Just a couple of brief mentions of Richmond but a pretty good article about rebuilding a side from the bottom to the top....From bottom to topBy Nick Bowen
Fri 01 Jul, 2011FROM round 10, 2002, an exciting young Geelong team won seven games in a row. Sixteen of the 22 players who would be part of the Cats' 2007 premiership team played in at least one of those wins.
They included youngsters Joel Corey, Paul Chapman, Cameron Ling, Corey Enright, Jimmy Bartel - then known as James - Gary Ablett, James Kelly and Steve Johnson.
Geelong's victims in this run included one of that season's Grand Finalists, Collingwood, and three other finalists, Essendon, Melbourne and West Coast.
Under coach Mark Thompson, the Cats were playing an exhilarating brand of football. At the end of the streak, after round 16, they sat fifth on the ladder, just percentage outside the top four.
However, they won just one more game for the season - against 15-placed St Kilda by one point - to finish ninth. Their losses included a 45-point humbling at the hands of 13th-placed Fremantle.
Still, it seemed a promising season. And, after investing heavily in youth at the 1999 and 2001 drafts, logic suggested Geelong's young squad would continue to improve the following year.
It was not to be. The Cats won just two games in 2003's first 10 rounds and just seven - and a draw - for the season.
They opened 2004 with three straight losses, including 61-point and 54-point thrashings by St Kilda and Carlton in rounds one and two respectively.
At the time, there was no shortage of journalists and Geelong fans calling for Thompson's head.
As we now know, the Cats regrouped to make the top four that year and - after an unexpected detour into the bottom half of the ladder in 2006 - took out the premiership three years later.
Geelong's journey from its decision at the end of 1999 to reinvigorate its list with youth to the premiership cup is a good example of the rocky path that awaits any developing club.
This season, Melbourne, Richmond, North Melbourne and Essendon seem to be the teams similarly placed to Geelong's class of 2002.All have invested heavily in youth at recent drafts and, after several lean seasons, appeared well positioned to climb the ladder sooner rather than later.
But, like Geelong in 2002, each has demonstrated some of the telltale signs of young sides.
Most obvious has been their inconsistency - from month to month, week to week and, even, from quarter to quarter.
All four have been guilty of it, but Melbourne's lapses have been most heavily scrutinised. Its win against Richmond last weekend marked only the second time this season it has won consecutive games.
And, on several occasions, the Demons have followed big wins with big losses and vice versa.
North Melbourne coach Brad Scott has had two regular laments this season: his team's relatively poor skill execution and its inability to compete with the competition's top-four sides.
Again, these are regular characteristics of developing groups. If we assume this year's top-four teams will come from Geelong, Collingwood, Carlton, Hawthorn and West Coast, the four developing teams have collectively registered only one win against top-four opposition - Essendon's victory over West Coast in round seven.
This is nothing new. In 2000-01, a rebuilding West Coast won just one of 12 games against those seasons' top-four teams. In 2002-03, Geelong won two of nine; in 2000-02, St Kilda won two of 21; from 2004-06 Hawthorn won one of 17; and in 2004-05, Collingwood won one of 11.
But all these clubs eventually developed into powerhouses, the Eagles winning the 2006 premiership, the Cats winning in 2007 and 2009, Hawthorn in 2008 and Collingwood last season.
The Saints did not win a flag, but made the 2009 and 2010 Grand Finals.
All are examples developing teams can aspire to, and follow.
The AFL Record spoke with six men who were central to these club ‘rebuilds' - Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson, West Coast assistant coach Peter Sumich, former St Kilda assistant coach Matthew Rendell, former Geelong VFL coach Ron Watt, Geelong recruiting and list manager Stephen Wells and Collingwood national recruiting manager Derek Hine.
All agreed youth-based rebuilds are an inexact science, with clubs requiring patience and conviction to negotiate the inevitable road humps sent to test their faith in their long-term plans.
But Clarkson said a club that was able to stay this course could reap the rewards.
"My experience has been if you inject a lot of youth and energy into the place and a clear sense of direction and purpose, you can accomplish some great things in a quick space of time," he said.
But how does a developing club best nurture a promising batch of youngsters into the core of its next premiership team?
