talent not to take advantage of these players in their prime. If we're now talking about our premiership window commencing 2015 (which seems speculative in the extreme), that means our initial rebuild didn't work or we didn't recruit players who would complement our existing talent - something teams like the Swans and the Pies would never allow to occur. In short, IMO we didn't need to bottom out to be in this position now - fringe top 8 with no guarantee of being top 4 the year after. That's why I reckon Neeld is recruiting mature bodied players - he's trying to accelerate the development of this list. We simply don't have forever to incubate young talent - the rubber has to hit the road, and we have to start winning more games than we lose. This year.

The 'premiership window' timing is interesting to me, Fan. People here used to talk about it commencing in 2013. Now it's 2015. It seems there's some time creep going on at the moment. We have 'suffered' from about 2007. And we have been patient. Not only that, 'this list' will not include the best of the list from recent years, supplemented by the younger talented recruits (Morton, Watts, Trengove, Gysberts etc), as was said to be the stated methodology a few years ago. It will be an entirely different list in 2015 and beyond. To me, that suggests that we're not really relying on any of our better players over the last 5 years or so, eg, Jamar, Green, Sylvia, Moloney, Rivers, Davey etc. And, given that we don't yet really know how good our younger, talented players will be just yet, it's possible the rebuild's not tracking as well as we have been told/would have hoped. Accordingly, I am hoping the 'premiership window' opens before that - and we witness some drastic improvement, commencing round 1, 2012, following a year of chronic underperformance and disappointment last season. I want to see finals this year, as I think does Mark Neeld. If I'm being overly optimistic or idealistic in saying this, it has to mean our rebuild since 2007/2008 has not been all that successful or particularly well balanced. It also begs the question as to why we didn't go full bore at recruiting some more effective senior players over the last few years.

Lutz, I think RobbieF's point is quite clear. It may not ultimately turn out to be correct, but he's hardly being selective with his data. We have actually spent a high proportion of our top 12 picks in recent years on tall, skinny kids. For instance, we overlooked the bigger bodies of Hurley and Darling, and took talented, arguably undersized, tall players instead. We also overlooked plenty of very, very good midfielders with those selections. What I think weakens an argument is when a poster is so clearly partial, and potentially so emotionally aligned to an argument, that they appear unable to see, even acknowledge, different perspectives. This thread is literally littered with you and bing181 ticking the 'like this' button every time another poster puts forward any argument, no matter how pedestrian, against the view that RobbieF has just advanced. To my mind, that approach lessens credibility, as it suggests that poster is losing objectivity. There is no doubt that the club needed to rebuild its list and that we needed talls. There is also absolutely no doubt that certain talls take time. Everyone knows this. But IMO there is no doubt that this club needs to be competitive in 2012, having had a rather inglorious rebuild that's now entering its fifth year. And our recruiting needs to reflect this. Despite many thinking here (a couple of years ago) that we could be a top 4-6 side in 2012 and then entering our premiership window in 2013, the reality is this IMO - absent the recruitment of Mark Neeld and his change in recruiting strategy, we would still have a list that lacks the physicality and on field presence to get us there. Thank God we managed to land Clark. We've clearly had a lot of good picks in recent years, but that doesn't mean we've selected the right players, or even the right balance of players. And that is what some of us are trying to discuss here. Personally, I think Watts will make it and will turn out to be a great pick. I still also have high hopes for Morton, but there have been some worrying signs in recent years. Misson could be the key here.

I would trade Cook, Darling and many others to have Gaff on our list. He will be a gun (and grew up supporting the Dees). If WCE had their second round pick at, say, 11 - rather than 26 - I reckon they would still have picked Darling. An interesting issue in some respects is whether Gaff will be more valuable than Darling. I reckon he will be. Accordingly, I don't think one can credibly say that WCE 'fluked it' by landing Darling with their second round draft pick, in circumstances where they used their first round draft pick on a kid who will most likely become an elite player in the competition.

No one's claiming 'victory' here, furious d. I think we understand the reasons underlying Cook's recruitment. It's footy - this is all pretty simple stuff. Some people here are trying to have a mature discussion about some of our recent recruiting decisions. I find that interesting, particularly given that we have a new coach who seems to be taking the list in a different direction. I am personally very interested to read the views on these issues from people who know a lot more about this stuff than me (eg, Whispering Jack - great post by the way). It helps me to better understand where our list is at. And if one thing's clear to me, it's that all regular posters here love the club and want to see the club succeed. I highly doubt anyone has any interest in seeing Cook not succeed. The pettiness between posters that often comes into these threads is pathetic and unintelligent. And it doesn't actually add anything meaningful either. But then again, some people absolutely love to be right. Or be seen to be right at least. What they don't seem to realise though is that it's not actually about them - the interesting stuff is in the arguments being put forward and the underlying issue being discussed.

