One-Eyed Richmond Forum
Football => Richmond Rant => Topic started by: 10 FLAGS on July 24, 2011, 05:22:32 PM
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Gary March has been Vice President under Casey and now President. He has been there a very long time IMHO. Look I dont have anything against Gary at all but maybe its time for a new President who can lead the club and provide the members with a new direction and some hope for the future.
Craig Cameron Im sorry but I would let him go at seasons end. I cant see any improvement in football the last few years and Im not sure what he offers to the club. Im sure hes a decent bloke but we need someone in this role like Neil Balme IMHO.
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Craig Cameron must be replaced - unfortunately he still has 2 years to go on his contract? :lol
Balme would be a terrific get, but why didnt he come when the job was first available? These hot property types know something stinks at Punt Rd and dont want to touch it. The day we get a Balme type or a Malthouse/Roos as coach isthe day you know we're well and truly out of the woods and on our way.
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If March had some balls he would sack Cameron and bring in someone but that may be the problem with the club in itself. After we were lambasted in the 90's after Bartlett, Jeans, Northey, Walls and Gieschen all left the club went out and kept the next two coaches for five years clearly two years beyond their tenure especially in Wallets case. We are just too afraid to make a harsh decision out of love for the footy club based on what the media will think of us.
Furthermore I think people at a board level are just too comfortable in their roles and hence there always seems to be a perceived apathy there.
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Cameron has to go, what has he ever done anywhere to warrant his place at RFC?
Everytime the bloke speaks it is cringeworthy.
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Cameron has to go, what has he ever done anywhere to warrant his place at RFC?
Everytime the bloke speaks it is cringeworthy.
Time for a board challenge?
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Let's start collecting signatures.
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Cameron has to go, what has he ever done anywhere to warrant his place at RFC?
Everytime the bloke speaks it is cringeworthy.
Time for a board challenge?
On the cards
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Craig Cameron must be replaced - unfortunately he still has 2 years to go on his contract? :lol
Balme would be a terrific get, but why didnt he come when the job was first available? These hot property types know something stinks at Punt Rd and dont want to touch it. The day we get a Balme type or a Malthouse/Roos as coach isthe day you know we're well and truly out of the woods and on our way.
well said. :thumbsup
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Cameron has to go, what has he ever done anywhere to warrant his place at RFC?
Everytime the bloke speaks it is cringeworthy.
Time for a board challenge?
On the cards
Let me know where to sign.
Gale aside ive had a gutful of these clowns at the top.
Who the stuff in their right mind would sign Cameron the ex demon hack on that lengthy deal.
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Brendon Gale is our Jason Dunstall, who in my opinion was the pivotal figure is resurrecting Hawthorn to where they are today from where they were in 2003-2006.
Brendon needs to be that figure and continue to run the show, we need to get a true professional/best in the business football manager along side a hard nosed, media capable President.
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Balmey is out of contract end of this year
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Balmey is out of contract end of this year
I hope you're not cockteasing gerks
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I hope you're not cockteasing gerks
nope, maybe caro is
Interestingly, Geelong's football operations manager Neil Balme, whose contract finishes at Geelong at the end of this season, recently requested to move to a similar employment agreement.
http://www.smh.com.au/afl/afl-news/as-the-crow-falls-20110725-1hx7x.html
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A lot of people calling for Craig Cameron's head, but can't articulate what he has done wrong. Can anyone actually pinpoint his deficiencies?
Personally I reckon we need to look at Francis Jackson, and two assistants - Leppitsch and Daly. I reckon our defensive structures are not working, and our offensive moves from the backline are also a massive problem. In other words we are conceding massive scores and kicking very little ourselves - Einstein will tell you that translates into huge thumpings, and has done for some time!
I reckon Francis comes from the "Greg Miller School of Pulling Rabbits Out of Hats".
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A lot of people calling for Craig Cameron's head, but can't articulate what he has done wrong. Can anyone actually pinpoint his deficiencies?
Personally I reckon we need to look at Francis Jackson, and two assistants - Leppitsch and Daly. I reckon our defensive structures are not working, and our offensive moves from the backline are also a massive problem. In other words we are conceding massive scores and kicking very little ourselves - Einstein will tell you that translates into huge thumpings, and has done for some time!
I reckon Francis comes from the "Greg Miller School of Pulling Rabbits Out of Hats".
Dude, our defensive structure isn't working because we don't have enough decent Defenders!
If we could sure up the back line with a couple of bigger blokes who can play it would be all very differen't IMO.
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don't lay an egg, boony
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A lot of people calling for Craig Cameron's head, but can't articulate what he has done wrong. Can anyone actually pinpoint his deficiencies?
Good hair and good football is clearly related. Ask Geoff Raines... If Cameron can't see that he's choosing the worst hairdresser in Australia then how can he possibly run a football club ?
:rollin
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don't lay an egg, boony
Don't worry Bro, I'v stopped cackling......
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A lot of people calling for Craig Cameron's head, but can't articulate what he has done wrong. Can anyone actually pinpoint his deficiencies?
Good hair and good football is clearly related. Ask Geoff Raines... If Cameron can't see that he's choosing the worst hairdresser in Australia then how can he possibly run a football club ?
Bloody good point, he also looks like a fat Tim Brooke-Taylor.
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It's not yet time to point fingers or usurp those running the show. We need to remain united for a while yet.
My view is we're still suffering from the diabolical drafts of '04 & '05 as well as poor recruiting. The Wallet/Miller damage is still being felt.
Cameron & Jackson have done a decent job since but until some of the players taken at that time enter their prime, it's unfair to ask those guys to carry the can for past blunders. Whilst not every pick has been great, they've brought some good talent in. The jury is still out on them. Happy to run with it for another season or two.
March? Done a reasonable job but might be time for a fresh face.
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My issues with Cameron as initially our list manager and then promoted to head of our footy dept....
(i) In his first draft (2008) as list manager we only picked up two kids (Vickery and Post) when we were meant to be rebuilding our list. He then traded a decent 3rd round pick for Adam Thomson who couldn't kick to save himself and as a inside mid couldn't get a game in a bottom 4 Port side that was crying out for inside mids. Cameron gave some garbage reasoning about Thomson being the number 1 clearance player in the AFL per time on ground. Then he used a 4th round pick on Hislop. That kind of recruiting was no different to under Greg Miller's reign who Cameron replaced.
(ii) When Wallace was sacked mid-2009, Cameron by then was head of the footy dept. and should have mapped out plan for the next 3 years to maximise our draft selections and use the draft system and priority pick rules to our advantage. The club knew GC and GWS would hog the 2010-11 drafts and the club knew we were going down the youth path. We had just 2 wins at the midpoint of 2009 so Cameron should have instructed caretaker coach Jade Rawlings to make sure via team selections and matchday match-ups we won no more than 2 more games to gain a end of round 1 priority pick which could have got us one of Nathan Fyfe or Ryan Bastinac. Instead we threw it away winning meaningless games against other bottom sides in the second half of the season.
(iii) Just 4 wins in 2009 would have also set us up to get picks 4 and 6 in the 2010. We knew we had the very young and inexperienced list and a new first-time senior coach and that showed losing the first 9 games. Once again we reached the midpoint of the season with hardly a win on the board and once again threw a chance of getting priority pick winning games in the second half of the season to exceed the 4 win mark. So we could have still got Conca plus one extra top kid such as a Heppel, Lynch or Gaff for example.
So in total not planning to make the most of priority picks on offer in the past two years has cost us another two quality young players who could have played for us alongside Cotch, Martin, Jack and co. for the next decade. It's no point complaining about lack of funds for recruiting if you throw away the chance to gain bonus top 20 draft picks. Sure people can say we screwed up our top picks in 2004-5 but since 2006 when Francis Jackson went full time as a recruiter he has drafted Jack, Cotch, Rance, Vickery, Martin, Griffiths and Conca with our top 20 picks which is a pretty good return. Too bad we were dumb as a club and didn't give him the chance of two more top 20 picks!
(iv) Wasting rookie list spots on keeping or recycling duds such as Hislop and Miller. Richmond has been there done that many times in the past.
(v) Some re-signings have been quite questionable such as giving McGuane as 3 year contract ???.
(vi) Our fitness staff has basically remained the same since Wallace was still senior coach.
Another thing that needs addressing is we still have a too small and light-weighted playing list. We have an excess of smalls and most aren't up to AFL level. It's no point drafting players under 6ft unless they have exceptional skills, speed and footy smarts.
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totally agree.
would never ever pick any kid in the draft if he wasnt OVER 6ft.2ins
If you look through our list, way too many undersized players
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Good posting MT. Looks pretty ugly when you lay it out like that.
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totally agree.
would never ever pick any kid in the draft if he wasnt OVER 6ft.2ins
If you look through our list, way too many undersized players
Cotchin ain't 6ft2. Would you have taken Cale Morton (pick 3) over him?
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totally agree.
would never ever pick any kid in the draft if he wasnt OVER 6ft.2ins
If you look through our list, way too many undersized players
Cotchin ain't 6ft2. Would you have taken Cale Morton (pick 3) over him?
use some brains, you can have an exception ::)
Also if you needed a small forward, you could trade to get one.
instead of the current situation of having 6-8 midgets at punt rd
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I reckon we sack everyone and turn punt road into an environmental theme park for the Laborites to guffaw over ;D
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totally agree.
would never ever pick any kid in the draft if he wasnt OVER 6ft.2ins
If you look through our list, way too many undersized players
Cotchin ain't 6ft2. Would you have taken Cale Morton (pick 3) over him?
use some brains, you can have an exception ::)
Then it ain't 'never ever' :P
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Couldn't agree more MT.
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So we could have still got Conca plus one extra top kid such as a Heppel, Lynch or Gaff for example.
31 disposals and 2 goals from Gaff today in just his ninth AFL game. Well done Craig I hope you enjoyed those few meaningless second half of the season in recent years that cost us priority picks ::).
No point supporters bagging the coach and players when the problem has always been higher up the tree at Punt Rd. Such short-sightedness and lack of planning not using the draft system to our advantage given where our list is at is unforgiveable! :banghead
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My issues with Cameron as initially our list manager and then promoted to head of our footy dept....