As a starting point, it makes sense that you have to understand the challenges young players face in the AFL today.
Watt, Geelong's VFL coach when many of its 2007 and 2009 premiership players were starting out, said players coming into an AFL club from the junior ranks faced a massive learning curve.
For example, Watt said players' skill errors might not have been highlighted at junior level, but that soon changed at AFL level.
"The feedback and the intensity with which they're reviewed is a big step up for them," Watt said.
"So setting reasonable and consistent expectations for players is important in their development. The way you sell the message about what they're seeing in their review is important."
Just as most young players have work to do on their skills and decision-making, Watt said they also needed at least two or three seasons to develop the fitness and strength to compete weekly against seasoned AFL players.
"Going back 10 years, we had a lot of young people in the team and knew what it was like to be pushed around a lot," he said.
Watt said even Geelong's best young players in the early 2000s had inconsistent patches and periods where they were sent back to the VFL to work on their skills.
Bartel is a good example. In his Sunday Herald Sun column last week, the Cat star said he received "seriously tough love" from then-Geelong coach Mark Thompson early in his third season, 2004, when he was dropped to the VFL for seven weeks.
"In hindsight, it was the best thing that happened to me," Bartel said.
"I was playing in the AFL the way I'd played junior footy, basically running around trying to get as many kicks as I could.
"(Thompson) wanted me to learn more about the game, how to set up in the team's structure, how to play in more positions and to use my voice more."
Bartel returned to the senior side in round 10, 2004, and played every game for the remainder of the year, as the Cats finished in the top four for the first time since 1997. He has not been dropped since.
Rendell, who served as an assistant coach to Grant Thomas at St Kilda from 2002-06 and is now Adelaide's national recruiting manager, cited two-time All-Australian midfielder Leigh Montagna as another player who benefited from tough love early in his career.
When Montagna arrived at the Saints, Rendell said he was "a little fella who was not that physical, someone who'd rather run around the edges".
But Rendell said Thomas identified Montagna was someone who would respond to being made to earn his AFL stripes.
And earn them he did.
After being drafted by St Kilda with pick No. 37 in the 2001 NAB AFL Draft, Montagna played just 30 games in his first four years.
But, by 2007, he had improved the physical side of his game to the extent he finished that season in the Saints' top four tacklers.
"Grant didn't give him a free ride," Rendell said. "I bet you there were times when ‘Joey' (Montagna) felt like giving it away because of all the hard stuff. But I'm sure he sees the benefit of that now."
Scott took a different approach with two of his young players, Jack Ziebell and Ben Cunnington, at the start of this season.
After injury interrupted starts to their careers at North, Ziebell, 20, and Cunnington, who turned 20 on Thursday, started the 2011 season slowly.
After the Kangaroos' round-five loss to Richmond, former Sydney Swans coach Paul Roos said the pair was "unfit for AFL level".
"They've been next to useless today," Roos said of the pair on the Fox Sports' telecast of the match.
"It's a tough game with this new ‘sub' rule and I know they're only young players, but maybe they should be playing in the (VFL) to get their fitness up."
After the game, Scott acknowledged Ziebell and Cunnington had work to do on their fitness, but said both otherwise matched "the pretty high standards" the Kangaroos set for their players.
Instead of dropping them to the VFL, Scott continued to play them, with both assigned extra aerobic training on top of North's team training sessions.
Scott's patience, particularly with Ziebell, has been rewarded. Ziebell averaged 13 possessions in North's first four games this year, but has since averaged 17.8.
He has also recaptured the form that made him such an exciting prospect in his debut season, 2009, before he suffered two broken legs.
Ziebell's games against Melbourne in round eight, Adelaide in round 11 (25 possessions, 11 tackles and a goal) and Port Adelaide last Sunday (a career-high 27 disposals and a goal) were outstanding.
And, in a sign his fitness is improving, Ziebell, who was replaced by North's substitute player in rounds six-eight, has played out the past six matches.
Cunnington was used in the substitute role in rounds six and seven, and replaced by the substitute in rounds 10 and 13.