You serious? Zaharakis is the incumbent Dons B&F winner, and he's still a kid.

Even though a list continually evolves, it seems to me that we no longer have the luxury of spending years developing players and a structure. We need to be competitive now, and our drafting needs to reflect that. In this context, given the needs of the MFC at the time (ie, in desperate need of a full forward) Darling to my mind was a better bet than Cook AT PICK 12. This is not to suggest that Cook will not, in time, become a very good player. The fact that he was the under 18 AA CHF indicates that he was a very good prospect. That so called 'experts' were surprised we picked him at 12 also suggests to me there were some question marks over whether he would ultimately become an elite forward, unlike say Hurley, Watts, Riewoldt, Franklin and Roughhead. If not this, it perhaps indicates he was not as 'ready made' as certain other elite young tall prospects. In fact, I seem to recall most experts predicted he would go somewhere around 20 -25. But here's the rub. We don't need to draft kids exclusively. Old55, you seem to suggest that virtually all A grade KPPs are picked early in the national draft. I agree with you - hard to argue otherwise. HOWEVER, not all clubs spend first round picks recruiting such players. Some examples include: Leigh Brown (Collingwood - pick 73, 2008), Chris Tarrant (Collingwood - pick 44, 2010), Podsiadly (Geelong - pick 58, rookie draft 2010). Also some good forwards do actually get picked up late in the national draft (eg, Taylor Walker - pick 75, Bradshaw - pick 56). That said, I agree with the point you are making here. Now onto the other issue. Some have said, rather conveniently in my view, that Darling is a "mid sized" forward and therefore he didn't fall into our needs category at the time, principally because we had so many "mid sized" forwards. Some observations: 1. We picked another of our "mid sized" forwards in the same draft (Jeremy Howe), and we hadn't secured him at the time we passed on Darling. Conveniently though, this argument doesn't seem to be put forward in relation to Cook now that we have Mitch Clark. 2. Because Darling is only 191 cms, some seem to say he wouldn't be capable of playing out of the goal square. Interesting that, given that the following full forwards have won Coleman Medals: Neitz (191cm), Fevola (191cm), Modra (188cm), and Lloyd (192cm). Hurley (192cm) will probably win one too in due course. Darling IMO would've been capable of playing full forward for us - perhaps not this year, but certainly in the next couple of years. I think he's a very different player to Howe too - we could've had both in our forward line. And, as an aside, people here (quite rightly) absolutely love Howe because we know we got a little bewdy - not just right now, but well into the future too. I reckon the same joy would've been extended to Darling had we picked him. That said, we didn't - it's all hypothetical. Cook's a Demon, and I will now fall into line.

You seem to engage in a lot of inductive reasoning, old55. Clearly there will be instances either way. If you disagree with the general point I am making, just say so. I am not putting myself forward as any particular luminary on AFL recruitment - I am merely making an observation, which may ultimately be entirely incorrect. Time will tell. But please don't engage in some anti-intellectual form of reasoning to demonstrate your point. It's too annoying to counter, and I don't propose to do so.

I'll put it back to you, old55. How many top 10 or 12 draft picks take 4-5 years to develop into regular AFL players these days? Hurley, Watts, NikNat, Franklin, Roughhead, even Gumbleton (but for chronic injuries), all showed quite a bit reasonably early on in their AFL careers. Perhaps this was not the case a decade or so ago, but it seems that most top picks start contibuting fairly soon in their careers. I'm not suggesting for a moment that any of the above elite talls are not worthy of their selection. The intent of my comment (which I would think is obvious to any fair minded observer) is that most tall, long term development-type players (such as Cook) are perhaps better being picked slightly later in the draft. Even though everyone's going on about how Darling was overlooked by all clubs prior to being picked up by WCE, it'd perhaps be interesting to know where Cook would've landed had the MFC not picked him at 12. I suspect it wouldn't have been 13. And FWIW, I really hope Cook makes it. I have absolutely no interest in seeing him fail. Ideally, he'll be our CHF for the next decade, but, from what I read here, there are some slightly worrying signs.