(i) In his first draft (2008) as list manager we only picked up two kids (Vickery and Post) when we were meant to be rebuilding our list. He then traded a decent 3rd round pick for Adam Thomson who couldn't kick to save himself and as a inside mid couldn't get a game in a bottom 4 Port side that was crying out for inside mids. Cameron gave some garbage reasoning about Thomson being the number 1 clearance player in the AFL per time on ground. Then he used a 4th round pick on Hislop. That kind of recruiting was no different to under Greg Miller's reign who Cameron replaced.
(ii) When Wallace was sacked mid-2009, Cameron by then was head of the footy dept. and should have mapped out plan for the next 3 years to maximise our draft selections and use the draft system and priority pick rules to our advantage. The club knew GC and GWS would hog the 2010-11 drafts and the club knew we were going down the youth path. We had just 2 wins at the midpoint of 2009 so Cameron should have instructed caretaker coach Jade Rawlings to make sure via team selections and matchday match-ups we won no more than 2 more games to gain a end of round 1 priority pick which could have got us one of Nathan Fyfe or Ryan Bastinac. Instead we threw it away winning meaningless games against other bottom sides in the second half of the season.
(iii) Just 4 wins in 2009 would have also set us up to get picks 4 and 6 in the 2010. We knew we had the very young and inexperienced list and a new first-time senior coach and that showed losing the first 9 games. Once again we reached the midpoint of the season with hardly a win on the board and once again threw a chance of getting priority pick winning games in the second half of the season to exceed the 4 win mark. So we could have still got Conca plus one extra top kid such as a Heppel, Lynch or Gaff for example.
So in total not planning to make the most of priority picks on offer in the past two years has cost us another two quality young players who could have played for us alongside Cotch, Martin, Jack and co. for the next decade. It's no point complaining about lack of funds for recruiting if you throw away the chance to gain bonus top 20 draft picks. Sure people can say we screwed up our top picks in 2004-5 but since 2006 when Francis Jackson went full time as a recruiter he has drafted Jack, Cotch, Rance, Vickery, Martin, Griffiths and Conca with our top 20 picks which is a pretty good return. Too bad we were dumb as a club and didn't give him the chance of two more top 20 picks!
(iv) Wasting rookie list spots on keeping or recycling duds such as Hislop and Miller. Richmond has been there done that many times in the past.
(v) Some re-signings have been quite questionable such as giving McGuane as 3 year contract ???.
(vi) Our fitness staff has basically remained the same since Wallace was still senior coach.
Another thing that needs addressing is we still have a too small and light-weighted playing list. We have an excess of smalls and most aren't up to AFL level. It's no point drafting players under 6ft unless they have exceptional skills, speed and footy smarts.
sounds an awful lot like a pro tank post. sheesh some of us copped plenty of crap for daring to voice exactly the above at the time, what you so eloquently have posted now.
oh on those jackson picks first its easy to ignore the bad and only post the good, second i firmly believe we could have done better with the rance griffiths and conca picks rance in particular as hes been around long enough to make a call .
and finally since 2006 id say nearly all clubs have found at least decent players with their top 20 picks.yeah theres the odd one that has failed but theres not many. ffs you or i could have done reasonably well with top 20 picks without having a footy dept behind ya.
will say it again the roles of head recruiter and list manager are the two most important roles at any afl club. we can never find people good enough and we should always be looking to do better in these areas, especially when those we have barely passes at best.
its only an opinion but to me i would like to see us look for better than jackson he was definately an upgrade on beck but imo we need to do better.
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Cameron needs to go.
Never liked him.
What are his achievements?
Melbourne's drafting when he was there has been poo.
Richmonds drafting when he was here has been poo.
They guy has had 2 innings and been bowled for 2 golden ducks.
Adios.
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My issues with Cameron as initially our list manager and then promoted to head of our footy dept....
(i) In his first draft (2008) as list manager we only picked up two kids (Vickery and Post) when we were meant to be rebuilding our list. He then traded a decent 3rd round pick for Adam Thomson who couldn't kick to save himself and as a inside mid couldn't get a game in a bottom 4 Port side that was crying out for inside mids. Cameron gave some garbage reasoning about Thomson being the number 1 clearance player in the AFL per time on ground. Then he used a 4th round pick on Hislop. That kind of recruiting was no different to under Greg Miller's reign who Cameron replaced.
(ii) When Wallace was sacked mid-2009, Cameron by then was head of the footy dept. and should have mapped out plan for the next 3 years to maximise our draft selections and use the draft system and priority pick rules to our advantage. The club knew GC and GWS would hog the 2010-11 drafts and the club knew we were going down the youth path. We had just 2 wins at the midpoint of 2009 so Cameron should have instructed caretaker coach Jade Rawlings to make sure via team selections and matchday match-ups we won no more than 2 more games to gain a end of round 1 priority pick which could have got us one of Nathan Fyfe or Ryan Bastinac. Instead we threw it away winning meaningless games against other bottom sides in the second half of the season.
(iii) Just 4 wins in 2009 would have also set us up to get picks 4 and 6 in the 2010. We knew we had the very young and inexperienced list and a new first-time senior coach and that showed losing the first 9 games. Once again we reached the midpoint of the season with hardly a win on the board and once again threw a chance of getting priority pick winning games in the second half of the season to exceed the 4 win mark. So we could have still got Conca plus one extra top kid such as a Heppel, Lynch or Gaff for example.
So in total not planning to make the most of priority picks on offer in the past two years has cost us another two quality young players who could have played for us alongside Cotch, Martin, Jack and co. for the next decade. It's no point complaining about lack of funds for recruiting if you throw away the chance to gain bonus top 20 draft picks. Sure people can say we screwed up our top picks in 2004-5 but since 2006 when Francis Jackson went full time as a recruiter he has drafted Jack, Cotch, Rance, Vickery, Martin, Griffiths and Conca with our top 20 picks which is a pretty good return. Too bad we were dumb as a club and didn't give him the chance of two more top 20 picks!
(iv) Wasting rookie list spots on keeping or recycling duds such as Hislop and Miller. Richmond has been there done that many times in the past.
(v) Some re-signings have been quite questionable such as giving McGuane as 3 year contract ???.
(vi) Our fitness staff has basically remained the same since Wallace was still senior coach.
Another thing that needs addressing is we still have a too small and light-weighted playing list. We have an excess of smalls and most aren't up to AFL level. It's no point drafting players under 6ft unless they have exceptional skills, speed and footy smarts.
Sensational posts.
I sometimes think if some guys on here were running the club we'b be in better pastures.
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the pro tanking forces have always been ridiculed by those who wanted us to be the cleanskins of the AFL. Sadly that means finishing towards the bottom on a constant basis and never having any success. Thats the price we have had to pay for stupidity.
On the other matter of doing better in terms of our personnel - YES we should do better but we never ever do better because the RFC has been a mates club for the best part of 20 years. Mates clubs dont work in football terms anymore, now money is what counts because money gets you the best CEO, money gets you the best football director, money gets you the best recruiting manager and network, money gets you the best coaches, the best list managers etc etc.
Now I have one simple question - How many people in here seriously believe that Richmond have chased say Stephen Wells from Geelong in recruiting or the Collingwood recruiting manager over the last 5 years? How much effort has gone into getting a Neil Balme? Why havent we been successful at getting the best people.
How come we cant attract good players from other clubs? How come potential father and sons never choose to come to Richmond when they have a choice of another club - ie. Andy Gowers who barracked for us but chose to play for Hawthorn or Travis Cloke.
Theres way too much that needs to be done before we become a decent club let alone a good one.
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My issues with Cameron as initially our list manager and then promoted to head of our footy dept....
(i) In his first draft (2008) as list manager we only picked up two kids (Vickery and Post) when we were meant to be rebuilding our list. He then traded a decent 3rd round pick for Adam Thomson who couldn't kick to save himself and as a inside mid couldn't get a game in a bottom 4 Port side that was crying out for inside mids. Cameron gave some garbage reasoning about Thomson being the number 1 clearance player in the AFL per time on ground. Then he used a 4th round pick on Hislop. That kind of recruiting was no different to under Greg Miller's reign who Cameron replaced.
(ii) When Wallace was sacked mid-2009, Cameron by then was head of the footy dept. and should have mapped out plan for the next 3 years to maximise our draft selections and use the draft system and priority pick rules to our advantage. The club knew GC and GWS would hog the 2010-11 drafts and the club knew we were going down the youth path. We had just 2 wins at the midpoint of 2009 so Cameron should have instructed caretaker coach Jade Rawlings to make sure via team selections and matchday match-ups we won no more than 2 more games to gain a end of round 1 priority pick which could have got us one of Nathan Fyfe or Ryan Bastinac. Instead we threw it away winning meaningless games against other bottom sides in the second half of the season.
(iii) Just 4 wins in 2009 would have also set us up to get picks 4 and 6 in the 2010. We knew we had the very young and inexperienced list and a new first-time senior coach and that showed losing the first 9 games. Once again we reached the midpoint of the season with hardly a win on the board and once again threw a chance of getting priority pick winning games in the second half of the season to exceed the 4 win mark. So we could have still got Conca plus one extra top kid such as a Heppel, Lynch or Gaff for example.
So in total not planning to make the most of priority picks on offer in the past two years has cost us another two quality young players who could have played for us alongside Cotch, Martin, Jack and co. for the next decade. It's no point complaining about lack of funds for recruiting if you throw away the chance to gain bonus top 20 draft picks. Sure people can say we screwed up our top picks in 2004-5 but since 2006 when Francis Jackson went full time as a recruiter he has drafted Jack, Cotch, Rance, Vickery, Martin, Griffiths and Conca with our top 20 picks which is a pretty good return. Too bad we were dumb as a club and didn't give him the chance of two more top 20 picks!
(iv) Wasting rookie list spots on keeping or recycling duds such as Hislop and Miller. Richmond has been there done that many times in the past.
(v) Some re-signings have been quite questionable such as giving McGuane as 3 year contract ???.
(vi) Our fitness staff has basically remained the same since Wallace was still senior coach.
