Fired off an email this morning.... thanks again, great article.

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Richard Pratt - A Carlton legend.

Good article M+D. Take that, you hack!

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Cer 'ch 'n alluog Blues

I didn't say we should of played worse, I was pointing out that we did have an alternative. I understand that it's a poorly written, poorly researched and generally biased article, and that people want to defend the club. But it's incorrect to say - as most have - that we had no other choice. There are always other choices, and it's these that the decision to re-tred should be benchmarked against. It's just plain silly to justify our actions by comparing how many games our re-treds played versus how many games the players we gave up have played. Why? I hear you all ask. Well think about it people:

1) Any idiot would could tie their shoes up properly and wasn’t on speed could get a game with the Blues in 2003/2004/2005, so of course the players we brought in were going to play a fair few games. Can’t remember the coach who said it, but the comment was along the lines of “Carlton’s plight is best summed up by the fact that Prendergast is still on their list. Wouldn’t get a game at any other clubâ€

Interesting perspective, but:

* no club needs a 25-30 year old grouping
* Gleeson's article was talking about what we got. the carltonfc article talks about what we gave. Comparing games played, in the absence of one of our players given away being the missing link and being a premiership player, is the only valid way to compare the 2; everything else is supposition.
* if a club trades for Murphy by giving up McGrath, and lets say Murphy isnt good enough to get a game, that means Essendon* has lost completely. Traded for absolutely nothing. The trade is a draw, incosequential, if they end up as useless to one another.

Carlton had a gaping hole in the list, we could recruit youngsters or we could recruit trades. The fact that only 3 clubs were in that draft post 60 tells me all I need to know about recruiting for youngsters in that age.

Well no club except every club that's ever competed for a flag, let alone won one.

I don't hear anyone calling for more 25-30 year olds at Carlton!

Seriously nightcrawler, I hear what you're saying and yes in my mind I think we could have picked up 2-3 good long term players with the youth route, considering lateness of the picks and seemingly poor draft at the back end.

Instead we have picked up 13 players, 6 remain and likely 2 more will go in the next 12 months. the remainders may be 100 game players for Carlton, or may all be gone by the next time we hit the finals.

The Club made a choice and went through with it wholeheartedly. I hated the recruitment of Mott and Kenna but that's the huge loss of what the Club did.

I think everyone knows we had a choice and what we did. the point of that Age article though is not about the choice.

The two guys who write the articles on the official website have to say something against the article
We had to recycle players because of the position we were in,but we went overboard.we should of risked picking a couple of youngsters instead of some of the recycled stuff.

the two guys who wrote the aerrticle have to say nothing but were stirred to write something because the article is a piece of crap.

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This type of slight is alien in the more cultured part of the world - Walsh. Its up there with mad dogs, Englishmen and the midday sun!

Thanks for the comment DB, but keogh we don't have to say anything at all.

You are probably aware of many anti-Carlton articles over the past few years, after all, we're an easy target at the moment and we sell papers. We also got more than our fair share of positive articles earlier in the year. Over the past weeks we've copped a fair bit, and it won't end.

The problem with the Gleeson article, and thus the response, was that it was only one part of the story. Personally I think we should have taken youngsters with the draft picks - Hartigan, Tuck would be very useful (NB Richmond also took Morrison and Simon Fletcher in teh 60's and 70's so they stuffed up too), but Gleeson only points out who came in. He does not talk about what we gave up in the trades, which is pivotal to understanding what happened. It annoyed me so out came the article. But we didn't have to say anything. We never do.

FWIW, most of my anti-press rants get knocked back by the Club, this was the first time one got through. This is a good thing - next time Patrick Smith writes a biased piece of floatsam we can take aim. TCers should consider this a positive - if there's an article that really needs a response you might have an avenue to pick it to pieces through the Club website / M&D.

We had the youngest list in season 2005 ... not sure how we could have got more QUALITY youngsters into the club given our draft penalties.

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In WADA we trust

YOUNG and GOOD aren't the same thing.

The happy hand of hindsight allows me to say I'd preferred to have recruited Tuck and Hartigan (and I think Maxwell was a rookie in that year) over Kenna, Bowyer etc.

All I'm saying Dukes is that in my view we took too many second chances and with late picks could have gone with some other youngsters. It was one of many courses of action and could have us a little better off in hindsight. But of course, the Club chose otherwise.

keogh can you please explain why you re-posted this when the thread had died off a few months ago?

The average age of a teams list can change dramatically each season, I don't think a club's recruiters have a calculator out when they are assessing prospective recruits.

I consider our recruiting post 'penalties' to have been a little unsubtle.

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Just because I'm offended, doesn't mean I'm wrong.

I reckon you have to have a think about which way you want to approach the argument...

Are we arguing outcome?
or
Are we arguing process?

If you're arguing outcome and over half of those guys went nowhere, or arguably held us back from developing young players, then I'd agree with you. I reckon most here would. Theres not much doubt, especially with who has been delisted over the past 2 seasons, that we picked up some players who weren't going to make it.