Totally agree. In recent years, I have literally despaired at some of the recruiting and team selection decisions that the MFC have made. Before others point it out, I know I am not remotely an expert and I am wholly aware of this. That said, I have watched (or listened to) every MFC game over a very, very long period of time. In short, I follow the club closely. It seemed to me that we were intent on fielding a TAC Cup team each week, more or less thinking that simply getting 50 plus games into talented youngsters would ensure a flag in 2013 (and beyond). However, I'd always thought it was a little bit more complex than that, particularly given the clear leadership vacuum we had at the club. Clubs like the Swans and the Pies seemed so good at identifying/recycling older players (eg, Craig Bolton, Leigh Brown), yet our record in this regard's not been that great. It almost seems as though our recruiters were briefed only with looking at the most talented 16 and 17 year olds in the country. On any construction, identifying established players like Judd, Mumford, R Warnock and Ball who wish to move clubs is easy - recycling the lesser known older players and fitting them into the team's structure takes skill. That's why I have found the recruiting in recent months so exciting. It seems we are identifying older players who are being brought in to fill a defined role (Sellar, Magner, Couch). It suggests to me that there's some vision, perhaps even a plan. And why cut players of Junior's ilk prematurely if we weren't able to attract the likes of Judd and Ball to the club?! Surely we knew that - gross misjudgement IMO. We seemed to underestimate the value of a well balanced list. IMO our club couldn't keep rolling out the whole 'blue sky', talented kids, five year game plan forever. It's not a luxury AFL clubs have, particularly the MFC. This stuff isn't some interesting scientific experiment - the rubber had to hit the road at some point in time, and we needed to start being consistently competitive and start winning games. And that's why I think picking Darling over Cook, assessed at this point in time and looking into the medium term, was an absolute no brainer. Cook's apparently a fringe player for Casey. Meanwhile, Darling's been a very effective forward in a top 4 AFL team in his first year. I expect he will also continue to deliver a lot of value for WCE going forward - whereas it's still pure speculation for Cook. Not ideal for a first round pick IMO, especially for a club in our circumstances. Speculating on a talented tall is, however, an entirely acceptable methodology for a lower pick IMO. And I reckon Neeld/Craig/Misson/Rawlings/Brown and the other new coaching group recognise this. Fortunately.

Another benefit of hindsight post perhaps, but I recall virtually every poster on 'land and 'ology who followed the prospective draftees at the time pencilled in Zaharakis for either pick 17 or 19 in the relevant draft. We then picked Strauss with pick 19, which was thought to be a rather left field selection. I hope he turns out to be okay, particularly given that Zaharakis has already won a B&F with the Dons. As they say, if you hear hooves beating, think horses, not zebras. Perhaps it would've paid off for us to have taken the obvious choice here rather than the left field one. Good luck to him, but not picking Zaharakis has always troubled me.

Speculation perhaps, but I reckon Neeld would swap Cook for Darling in a heart beat. Don't know if WCE would be so keen though.

Yep - he's not exactly another Michael Hurley.

Interesting debate. The main thing I take from this (and perhaps it assumes that AoB's analysis is correct) is that Mark Neeld has a clear vision and game plan that he intends to execute. Sellar, it seems, fits neatly into what Neeld is looking for in defence. Whether Sellar is good enough or not to effectively play that role, time will tell - but, at this point in time, he is a required piece in Neeld's jigsaw puzzle. The whole 'best available' methodology seems to have gone out the window a little for the time being. Neeld seems intent on recruiting players who will have defined roles to play in his structure. And I like that - it inspires confidence.

Great report, JJH. What you have described in the first paragraph is music to my ears - it sounds as though we now have an experienced, battle hardened Green Beret (Mark Neeld) at the helm of this club, and he is preparing these boys for the type of combat where lives may be lost. Bottom line - they will be a well drilled unit this year. For years I've said to my mates at the start of each season, "watch out for the Demon Express - we'll be in the mix", only to see us turn out pathetic performances for the entire season and end up in the bottom four. Even though I have absolutely no credibility with my MFC predictions anymore (partly because I told everyone to put their house on Sylvia for the Brownlow last year), I reckon we will be finals bound this year - and I'm going to put my zero credibility on the line with my mates (once again) and tell them to watch out for the Demon Express in 2012. When they dismiss my predictions, I will simply give them the type of smug look back that says, "I have inside info - I know what I'm talking about". I feel certain we'll make the top 8 this year. Major Neeld won't settle for less.

I would be extremely surprised if any club thinks they got it right in letting Darling slip to 26 (WCE aside), particularly following his season last year. He should only get better too. Anyone who suggests otherwise is seemingly trying to justify a position that doesn't quite accord to reality IMO. Darling was one 'out of the box' - and, on any construction, that's a good thing. His character was apparently the issue, yet there were seemingly no character issues that transpired at all during last season - so the underlying fear proved to be entirely misguided. His skills and on field aggression were not ever in issue. All this, 'let's wait and see in 4 years' starts to wear a bit thin after a while IMO. It's too convenient, and it effectively censors all such comparisons. I'm absolutely stoked we picked Howe, but don't be thinking we pulled him completely out of the hat. When we passed over Darling at pick 12, there was absolutely no certainty Howe would be around in the 30s. Other clubs were tracking him too, including Collingwood I believe. And Darling and Howe in the forward line would be awesome over the next 5 years or so - they'd compliment each other very nicely IMO, particularly with Mitch Clark, Jack Watts, Ricky Petterd and Liam Jurrah rotating through it too - opposition defenders wouldn't know which way to look.

