Sorry Billy.. Not ready to bury it yet...still chewing on it....just mentioning Trent Sporn makes me chew a bit harder....

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"When you have the attitude of a champion, you see adversity as your
training partner."
- Conor Gillen

i don't quite see how you could jump to that conclusion. At the moment, according to most we are a complete fuckup of an organisation who know nothing. So why does "not doing enough research in the 2000 draft" automatically get dismissed by you molsey?

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The problem will be made. for the solution to be sold, to your face before your eyes, tolerance is now the new danger

How long is a piece of string? How much is enough? Is 4 full time personnel enough or is 6 part time personnel?

We had a recruiting department that made decisions viewed generally positively at the time other than the Sporn decision which caused some questioning. The draft is a lottery and you make best guess estimates and calculations based on what you have in front of you. Add injury and some environmental factors (ie development strategies) and you have a result that we have seen. To say recruiting didn't do enough work is woefully simplistic to me and ignores a whole range of external factors and the implicit risk we take on any draft pick.

Having just watched the Bears final from 95, and the discussion in the other thread, it is quite clear we were aiming for another flag some time around the late 90s early 2000s. By the end of 2000 season, it became apparent that time was running out, so we went for draft picks that year.

In 1996 we definitely would've been expecting to be a premiership contender.

In 1997 we lost a wealth of experienced players. But with a strong nucleus to the team still in place, a premiership tilt definitely wouldn't have been out of the question in the coming years with the players we added into the mix. Come 2000 it was our best chance.

Footy clubs look to being the premier team in a small window. Not ten years, more like three. If they fail, they start again looking for premiership success in the next three or so years.

To win a premiership you need a strong basis of 100 games + players. Why dont we? The answer lies from the 2000 draft and beyond, through to Brittain's sacking and the mass clean-out/recycled players brought in at the end of 2003. Those three years add up to where we are at the moment...one or two older players and a threadbare middle tier. The key to keeping your premiership chances alive is to maintaining a strong middle tier and core of experienced stars.

So what your telling me is that our recruiting officer did a good job even though he did not pick up 1 decent player apart from Wiggo in the draft(Once more talent comes in Wiggo will be gone aswell).....
Do me a favor have a good look at the list of the draftees in the year 2000 especially the second half of it we missed out on alot talented young players for that we are copping hardcore!m Once you have had a good look at it come back and let me know if you stil disagree with me.

Backing up an urgument with "you look at it too simplisticly so my way is better" doesn't cut it.

I just want to know why "not enough effort put into research in 2000" is instantly dismissable. It seems that anything is possible with us.

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The problem will be made. for the solution to be sold, to your face before your eyes, tolerance is now the new danger

It's possible for a recruiting officer to do a great job, and end up with no players from a draft on the list 6 years later. The choice of player is only one factor of many that determines what happens to a player over their career.

You just CANNOT judge recruitment based on hindsight. It just doesn't work.

Not doing enough research, choosing players for the wrong reasons etc are all valid criticisms, but you can't work backwards and say that we probably did those things because the draft hasn't worked out for us 6 years later.

ACHILLES if your argument is 'We could have done so much better in 2000 if you look at other players that were drafted after our picks' then of course I agree with you, everyone would.

The problem is that recruiting in hindsight doesnt work. Players are subject to different environments, growth levels, coaches, injuries etc. which expand and detract from us. Why dont we all hang ourselves about missing Hird at pick 2000 or so? Because a) they all did their research but couldnt find him, b) they all did their research on the mainstream entries into the draft and c)they were satisfied with our picks in that year based on their research.

To blame a lack of hard work on recruiters is far too convenient.

Go and watch 2002 and you'll see all 3 of our remaining draftees show promise. Livo looked alert, Wiggo was hard running, committed and had good hands and Sporn to some was the pick of the bunch, if only he wasnt injured. Since then the Club has been smashed, Livo's back and ftiness mean he has slowed down and Sporn's ball handling and pace have dropped away. How were the recruiters to see that happening?

TBM...not sure what I can say to your post. If the above doesn't answer it then I'll just have to accept I don't cut it for you.

Maybe if Livo,Sporn, Wiggins, Beasy and etc were playing for other teams they wouldv'e been guns...Maybe the recruiters did get it right but our football department, coaches etc are the ones who destroyed these kids??? We will never know I suppose. Let's hope to god we get it right this year as we are already behind as it is...

Yeah I guess my point is not just the other club factor, its all factors combines; but injuries have killed Livo in my view. Add playing FB for a struggling team and well.. its hard to say. He has very slow reaction time these days and whether that would have happened anyway who can tell. But at the time no one thought Livo was an odd choice. Doesnt suggest the recruiters didnt do their work.

Who said it was all about development?