Another thing that needs addressing is we still have a too small and light-weighted playing list. We have an excess of smalls and most aren't up to AFL level. It's no point drafting players under 6ft unless they have exceptional skills, speed and footy smarts.
sounds an awful lot like a pro tank post. sheesh some of us copped plenty of crap for daring to voice exactly the above at the time, what you so eloquently have posted now.
oh on those jackson picks first its easy to ignore the bad and only post the good, second i firmly believe we could have done better with the rance griffiths and conca picks rance in particular as hes been around long enough to make a call .
and finally since 2006 id say nearly all clubs have found at least decent players with their top 20 picks.yeah theres the odd one that has failed but theres not many. ffs you or i could have done reasonably well with top 20 picks without having a footy dept behind ya.
will say it again the roles of head recruiter and list manager are the two most important roles at any afl club. we can never find people good enough and we should always be looking to do better in these areas, especially when those we have barely passes at best.
its only an opinion but to me i would like to see us look for better than jackson he was definately an upgrade on beck but imo we need to do better.
I'm happy with all 3 draft selections.
I'm not interested in the pety arguement of "If we chose (x) he is 2% better than what we chose. Not good enough" Thats wasting breath.
The real problems are when your draft selections in the top 30 are not AFL standard. If you have a choice out of the top 30 kids in the country they should be AFL standard and play 100 games minimum. 150 if your fair dinkum. If you can't pick a future 100 gamer in the top 30 kids in the country you can't call yourself a recruiter, especially when our club gifts games to very ordinary players.
When you say we should have picked Heppell over Conca or Bastinac over Griffiths, it doesn't change things significantly.
What would change things significantly is when you look at our top 30 draft picks in the last 6 years and see where the failed picks are who havent gone onto be AFL standard.:
2003
#21 Alex Gilmore - Finished
2004
#1 Brett Deledio - AFL Standard
#4 Richard Tambling - Borderline AFL standard
#12 Danny Meyer - Finished
#16 Adam Pattison - Finished
#20 Dean Polo - Borderline AFL standard
2005
#8 Oakly Nicholls - Finished
#24 Cleve Hughes - Finished
2006
#13 Jack Riewoldt - AFL Standard
#26 Shane Edwards - Borderline AFL Standard
2007
#2 Trent Cotchin - AFL Standard
#18 Alex Rance - Borderline AFL Standard (Improving)
2008
#8 Ty Vickery - AFL Standard
#26 Jayden Post - Borderline AFL Standard (Needs break out year next year)
2009
#3 Dustin Martin - AFL Standard
- #19 Ben Griffiths - Youth
2010
#6 Reece Conca - Youth
#30 Jake Batchelor - Youth
So in 7 drafts out of top 30 picks:
5 are AFL Standard
3 are Youth and are exempt from classification
5 are Finsihed footballers, no career in football
5 are Borderline AFL Standard
So out of 20 top 30 picks only 5 of them are established AFL players. 1 in 4 selections.
That is where the problem lies. Not the tit for tat; we should have picked X over Y. Its the fact that 3 out 4 players we have drafted are not to the standard of AFL. From the top 30 kids in the country, that is inexcusable.
The good have been good, but for mine the value of a recruiter is picking good AFL players from picks 15-30. We have failed in doing so in my opinion. Getting a first round pick right, isn't very hard. Getting a 2nd round pick right isn't hard either... but we've made out it to be. IMO thats where our problem lies - getting picks right 2nd round and above.
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the pro tanking forces have always been ridiculed by those who wanted us to be the cleanskins of the AFL. Sadly that means finishing towards the bottom on a constant basis and never having any success. Thats the price we have had to pay for stupidity.
On the other matter of doing better in terms of our personnel - YES we should do better but we never ever do better because the RFC has been a mates club for the best part of 20 years. Mates clubs dont work in football terms anymore, now money is what counts because money gets you the best CEO, money gets you the best football director, money gets you the best recruiting manager and network, money gets you the best coaches, the best list managers etc etc.
Now I have one simple question - How many people in here seriously believe that Richmond have chased say Stephen Wells from Geelong in recruiting or the Collingwood recruiting manager over the last 5 years? How much effort has gone into getting a Neil Balme? Why havent we been successful at getting the best people.
How come we cant attract good players from other clubs? How come potential father and sons never choose to come to Richmond when they have a choice of another club - ie. Andy Gowers who barracked for us but chose to play for Hawthorn or Travis Cloke.
Theres way too much that needs to be done before we become a decent club let alone a good one.
The argument against us tanking is that our history of recruiting has been so poor that we'd stuff up the extra picks anyway lol.
I must admit I wasn't one for tanking, a whole year, however I was against meaningless wins against bottom 4 sides. If we lost a priority pick because we beat a top 4 side I was for that. But beating a bottom 4 club was 100% pointless.
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totally agree.
would never ever pick any kid in the draft if he wasnt OVER 6ft.2ins
If you look through our list, way too many undersized players
Cotchin ain't 6ft2. Would you have taken Cale Morton (pick 3) over him?
use some brains, you can have an exception ::)
Also if you needed a small forward, you could trade to get one.
instead of the current situation of having 6-8 midgets at punt rd
:lol you're not tony abbot are you?
when do we take you word literally and when don't we?
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My issues with Cameron as initially our list manager and then promoted to head of our footy dept....
(i) In his first draft (2008) as list manager we only picked up two kids (Vickery and Post) when we were meant to be rebuilding our list. He then traded a decent 3rd round pick for Adam Thomson who couldn't kick to save himself and as a inside mid couldn't get a game in a bottom 4 Port side that was crying out for inside mids. Cameron gave some garbage reasoning about Thomson being the number 1 clearance player in the AFL per time on ground. Then he used a 4th round pick on Hislop. That kind of recruiting was no different to under Greg Miller's reign who Cameron replaced.
(ii) When Wallace was sacked mid-2009, Cameron by then was head of the footy dept. and should have mapped out plan for the next 3 years to maximise our draft selections and use the draft system and priority pick rules to our advantage. The club knew GC and GWS would hog the 2010-11 drafts and the club knew we were going down the youth path. We had just 2 wins at the midpoint of 2009 so Cameron should have instructed caretaker coach Jade Rawlings to make sure via team selections and matchday match-ups we won no more than 2 more games to gain a end of round 1 priority pick which could have got us one of Nathan Fyfe or Ryan Bastinac. Instead we threw it away winning meaningless games against other bottom sides in the second half of the season.
(iii) Just 4 wins in 2009 would have also set us up to get picks 4 and 6 in the 2010. We knew we had the very young and inexperienced list and a new first-time senior coach and that showed losing the first 9 games. Once again we reached the midpoint of the season with hardly a win on the board and once again threw a chance of getting priority pick winning games in the second half of the season to exceed the 4 win mark. So we could have still got Conca plus one extra top kid such as a Heppel, Lynch or Gaff for example.
So in total not planning to make the most of priority picks on offer in the past two years has cost us another two quality young players who could have played for us alongside Cotch, Martin, Jack and co. for the next decade. It's no point complaining about lack of funds for recruiting if you throw away the chance to gain bonus top 20 draft picks. Sure people can say we screwed up our top picks in 2004-5 but since 2006 when Francis Jackson went full time as a recruiter he has drafted Jack, Cotch, Rance, Vickery, Martin, Griffiths and Conca with our top 20 picks which is a pretty good return. Too bad we were dumb as a club and didn't give him the chance of two more top 20 picks!
(iv) Wasting rookie list spots on keeping or recycling duds such as Hislop and Miller. Richmond has been there done that many times in the past.
(v) Some re-signings have been quite questionable such as giving McGuane as 3 year contract ???.
(vi) Our fitness staff has basically remained the same since Wallace was still senior coach.
Another thing that needs addressing is we still have a too small and light-weighted playing list. We have an excess of smalls and most aren't up to AFL level. It's no point drafting players under 6ft unless they have exceptional skills, speed and footy smarts.
sounds an awful lot like a pro tank post. sheesh some of us copped plenty of crap for daring to voice exactly the above at the time, what you so eloquently have posted now.
oh on those jackson picks first its easy to ignore the bad and only post the good, second i firmly believe we could have done better with the rance griffiths and conca picks rance in particular as hes been around long enough to make a call .
and finally since 2006 id say nearly all clubs have found at least decent players with their top 20 picks.yeah theres the odd one that has failed but theres not many. ffs you or i could have done reasonably well with top 20 picks without having a footy dept behind ya.
will say it again the roles of head recruiter and list manager are the two most important roles at any afl club. we can never find people good enough and we should always be looking to do better in these areas, especially when those we have barely passes at best.
its only an opinion but to me i would like to see us look for better than jackson he was definately an upgrade on beck but imo we need to do better.
I'm happy with all 3 draft selections.
I'm not interested in the pety arguement of "If we chose (x) he is 2% better than what we chose. Not good enough" Thats wasting breath.
The real problems are when your draft selections in the top 30 are not AFL standard. If you have a choice out of the top 30 kids in the country they should be AFL standard and play 100 games minimum. 150 if your fair dinkum. If you can't pick a future 100 gamer in the top 30 kids in the country you can't call yourself a recruiter, especially when our club gifts games to very ordinary players.
When you say we should have picked Heppell over Conca or Bastinac over Griffiths, it doesn't change things significantly.
What would change things significantly is when you look at our top 30 draft picks in the last 6 years and see where the failed picks are who havent gone onto be AFL standard.:
2003
#21 Alex Gilmore - Finished
2004
#1 Brett Deledio - AFL Standard
#4 Richard Tambling - Borderline AFL standard
#12 Danny Meyer - Finished
#16 Adam Pattison - Finished
#20 Dean Polo - Borderline AFL standard
2005
#8 Oakly Nicholls - Finished
#24 Cleve Hughes - Finished
2006
#13 Jack Riewoldt - AFL Standard
#26 Shane Edwards - Borderline AFL Standard
2007
#2 Trent Cotchin - AFL Standard
#18 Alex Rance - Borderline AFL Standard (Improving)
2008
#8 Ty Vickery - AFL Standard
#26 Jayden Post - Borderline AFL Standard (Needs break out year next year)
2009
#3 Dustin Martin - AFL Standard
- #19 Ben Griffiths - Youth
2010
#6 Reece Conca - Youth
#30 Jake Batchelor - Youth
So in 7 drafts out of top 30 picks:
5 are AFL Standard
3 are Youth and are exempt from classification
5 are Finsihed footballers, no career in football
5 are Borderline AFL Standard
So out of 20 top 30 picks only 5 of them are established AFL players. 1 in 4 selections.