10 out of 10, Garry. The best post season we've had in memory. Thank you.

What's with all the sleeves on these dudes? These guys are becoming a bunch of lemmings re: the tatts. Our forward line is starting to look really good. The last time our forward had this much promise was in about 2002 (with Robbo, Neita, Vardy and Green in it, and a good attacking midfield pushing forward: Powell, Yze, Bruce etc).

I've not ever seen him play. I'm simply relying on the feedback I read about him, essentially on this site - so I've got no clue really. We just seemed to go through a period when we recruited a lot of skinny, nice young (apparently talented) kids. Cook seems to fit firmly in that category, yet we recruited him (ultimately) to take on the KPP mongrels at other clubs. That said, I understand he was All Australian CHF - so he must be pretty handy. Just a pity about Darling IMO - we probably needed him more than any other club at the time. Some of the other clubs during this period seemed to recruit kids that you could see as men, and they've got a bit of mongrel about them. From a distance, I think Neeld likes those types and feels we don't have enough of them. Could very well be wrong though, but the approach to the recent draft period suggests otherwise.

I don't think Neeld would have been particularly impressed with our selection of Cook at number 12, given our clear need for an aggressive, big bodied forward on our list. The reports I've read suggest that he's still a long way off playing in the seniors. If true, that's not good. Not remotely. That the recruiting team (or at least some in it) preferred Zaharakis over Strauss is interesting - I'd always found Strauss to be a curious selection so high in that draft. I wonder if Neeld/the club have already identified someone they'd prefer in the BP's (former) role. After all, the club's been a step ahead of the curve in recent times.

Nailed it.

The thing I take some comfort in is that it's not only Dees supporters who have a bad taste about the whole episode. A lot of non-MFC supporters also feel we got completely dudded. What's more, many people seem to think that Scully isn't the sort of guy you would want your club to spend a lot of its cap on (ie, his character and his motivations are suspect). Better to invest time and money in players of Trengove's ilk, as they will bring so much more to the club, both on AND off the field. In short, players like Trengove can positively influence the culture of the entire club. Scully seemingly cannot. The other great thing about this episode is that it's completely changed many people's view of the club. Prior to Scully's departure, I think a lot of people thought we were getting an unfair 'leg up' from the AFL - essentially because we were seen to 'tank' to secure the priority pick. We obviously no longer have that priority pick, and at no stage did the club actually derive any benefit from that priority pick - in fact, the way in which the Scully saga played out actually made it something of a millstone for us. Add to this the disgraceful way in which we lost Scully to GWS. Now many people seem to think we were the innocent victim of an unfair system, rather than the undeserving recipient of the priority draft pick. But here's the silver lining - we didn't actually lose anything. We desperately needed Mitch Clark. But for Scully's departure, there's no way we would have secured him. We also dodged a bullet in not paying a mercenary like Scully so much of our cap, which would definitely have resulted in us not retaining some other talented young players in due course. And we got two first round compo picks for him (same as Geelong for Ablett). All good IMO. Makes me happy in fact. And here's the rub for young Tom - he is simply going to love the professionalism of Laurel and Hardy (aka Sheedy and Williams) at GWS. Meanwhile we now have Neeld, Craig, Misson, Rawlings, Brown etc at the helm, arguably one of the best coaching teams in the AFL. If there's anything to make you laugh out loud, it's that. Post-season 2011 is going to go down as one of the best ever in the history of this club. Mark my words. Rev up fellow Demons!

I have no doubt that Scully's a supreme athlete. I also think it likely that he will be, at the very minimum, a very, very good AFL player. It's his character that always concerned me. From a distance, he seems to be weirdly unemotional for a kid of his age. And I think it's too convenient to say he's 'professional', because quite frankly I don't think his conduct and approach over the past two years was particularly professional. Perhaps you can lay that at the feet of his agent/advisers, but I would love to see how a psychiatrist would profile his personality type. Jack Trengove on the other hand - he's got emotional intelligence in spades. And ability. And love of club. And about everything else we could possibly have hoped for ...

Reading the various off season reports, I had formed the view that Jones would definitely be in the mix. He's always mentioned as 'training the house down', being especially vocal, encouraging and enthusiastic at training etc - qualities which I expect would impress Neeld and his new assistants. He is also hard at it, loves the club, rarely misses a game and has leadership experience under his belt. The fact that he has a massive dirty great sleeve tatt would also have to impress a coach coming from Collingwood ... As much as I like Trengove, he's still too young to be captain IMO. And as to Grimes, he's just not on the park enough. Hard to captain the club from the stands each week.