Just to add to the debate...Learn to look past numbersGreg Baum | June 27, 2009
LEIGH Matthews, characteristically blunt, reckons it is hard to see a No. 1 draft pick in Jack Watts. In the two games he has played, Watts has looked overwhelmed. But it must be remembered that he is being held to an impossibly high standard. It is not his standard, but one set by the system. He is being held to the standard of No. 1 draft pick, and all it has come to mean.
If Watts had been drafted at, say, No. 40, he would still be the same man, the same footballer: 18, at school, a junior. But assessments would be different. It would be said that he had played as you might expect of an 18-year-old, part-time, schoolboy footballer thrown into the AFL. It would be said, as his school coach Robert Shaw said, that he was out of his league.
Much is skewed here. The foremost is the system. The draft order is seen as a perfect and immutable hierarchical arrangement of the available talent, from best to worst. The expectation is that the drafted players will be successful more or less in proportion to their draft number.
This ignores many realities. One is that clubs recruit according to their position and needs; Melbourne, too far down the ladder to bother with quick fixes, calculatedly chose a younger player in Watts. This did not stop the expectations piling up.
Another reality is that the draft order is a consensus, not a hierarchy. A third is that even recruiters admit it is only ever right on the day it is made. It is dynamic. From draft day onwards, some improve, some regress, some follow a steady course. Despite all the science now applied, no one can predict who will go which way.
The system is cruel on players, but cruel for recruiters, too. They make their judgments in advance, yet their work is judged retrospectively. Critics might quibble on draft day, then denounce thunderously five years later. Ultimately, it means jobs: ask Terry Wallace.
It is generally held that first-round draftees are guaranteed to become regular footballers. But let's look. We'll ignore the past three drafts, since it is too soon to make conclusive judgements about them, and concentrate on the three before that.
In 2005, Josh Kennedy, Beau Dowler, Jarrad Oakley-Nicholls, Darren Pfeiffer and Max Bailey all were drafted in the top 20. For different reasons, all have struggled to make an impact. Bernie Vince (32), John Anthony (37), Sam Lonergan (50), Joel Patfull (56) and Mathew Stokes (60) are all regulars.
In 2004, John Meesen, Chris Egan, Adam Thomson, Danny Meyer, Cameron Wood and Ryan Willits were all top-20 picks, Brent Prismall (32), Mark LeCras (37), Chris Knights (56), Matthew Egan (62), and James Gwilt (63) not. In 2003, the top 20 included Andrew Walker, Farren Ray, Kepler Bradley, Kane Tenace, David Trotter, Fergus Watts, Josh Willoughby, Billy Morrison and Llane Spaanderman, but not Jed Adcock (33), Mark Blake (38), Ricky Dyson (44), Heath Shaw (48), Daniel Jackson (53), Michael Rischitelli (61) or Shane Tuck (73).
It's gloriously inexact. If you trawl through these lists, every club has made "mistakes", and every club has identified "bargains". In fact, all they have done is make their most informed choice on draft day. The draft is a beginning, not an end.
Even at the pointy end, a certain level of inspired guesswork is necessary. The case in point is the famous 2004 draft, in which Lance Franklin was taken at No. 5, behind Brett Deledio, Jarryd Roughead, Ryan Griffen and Richard Tambling. This, as much as anything, probably cost Wallace his job. Yet on the day, doubt was muted.
Out of this system, each player emerges with a number, and it comes to define him thereafter. It lionises some, condemns others.
Sadly, the clubs are complicit in this....
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