Craig Cameron and the grim message from recent times. Photo: Justin McManus
Now for my one and only "criticism" lol....
I hope we aren't just blaming lack of funds entirely for poor onfield performances and poor recruiting because IMO that is way too simplistic and in some ways a cop out for want of a better phrase as it is avoiding the whole picture of why we have failed over and over again.
Fair enough to link grand final appearances and premierships to footy dept. expenditure as we are then talking about reaching the elite of the competition. However, what has made us the laughing stock for so long is we couldn't even scrape into the finals once in a while in a era where half the sides can make them. Sorry but 2 finals appearances in 27 years isn't a result of lack of funds. It is purely and simply a result of the Club's own incompetence year after year from the board down to admin, head of footy dept., recruiters, coaching, etc ...
Even just looking at a few examples from the past 4 years:
- It was not lack of funds that meant we traded a top 20 pick for a dud like Jordan McMahon who was playing ressies at Werribee at the time.
- It was not lack of funds that meant we had just 2 picks in the top 50 of both the 2007 and 2008 drafts when we were supposedly still in rebuild mode. The 2008 draft was under Craig's reign as list manager. No point claiming the 2006 draft was a success thanks to making FJ full-time when the following two drafts returned so few picks. FJ as a full-time recruiter can take credit for the selections in 2006 but the only reason we used so many picks on kids is becuase the 2006 draft was one of the deepest. Even then we effectively traded away our 3rd round pick that year for Polak.
- It was not lack of funds that meant Craig traded a 3rd round pick for a dud who couldn't kick like Adam Thomson and then a 4th rounder for Hislop.
- It will not be lack of funds that means a 27 year old Brad Miller who was playing mostly at Casey last year is promoted off the rookie list and may play round 1 when he is not part of our future and was only meant to be back-up.
- It was not lack of funds that enabled us to win meaningless games in second half of a season costing us priority picks by just 1 or 2 games when priority pick(s) could have provided us with a 10 year player(s).
If you take just the first 11 rounds of the past 4 years we have won just 6 games from 44. I don't expect us to add greatly to those 6 wins either this first half of the season either so it could be less than 10 wins from 55 by round 11 this year. Not even our resident AFL porper North Melbourne is close to such a pathetic record as that. Our seasons have been over before the midway point where we are averaging less than 2 wins and yet we have no bonus priority picks to show for it by the end of any of those seasons. That's no priority picks to accelerate the turnover and rebuilding of our list. That's no priority picks to access more of the best talented kids at the top end of the draft. We never used the draft system to our advantage because we never understood it and we never planned in advance such as midway of 2009 to exploit it to our advantage knowing we would have a very young list in 2010. If we had been smart as a Club we would be a year ahead of where we are now in terms of our list without needing to spend a cent more but alas we weren't. If we wish to become the best then surely we need to be ruthless and exploit every AFL draft rule and system available to us to our advantage. Yes smokey I'm still peeved off about it
.
It's a great idea that we are raising these huge funds to pay off our debt and build a warchest for free agency and credit goes to Benny Gale for that idea. However I just hope Craig, Gary and the Club on the night not only blamed lack of funds for the state of our list but also acknowledged their own stuff ups that had nothing to do with money but rather a poor and inconsistent recruiting philosophy.
And that ends my late night rant!