But the process is the different thing. You have to ask what else could they have done, who else could they have picked up. Which late draftees were going to be picked up rather than Mott and Kenna to show that we without doubt made a mistake. Does that make sense? I mean, if DeLuca and Bannister deliver on their promise and become 100 game players then those late draft picks would have been used brilliantly.

I realise I sound like Grant Thomas in this thread. Dont hate me.

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Formerly: Ackland the Wonderkid / Army the Wonderkid / quivering mess / molsey / Tony Lynn Fan Club

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"One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds." - Frank Zappa

I think we are arguing the outcome with our late draft picks in 2003 more than anything else. For example if we took Hudson (Adelaide quality ruckman recruited from VFL - Werribee?) instead of Deluca or Mott, Aaron Davey (was playing for Port Melbourne in VFL) instead of Kenna and Shane Tuck (playing in SANFL after being dumped by Hawthorn) instead of Johnson/Harford we'd all be very happy with the outcome.

Walker at pick #2 will probably prove to be the right selection whilst Scotland is great value for pick #35. Swapping Teague & McGrath for McKernan & Murphy respectively was a good deal for us.

Mosley I am computer idiot who always pushes the wrong buttons.I was trying to put it into another recent post on similar lines

Good work. I love it when people bring up past articles, even better if done by mistake!

I note that this issue has been raised by Warby in another thread. I think it is very important to know who else we could have drafted, if only on a hindsight basis, before attempting to evaluate the methods of the day. If you start from Scotland's traded pick at 35, the following AFL players were drafted in 2003:

Tom Roach, Eddie Sansbury, Peake (Freo), Ricky Dyson, Pettigrew, Matthew Ball, Daniel Jackson, Sam Fisher, Hartigan and Shane Tuck, plus a whole heap of youngsters. Importantly most of these players were taken between 35 and 50. 35, our first real pick post the Priority(Walker), was traded for Scotland. Pick 51, our next, was traded for the 2 Hawks Harford and Johnson. This could have nabbed Daniel Jackson or Sam Fisher, both very useful players (or have I got my Fisher's mixed up)?

(Could someone post this - the only one I can find is the AFL.com.au one with all the drivel write-ups)

I've left out the Ben Hudson / Ricky Mott one for in my memory no one talked about Hudson as a draftee and hasn't he shown the world up? In hindsight you'd take Hudson in a flash but at the time it looked like he was just a VFL player. Arguably so was Mott, so proven in the year ahead.

After this pick (we got Mott for the Allan pick, pick 57), it's all late draft picks with late selections and only Richmond, St Kilda and Carlton still in the game. The Tigers picked up Morrison but also late gems in Hartigan and Tuck. WE picked up Bannister, DeLuca, Kenna and Bowyer.

Other than Allan the other trades were all for mature players - Morrell, Teague, McGrath, Clarke. Perhaps if we could have secured draft picks instead for these it may have been better in hindsight, but you have to ask whether these were available?

So if you look at it, we're still to work out whether Pick 35 / Scotland was worthwhile. The next 5 years will tell us. Pick 51 was a loss, as we could have got (again in hindsight) Jackson, Fisher or Rowe instead. But after that, we used late picks which do not customarily bring success. Deluca and Bannister probably have this year to work out if we flopped on these selections.

iunless of course the club was never think just about that year but rather was looking 3 or even more years ahead and thinking, okay we are shit, we will have a heap of kids coming through these doors, early picks, rookies etc, this year we pick upo tex and then we'll go for some biggger more mature bodies to have around the place while these kids we plan to draft develop. Players with sound attitudes - towards Denis, yeah yeah, hate denis all you like but in the end it is up to him to have players around who'll follow, all coaches need this and all coaches will get rid of players who will not listen to them (hence clarke over beaumont, and also, i think why we went for Mott, another chance for the bigtime etc) - who train hard and who can see their dream slippoing away, that'd be handy for the kids, to see these desire of these older guys wanting something so bad....

Now we draft the kids and as we do we whittle away this core group of players who were never expected to take us anywhere except though time and space, keeping those that will work for longer and longer periods until the kids are ready - now going by what Bomber Thompson and other coaches blab on about (forget talent here) they talk about a side needeing to be old enough to win the flag, so lets say five years of kids developing before we are anywhere near good enough. During those five years (or so) we need bodies to take the hits and whacks, to pick the kids up, to show them its all worthwhile etc.

We have

Kouta
Lance
Skinny
McGrath
Scotland
De Luca(?)
Stevens
Houla (now)
Teague
French
Mclaren
Saddo

12 mature bodied players

with Livo, T-Bird, Wiggins, Davies coming along.

In my view many of these players weill fall away as more and more kids step up.

So it may be argued that the club has taken a far longer view than people give give it credit for - perhaps the club never was trying to do anything other than change the culture while waiting for the early draft picks to come their way - course that 10 win season would never have been expected by anyone!

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This type of slight is alien in the more cultured part of the world - Walsh. Its up there with mad dogs, Englishmen and the midday sun!