Face Off - Miller v Jackson

[Stripes]

Which recruiter has been the better with trades and recruitment?

I was going to put a none of the above option but thought everyone would choose this....

Stripes

[Infamy]

Not sure anyone on this forum is qualified to answer this question because everyone has different perceptions of who chose who.

For example people blame Miller for selecting JON when he wanted Renouf
Beck was still in charge of recruiting in 2004, it was the last draft he was involved with at Richmond, he stayed on for the draft after Wallace's arrival

Plus Jackson has been at the club longer than Cameron and remains in charge of our recruiting. Not sure how Cameron can be credited with any selections, unless you count his time at Melbourne, and his time there is clouded by the club trading away picks on him. No one really knows his true involvement in developing the Melbourne list and he's not been at Richmond long enough to evaluate properly.

[Francois Jackson]

Neither Miller or Jackson. Both hacks

[Stripes]

Not sure anyone on this forum is qualified to answer this question because everyone has different perceptions of who chose who.

For example people blame Miller for selecting JON when he wanted Renouf
Beck was still in charge of recruiting in 2004, it was the last draft he was involved with at Richmond, he stayed on for the draft after Wallace's arrival

Plus Jackson has been at the club longer than Cameron and remains in charge of our recruiting. Not sure how Cameron can be credited with any selections, unless you count his time at Melbourne, and his time there is clouded by the club trading away picks on him. No one really knows his true involvement in developing the Melbourne list and he's not been at Richmond long enough to evaluate properly.

Interesting what you say about Beck and 2004. Perhaps I should clarify in eras or responsibility rather than individual decisions. Just like Wallace and Spud, where other assistant coaches would make bad calls from time to time, they have to take responsibility for the team regardless.

Miller made some good trades with players such as Simmonds and Polak but bad draft decisions with players such as Casserly and Hughes among others. Jackson traded poorly with players such as McMahon, Thomson and Hislop but arguably recruited well with Cotchin, Post and Vickery. Nahas was another great find though who was responsible for Gourdis and Putt?

Cameron was a throw away selection, more to generate discussion than pinpoint responsibility.

Stripes

[Francois Jackson]

Not sure anyone on this forum is qualified to answer this question because everyone has different perceptions of who chose who.

For example people blame Miller for selecting JON when he wanted Renouf
Beck was still in charge of recruiting in 2004, it was the last draft he was involved with at Richmond, he stayed on for the draft after Wallace's arrival

Plus Jackson has been at the club longer than Cameron and remains in charge of our recruiting. Not sure how Cameron can be credited with any selections, unless you count his time at Melbourne, and his time there is clouded by the club trading away picks on him. No one really knows his true involvement in developing the Melbourne list and he's not been at Richmond long enough to evaluate properly.

Interesting what you say about Beck and 2004. Perhaps I should clarify in eras or responsibility rather than individual decisions. Just like Wallace and Spud, where other assistant coaches would make bad calls from time to time, they have to take responsibility for the team regardless.

Miller made some good trades with players such as Simmonds and Polak but bad draft decisions with players such as Casserly and Hughes among others. Jackson traded poorly with players such as McMahon, Thomson and Hislop but arguably recruited well with Cotchin, Post and Vickery. Nahas was another great find though who was responsible for Gourdis and Putt?

Cameron was a throw away selection, more to generate discussion than pinpoint responsibility.

Stripes

sorry tell me what Post, Vickery, and for that matter Cotchin has done to be labelled a Jackson recruiting success

Nahas for that matter coming from where he did was a success no doubt about that.

Polak a success????

Simmonds 5 year deal for peanuts was a good result for us but Polak im not sure, actually yes i am, It wasn't!!

Face facts both of those people have had a direct influence of how we peform as a footy club and its not pretty.

Lets hope Cameron doesnt make it 3 from 3 otherwise we will be near the bottom for another 10 years

[Infamy]

Miller made some good trades with players such as Simmonds and Polak but bad draft decisions with players such as Casserly and Hughes among others. Jackson traded poorly with players such as McMahon, Thomson and Hislop but arguably recruited well with Cotchin, Post and Vickery. Nahas was another great find though who was responsible for Gourdis and Putt?