Well, yes, you can't just get a youngster with all the credentials and simply point to the football oval and say 'play'. However, all the good coaching in the world will not make the slightest bit of difference if the said youngster just doesn't have what it takes.

Of course there are a lot of factors at stake when we come to make our decisions but it has as much to do with foresight as hindsight. Anyone could have seen back in 2000 that Burgoyne had more going for him as a footballer than Sporn. Also, although I think we were right to be interested in Wiggens, I think draft pick fifteen was a bit high for a dour flanker (and so it proved).

There are also a lot of dynamics involved as to why certain players are 'rated' higher than others or ‘around the mark’. This does not automatically make the choice in question the correct one or even justifiable

I feel Dannyboy is right when he suggests that we did not have the drafting caper figured out in 2000. I also think the art of recruiting is more subtle than a lot of people give it credit for.

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

Hughes picks Mundy and Murphy are going pretty well tonight

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"You are being watched. The government has a secret system. A machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know because I built it." - Finch

No one did. No one suggested the latter. Perhaps read the whole thread?

Recruiters are paid to do a job and ours failed in 2000.

Too simplistic?

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The problem will be made. for the solution to be sold, to your face before your eyes, tolerance is now the new danger

I think what Molsey is saying is that its:

Recruiters + Development Coaching

that dictates the success of a young player's career. Its a combination of the 2 that brings about "having good young players on our list".

I think Molsey's point is its hard to look back and pin a "failure" DEFINITELY on bad recruitment, because its hard to know how good that "failure" could have been if given other opportunities by the coaching staff etc.

I agree that 2000 was probably a poor effort from our recruiting staff, but you couldn't put 100% of the blame on them for the failures of those players. I would argue that part of the blame has to sit with Pagan, who has been their coach for hte majority of their careers. We'll never know what kind of player Sporn would be now if just given a regular game, rather than being dropped down the pecking order by the additions of Clarke, McGrath, Johnson, Chambers etc etc. Certainly Wiggo has looked fairly dicey but has received now a regular run in the 1sts and is showing a lot of positives.

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Love Cricket? Love me

Sporn was dropped down the pecvking order because he'd string two or three games together and then get injured. There was a game in 2004 (I think) against geeling at P.P. when I thought 'ahh Sporny's gunna make it. Showed courage and excellent hands that day. But a week or two later he was injured again.

In all this we must rememeber injuries. Livo has never been the same player since his back [REDACTED] up. Lost speed, lost jump and probably belief in himself.

Sporn has little speed now (where once he was expected to be able to hold down a wing due to his speed) so when he steps up from VFL to AFL it is the speed of the game that kills him.

Wiggo has been developed well by Carlton. Has played back, forward and middle and this year has shown that he may cement a spot.

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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!

If Livo:
1. Didn't have a life threatening bowel injury;
2. Hadn't f#$@^#d up his back;
3. Wasn't immediately played on gorillas like Neitz in his first 15 games (WHEN HE'D SPENT ALL HIS JUNIOR FOOTY AS A FORWARD)

then who knows? We may be saying what geniuses we were in 2000.

Except for freaks like Reiwolt and Kosi; Hodge, Ball, and Judd; Cooney; Delidio; and Murphy and Thomas, it's all a crap shoot. It's statistical. You're not going for certainties - you're going for high likelihoods.

So blaming "poor recruiting in 2000" for our ills is not only simplistic; it's missing the point......

Well after a piss poor showing in the VFL today, we can nearly put the 2000 draft behind us - as that was the last we'll see of Sporn and Livingston representing the club as players.

No, not really. My point was that it shouldnt be pinned down to 'recruiters not doing enough work' when they had details of all players, took a punt for whatever reason, and in hindsight its been shown to have not been the right decision. Recruiters may have done lots of research on S.Burgoyne and felt for whatver reason that he wasnt going to make it; maybe he was flighty, maybe he had an attitude, I dont know....my argument is it is not appropriate to say they didnt do enough research. You can say in hindsight that those picks werent the right ones and no one would disagree with you.

Add development, injury, one on one coaching, lifestyles, position selected, mentoring, continued growth...and you get the finished picture.

Add the fact that 2000 was our only year of embracing the draft and Carlton fans continue to kick at it. If we'd kept early draft picks say in 97 or 99 or 01 then maybe we wouldn't get so upset about 2000? Our Club has continually thumbed its nose at conventional wisdom in the draft and that's what is really the upsetting bit.

I'm with the BlueMuse....you take the job you wear the responsibility and outcomes..coaches get sacked through poor results...recruiters have to suffer the same. Saying all that S Burgoyne was less likely to succeed away from SA and his bro ...and the club had been burnt by Troy Bond and probably saw a similar situation with Burgoyne.....

_________________
"When you have the attitude of a champion, you see adversity as your
training partner."
- Conor Gillen