That is where the problem lies. Not the tit for tat; we should have picked X over Y. Its the fact that 3 out 4 players we have drafted are not to the standard of AFL. From the top 30 kids in the country, that is inexcusable.
The good have been good, but for mine the value of a recruiter is picking good AFL players from picks 15-30. We have failed in doing so in my opinion. Getting a first round pick right, isn't very hard. Getting a 2nd round pick right isn't hard either... but we've made out it to be. IMO thats where our problem lies - getting picks right 2nd round and above.
pretty much agree with most of that and is basically whats been said for a long time by some.
i do disagree though on the petty comments. yes if you pick a afl standard player i suppose you have done well. but top 10 picks should be aimed at very good to elite. 10 to 20 good to very good etc etc. if say you have a top 10 pick no make it specific and say pick 5 and end up with a good player or up to standard player and directly after you have picked the next 5 picks end up very good to elite players you have every right to question if you could/should not have done better.
griffiths imo had many questions about him was always high risk and was clearly not best available. the same thing is being debated about conca the only thing that will justify us taking conca in front of not just heppell but a fair few others is if he ends up in the very good to elite category.
yes where we take them and who was is available when we take them is vaklid and could mean the difference between top 4 and top 8.
for me and its only opinion but i think both list management and recruiting since 05 jacksons time at the club only average at best.
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So in 7 drafts out of top 30 picks:
5 are AFL Standard
3 are Youth and are exempt from classification
5 are Finsihed footballers, no career in football
5 are Borderline AFL Standard
So out of 20 top 30 picks only 5 of them are established AFL players. 1 in 4 selections.
That is where the problem lies. Not the tit for tat; we should have picked X over Y. Its the fact that 3 out 4 players we have drafted are not to the standard of AFL. From the top 30 kids in the country, that is inexcusable.
I thought the youth were exempt from status? So it would be 5 from 17?
You produce a high quality post and then tilt the stats in your favour.
But even saying that, 8 from 20 is still a pisspoor strike rate. Ill happily call it now, Griffiths conca and batch are all AFL Standard.
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My issues with Cameron as initially our list manager and then promoted to head of our footy dept....
(i) In his first draft (2008) as list manager we only picked up two kids (Vickery and Post) when we were meant to be rebuilding our list. He then traded a decent 3rd round pick for Adam Thomson who couldn't kick to save himself and as a inside mid couldn't get a game in a bottom 4 Port side that was crying out for inside mids. Cameron gave some garbage reasoning about Thomson being the number 1 clearance player in the AFL per time on ground. Then he used a 4th round pick on Hislop. That kind of recruiting was no different to under Greg Miller's reign who Cameron replaced.
(ii) When Wallace was sacked mid-2009, Cameron by then was head of the footy dept. and should have mapped out plan for the next 3 years to maximise our draft selections and use the draft system and priority pick rules to our advantage. The club knew GC and GWS would hog the 2010-11 drafts and the club knew we were going down the youth path. We had just 2 wins at the midpoint of 2009 so Cameron should have instructed caretaker coach Jade Rawlings to make sure via team selections and matchday match-ups we won no more than 2 more games to gain a end of round 1 priority pick which could have got us one of Nathan Fyfe or Ryan Bastinac. Instead we threw it away winning meaningless games against other bottom sides in the second half of the season.
(iii) Just 4 wins in 2009 would have also set us up to get picks 4 and 6 in the 2010. We knew we had the very young and inexperienced list and a new first-time senior coach and that showed losing the first 9 games. Once again we reached the midpoint of the season with hardly a win on the board and once again threw a chance of getting priority pick winning games in the second half of the season to exceed the 4 win mark. So we could have still got Conca plus one extra top kid such as a Heppel, Lynch or Gaff for example.
So in total not planning to make the most of priority picks on offer in the past two years has cost us another two quality young players who could have played for us alongside Cotch, Martin, Jack and co. for the next decade. It's no point complaining about lack of funds for recruiting if you throw away the chance to gain bonus top 20 draft picks. Sure people can say we screwed up our top picks in 2004-5 but since 2006 when Francis Jackson went full time as a recruiter he has drafted Jack, Cotch, Rance, Vickery, Martin, Griffiths and Conca with our top 20 picks which is a pretty good return. Too bad we were dumb as a club and didn't give him the chance of two more top 20 picks!
(iv) Wasting rookie list spots on keeping or recycling duds such as Hislop and Miller. Richmond has been there done that many times in the past.
(v) Some re-signings have been quite questionable such as giving McGuane as 3 year contract ???.
(vi) Our fitness staff has basically remained the same since Wallace was still senior coach.
Another thing that needs addressing is we still have a too small and light-weighted playing list. We have an excess of smalls and most aren't up to AFL level. It's no point drafting players under 6ft unless they have exceptional skills, speed and footy smarts.
Sensational posts.
I sometimes think if some guys on here were running the club we'b be in better pastures.
hahahaha so funny you say that because ive often thought this to myself.
A very astute person is MT. Post was spot on again.
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the pro tanking forces have always been ridiculed by those who wanted us to be the cleanskins of the AFL. Sadly that means finishing towards the bottom on a constant basis and never having any success. Thats the price we have had to pay for stupidity.
On the other matter of doing better in terms of our personnel - YES we should do better but we never ever do better because the RFC has been a mates club for the best part of 20 years. Mates clubs dont work in football terms anymore, now money is what counts because money gets you the best CEO, money gets you the best football director, money gets you the best recruiting manager and network, money gets you the best coaches, the best list managers etc etc.
Now I have one simple question - How many people in here seriously believe that Richmond have chased say Stephen Wells from Geelong in recruiting or the Collingwood recruiting manager over the last 5 years? How much effort has gone into getting a Neil Balme? Why havent we been successful at getting the best people.
How come we cant attract good players from other clubs? How come potential father and sons never choose to come to Richmond when they have a choice of another club - ie. Andy Gowers who barracked for us but chose to play for Hawthorn or Travis Cloke.
Theres way too much that needs to be done before we become a decent club let alone a good one.
Cloke's mum barracks for the Pies so his attachment to the Tigers wasn't that great. Also we would've had to pick up all 3 brothers to gain Travis which is hindsight you would do but no one could have predicted Cogs' career would be crueled at such a young age after just one B&F year due to groin problems and then a ACL finished him off :(.
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My issues with Cameron as initially our list manager and then promoted to head of our footy dept....
(i) In his first draft (2008) as list manager we only picked up two kids (Vickery and Post) when we were meant to be rebuilding our list. He then traded a decent 3rd round pick for Adam Thomson who couldn't kick to save himself and as a inside mid couldn't get a game in a bottom 4 Port side that was crying out for inside mids. Cameron gave some garbage reasoning about Thomson being the number 1 clearance player in the AFL per time on ground. Then he used a 4th round pick on Hislop. That kind of recruiting was no different to under Greg Miller's reign who Cameron replaced.
(ii) When Wallace was sacked mid-2009, Cameron by then was head of the footy dept. and should have mapped out plan for the next 3 years to maximise our draft selections and use the draft system and priority pick rules to our advantage. The club knew GC and GWS would hog the 2010-11 drafts and the club knew we were going down the youth path. We had just 2 wins at the midpoint of 2009 so Cameron should have instructed caretaker coach Jade Rawlings to make sure via team selections and matchday match-ups we won no more than 2 more games to gain a end of round 1 priority pick which could have got us one of Nathan Fyfe or Ryan Bastinac. Instead we threw it away winning meaningless games against other bottom sides in the second half of the season.
(iii) Just 4 wins in 2009 would have also set us up to get picks 4 and 6 in the 2010. We knew we had the very young and inexperienced list and a new first-time senior coach and that showed losing the first 9 games. Once again we reached the midpoint of the season with hardly a win on the board and once again threw a chance of getting priority pick winning games in the second half of the season to exceed the 4 win mark. So we could have still got Conca plus one extra top kid such as a Heppel, Lynch or Gaff for example.
So in total not planning to make the most of priority picks on offer in the past two years has cost us another two quality young players who could have played for us alongside Cotch, Martin, Jack and co. for the next decade. It's no point complaining about lack of funds for recruiting if you throw away the chance to gain bonus top 20 draft picks. Sure people can say we screwed up our top picks in 2004-5 but since 2006 when Francis Jackson went full time as a recruiter he has drafted Jack, Cotch, Rance, Vickery, Martin, Griffiths and Conca with our top 20 picks which is a pretty good return. Too bad we were dumb as a club and didn't give him the chance of two more top 20 picks!
(iv) Wasting rookie list spots on keeping or recycling duds such as Hislop and Miller. Richmond has been there done that many times in the past.
(v) Some re-signings have been quite questionable such as giving McGuane as 3 year contract ???.
(vi) Our fitness staff has basically remained the same since Wallace was still senior coach.
Another thing that needs addressing is we still have a too small and light-weighted playing list. We have an excess of smalls and most aren't up to AFL level. It's no point drafting players under 6ft unless they have exceptional skills, speed and footy smarts.
sounds an awful lot like a pro tank post. sheesh some of us copped plenty of crap for daring to voice exactly the above at the time, what you so eloquently have posted now.
That's because it is a pro tank post! ;D
oh on those jackson picks first its easy to ignore the bad and only post the good, second i firmly believe we could have done better with the rance griffiths and conca picks rance in particular as hes been around long enough to make a call .
and finally since 2006 id say nearly all clubs have found at least decent players with their top 20 picks.yeah theres the odd one that has failed but theres not many. ffs you or i could have done reasonably well with top 20 picks without having a footy dept behind ya.
will say it again the roles of head recruiter and list manager are the two most important roles at any afl club. we can never find people good enough and we should always be looking to do better in these areas, especially when those we have barely passes at best.
its only an opinion but to me i would like to see us look for better than jackson he was definately an upgrade on beck but imo we need to do better.
Of course we can do better as far as our picks at all rounds of the draft especially those mid-range 2nd and 3rd round picks which can make a huge difference to rebuilding a list if a club nails a whole draft or two (eg: Geelong in 1999 and 2001). However I would take into account that 5 years ago our recruiting resources were arguably the poorest and worst in the comp. We are still now adding to our recruiting dept. to try and catch up with the top clubs who have a number of scouts watching say each U18 TAC Cup game. Given our recruiting dept. isn't as strong as other top clubs then why miss the opportunity to gain top 20 picks where it's easier to gain top talent.
