How does one club fail so consistently in recruitment?

[Ox]

?????

Gee,i like the look of him!(Farmer)

Now,that kid will be a great defender!!(McGuane,Thursfield.)

I see a solid ruckman in him!!(Browne,Gus)

Sean Grigg would work well at tigerland - Damien Hardwick!!!!

Once he puts some weight on,i can see him running the lines like daisy thomas(Shane Edwards)

or

"Let's invest time,money and list re-management into these blokes"(Coghlan,Foley)


After much thought i have come to the basic realisation,the RFC represents the average DumbFuk aussie administration,that has been ran so badly on ego and donations,it has far exceeded it's life-span.

[10 FLAGS]

They dont know what there looking for. Its pretty apparent. Just my opinion.

They just dont know.

 

[Ox]

or to be more precise,
the entire staff is severely under-qualified.

If i see Farmer i reckon i'll just have to ask him WTF goes on in his heart and head during a game

[10 FLAGS]

And add another dozen at least. We're stuffed. The clubs football administration is diabolical. List management a disgrace. The supporters have every right to be ropeable.

[Ox]

what do they expect without a ruckman is sight since stafford

[mightytiges]

People wrongly assume the draft is designed to best help struggling clubs on the bottom of the ladder. It doesn't really. It actually helps best those clubs who well manage and maintain a strong quality mature core group. If you have this group you spend 4-5 years challenging before falling away as the older players slow down and retire. You then fall down to the bottom of the ladder for a couple of years and fill up with a large new young crop and then the next core group is made up of the remainder of the first core who are now older plus the best of the new young crop who have gained the necessary experience. You then have a side/list to rise up the ladder. The process is then repeated.

The problem at Richmond was when the draft was introduced (1986) we didn't have this quality core group to begin with thanks to mass retirements, trade wars for crappy Collingwood players and our best experienced players walking out post-1982. We struggled at the bottom of the ladder for the first 9 drafts or so drafting country kids as we had no money. By luck somehow plus gained off the dying Fitzroy carcus (Brodders/M.Gale) and getting Richo as F/S for free, we were able to actually build a decent core to take us to the finals in 1995. The problem was this core wasn't good enough on its own and we needed to add to it with more young talent with our early picks in the mid-late 90s drafts. Instead we topped up trading top picks for recycled fringe players from other clubs. The average core we had kept us around the mid-ladder mark (ninth mainly  ). The only really quality youngster we drafted was Brad Ottens and the only classy mature recycled player we gained was Leon Cameron. With those two additions and a decent stopper full-back in Gaspar plus a good run with injuries and a number of our middle-tier players having one-off great years (Tivs, Hilton), we made the finals in 2001. However once again we weren't anywhere good enough and fell straight back down again in 2002. By then the 1995 core that had served us for 7-8 years was reaching its used-by-date and due to topping up we had hardly any quality kids coming through from underneath thanks to our 1995-2001 poor recruiting. By the end of Spud's reign we were back to having no quality mature core and list of mainly mid-20s duds just like 1986-87. At the end of 2004 we had to start from scratch again but completely stuffed up the 2004-5 drafts so that pushed the rebuild back further. Even the 2006-7-8 drafts are ordinary in terms of number of quality kids drafted although we did gain Jack, Cotch, TV and Rance with top 20 picks. You know my views already on us failing to plan in 2009-10 for more top (priority) picks to help us rebuild our list more quickly and properly.

When you look at our recruiting history it's not hard to understand why we have failed for so long to build a quality and well-balanced playing list. We simply as a Club have never understood how the the draft system works. If you have 3-4 years of top drafting you can build a core group that can be built around that gives you a chance of success for the next decade; if you totally stuff up 3-4 years of drafting you can leave gaping holes in your list that last a decade and confine you to mediocrity. Recruiting is that much a knife-edge and why it is so critical to get it right with the right people in charge who realistically and truly understand where a playing list is at and can map out where and how to become successful. Sadly we've had 30 years of getting it wrong with the wrong people in charge who had/have little idea in terms of judging football talent and overrate our list. I even had one deluded high-up RFC official tell me and a friend of mine while watching a training session in April 2009 that we had the best crop of young players in the AFL  ???. They just make things up as they go along feeding a load of far-fetched grand-plans and piffle to supporters to justify their poor and misguided decision-making. Basically talk that's not backed up by their actions.