Macca

We've played 1 finals series in the last 13 years ... there's your answer. And we won't be playing finals next year without a healthy dose of added talent. We are a long way off and the reason we're in that spot is because of our putrid recruiting. Numerous draft picks going wrong could have been avoided. Trade for talent. May, Lever, Melksham & Hibberd is a good start so we're at least not putting all our eggs in one basket with drafting (as we did previously) And I've never been one to say we should have picked another player in the draft. That really is hindsight nonsense.

Ok then ... we'll just sit on our hands and hope for the best hey AF? Your way hasn't worked. My way hasn't even been tried. You might want to read up on the New England Patriots. Arguably the most successful team going around and they have turned trading picks into an absolute artform. They are brilliant at it Broaden those horizons and look outside the AFL bubble.

You're building a list through trading for 21-23yo proven talent. And you use draft picks to trade. And I'm not talking anything less than B+. You also bring in quality free agents. You might still draft when it suits but trading is the main M.O. So what is so hard to understand? As you add more talent you get better. To be honest, I'm not sure you even know what you're talking about I think you've got drafting 18 year old's on the brain. Let it go mate. There are other ways to get to the finishing line.

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Well GWS have done a top job at list building but I have already acknowledged that. I just don't care for them. They are a broadcast rights team. They are there for financial reasons And I'm not a cheerleader for the AFL. MFC - different story.

I played a lot of sport and all the successful teams I played with or played against had loads of talent The same principle applies at the top end of sport. Mate, we're 5 & 17 for a reason. 3/4's of the list aren't much chop Our disposal skills and decision making is woeful. And it's up to the players to improve their own form and abilities. Unless you want the coach to hold their hands? Coach killers - Our list You want to blame Goodwin the same as others blamed Bailey & Neeld. Do that and you're going to get it wrong. The coach can only do so much. Hardwick, Clarkson or Simpson would turn our list over.

You left out the bit where I bundle up picks for proven talent. And trading out our off-cuts to get even more picks to trade for talent. And plenty of good players have been traded for draft picks. Lynch, Treloar, Dangerfield, Judd, Mitchell, O'Meara and numerous others. Buddy went for free didn't he? Free agency is another area where we've been virtually dormant. I reckon we're just happy to roll on and be a participant.

My way sees the club trading for Oliver or trading for a similar player So you don't lose and the clubs overvalue first round picks anyway Still not convinced?

It is not an oversimplification at all. And certainly not disingenuous. Of course you can build the guts of your team around trading. Do the maths AF And I am not late to the part either. Nothing is in hindsight. I have had the same stance for decades Examples ... Instead of drafting Morton we use that pick on a proven top player. That player would have almost certainly had a great career with us and might even still be playing for us now. Morton had a forgettable career with us Ditto for Watts Ditto for Trengove Ditto for Gysberts Ditto for Strauss Ditto for Maric Ditto for Tapscott Ditto for Blease Ditto for Cook Ditto for Toumpas Ditto for Scully (although we did get Hogan and subsequently May for Scully) We wasted pick 12 on a non B+ player in Clark. Ugly hey? Draft picks are overrated as well so we may well have picked up (through trading) at least a dozen top players in that time period. Perhaps a few more if we were able to add in any number of the 2nd & 3rd rounders. It should be noted that we traded Melksham, Hibberd & Frost for 2nd rounders. But still, we're 5 and 17 after all that and you still believe in drafting? Astonishing. You probably think it's just the clubs making colossal errors. It's a system failure that hasn't been outed.

Whatever the number might be it could be assumed that the number is not correct. Spin will be applied as image is all-important. This is the AFL we're talking about. My guess is that there will be a number of tickets available but those tickets will be conveniently relocated in a number of different directions. There won't be a general announcement that GWS members have only taken up a small amount of their GF ticket allication. I doubt it anyway. Do they have any real supporters? Does fake piped cheering count? If there was fake piped booing it might sound more authentic. I never thought I'd ever be cheering for the ferals but they are at least a proper footy team. GWS are a broadcast rights team. No soul. Just an entity that I will probably never recognise.

GCS is a holiday camp and the club is a company store that is poorly run As much as I can't even identify with the Giants they do make great decisions and they do understand the draft. They were smart enough to know that there are busts coming so they traded the also-rans to those clubs who wanted the hand-me-downs. Double dipped and then triple dipped. Other clubs like Hawthorn, Collingwood, Richmond & Geelong trade for real talent. And they play finals. So the difference between the GCS & GWS is stark even though they both started off at the same sort of base. It is not one size fits all. Clubs still have to make sensible decisions Our club works under the same salary cap and recruiting conditions as the other clubs yet we continually fail. The club doesn't knows how to be successful 55.

