nutbean

Jimmy was not the flavor of the month - he was definitely the more fancied selection by the experts What I have learned from numerous drafts is that the experts are pretty good at identifying the top draft picks but trying to identify them in order of how they will turn out is nothing more than guesswork - if you go through the top 10 from every draft, they have generally identified the top talent but not one draft would not have a complete reordering - there will always be picks that in retrospect should go higher and others that should be lower and picks that are a complete bust and smokey's that no one really identified - how in in the name of all that is good did Fyfe get through to the selection he did. We were lucky that last year we had picks 2 and 3 - who here is willing to bet who will turn out better ? Petracca or Brayshaw ? We are fortunate we did not have to make that choice. But if we only had pick 2 and not pick 3 as well and picked Petracca - we would be upset if Brayshaw turned out better.

Seriously ? Just type in Jimmy Toumpas and go to the earliest threads and there are umpteen references to Toumpas going in the top three and not making it to our pick - Even Jack Viney in an interview asked who he would take and he nominated Toumpas but further elaborated that he didnt think he would be available at our pick. ( I cannot find the interview but Hannibal refers to the same interview in Nov 2012 - " I heard Viney (Jack) interviewed a few weeks back and he was asked which other player in the draft do you really rate and would love to go to Melbourne and he nominated Toumpas".) So much talk of Toumpas hopefully "Sliding" to our pick. Even enjoying the conspiracy theories of us overpaying for Hogan in exchange for GWS letting Toumpas slide to our pick. Ill set you a challenge - you provide one shred of evidence that Wines was higher rated prior to the draft than Toumpas and was the "obvious" choice and I will then provide double the amount for Toumpas being rated higher than Wines. (FYI - in the first minute of searching I have two from July and September of the draft year).

I think Toumpas and Watts is definitely between the ears. ( although Toumpas also has been hampered with injuries as well) Grimes - I think he is actually mentally tough ( physically he has been stop and start). But he does have some gaps in his skills.

Actually blantantly right. Newspapers are working off information from recruiters and TAC watchers. Until you provide one shred of evidence that Wines was rated by anyone ahead of Toumpas then your comment referring to "blatantly wrong" is blatantly wrong. Did we get it wrong in hindsight ? no argument. Your comment " Without question Toumpas was in that correct range and the debate between the two was valid at that point in time" is correct but the debate at the time was one sided - At that time it was envisaged that Toumpas would be selected higher than Wines and that is exactly what transpired. I will watch with interest how Parish goes because before any more rewriting of history happens, I will also state that Parish was more highly fancied that Oliver so I expect there to be much hand wringing if Parish ends up a much better footballer than Oliver. However I don't get angry over who we could have had - it is a pointless exercise.

As with most of demonland threads over 5 pages - lots of circular arguments going on. Based on Trengoves first couple of seasons there is little doubt that he is best 22. The doubt comes in as to whether his foot will allow him to be the very good player he was becoming in his first two seasons.

Could not disagree more - I don't care if you look like king kong or twiggy - if you don't have talent - take your bat and ball go home - you are not going to make it. If you are suggesting that you have two equally talented footballers but one is undersized and one is a brute - then it is no brainer. To also suggest that you draft for the immediate playing team flies in the face of what Roos constantly says ( and every expert of the game). You hope for some exposure from your draftee in year one and more output in year two - and established in year 3 - big men generally take longer. Drafting any footballer because they are "ready to go" is folly - Ready to go footballers are the exception rather than the rule. Using Cale Morton body size is interesting - He is 192 cms and played at 88kg ( footywire). Jack Gunston is 193 cms and plays at 85kg ( footywire) - interestingly Gunston doesn't suffer from the same problem as Morton did. Years of watching football shows me that talent is and always will be paramount. I'll give you two more - Adam Saad of the Gold Coast - he is a ripper - all 178cm and 74kg of him. Are you critical of the drafting of Neal Bullen - 182cm and 76kg - 1cm shorter than Toumpas but 5kg lighter. There is no substitute for talent The major difference between Toumpas and Wines is not body maturity/size - it is about talent. Wines is more talented than Toumpas.

