Earl Hood

I watched Plough Wallace do some analysis on the TAC show on Ch 9 on Sunday. He looked at the success rate of the top 10 draft picks from 10 drafts between 2001 and 2010. He rated the picks as pass, fail, question mark? Of the 10 number 1 picks everyone passed except Kreuser, Watts and Scully of whom he said the jury is still out. Probably a fair call at this stage. I gathered his pass mark is that the player is a good consistent AFL player, not necessarily the best player from that draft. Thus Delidio is a pass at number 1 although he was not the best player in that 2004 draft. Needless to say his analysis showed that 2001, 2004 and 2006 were great drafts. As we know 2003 was the worst! There is luck involved in all this draft business. But interestingly to me, he then categorised the 100 top draftees into inside mids, outside mid/flankers, rucks and key position players. The success rate he reported was a whooping 85% for genuine top 10 inside mids. For rucks it drops to 30%, for key position players I think it was 34% and for outsiders again it was 30 or 34% I think. I can't vouch for the rigour behind Plough's analysis but it rings true to me. A top 10 inside mid is likely to have certain attributes in addition to underage talent, that is a strong body, aggression and leadership skills as they have probably captained sides in under age. No guarantee of success but the odds are in your favour. Outside mids, flankers at top 10 will be very talented athletically but of lighter build and maybe not suited to intense physical pressure perhaps, on average. If you ignore them you run the risk of missing some of the elite indigenous players like Cyril Rioli and others. But it depends where your list is at the time of each draft. I believe the Hawks could afford the risks involved in choosing Rioli but at that stage MFC could not, even if we thought he was a potential star. Our need wasn't for a small forward,but if we had known, oh well! And many have argued here that you don't burn early picks on ruckman and even key position players as there is equivalent talent later in the draft from those who mature later and some young boy-men have dominated underage just because of their size and stall when they get to seniors etc. So to sum up, if we play the odds we should be chasing an inside mid for our first pick and I wonder where we would be if we had been playing those odds since the 2007 draft?

I will take three or four star mids if we could do it. And let's face it we should have with our draft picks between 2007 and now. But anyway let's move on.

But we probably would have if we could have!

Machsy I think you are echoing what I was trying to say (perhaps poorly worded). Struggling clubs need more picks in the first and second rounds of the draft, not necessarily a priority 1 pick, to increase their chances of improving their lists in what you have described as a raffle. in the draft raffle about all we have some confidence in is that there is more talent in the first 25 picks than the next 25 picks. And yes this is exactly what Roos tried to engineer for us last draft.

If we get pick one, two or whatever it will still be a lottery. One of the pillars of the AFL's belief system is that the draft is an equalising force, while the salary cap keeps a lid on the powerful clubs. In theory the draft should be an equaliser but is it? Ignoring the expansion clubs excessive draft gouging of recent years if you look at drafts in the early to mid 2000's, the bottom clubs didn't always get the best talent. Selwood, Rioli, Darling , Dangerfield, Shuey, Fyfe, Rich, the list goes on. My point is the AFL lives on the concept the draft order provides more than enough equalisation in talent. I say no because it is still a lottery in the top 20 odd picks, it seems. I think the lower sides just need access to a greater number of first and second round picks. Forget priorities, just talk an extra pick say mid round 1 and an extra early 2nd rounder if you have failed to win 4 games for the last xxx years for Gods sake!!! Is this asking too much?

Except those that aren't! I agree.

God I hope you are right and we actually got a first round pick right for the first time in 10 years or more!!!

Watched 7 and 17 last year to practice my spanish and because we had just travelled to Amazonia via Peru. Good movies though.

Well I suppose it is only just starting to look dodgy because most of us had never heard of this punters club until this week. The price of bananas is dependent on quite different criteria I think. Maybe climate in the key growing areas, who knows I am not an expert. Maybe TGP you can inform us of more detail on the punters club and what determines the price of bananas?

It is all starting to sound very dodgy. An assault and a car being torched down at Connewarre, unpaid bills for horses and payments to tax havens in Bermuda! Promises of 25% returns on punting? A sensible person wouldn't go near it unless you are interested in tax avoidance, money laundering or alternatively you are just plain stupid? In Don's case it could just be the latter.

I feel your pain having missed those two flag just. All I think is if we have finally got rid of the overpaid clowns running the place and we have professional people in charge we will go forward,drafting will still have its problems, there will be wins and losses but if the decision making is right, if there is a coherent strategy to get ahead, we will. For so long we have been lead by part time, narrow thinking near do wells on the Board.