Anyway my post wasn't a judgement of FJ as recruitier. My point was simply that failing to gain priority picks in recent years in our situation has been detrimental to our rebuild in a big way given we've missed out on at least two more A-graders and that's just pure negligence bordering on incompetence from our list manager and footy dept. head whose job it is to plan out in advance what we need and to use smarts to exploit the rules to gain it. It's the reason why recruiters at all clubs are sent out to watch U16 champs footy to comprehend what talent is coming through two years in advance at least. The draft system has been around for a quarter of a century and we as a Club still don't understand how it fully works and how to exploit it to our advantage.
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My issues with Cameron as initially our list manager and then promoted to head of our footy dept....
(i) In his first draft (2008) as list manager we only picked up two kids (Vickery and Post) when we were meant to be rebuilding our list. He then traded a decent 3rd round pick for Adam Thomson who couldn't kick to save himself and as a inside mid couldn't get a game in a bottom 4 Port side that was crying out for inside mids. Cameron gave some garbage reasoning about Thomson being the number 1 clearance player in the AFL per time on ground. Then he used a 4th round pick on Hislop. That kind of recruiting was no different to under Greg Miller's reign who Cameron replaced.
(ii) When Wallace was sacked mid-2009, Cameron by then was head of the footy dept. and should have mapped out plan for the next 3 years to maximise our draft selections and use the draft system and priority pick rules to our advantage. The club knew GC and GWS would hog the 2010-11 drafts and the club knew we were going down the youth path. We had just 2 wins at the midpoint of 2009 so Cameron should have instructed caretaker coach Jade Rawlings to make sure via team selections and matchday match-ups we won no more than 2 more games to gain a end of round 1 priority pick which could have got us one of Nathan Fyfe or Ryan Bastinac. Instead we threw it away winning meaningless games against other bottom sides in the second half of the season.
(iii) Just 4 wins in 2009 would have also set us up to get picks 4 and 6 in the 2010. We knew we had the very young and inexperienced list and a new first-time senior coach and that showed losing the first 9 games. Once again we reached the midpoint of the season with hardly a win on the board and once again threw a chance of getting priority pick winning games in the second half of the season to exceed the 4 win mark. So we could have still got Conca plus one extra top kid such as a Heppel, Lynch or Gaff for example.
So in total not planning to make the most of priority picks on offer in the past two years has cost us another two quality young players who could have played for us alongside Cotch, Martin, Jack and co. for the next decade. It's no point complaining about lack of funds for recruiting if you throw away the chance to gain bonus top 20 draft picks. Sure people can say we screwed up our top picks in 2004-5 but since 2006 when Francis Jackson went full time as a recruiter he has drafted Jack, Cotch, Rance, Vickery, Martin, Griffiths and Conca with our top 20 picks which is a pretty good return. Too bad we were dumb as a club and didn't give him the chance of two more top 20 picks!
(iv) Wasting rookie list spots on keeping or recycling duds such as Hislop and Miller. Richmond has been there done that many times in the past.
(v) Some re-signings have been quite questionable such as giving McGuane as 3 year contract ???.
(vi) Our fitness staff has basically remained the same since Wallace was still senior coach.
Another thing that needs addressing is we still have a too small and light-weighted playing list. We have an excess of smalls and most aren't up to AFL level. It's no point drafting players under 6ft unless they have exceptional skills, speed and footy smarts.
sounds an awful lot like a pro tank post. sheesh some of us copped plenty of crap for daring to voice exactly the above at the time, what you so eloquently have posted now.
That's because it is a pro tank post! ;D
oh on those jackson picks first its easy to ignore the bad and only post the good, second i firmly believe we could have done better with the rance griffiths and conca picks rance in particular as hes been around long enough to make a call .
and finally since 2006 id say nearly all clubs have found at least decent players with their top 20 picks.yeah theres the odd one that has failed but theres not many. ffs you or i could have done reasonably well with top 20 picks without having a footy dept behind ya.
will say it again the roles of head recruiter and list manager are the two most important roles at any afl club. we can never find people good enough and we should always be looking to do better in these areas, especially when those we have barely passes at best.
its only an opinion but to me i would like to see us look for better than jackson he was definately an upgrade on beck but imo we need to do better.
Of course we can do better as far as our picks at all rounds of the draft especially those mid-range 2nd and 3rd round picks which can make a huge difference to rebuilding a list if a club nails a whole draft or two (eg: Geelong in 1999 and 2001). However I would take into account that 5 years ago our recruiting resources were arguably the poorest and worst in the comp. We are still now adding to our recruiting dept. to try and catch up with the top clubs who have a number of scouts watching say each U18 TAC Cup game. Given our recruiting dept. isn't as strong as other top clubs then why miss the opportunity to gain top 20 picks where it's easier to gain top talent.
Anyway my post wasn't a judgement of FJ as recruitier. My point was simply that failing to gain priority picks in recent years in our situation has been detrimental to our rebuild in a big way given we've missed out on at least two more A-graders and that's just pure negligence bordering on incompetence from our list manager and footy dept. head whose job it is to plan out in advance what we need and to use smarts to exploit the rules to gain it. It's the reason why recruiters at all clubs are sent out to watch U16 champs footy to comprehend what talent is coming through two years in advance at least. The draft system has been around for a quarter of a century and we as a Club still don't understand how it fully works and how to exploit it to our advantage.
we are pretty much on the same page. a pretty fair point about resources for jackson, still dont rate his performances though money or no money. believe it or not i was advocating the tank as far back as 02 some of the debates ive had over this issue have been heated and over the top.ive been screaming for the recruiting dept to be properly financed and run to the detriment of all else for as long as i can remember almost.
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So in 7 drafts out of top 30 picks:
5 are AFL Standard
3 are Youth and are exempt from classification
5 are Finsihed footballers, no career in football
5 are Borderline AFL Standard
So out of 20 top 30 picks only 5 of them are established AFL players. 1 in 4 selections.
That is where the problem lies. Not the tit for tat; we should have picked X over Y. Its the fact that 3 out 4 players we have drafted are not to the standard of AFL. From the top 30 kids in the country, that is inexcusable.
I thought the youth were exempt from status? So it would be 5 from 17?
You produce a high quality post and then tilt the stats in your favour.
But even saying that, 8 from 20 is still a peepoor strike rate. Ill happily call it now, Griffiths conca and batch are all AFL Standard.
Damo the stats are correct - since 2003 draft we have had 23 top 30 picks, minus the 3 picks that are exempt from classification, hence 5/20 is correct. Apologies for not making that clear.
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pretty much agree with most of that and is basically whats been said for a long time by some.
i do disagree though on the petty comments. yes if you pick a afl standard player i suppose you have done well. but top 10 picks should be aimed at very good to elite. 10 to 20 good to very good etc etc. if say you have a top 10 pick no make it specific and say pick 5 and end up with a good player or up to standard player and directly after you have picked the next 5 picks end up very good to elite players you have every right to question if you could/should not have done better.
griffiths imo had many questions about him was always high risk and was clearly not best available. the same thing is being debated about conca the only thing that will justify us taking conca in front of not just heppell but a fair few others is if he ends up in the very good to elite category.
yes where we take them and who was is available when we take them is vaklid and could mean the difference between top 4 and top 8.
for me and its only opinion but i think both list management and recruiting since 05 jacksons time at the club only average at best.
I understand where your coming from and if we were in St.Kildas shoes and playing a good brand of football but failing to have that killer punch in September I would be agreeing with you that these little 1% of improvement were the difference. However we are not a top 4 side, we are uncompetetive and have an unfortunate embarressing list. Countless reasons why, but the biggest fact is that since 2003 we have a 25% success rate in finding AFL standard footballers when using picks 1-30. Thats not finding the best available, that is straight up finding and selecting a player that can play to the standard of AFL. Top 30 picks out of the top 30 kids in the country each year to find only 1 in every 4 attempts is just embarrassing. That is basic recruiting, not whinging about finding superstars we have 25% success rate when drafting standard AFL players.
That is why we are in the state we are in above all else. Poor development, lack of football department spending, VFL stand alone side, no debt etc. have all magnified where we are at but the brute of the problem for where we are at is our recruiting and failures to find 100+ gamers, and in turn not even drafting AFL standard/currency. But if you take that percentage and improve it to 50% success rate we have an extra 5 players on our list that would be of AFL standard. These would replace the current fringe players we have that we have had to bring to the club from the rookie draft, trades and 30+ selections who are not AFL standard.
You can't blame the club for failing to develop rookies and picks 30-70 for the lack of success and state of the club. The problem is the fact that 75% of the picks in the top 30 for the last 7 years are not upto standard. How you can get such a low percentage is beyond me.
To put it in perspective, take all the players who have been failed top 30 draft picks; in terms of failing to even compete/develop into AFL standard.
#21 Alex Gilmore - Finished
#4 Richard Tambling - Borderline AFL standard
#12 Danny Meyer - Finished
#16 Adam Pattison - Finished
#20 Dean Polo - Borderline AFL standard
#8 Oakly Nicholls - Finished
#24 Cleve Hughes - Finished
#26 Shane Edwards - Borderline AFL Standard
#18 Alex Rance - Borderline AFL Standard (Improving)
#26 Jayden Post - Borderline AFL Standard (Needs break out year next year)
You can excuse Post seeing as he is still a young KP player and being kind I'll also excuse Rance as he's improving rapidly in comparison to last year.
So that leaves us with 5 completely failed picks and 3 unsuccessful ones.
The size of the failure is what concerns me, out of all those players other than Tambling and Edwards none had any currency 3 years out of drafting them. Considering what we paid for them (high draft picks) that is a disgrace. Unfortunately Jackson wears this as he is head of recruiting, even if it wasn't him who made the call, he unfortunately cops the whack, just as Damien Hardwick does for on field performance.
Now, we could be upset with what we have missed out when you compare Conca to Heppell and Fyfe to Griffiths (as examples) yes there is an improvement, but only marginal. Which is why I think its irrelevant. Many of the top 4 clubs have missed out on best availables but are able to still create a premiership/finals list. Conca, Griffiths and Rance have AFL standard all over them, which at minimal is a pass, even though you can argue we missed out on best available, you can't expect every pick to be 100% correct. What you do expect is for top 30 picks, at worst, to be AFL standard.