Not sure that is fair comparison - Hunt was a young project player who was always going to take some time to develop (we can all argue how long you give a player to develop) - Melksham was brought in ready to go from day one with the caveat being the unknown on how long he was going to get suspended for. I would suggest that we rolled the dice on the length of the suspension and basically got it wrong. I am not convinced that with the benefit of hindsight and knowledge of the length of the suspension, Melksham would be on our list.

You would have to suggest that if Stretch and ANB are vying for the same spot and now Hunt is putting his hand up to compete in their position - Hunt would be third in line until he has exposed form that would have him leapfrog the other two.

I am ! The Ox suggests it and it now becomes fact ? I becomes pretty suspicious of "facts" when no-one actually mentions this "fact" until a year or two after the event when Wines has become a star and Toumpas a washout. What is absolute fact is the Toumpas was higher rated by so called experts than Wines was. (What is also fact is so called experts get their rankings wrong as much as they get them right)

"retrogenius" - those who look back in time, armed with current data and rewrite history - "it was so obvious that Wines was the better choice than Toumpas". As stated previously - these boards may go into meltdown if Parish turns out much better than Oliver as Parish was more the highly fancied pick.

You broke the cardinal rule - when you type Triple M play horrendous music you need to bold and underline horrendous music

They do actually. They have opted so far for the safe choice of tried and tested AFL players who are close to, or past their use by date. Picking up the likes of a Vanders , is rolling the dice on a player who is a stand out in a minor competition and hoping he can make the step up to be a good AFL footballer.

I agree but Essendon are in a different position to us. If we are able to pick up one top up player - then we can take a risk with a Vanders type player - it is only one player. Essendon need 12 players to actually be able to field a side - whilst one or two may be left field I am not sure you would want to take 12 outside the box players.

absolutely.... I am still firmly in the "development is king" camp. I cannot fathom that we had that many footballers come to our club that either failed completely or plateaued at "average at best". I maintain that if you get footballers with some raw talent into a cesspool of a club both on and off field and give them no further tuition or nurture them and basically throw them to the wolves they will ultimately wither on the vine ( unless you are a rare driven specimen like Nathan Jones). I also do not think you can downplay having good role models, mature footballers in your club to help transition youth. This has been absent from our club and to an extent is still in short supply. My greatest delight with the Roos appointment is he firmly put development on the table - he constantly talks about and has backed it up by putting a lot of resources into developing our youth - McCartney to my mind, is an inspired appointment.

It will be interesting to see how we go with Oliver as he only came into contention later in the season and touted as our top pick in the last couple of weeks Darcy Parish was certainly "conventional wisdom" for most of the year.

I can't quite get a handle on Melksham - talking to some (sullen) Essendon supporters I know - the views on him range from champ to chump.

Kelly looked like he needed to retire by the end of last year - he was a yard too slow to keep up with game and a couple of seconds too slow in reacting. ( this is not meant to detract on how good he was for many years)

1 out of 3 ...

I'll meet you halfway - I was never big on previously rushing Trengove and Toumpas without a good solid foundation. I am not big on rushing Petracca, Oliver or any other young player until they are fit and considered ready. But seeing an injury as a blessing....lots of injuries heal quickly without problems - others don't . Frost had a four week toe injury which kept him out of action for the best part of the season. The blessing we want is to have every player on our list injury free.

hmmm...let's give all our players fractured toes to stop them doing ACL's before the season starts......hmmmmm

If so I better revise my standard response of " I never did a days study in my life"

too many going too soon ( Eagles never did it for me either)

Agree on both counts. I will victim blame - just dumb in this day and age to put those sort of images into someone else's hands. I will also offender blame - both the recipients of the photo's who passed them on and the publishers of the material should be held to account. I tried to take those sort of pictures of myself but they don't make a selfie stick long enough to be able to get all of the necessary scenery into the photo.

I was accessing the web way before 99 but all I was looking at was...wait a second...never mind....

I saw a tweet "Cloke only meant to send the pics to his wife who was only 20 metres away but he sprayed his shots "