nutbean

the African explorer. did someone call me schnorrer hooray hooray hooray ( okay now I am REALLY showing my age)

Harts also did a tram session http://www.tramsessions.com/sessions/harts/

On topic but a complete aside - stumbled across this yesterday - tram sessions - random talent jumping on trams and playing. ( to support sustainable transport and support live music) http://www.tramsessions.com/ Imagine getting on tram and Paul Kelly lobs on behind you and starts playing. (btw - Paul Kelly - you are a god)

We are a sad bunch who have really learned little. We got sooo excited about drafting Watts. Wow.. A double header - Scully and Trengove - saviours of the club. jimmy T slipped to our pick.. A blessing. hogan is our next Wayne Carey. I will get excited by a draft pick...any draft pick when they deliver. What a blessing Dom Tyson is.. We paid a handsome price for you and you gave us ROI from day one. (Disclaimer - I will give a few of these blokes time as they are young and have time to make their marks - but I refuse to get all excited about any draft picks until they deliver - if they don't deliver in 2 seasons half of demonland will be trashing them in no time)

And you missed the whole point of the post. I quote from the Steven King film Christine " you can't polish a turd" and our club for many years has been one steaming pile.

This proves it is a lottery - so many mistakes in that draft it can have 100 page thread of its own. So many clubs got lucky with their second picks being better than their first ( as I have said in previous threads). All this does is highlight what I have always believed has been our problem. Take a draft pick with some raw, undeveloped talent and throw them into what was our cesspool and watch them sink. Poor culture, average to poor coaches, no demands for excellence, fitness regime years behind the pacesetters, no leaders/mentors/older talented players to ease the path for the youngsters, protect them and make them the third or fourth target instead of the first. I have mentioned this elsewhere - who is the great white hope of the top four teams for next year - not some untried draft pick - Hawks look to Roughy, Gunston, Hodge etc, Swans look to Tippett, Hanneberry, Kennedy. Who do we look to to save us ??? An 19 year old who is yet to play a senior game....

Could not agree more - and add to that, that we have been drafting young kids and putting them into our putrid club. So no doubt in my mind that we can clearly say that looking back Wines was who we should have taken. So carrying on your theme - most of the picks we have taken have nothing to do with the fact of poor recruiting - it is more to do with that we are pretty bad at picking the lottery numbers.

I'll stop splitting when you direct me to one ( all I need is one) of the so called experts who actually had Wines rated above Toumpas.

Go back to 2008. Garry Lyon suggested we try and raid Geelong and take Steven Motlop. That was Geelongs 3rd pick. Maybe we should raid them and take their 2nd pick from that draft - Tom Gillies...ohh...wait.....

Just been looking back through drafts - anyone who doesn't think that it is a turkey shoot..well...look at 2009... We keep bemoaning not taking Dustin Martin - have a look at that draft and see how many mistakes were made. Poster say we could have taken Fyffe - but that was Freo's second pick not their first so they didnt even rate that him as highly as Moribito. We could have had Lewis Jetta but that was the Swans second pick - they preferred Rohan over him. Essendon took Melksham before Carlisle. Geelongs third pick was Christensen at 40 - the best for Geelong from that draft.

Need to pick you up on one point - - Most pundits had Watts and Niknat around the same pundits - most pundits did NOT have Toumpas and Wines around the same pick. Toumpas was clearly the preferred pick and expected to go top 3. Even Jack Viney had him as the preferred pick but commented that he didn't think he would get to our pick. I don't think it proves that pundits don't know - I think it proves that it is a lottery - in fact GWS , Bulldogs and us all got it wrong as he is clearly the standout ( at this stage) of that draft.

Nonsense - obviously you weren't gifted a crystal ball and rear vision mirror like many on here.

Your dodgy memory is the same as my dodgy memory but I didn't post because I couldn't find the reference. My dodgy memory recalls Viney Jr rating Toumpas as the number pick and suggesting he wouldn't be around at our pick.

Most of the highlight packages are pretty meh. Two of the better packages I have seen is Fitzpatrick and Troy Davis - what does that tell you ?

For accuracy sake - Roos said he would not have done a straight pick 2 for Tyson - he wanted to get a pick back in the top 10 which was he got. (Tyson, 9 and 52 for 2,20,72)

Roos is on record Saying he wanted that trade precisely because it was two for one deal. He also said that Kelly would be a really good footballer. He called it a win win.

Dermie spoke about the great Hawk teams and he said the biggest single factor in the continual development of their youth was the unbelievably good mature aged players and leaders at the club. When Brereton debut ( in the finals of 1982 - couldnt make the team the whole year) - he was the third tall in the forward line. The early parts of his career were shielded. We expect Hogan to come in and be a gun from day one. Look at Gunston at the Hawks - had two years of the pressure being on Franklin and Roughy.

The jury is out on everything. What Steve said is correct except I have guarded optimism - we have changed plenty but I wish ( hope) it is that simple to turn around. I can see that Roos has improved the team but by his own admission we are still a long way off. Lots of the other building blocks are in place but I think have a real solid core of mature footballers to ease the way recruits is so important and we have better than last year but still dont have enough good matures to take the pressure off the kids. I am not as confident as some that we have the right environment for kids to prosper YET. Call it a work in progress. I have confidence that we are on the path. Incompetence doesn't get corrected and overhauled from one year to the next so I will hold fire about all the guns that may come into this club until one actually proves himself to be one.

Thanks for pointing out me being ignorant and infuriating but obviously you don't read my posts on recruits because I actually agree with you 100%. Well 90%. All you say is true but I have been so badly burned by our past incompetence that I will declare a future draft pick a gun when one actually turns out to be one.

morton, scully, trengove, watts petracca will be a gun - I'm certain of it.

Or they could be Luke Tapscott

All our players look composed during training...alas.. when they play a game proper.......

lordy lordy - when we all learn. Cook was All Australian centre half forward !!!!!

sigh........ Again...... Toumpas was the more highly regarded player at the time of the draft. You can all rewrite history as much as you like but go through every article by TAC watchers and Toumpas was more highly ranked than Wines. That much is fact. The next probability is that Wines is now arguably the best player out of that draft so following the flawed rear vision logic - we should not have been able to draft him because GWS had picks before us and they should have taken him first ! (if you go back through posts at the time - there was even talk of "collusion" that we gave up too much for Hogan but the trade off was that Toumpas would somehow slip through to our pick)

Same was said about Tom Scully if i recall... Same was said about Jack Watts and/or NicNat if I recall. They all look like guns and jets at TAC level. Here's a riddle - how do you turn a jet into a spud - put him in a Melbourne jumper. ( sorry - still in the grieving process after Sunday - I asked an MCC attendant for my membership money back)