Not sure how you can consider Casserley a bad draft decision when it was his body that let him down. You can't tell someone is going to have chronic hamstring issues when stepping up to the elite level. He had all the tools but couldn't get on the park. Hughes was also a highly rated junior forward and tore it up at Coburg in his first year demanding AFL selection after kicking bags of 6 & 7 goals in the VFL. He lost his way, but is that a recruitment or development issue? I don't know if many people doubt Hughes' talent, just his application. Far too soon to make the call on Putt & Gourdis too. Not only were both late picks for talls which makes them very speculative to begin with, but Essendon were gutted we took Putt ahead of them.

sorry tell me what Post, Vickery, and for that matter Cotchin has done to be labelled a Jackson recruiting success

Nahas for that matter coming from where he did was a success no doubt about that.

Polak a success????

Simmonds 5 year deal for peanuts was a good result for us but Polak im not sure, actually yes i am, It wasn't!!

Face facts both of those people have had a direct influence of how we peform as a footy club and its not pretty.

Lets hope Cameron doesnt make it 3 from 3 otherwise we will be near the bottom for another 10 years

Polak only cost us a 3rd round pick, again I'm not sure we can be blamed for not seeing that he'd get hit by a tram in the coming years, however it was a good trade. We still got the player we wanted in the first round and so far he's been pick of the bunch. In hindsight it didn't turn out ok, however his career isn't over yet so who knows how it will turn out. We probably would have taken Dan Connors with that pick anyway so not sure how the trade is a point of contention.

[DallasCrane]

I love little Cotchin but we shouldn't be labelling him a success until he has played 200 games for the club. He is constantly injured. I have to reveal one of my greatest fears here- Cotchin's body may never stand up to the rigors of AFL footy and we should be open minded about that, instead of hailing him our next great mid.

As for who is the best recruiter, all I'll say Stripesy is that I wish you did put 'none of the above', it has been appalling for years and the fact that most people on here rated our trade week as a 4 or 5 out of ten, is sadly, one of our best results in recent times! Just the mere fact that we didn't stuff up trade week! 

[Jackstar is back]

Neither Miller or Jackson. Both hacks

CORRECT.
When is Channel 7,s Hammerheads making a return ????

[Hellenic Tiger]

I can remember Miller telling us at some stage during our one win in the last fourteen games of 2003 that we would have to absorb the pain and look forward to 2007 when we would be coming out of the rut. That is almost as diabolical as Terry's 16 goal a game blueprint and his 2011 statement. So for me Miller has been responsible and principally answerable to two failed regimes at the club.

Jackson and Cameron need to get this year right as the jury at best is still out. A Melbourne mate of mine said that he was not too happy with the early picks Melbourne got during Cameron's time at the club and that he only fared marginally better with his later picks. We will know 100% by season 2011 and by then me thinks that one if not both won't be at the club in that Hardwick will have instilled his own people by then.

We need to start attracting better calibre people at the club if so rather that picking up the people that other clubs were only too happy to leave behind. Its time we stopped being a half way house for on and off field personnel. Then we would not have to answer or make up threads like these. In a perfect world of course.

[Stripes]

My criteria for 'success' is based purely on what they have produced given their stage of development. So for example if Post was performing as he is now in his 5th season I would label him a failure but based on the reality that it is his, Vickery's and Nahas' first year at the club, I would rate them as successes. Clubs do not wait until a player has been around 10 years to make a call on a player, they base it on their age, potential, opportunity etc. I have done the same with our recruits and trades.

Casserly and Hughes were failures. Casserly is a recruiting failure through not fault of his own but all the same, given the return for the club, he was a wasted pick. Similarly, Hughes may have been rated a recruiting success in his first year but in 2009 he was a failure. This is why both of these players are no longer on our list plain and simple.