So if we take our 5 finished players:
#21 Alex Gilmore - Finished
#12 Danny Meyer - Finished
#16 Adam Pattison - Finished
#8 Oakly Nicholls - Finished
#24 Cleve Hughes - Finished
All with quality picks 3 being first rounders. If we take those and actually drafted AFL standard players, not even being greedy with "the best availble" if we even only got these picks slightly wrong our list would be improved dramatically.
Compare this to having Heppell over Conca or Fyfe over Griffiths, the list only improves slightly.
Where as if we picked up AFL standard 4th rounders with these high draft picks we'd have 5 extra players on the list mid 20s, bigger bodies and 5x100 games experience - that is a massive improvement to the list.
So if we even got these half right, and settle for some mistakes in - the Tambling, Polo and Edwards draft picks you'd have a pass mark for the clubs recruiting and all of a sudden - presto - you have a competetive football list. Unfortunately we don't. This is why I have no problem with Conca, Griffiths and Rance selections. They are/will be AFL standard and that above all else is the most important when recruiting, you can't possibly expect to predict the future and draft the best available every pick.
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I don't support not winning when you can win. I want us to give our best every week come what may.
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tanking = 186
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I don't support not winning when you can win. I want us to give our best every week come what may.
I support your post but we would end up with the same win/loss record anyway
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Cameron needs to go.
Never liked him.
What are his achievements?
Melbourne's drafting when he was there has been poo.
Richmonds drafting when he was here has been poo.
They guy has had 2 innings and been bowled for 2 golden ducks.
Adios.
Wouldn't say two golden ducks. Definentely has not been in and out just like that in either role.
Lets just say he's had two 20/20 innings and used up 20 balls and gotten out for 0 in both.
Tavare the tortoise.
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Cameron needs to go.
Never liked him.
What are his achievements?
Melbourne's drafting when he was there has been poo.
Richmonds drafting when he was here has been poo.
They guy has had 2 innings and been bowled for 2 golden ducks.
Adios.
Wouldn't say two golden ducks. Definentely has not been in and out just like that in either role.
Lets just say he's had two 20/20 innings and used up 20 balls and gotten out for 0 in both.
Tavare the tortoise.
Where did you remember Tavare from lol. Id forgotten him. Came straight out of the Boycott school for Batting.
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Cameron needs to go.
Never liked him.
What are his achievements?
Melbourne's drafting when he was there has been poo.
Richmonds drafting when he was here has been poo.
They guy has had 2 innings and been bowled for 2 golden ducks.
Adios.
Wouldn't say two golden ducks. Definentely has not been in and out just like that in either role.
Lets just say he's had two 20/20 innings and used up 20 balls and gotten out for 0 in both.
Tavare the tortoise.
Where did you remember Tavare from lol. Id forgotten him. Came straight out of the Boycott school for Batting.
Somehow on Youtube stumbled on the end of the Ashes test from the MCG in 1982-83 lol. :thumbsup
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nah, he was much more painful than boycott :sleep
Theres a story that england wanted quick runs in a test and the message went out to boycott to up the ante. the message that came back was basically get stuffed so botham volunteered to run boycott out, which he duly did.
apparantly boycott hasnt spoken to botham since.
:lol
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nah, he was much more painful than boycott :sleep
Theres a story that england wanted quick runs in a test and the message went out to boycott to up the ante. the message that came back was basically get stuffed so botham volunteered to gun boycott out, which he duly did.
apparantly boycott hasnt spoken to botham since.
:lol
Heard that story too Al. Botham did that in his second year of Test Cricket in 1978 against NZ in NZ. :rollin :lol :rollin
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i see that when you fix tpos it doesnt flow through to quotes.
yeah the NZ part rings a bell
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tanking = 186
Not quite that simple but it's a fair post re the 'tanking' debate.
You still need a mix of seasoned quality & strong leaders to extract the most of young quality draft selections.
Richmond and Melbourne are in a similar boat in this regard. We just don't have senior leadership quality at the pointy end.
West Coast have a good mix with Cox, Glass & Embley etc. Carlton have benefitted by having Judd & GC with Ablett.
Cousins was a step in the right direction but he was at the wrong end of his career and had too much on his plate to make any real difference.
Kids need to see what it takes on field otherwise their talent can go to waste. It's a crucial part of their development.
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My issues with Cameron as initially our list manager and then promoted to head of our footy dept....
(i) In his first draft (2008) as list manager we only picked up two kids (Vickery and Post) when we were meant to be rebuilding our list. He then traded a decent 3rd round pick for Adam Thomson who couldn't kick to save himself and as a inside mid couldn't get a game in a bottom 4 Port side that was crying out for inside mids. Cameron gave some garbage reasoning about Thomson being the number 1 clearance player in the AFL per time on ground. Then he used a 4th round pick on Hislop. That kind of recruiting was no different to under Greg Miller's reign who Cameron replaced.
(ii) When Wallace was sacked mid-2009, Cameron by then was head of the footy dept. and should have mapped out plan for the next 3 years to maximise our draft selections and use the draft system and priority pick rules to our advantage. The club knew GC and GWS would hog the 2010-11 drafts and the club knew we were going down the youth path. We had just 2 wins at the midpoint of 2009 so Cameron should have instructed caretaker coach Jade Rawlings to make sure via team selections and matchday match-ups we won no more than 2 more games to gain a end of round 1 priority pick which could have got us one of Nathan Fyfe or Ryan Bastinac. Instead we threw it away winning meaningless games against other bottom sides in the second half of the season.
(iii) Just 4 wins in 2009 would have also set us up to get picks 4 and 6 in the 2010. We knew we had the very young and inexperienced list and a new first-time senior coach and that showed losing the first 9 games. Once again we reached the midpoint of the season with hardly a win on the board and once again threw a chance of getting priority pick winning games in the second half of the season to exceed the 4 win mark. So we could have still got Conca plus one extra top kid such as a Heppel, Lynch or Gaff for example.
So in total not planning to make the most of priority picks on offer in the past two years has cost us another two quality young players who could have played for us alongside Cotch, Martin, Jack and co. for the next decade. It's no point complaining about lack of funds for recruiting if you throw away the chance to gain bonus top 20 draft picks. Sure people can say we screwed up our top picks in 2004-5 but since 2006 when Francis Jackson went full time as a recruiter he has drafted Jack, Cotch, Rance, Vickery, Martin, Griffiths and Conca with our top 20 picks which is a pretty good return. Too bad we were dumb as a club and didn't give him the chance of two more top 20 picks!
(iv) Wasting rookie list spots on keeping or recycling duds such as Hislop and Miller. Richmond has been there done that many times in the past.
(v) Some re-signings have been quite questionable such as giving McGuane as 3 year contract ???.
(vi) Our fitness staff has basically remained the same since Wallace was still senior coach.
Another thing that needs addressing is we still have a too small and light-weighted playing list. We have an excess of smalls and most aren't up to AFL level. It's no point drafting players under 6ft unless they have exceptional skills, speed and footy smarts.
What makes you think that these decisions are solely Craig Cameron's work? Is it the Football Manager's decision alone to unilaterally decide that we must lose games? Aren't you projecting your philosophy of losing and tanking onto Craig Cameron?
What is/was Francis Jackson's role in these decisions?
And what of our drafting and trading in the past 2 years? Not going to mention that? Or are the good decisions made by someone else?
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Out of interest here is what Craig Cameron said when outlining the Club's 5-year plan at this time of year in 2009 .....
SOLID FOUNDATIONS THE KEY TO SUSTAINED TIGER SUCCESS
Richmond's General Manager of Football, Craig Cameron
Fighting Tiger bulletin - Issue 2, July 2009
Richmond entered the 2009 season full of hope, and expectations of playing finals football. Unfortunately, that's not going to eventuate, which clearly is very disappointing to us all.
I can assure our members, however, that proper foundations are now being put in place, to give the Tigers the best possible opportunity of experiencing success in the future on a constant basis. We're devising a strategy that will build a sustainable structure within our football department. This will ensure that when we recruit our players, we develop them (both on-field and off-field), we maintain injury-prevention levels, physically prepare them, as well as supply them with the required mental skills. As a result, we can then provide our coaching panel with a playing list they can mould into a successful unit. The overall objective is to make sure we have a football department that can extract the maximum talent out of all the players on our list.
It had reached a point where we just had to say, okay, we're going to take a long-term view to structuring the football department and the playing list. But, even though we are adopting a bigger-picture outlook, that doesn't mean we're in a rebuilding phase. The long-term vision is based around getting the right structures in place and ensuring that whenever a player is recruited to Tigerland, he is given every chance to fulfill his potential.
I asked each of the people, who head up the various areas of the football department - operations, recruiting, list management. coaching, elite performance, (strength and conditioning and medical), and the development side - for them to talk to their staff members, to get their input, and then report back to me.
Under CEO Steven Wright's direction, at the Gold Coast in early July, each Club department presented their specific strategic plan. We then worked on integrating those strategic plans into an overall five-year vision for the Club. The plan is for the entire Club to end up on the same page, and over the next couple of months, we'll reveal the details of this five-year vision.
From a football department perspective, by the end of this [2009] season, we should have a much better understanding of where our list's at, and how the development of our younger, developing players is coming along, with a view to them being able to play good AFL football for a long period of time.
.... [edited out stuff about finding a new coach]
I firmly believe we are an exciting prospect for a coach, with our young list and the structural plans we have in place for our football department. The successful coaching candidate will be stepping into a football department that will give him every chance to coach a thriving team. . .
At the end of this year [2009], it's likely that we'll have more than the usual number of picks in the National Draft. Our intention is to go to this Draft and give our recruiters every opportunity to select talent. The same objective applies to the Rookie Draft a few weeks after that. The recruiters have to go out and recruit the best players, however, from a list-management and succession-planning viewpoint, we probably need to find a power forward. And, if we could snare another A-grade midfielder, we'd be pretty happy. We think our ruck stocks are quite good, with Tyrone Vickery and Andrew Browne coming through and Angus Graham showing significant improvement this season. Our defensive end is solid, with Luke McGuane, Kel Moore and Will Thursfield, along with young players such as Jayden Post and Alex Rance developing through there as well. Forward of centre, Matthew Richardson can't play forever. I'm certainly not retiring 'Richo', but we need to find a young power forward, who can step up when the Tiger great does eventually hang the boots up. And, you can never have enough A-grade midfielders, so that also will be high on our list of recruiting priorities.