But he has shown his versatility by moving into defence in the past month, and told afl.com.au recently he was determined to build his fitness.
As such, we suspect Scott will continue to back him.
The difference in Scott's approach and that of Geelong and St Kilda with Bartel and Montagna in the early 2000s is perhaps due to the different mindset of today's players.
Sumich, who has been John Worsfold's senior assistant since 2002, said the Eagles' coaching staff have had to take a different approach with the current crop of youngsters to the one they took with players such as Dean Cox, Daniel Kerr and Chris Judd a decade ago.
"We've used a similar model but what's changed is the attitude of players, and the way they think and operate," Sumich said.
"So, we've had to adapt to them a little bit. The systems and structures we had in place back in 2002 won't work now. We've had to adapt them slightly to the ‘Gen Y' attitudes."
Sumich said the biggest change had been the growing importance of coach-player communication.
"I think communication has probably become the No. 1 thing now," he said.
"That's something I work on a fair bit, the one-on-one stuff, the day-to-day chats. It might not even be about footy - I think that's really important with this generation."
The proliferation of club development coaches in recent years has meant youngsters have all the hands-on tuition they needed to bring their skills and decision-making up to AFL standard.
"Development is massive and that's why clubs are spending more and more money in development and trying to fast-track their young players," Rendell said.
But Rendell and Watt said just as important was ensuring players had a sense of belonging at their club.
"The young players who started with us many years ago felt that we were developing a list that was handpicked by the people here and they really belonged and they were going to be part of a bigger picture," Watt said.
"If they were doing the right things and working to the club's expectations, there was always the opportunity for them to be a player here."
Part of the reason why Adelaide and Port Adelaide want to field their own reserves teams in the SANFL is so their young players won't be farmed off across that competition's nine clubs each weekend, Rendell said.
Obviously, a club's senior players have an important role to play in a developing club, principally through the on- and off-field example they set for their impressionable young teammates.
We've seen that at the Eagles this year. Granted, Luke Shuey, Nic Naitanui, Scott Selwood and Jack Darling have played their part in the club's climb from 2010 wooden-spooner to top-four contender this season.
But West Coast coach Worsfold told Fox Sports' On The Couch program last Monday night the re-emergence of senior players Cox, Kerr, Andrew Embley and Darren Glass had been crucial to helping such youngsters gel together as a group.
But, above all, clubs hitching their masts to youth must set their sights high and maintain their faith that, in time, their core group of youngsters will deliver success.
As heavy and demoralising as losses against top-four teams can be, Clarkson said they should be regarded as a learning experience.
"What you're searching for out of those demoralising losses is the standards that drive the very, very best teams," Clarkson said.
"The areas you're deficient in are drummed into you quite clearly because you've just played a very, very talented opponent. And the change that is activated on that basis is of an enormous benefit.
"Some of the learning may be as simple as a young ruckman going up against a more experienced ruckman and getting a real wake-up call that he needs to get into the gym, put on more weight and have a really big pre-season."
In this way, Clarkson's former assistant Damien Hardwick salvaged some positives from Richmond's 63-point loss to Hawthorn in round three. Chiefly, he praised the performances of defenders David
Astbury, in his 20th game, and Dylan Grimes, in his second, on two of the game's best power forwards, Jarryd Roughead and Lance Franklin respectively.
Although Roughead kicked three goals and Franklin five, Grimes got to the contests and Astbury was outmarked just once.After such losses, and in the inevitable lean patches of a rebuild, it was important a coach projected the confidence to his players that the club remained on the right track, Clarkson said.
To do so, it was sometimes important to block out external factors such as media and supporter criticism, Clarkson said. In such circumstances, the counsel of trusted mentors was invaluable, he said.
For Clarkson, these mentors included then-Hawthorn president Ian Dicker, director Jason Dunstall and then-CEO Ian Robson. All were among the Hawks officials who gave him the mandate to invest in youth when he was first appointed.
"Once you've got that shared view, it's just a matter of continuing to drive towards that target," Clarkson said.
"There are a lot of hurdles along the way, sometimes there are some pretty significant roadblocks. But if you share that common view on where you need to go, then it's very, very easy to make sure you continue to map out that journey."
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