Right now, judging on current performance, Putt and Gourdis are failures. The questions is whether that is expected and what factors have hindered their development to date. From what we have seen of Cotchin he has been a success given the obstacles he has overcome. His upside remains huge. The only way he would be considered a recruitment blunder is if his injury concerns continue but as it stands, from the small amount of what we have seen, he has been a success.

My vote is for Jackson at the moment but if none of the above players realize their potential my decision will be vastly altered.

Stripes

[Infamy]

I still think its silly to blame recruiting on what is more likely a development issue.

[Stripes]

I still think its silly to blame recruiting on what is more likely a development issue.

Our current predicament doesn't come down to any one individual, decision or set of circumstances. Our problems are much deeper than that but this thread, like the coaching one, was just asking a question of opinion and perspective - who is better? No one knows the inner workings of the club and know one knows what TW and Spud actually did and didn't do either but looking in from the outside we can look at the evidence laid before us.  In this case we are looking at our recent recruiters and in some instances they appear to have made some good calls yet in others they seemed to have made poor choices. The question is to everyone who do you think made the better calls - Miller or Jackson?

Player development, education or motivation is such a crucial area but I really do not know who has been or who is ultimately responsible for it. Is it the coach, the assistant coaches, the specialist coaches....who? Because it is so hard to pinpoint I would rather try and focus on the areas of the club I can observe and judge with at least a small measure of accountability and evidence. Recruiting is one of them.

Stripes

[Infamy]

So you admit you're judging from afar and have no idea who is ultimately responsible, yet will slag off the blokes who recruited them simply because they read on their name on the day of the draft. Sorry, it just doesn't sit well with me.

I'm not saying our recruiters are blameless, but I just don't know how any punter can in any way evaluate their performance.

[Smokey]

Recruiters can only gather information and put names up as candidates - the decision to recruit or not recruit ultimately lies elsewhere.  They may be part of the decision-making process but can't be singled out for blame unless they publicly admit that they gave poor advice on a particular player that resulted in them being taken/not taken (and when has any recruiter from any club ever done that).  Their skill lies in identifying (and correctly forecasting the potential of) the right attributes in a player and it is a folly to try and pass judgment on that - too many other factors involved to make that judgment approach any reasonable level of subjectivity.  Only the inner sanctum of the club at that time will know what directives they (the recruiters) were given, what restrictions were applied, what information was delivered and what level of satisfaction with the outcome was ultimately realised.  To blame an individual recruiter for a club's list over a period of time is ignorant at best.

[Stripes]

So you admit you're judging from afar and have no idea who is ultimately responsible, yet will slag off the blokes who recruited them simply because they read on their name on the day of the draft. Sorry, it just doesn't sit well with me.

I'm not saying our recruiters are blameless, but I just don't know how any punter can in any way evaluate their performance.

That's an interesting post Infamy. Have you assumed I'm writing from the offices of Punt Road all this time? I think it's safe to say all of us on here (with perhaps the exception of Jackstar) are posting and judging based purely on opinions. Also interesting that you would claim I am 'slagging off blokes'. I've never been the type to insult or belittle people. More-so I will try and create a rational argument which if you read what I have written in previous posts in this thread I have attempted to do. You may disagree with my sentiments but that's your choice.

As to laying the blame for recruitment on the recruiters well......its like blaming poor coaching on the coaches.

I may be over simplifying the issue somewhat but supporters, media etc are quite happy to lay the blame for team failure on a coach yet their role is no more all encompassing than a recruiter. In fact a coach needs to rely upon far many more contributors, assistants, influences and variables than recruiters do. Similarly players are mercilessly dissected on these boards daily yet we really don't know what the inner sanctum of the club knows regarding their true injury status, off-field issues, team role etc yet we all judge them based on our observations. Yet you are saying we can't do the same with our recruiters...perhaps that is a little ignorant hey smokey

These 'Face Off' threads are designed to create debate and opposing opinions which they seem to have but if we wait to comment on only areas where we have first hand knowledge of then these boards would all but disappear.

Opinions are just that and I respect yours regardless of whether they are based on first hand facts or just gut feel. I hope you can do the same for me.

Stripes