There is no getting through to you is there? They were recruited as kids ... high school age. Entering a brutal man's world at that age. Half of them fail for good reason. They are not equipped and there is no way of measuring whether they are equipped or not at that age Unless you want to believe the spin doctors & the bs artists. You only know what you've been told. I doubt that you'll ever get it. Start thinking for yourself if you can. I would recruit ready made stars with great attitude and great skills. You want to take your chances in a lottery called the draft. You are destined to lose and I can't really lose. My way is a much safer route. You prefer high risk outcomes. Whilst you prefer to speculate I prefer the real deal. And I said the same thing to you and numerous others 8 years ago. Still don't want to listen do you? But the thinking is shifting Wyl ... people are getting tired of the disappointments. They want to win.

If it was about attitude we would have all been champion foitballers Wyl And you do just blame Goodwin. All the time. In fact, you never shut up about him. You rarely, if ever, talk about the actual talent levels of the players. You bang on about 'Attitude' way too much. No amount of great attitude was ever going to turn Toumpas, Blease, Morton, Cook, Tapscott, Strauss, Maric, Gysberts and hundreds of others into good footballers. Way too many failures for it to be simply about attitude. They all had the same thing in common ... they couldn't play and we recruited them. So the answer is to move them on and recruit real talent. But we just prefer the lottery (the draft) ... and we just keep coming back for more as if it's all going to turn around. Draft = Fools Gold. Meanwhile, we're a cellar dweller without any real ambition. We don't know how to be a power club. It's not about attitude, it's about being realistic and smart. We are quite determined but in the wrong way. You've got to have a good plan organised by smart people with good governance.

See I wouldn't bother about the scrutiny as a motivating force. What we need to see are people who know what they're doing with a workable, successful plan. Roos showed us the way as did RDB back in the 80's. But on both occasions we were too far back. Putting the heat on coaches like DB, Neeld, Goodwin and the like won't necessarily make those coaches perform better. In fact, the opposite can often happen where everything just disintegrates because of outside forces. And that's what we've witnessed. Our issues have to do with talent levels and always will be. Even with a great list major problems are just around the corner. As Smith found out. Nothing works like pure talent ... and clubs usually have excellent admin & coaching levels in order to get that pure talent. One doesn't work without the other. We need to recruit better. A seismic shift needs to occur. And if we ever by chance get to a point where we have an excess of talent, that's a great problem to have. Go through the list and do an honest appraisal of talent levels. With no bias whatsoever. I've done it and we are way short on pure talent. Even our good players have glaring weaknesses. If you think it's just Goodwin, you're wrong. But any coach needs to be involved with creating a great list. Or have a great list created for him. And that is not something that has been seen for decades.

I've had a good look at our list and we're not good enough Wyl. We're a benchmark 78 horse trying to win a Group 1 at WFA. We need to bring in 8 -10 top players over the next 4 -5 years. And it can be done. We need to get aggressive with free agency too. Play the long game. My aim would be to have a list capable of contesting for the flag on a regular basis. Not just a list capable of playing finals. There's no ambition in that type of thinking I've come across people in my time who told me that Smith's aim was to have an excess of talent. Year after year after year. But it's not living in the past ... Smith thought like a modern day coach. He just wanted the best list to work with. And more often than not, he got what he wanted. Until the zones came in. Barassi thought the same way as do a lot of successful coaches. Coaches can fall into the trap of too much methodology, systems or game plans. What they really need is lots of pure talent.

If you bring at least 2 talented players onto your list each season, before you know it you've got a top 4 team. Because top players often play for 10+ years. Acquiring them at the age of 21-22 is preferable. We have had at least 6 years since the acquisition of Jones where we haven't added 1 top player. And in other years it's been just the 1 top player added. An abysmal record. We've lost the battle at the recruiting table. The coaching often gets blamed but without talent, a coaching panel doesn't stand a chance.

Lever got injured and so did May ... if both get fit and remain fit, the good results will almost certainly happen. At least we know that their best footy is very good. They have both shown it. But us supporters are impatient. You're occasionally going to miss when trading for proven talent. And that is often injury related (which is just simply bad luck) But as a template, trading for pure talent is a much smarter way of recruiting. And I am not late to the party either. I've been pointing at the realities of how flawed the draft is for decades. Expectations Picks 1 - 5 (A grade) Picks 6 - 10 (B+ grade) Other first round picks (A good, solid player) Reality - Something completely different. So May was traded for pick 5 but pick 5 is not definitely an A grade player. Half the time a top 5 pick is a bust And Lever was traded for 2 first round picks outside of the top 10 ... again, no guarantees and the expectation isn't for greatness anyway. Probably those 2 picks for Lever falls into the May category. Again, no guarantees So if both players can get fit and remain fit, we've got our 2 guaranteed talented players.

