breaking a cycle of mediocrity is a difficult exercise and it becomes harder as every generation struggles harder to achieve it. Richmond needs to recruit "A grade players". Carlton were a rabble - they got Judd and became finals contenders. Richmond were a rabble and got the likes of Houli and Grigg and Maric and Knights and Chaplin etc. These boys are great lads but they aint gonna ever lift us into contention. Judd put Carlton into contention and they will play finals again.
All those players are hole fillers, all of them. Upgrading from poor to average. yes they wont get you a premiership but they will and did improve our list. Versus some kid drafted at 90 who clogs your list for 2 years and gets dropped.
Carlton also have a lot of cash to spend, where the 75 3 0 plan and the fighting tiger fund comes in. We need more cash, if you've got a spare million or two lying around doing nothing the club could do with it.
I haven't looked but I bet the likes of Essendon and Carlton outspend us by 5 million or so a year.
whats the point of bringing in any player if they cant help you win a flag or put you into a position of winning a flag?
sorry ramps for bringing up such an old post.
i reckon it has been shown you dont just draft kids to build a list.
every side goes thru a value add phase take robbie nahas for instance. he improved the list but as the list has developed and improved robbie has become superfluous to needs so we now need to upgrade on him or value add again and get a better version of nahas a version we may well need to upgrade on again. its about list improvement over time and you sure as hell cannot do it with just kids.
heres a sliding door moment for ya. we take michael barlow a state league player as a rookie in 2010 instead of robbie hicks a kid. the same draft we take podsiadlly instead of relton roberts.
mate there is nothing wrong with targeting and taking mature recruits so long as you do it on the cheap. ya know pods and barlow like others was there for all to see. they ticked some pretty simple criteria.
should sydney not have gone after josh kennedy and mcglyn two players from afl lists who before the trade would have been labelled battlers by most.
its not if you should take mature players but where and at what cost and where are they at as players. all clubs have to target mature players but there must be a good reason and they must tick some basic boxes.
steve morris is a 24 yr old we got him basically for nothing of course we had to target and take him.
people grumbling about us taking mature players last yr are wrong. we invested some very good picks on kids.in fact we invested all of our good picks on kids. we in fact took 5 kids vlastuin, mcintosh, mcbean, mcdonough, all 4 with good picks we didnt go past the 3rd round and then there was williams as a rookie, a rookie whos a lovely size had some injury and as far as kids go has every chance if he can get healthy.
we then actually addressed list deficiencies as far as age and experience went. the mature players taken may not have been everyones cup of tea including me. but they did addresss areas that needed to be addressed.
in other words and to keep it short the right processes have been gone thru.
there are so many good options in state leagues and there are some real good players on afl lists who for whatever reason are not getting a regular game. we just have to invest more into these areas.
the team we beat on the weekend have taken mainly on the cheap and invested time into the following mature players and fair dinkum they are all better picks than taking a kid in the rookie draft who does nothing more than clog up your list for two yrs.
and ya know what with late nd and young rookie picks clogging up the list is the norm not the exception.
that team femantle have taken mature types state or from other clubs in.
ballantyne nd 21 , barlow rookie , bradley nd 69, dawson psd, de boer rookie, duffy nd 39, griffin nd 61, hannath psd, michael johnson psd, mcpharlin the steak knives in the hodge croad trade. mzungu nd 39, pearce f/a, silvagni rookie, spurr rookie,