It's worth pointing out that our recruiting department has been significantly boosted this year. Francis Jackson remains our Recruiting Manager, and he's been joined by two full-time recruiting officers, in Matthew Clarke and Richard Taylor. Both Matthew and Richard had been involved in recruiting on a part-time basis for more than 10 years. Not only do they bring experience to the role, but having them in a full-time working capacity gives us more resources to view games. It also enables us to start buidling a three-year knowledge base of young players before they become eligible for the Draft. In addition, being better resourced in recruiting, has allowed us to explore some of the other areas that we have not been able to in the past, such as the NSW scholarship program. Francis visited Ireland a few months back to investigate the possibility of us recruiting there, and we may have an Irish youngster come out and train with us at some stage later on in the year. Matthew Clarke went to Papua-New Guinea to watch their under-15 and under-16 championships, then saw them play against Queensland. He made good connections with Ray Hall, the former Richmond player, who's now up in New Guinea and helping out with their junior teams. There's an international scholarship program that we'll probably investigate as well. The main bonus of having the additional recruiters, is they can cover the country much better. You've got three sets of eyes to watching vision of players all week, so there basically won't be a player who goes through the system that we won't have seen or won't have good coverage of. It also allows us to build better relationships with second-tier clubs, second-tier coaches and team managers, so that we receive all the information we require. We've gone from 2005, where we didn't have a full-time recruiter, to now, this year [2009], having three full-time recruiters, which is a significant step in the right direction for us.
http://oneeyed-richmond.com/forum/index.php?topic=9775.0
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OK, exactly what does craig cameron do?
does he have input into all the different football depts or does he just a managerial role where he collates and processes what they give him.
doe he march to his own tune or someone elses?
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OK, exactly what does craig cameron do?
does he have input into all the different football depts or does he just a managerial role where he collates and processes what they give him.
As General Manager of Football Operations you would hope that Cameron is responsible for all areas ie the buck stops with him.
In the article posted he says that he has integrated specific strategic plans into an overall five year plan that was due for release in 2009.
Like Benny Gale's overall plan I hope the Footy one has goals and is benchmarked for each area.
Benny has said he couldn't find a prior five year plan at the club, presumably he wasn't talking about this plan from Cameron.
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He was a little off the mark with his assessment of our ruck and defence but otherwise just the usual supporter message rubbish
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What makes you think that these decisions are solely Craig Cameron's work? Is it the Football Manager's decision alone to unilaterally decide that we must lose games? Aren't you projecting your philosophy of losing and tanking onto Craig Cameron?
What is/was Francis Jackson's role in these decisions?
And what of our drafting and trading in the past 2 years? Not going to mention that? Or are the good decisions made by someone else?
Craig Cameron has been head of our footy dept. since 2008 as well as our list manager from 2008-2010 until Blair Hartley came on board this year. The buck ultimately stops with him regarding footy dept. and list managerment decisions as it should. You don't want the coach making short-term top-up decisions to save his own backside in the final year of a contract. FJ as chief recruiter would advise Cameron on the strength of upcoming drafts and have a major say in new draftees chosen at each draft pick but he isn't the list manager nor can FJ instruct the coach to make sure wins are limited to 4 to gain a priority pick. Only Cameron has the authority to implement a whole footy dept. strategy and then delegate respective tasks to the various parties within the footy dept. to implement it.
Am I projecting my philosophy of tanking onto Craig Cameron? While I do support and have argued for us to tank for a number of years now as the draft system rewards tanking, I would argue any cluey footy dept. head and list manager wouldn't need to be told to tank if in the position we have found ourselves in. The benefits should/would be so bleedingly obvious and automatic to anyone (re)building our list. They would've jumped at the opportunity for long-term gain. The ability to pull it off in our case should have been simple to implement as well given we had just 2 wins by midseason 2009 and just 1 win by midseason 2010. It was hardly a stretch to keep our wins in both years to 4 each. If Cameron had/has a 'moral' objection to tanking and taking advantage of the draft rules to benefit the RFC via bonus priority picks then he's in the wrong job.
Our recruiting record since 2008...
2008:
Trades: pick 42 for Adam Thomson
ND: 8. Vickery, 26. Post, 58. Hislop
PSD: 6. Cousins
RD: 8. Nahas, 26. Gourdis [demoted], 39. Browne, 53. Gilligan
2009:
Trades: Raines for pick 44, Schulz for Farmer and pick 71
ND: 3. Martin, 19. Griffiths, 35. Astbury, 44. Dea, 51. Taylor?, 67. Webberley, 71. Nason
PSD: 2. Grimes
RD: 7. Hicks, 23. Contin, 38. Roberts, 51. Westhoff, 62. Polak [demoted], 70. O'Reilly
2010:
Trades: Collins for Grigg, Tambling for compo pick and pick 51
ND: 6. Conca, 30. Batchelor, 47. Helbig, 51. MacDonald, 63. Derickx
PSD: 3. Houli
RD: 11. Jakobi, 28. Miller, 45. Hislop [demoted]
2008 was poor with just two kids picked up in the ND. The Thomson trade was pathetic as I said at the time.
2009-10 the philosophy was at least right loading up with 13 picks in the two NDs and PSDs and using them all on kids/newbies (Houli being the only exception in the PSD which is fair enough).
2009-10 trade periods have been reasonable given what we had to offer up with the Tambling trade being by far the pick of the bunch. Grigg and Farmer were sideways trades but as I said we didn't have much to offer other clubs outside our half-dozen or so untouchable young guns.
Our use of the rookie draft is still poor. Last year's RD was a complete waste. You could clean out most of our rookie list and we wouldn't blink. Given other strong clubs have done very well with rookies over the past 5 years we are still behind the eight ball.
Anyway my main point is how we missed out on top talent because we didn't plan to tank in 2009-10 and gain as many top picks as we could have. Take away the stupidity of the Thomson trade and add us "tanking" over 2009-10 and the same NDs without changing any selections would look something like this:
2008: 8. Vickery, 26. Post, 42. Liam Anthony, 58. Hislop
2009: 3. Martin, 18. Bastinac/Fyfe, 19. Griffiths, 35. Astbury, 44. Dea, 51. Taylor?, 67. Webberley, 71. Nason
2010: 4. Gaff/Heppell, 6. Conca, 30. Batchelor, 47. Helbig, 51. MacDonald, 63. Derickx
Take your pick of Bastinac/Fyfe and Gaff/Heppell but in the end we've given up the opportunity to get 3 quality young up and coming players who would walk into our best 18 and make us a strong side over the next decade. Two of them we missed out on for the sake of 3 meaningless late season wins over 2009-10 that only meant the difference between finishing 15th and 16th on the ladder in both years.
Whether supporters want to blame Cameron or the Club as a whole, there's no doubt not tanking and using the draft rules to our advantage was dumb dumb dumb policy/philosophy/planning! We can't use lack of funds and resources as an excuse either as it costs no money to tank.
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As you've illustrated above, our drafting and trading in the past 3 years has been OK, if not pretty good.
Basically your argument is that Craig Cameron should go because of the Thompson trade, and the club didn't tank. I don't prescribe to the opinion that the decision to tank is Cameron's alone.
Not a strong argument IMO, and would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater as punishment for not holding to a loser philosophy in a club that had had a loser philosophy for nearly 30 years.
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The List Management debate has been done to death and most people have already decided on which side they stand.
For me the more important thing is his management of the entire department.
In the same way that an independant List Manager is required to plan for the future and combat the natural short-term desires of the current coaches, the General Manager is required to oversee other departments in the same way.
1) The Elite Performance area has a duty to physically condition to AFL standard, REGARDLESS of the desires of the senior coach for a particular type of fitness.
2) The Medical area has a duty to treat players to ensure their long term well-being, REGARDLESS of the desire of the senior coach wanting to risk for short term results.
3) The Development area has a duty to firstly consider the personal welfare of new recruits, REGARDLESS of what the club or coaches may want from them.
4) The Operations area has a duty to provide the best opportunities for Coburg (our reserves team), REGARDLESS of the fact it is our subordinate junior partner.
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As you've illustrated above, our drafting and trading in the past 3 years has been OK, if not pretty good.
Basically your argument is that Craig Cameron should go because of the Thompson trade, and the club didn't tank. I don't prescribe to the opinion that the decision to tank is Cameron's alone.
Not a strong argument IMO, and would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater as punishment for not holding to a loser philosophy in a club that had had a loser philosophy for nearly 30 years.
Bone Cameron. Bone him.
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Craig Cameron was signed to a five year contract when hired by Miller as List Manager in December 2007.
After Miller left the club he was promoted (after other applicants were approached) to the General Manager of Football Operations.
He has another year to go on his contract. IMO he should be allowed to run to the end of his contract next year.
There is little advantage in early termination and a lot of downside.
The Football sub-committee of the board should use the Football review that was done in 2008-9, the strategic plan referred to in the post from one-eyed, current operations of other clubs and relevant section (including the goals and benchmarks that should be available) as part of Gale's five year plan to organise the entire football department to achieve best practice.
After a plan for the structure is agreed upon, the criteria for new or replacement staff can be finalised and selection of those staff can be done over the next eighteen months.
In the meantime, as part of the organisation of the entire department, some much needed improvements can be made to current practice.
As an example related to point four in my previous post, I would draw attention to the quote from the Coburg coach, Adam Potter, after his recent win.
“It’s a good alignment because the Richmond boys came to training on Wednesday, and they were there Friday, which allows us to train together, which is really important.”
http://www.richmondfc.com.au/news/newsarticle/tabid/6301/newsid/119814/default.aspx
The idea that Richmond listed players do not train on a regular basis with the team they are playing for is plain stupid and a recipe for failure.
It is wrong on so many counts - team spirit, mutual player respect, professional ethics. It is not a surprise that Potter has publicly mentioned this setup.
The organisation where half the team is allowed to skip team training is just dumb.
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A year to go for CC you say?
How much longer did Malthouse say he would be at Collingwood?