We lack talent at Melbourne ... the Giants on the other hand have loads of talent. It has nothing to do with the coaching. Goodwin may well be a better coach than Cameron for all we know. What is true is that the Giants have loads more talent than what we have. Swap coaching roles and you'll see the same results. Our issue has always been with how we recruit talent. We haven't had a great list since the Smith days. That's why we don't win.

Their success is based purely on the numbers game. Half of all first round draft picks are busts therefore the other half aren't busts. And the formula works better from a probability point of view if a club has multiple first round draft picks out of the top 10 picks in the same year. It doesn't work the same way if a club only gets 1 pick in any given year. That 1 pick is therefore better off being traded for. GWS just simply played the percentages which was quite fool-proof. As long as the club is well run of course. The GCS hasn't worked in the same way but I'd argue the GCS aren't well run. By the way, I cannot stand the Giants and I see them as a Frankenstein team. No interest. None. I hope Richmond smash them.

It was different (as in splitting the pick) but still high risk. Tyson wasn't a proven talent, just a former no.3 pick. Pick 9 (Salem) was unproven. So in a way, we still trusted the draft and were looking to simply double-dip I would have swapped pick 2 (with a couple of extras) for a proven A grade midfielder (or suchlike) That way, you get what you pay for.

My argument has been a consistent one since the mid 90's. Ever since the flaws with drafting were shown up. But my argument goes back to the mid 80's just before the draft came in. And here as well ... but the shift in thinking was always going to happen over time anyway. Not by all but if talent identification is looked at logically, why take a chance on unproven talent vs proven talent? And you can still trade for the gems. We as a club should be in the ears of the player managers way before a top prospect draftee gets into the system. Keep up the relationships and then swoop at a later date. To me it's an absolute no-brainer.

Why wouldn't certain players want to live a life of luxury from a young age? They are not all Joel Selwood types. Idyllic lifestyle with great surfing weather with lots of money and you don't answer to anyone. Sounds like a plan.

We should nearly always swap our 1st & 2nd round picks for proven talent anyway. And by proven talent I mean B+ or A grade (never Dawes, Clark or Lumumba) More like Buddy, Dangerfield, Judd, Lynch, Treloar, Mitchell etc etc Drafting is high risk where as trading draft picks for proven talent has very little risk attached. And draft picks are overvalued anyway so it's hard to lose out from an overall perspective (trading draft picks for proven talent) Trading for Lever & May were the right moves. So was trading a top end pick for Jeff White back in 1997. Injuries can happen to draftees as well (Hogan, Petracca, Brayshaw, Trengove etc etc) And I have been saying the same thing for decades. Just think how better off we'd be if we'd traded for talent from 2007 onwards. The long list of busts wouldn't have happened and we'd have been relevant and a finals contender throughout. Morton, Watts, Scully, Trengove, Gysberts, Strauss, Maric, Blease, Cook, Tapscott, Weideman, Tyson (a former pick 3) and a few others would never have happened We'd have lost the chance to draft Oliver, Brayshaw, Petracca, Salem (and a departing Hogan) but those 5 players are all we can point at over a 12 year period. A massive, catastrophic fail. The system stinks and we need to stop blaming the A-end of the problem. What we could always have done is to trade for picks with those who have a bit of currency and then bundled up the picks for proven talent. Given how high risk drafting is I'm astonished that a club hasn't tried it (consistently) You'll never win backing long shots. But belief systems are belief systems. Faith, hope & trust wins out. We want to believe what we're being told by the draft believers but the truth says otherwise. Talented draftees should be therefore targeted after they have been in the AFL system for 2-4 years. So you don't actually ever miss out (if you're smart) You still have to do the mandatory 3 picks but that can be picks 62, 63 & 64. All expendable.

Got the approval of BM, JV7 as well so it looks like we were all on it Gorg! Looked the winner a long way from home carrying that light weight and with a big advantage at the weights as well. In true Aussie tradition the handicapper was beaten as well. It is too good a horse to be only carrying 52kgs. But that is how it works and the smart punters were all over the horse.

And Avilius duly wins ... great finishing burst and a class above. Had it going in a couple of bets so a nice collect. And without Winx involved, Avilius looks a real chance for the Cox Plate. The Cox Plate will be a much more open event though especially with Mystic Journey likely to run as well as a few other top fancies.