Sweet :thumbsup
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The idea that Richmond listed players do not train on a regular basis with the team they are playing for is plain stupid and a recipe for failure.
It is wrong on so many counts - team spirit, mutual player respect, professional ethics. It is not a surprise that Potter has publicly mentioned this setup.
The organisation where half the team is allowed to skip team training is just dumb.
What's the solution?
We'd all love to field a dedicated Richmond side in the VFL. Clearly that is the preferred model, but its an expensive one. For the time being, it's hard for players to be in two places at once.
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The idea that Richmond listed players do not train on a regular basis with the team they are playing for is plain stupid and a recipe for failure.
It is wrong on so many counts - team spirit, mutual player respect, professional ethics. It is not a surprise that Potter has publicly mentioned this setup.
The organisation where half the team is allowed to skip team training is just dumb.
What do you mean by this? The Richmond listed players missing Richmond training or Coburg training.
I am pretty sure all AFL listed players that are playing for there VFL affiliate only attend on main training session a week for the affiliate club, I know this is fact with the SANFL and pretty sure the same applies for the VFL as well.
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What's the solution?
We'd all love to field a dedicated Richmond side in the VFL. Clearly that is the preferred model, but its an expensive one. For the time being, it's hard for players to be in two places at once.
Do the teams train at the same time?
Since Coburg has players with full time jobs I assume they train evenings like other minor leagues.
Richmond seem to train mostly during the day.
The solution? If necessary, get VFL selections to attend Coburg and miss a Richmond session if necessary. It might teach some important lessons.
What do you mean by this? The Richmond listed players missing Richmond training or Coburg training.
I am pretty sure all AFL listed players that are playing for there VFL affiliate only attend on main training session a week for the affiliate club, I know this is fact with the SANFL and pretty sure the same applies for the VFL as well.
Read the quote and decifer for yourself.
Considering all AFL players only attend one session for affiliates I wonder what happens at Collingwood and Geelong. You know, the teams we're trying to emulate.
Edit: Have just read the post from the club's site and note the last sentence from Gale.
http://oneeyed-richmond.com/forum/index.php?topic=12496.30
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Do the teams train at the same time?
Since Coburg has players with full time jobs I assume they train evenings like other minor leagues.
Richmond seem to train mostly during the day.
The solution? If necessary, get VFL selections to attend Coburg and miss a Richmond session if necessary. It might teach some important lessons.
Tiger players selected to play with Coburg on the weekend train with Coburg once a week on the Friday night
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What makes you think that these decisions are solely Craig Cameron's work? Is it the Football Manager's decision alone to unilaterally decide that we must lose games? Aren't you projecting your philosophy of losing and tanking onto Craig Cameron?
What is/was Francis Jackson's role in these decisions?
And what of our drafting and trading in the past 2 years? Not going to mention that? Or are the good decisions made by someone else?
Craig Cameron has been head of our footy dept. since 2008 as well as our list manager from 2008-2010 until Blair Hartley came on board this year. The buck ultimately stops with him regarding footy dept. and list managerment decisions as it should. You don't want the coach making short-term top-up decisions to save his own backside in the final year of a contract. FJ as chief recruiter would advise Cameron on the strength of upcoming drafts and have a major say in new draftees chosen at each draft pick but he isn't the list manager nor can FJ instruct the coach to make sure wins are limited to 4 to gain a priority pick. Only Cameron has the authority to implement a whole footy dept. strategy and then delegate respective tasks to the various parties within the footy dept. to implement it.
Am I projecting my philosophy of tanking onto Craig Cameron? While I do support and have argued for us to tank for a number of years now as the draft system rewards tanking, I would argue any cluey footy dept. head and list manager wouldn't need to be told to tank if in the position we have found ourselves in. The benefits should/would be so bleedingly obvious and automatic to anyone (re)building our list. They would've jumped at the opportunity for long-term gain. The ability to pull it off in our case should have been simple to implement as well given we had just 2 wins by midseason 2009 and just 1 win by midseason 2010. It was hardly a stretch to keep our wins in both years to 4 each. If Cameron had/has a 'moral' objection to tanking and taking advantage of the draft rules to benefit the RFC via bonus priority picks then he's in the wrong job.
Our recruiting record since 2008...
2008:
Trades: pick 42 for Adam Thomson
ND: 8. Vickery, 26. Post, 58. Hislop
PSD: 6. Cousins
RD: 8. Nahas, 26. Gourdis [demoted], 39. Browne, 53. Gilligan
2009:
Trades: Raines for pick 44, Schulz for Farmer and pick 71
ND: 3. Martin, 19. Griffiths, 35. Astbury, 44. Dea, 51. Taylor?, 67. Webberley, 71. Nason
PSD: 2. Grimes
RD: 7. Hicks, 23. Contin, 38. Roberts, 51. Westhoff, 62. Polak [demoted], 70. O'Reilly
2010:
Trades: Collins for Grigg, Tambling for compo pick and pick 51
ND: 6. Conca, 30. Batchelor, 47. Helbig, 51. MacDonald, 63. Derickx
PSD: 3. Houli
RD: 11. Jakobi, 28. Miller, 45. Hislop [demoted]
2008 was poor with just two kids picked up in the ND. The Thomson trade was pathetic as I said at the time.
2009-10 the philosophy was at least right loading up with 13 picks in the two NDs and PSDs and using them all on kids/newbies (Houli being the only exception in the PSD which is fair enough).
2009-10 trade periods have been reasonable given what we had to offer up with the Tambling trade being by far the pick of the bunch. Grigg and Farmer were sideways trades but as I said we didn't have much to offer other clubs outside our half-dozen or so untouchable young guns.
Our use of the rookie draft is still poor. Last year's RD was a complete waste. You could clean out most of our rookie list and we wouldn't blink. Given other strong clubs have done very well with rookies over the past 5 years we are still behind the eight ball.
Anyway my main point is how we missed out on top talent because we didn't plan to tank in 2009-10 and gain as many top picks as we could have. Take away the stupidity of the Thomson trade and add us "tanking" over 2009-10 and the same NDs without changing any selections would look something like this:
2008: 8. Vickery, 26. Post, 42. Liam Anthony, 58. Hislop
2009: 3. Martin, 18. Bastinac/Fyfe, 19. Griffiths, 35. Astbury, 44. Dea, 51. Taylor?, 67. Webberley, 71. Nason
2010: 4. Gaff/Heppell, 6. Conca, 30. Batchelor, 47. Helbig, 51. MacDonald, 63. Derickx
Take your pick of Bastinac/Fyfe and Gaff/Heppell but in the end we've given up the opportunity to get 3 quality young up and coming players who would walk into our best 18 and make us a strong side over the next decade. Two of them we missed out on for the sake of 3 meaningless late season wins over 2009-10 that only meant the difference between finishing 15th and 16th on the ladder in both years.
Whether supporters want to blame Cameron or the Club as a whole, there's no doubt not tanking and using the draft rules to our advantage was dumb dumb dumb policy/philosophy/planning! We can't use lack of funds and resources as an excuse either as it costs no money to tank.
Come years end we may have missed out on a priority pick again by winning 1 to many games. Cannot see us winning another game.
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Tiger players selected to play with Coburg on the weekend train with Coburg once a week on the Friday night
Fair enough facts WP, but it still looks to me from the quote that training at Coburg is optional on at least Wednesdays and the Coburg coach wants at least two regular session of all players each week.
“It’s a good alignment because the Richmond boys came to training on Wednesday, and they were there Friday, which allows us to train together, which is really important.”
I can understand having players train at Coburg on Wednesday can give out selection info but IMO getting all fringe players at that session wouldn't be a bad thing.
A gentle hint to players they are in the frame to be dropped is a good stick to get rid of complacency as well as improving Coburg's performance.
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As you've illustrated above, our drafting and trading in the past 3 years has been OK, if not pretty good.
Basically your argument is that Craig Cameron should go because of the Thompson trade, and the club didn't tank. I don't prescribe to the opinion that the decision to tank is Cameron's alone.
Not a strong argument IMO, and would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater as punishment for not holding to a loser philosophy in a club that had had a loser philosophy for nearly 30 years.
Sorry FFV for the delayed reply to your post.
Firstly as shown in my initial post in this thread my argument wasn't just based on the Thomson trade and us not tanking. You can add a list that is overall too small and light weight, our continually poor use of the rookie list (last year's rookie draft was a waste) and holding onto the players not up to it with long-term contracts (eg: McGuane given 3-years and Gourdis contracted until 2012).
Not sure how expecting the employed footy dept. head and list manager to have done his upmost including using any draft rules in place to bring as many of the best talented footballers as possible to Punt Rd is a "loser philosophy". Having say Nathan Fyfe and Andrew Gaff on our list in addition to what we have wouldn't make our list worse ???. Holding the footy dept. head and list manager in his 4th year accountable is not throwing the baby out with the bathwater either (the same argument goes for the President in his 6th year and football director Tony Free in his 4th year on the Board). In fact I would argue tolerating the opposite is a loser philosophy. It's not like we back in the old days of us sacking people who don't achieve success immediately. The media like bringing up our past from 15-25 years ago but we've had continued stability off-field for the past 7 seasons (since the start of 2005) and supporters/member supported the Club going down the youth-path in terms of rebuilding the list.
The AFL is an elite professional competition both on and off field where every club is looking for an advantage in any and every area over the rest of the competition. To become the best you need to be the best. Surely we want people at Richmond who are smart, cunning and ruthless at doing what's best for Richmond in the long run. When it comes to list management and recruiting, for them to understand every nook and cranny of the draft system and exploit it to our advantage when the opportunity arises. Look at Scott Clayton at the Suns last year. He could have easily sat back and just relied on all the concessions the AFL gave Gold Coast yet he still worked out that there was a loophole in the concessions which gave Gold Coast a licence to print draft picks at will.
Look I understand some supporters have a problem with the idea of not going out to win every game but I didn't create a draft system that penalises a bottom 4 side for winning 5-6 games a year as we have done from 2009-11 compared to 4 wins. List management decisions and planning affect your list for the next decade afterwards. You can't afford to be just ok at it. I'd doubt the Pies can be accused of having a loser mentality when they tanked to get both Thomas and Pendlebury in 2005. It was all part of a calculated and well-thought out plan that is paying off now big-time for them.