Just wanted to see everyones views on this matter:

Up until recently Carlton has been a team who has year in year out been prepared to trade away their first round picks for established players to do a "pinch hit" for the premiership. What I do believe and there was no way of knowing this at the time as I am sure the players drafted were researched, but the picks in this draft are part of the problem of where we sit today. Before I have a heap of people jumping up and down I want to note that I am not saying this is THE problem, nor am I saying that these players are to blame as I am sure we drafted them on merit. But in this draft we had 3, yes as crazy as it may sound in a draft with carlton, 3 first round draft picks. These picks yielded Livingston, Wiggins and Sporn. Looking at these three players we may see that two of them are at the moment not considered in our best 22 and whilst I will admit that Livo has been much better this year we do need to remember that up until Feb this year everyone held the view he should go. Lets compare these three players to the possibilities of Burgoyne, Cornes (kane), Coughlan, Hadley, Mcphee, Kerr etc. who went in picks after our first round.

Now some people may be asking what is he on about. Its simple, all 6 of the players mentioned here would be definate keys to our team. WHen you have the first crack at prime talent it cant be wasted and that is being shown up now when we should be building teams around these players who have had 4 years to develop, not seeing them in the red of the Bullants.

Just wanted to see anyone else's view. To see the other draft picks in that draft follow this link (This link keeps replacing "afl[dot]com[dot]au" to "carltonfc.com.au" so please change it if it wont work for you when this is changed (WHY CANT I WRITE AFL..... WHY AUTO CHANGE IT!?!?!)

http://afl.com.au/default.asp?pg=draft& ... eid=177899

No doubt you're right monsta, but i'd rather use the picks than swap them and 2000 was by no means our worst draft performance. On saturday we were slaughtered by Hall and Jude Bolton. The saints got hall for the pick we gave them for devonport and Bolton went at 9 in a draft where we picked Murray Vance as 6. In 2001 we swapped early picks for Mckernan when Matt McGuire was picked up in the 20s by the saints. I'd rather fail drafting kids than swapping picks for hacks, but I'd rather not fail. Because we've drafted so poorly in the past, we have a legacy of hardly any 23-28 year olds and it means we can't make any mistakes from here on in. Huge pressure on Wayne Hughes to be the best talent spotter in the AFL. In the past we either swapped picks for hacks (with some exceptions) or drafted guys who were average at best (with some exceptions). To be the best you have to be the best in the draft. Doesn't matter what DP does, or the senior players, if we don't excel at the draft we're going to be ordinary for a long, long time

Yeah Gerry, in NO WAY am I saying we should have traded those picks away and in every year there are could haves, would have, shouldnt haves as you simply do not know.. just thought it made for interesting reading considering the players that came after our picks when for the first time we were in pole position to set ourselves up for the future.. o well life goes on....

Monsta -We are heading for three picks in the top twenty this year aswell. Despite what most people think I think the draft is the biggest lottery you have . Granted you have a better chance of picking a good player if you have more lower picks but its a big risk every club takes and by your example it shows we had a poor 2000 draft. There is no saying that the players we pick up this year will lift us out of the mire in years to come. With Carltons poor record in developing young players I often wonder is the option of trading early picks for established players that bad. At least with Established players you have an idea of what they are capable of.
I'm just glad that it is not me that has to make that choice because the person who decides who we draft can go from hero to chump pretty quickly.

Interesting times ahead for Carlton I think

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If you allow the Government to change the Laws in an emergency
They will create an Emergency to change the Laws

There is a risk that things wont work out whatever you do, the key to sucessful player selection is in the area of risk minimisation.

The draft in 2005 probably contains players who are more likely to do well that in previous years because the process has been refined over the years.

However there are still significant areas of risk.

DP may have some limitations as a coach, but he is a coach that started out developing young players.

We have to trust that DP and the recruiting staff around him are researching whether the prospective young talent that they will have to pick from will make the grade.

I think that the culture at Carlton as far as recruitment is concerned has changed over the past 5 years and the club is now very aware of how they must approach the task after the 2005 season ends.

The draft picks and trades we make this year are critical and will determine whether this bottoming out is the last we have before a period of success in the next few years.

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My Blue Heaven

I just had a flashback for a second and thought you meant David Parkin! I need another glass of Red!

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What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet
Woody Allen

Maybe the trouble we have isn't in picking up the talented youngsters. Maybe Livo, Sporn and Wiggins were talented and worthy of first round picks, BUT the blues aren't good at getting the best out of their young guns and they waste their talent away.

Just a thought
DH

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From little things big things grow....

20/20 hindsight is a great thing - but the draft is really like a lottery -

At the time Livingstone was always rated as top 4 Draft pick. Wiggins was rated top 10 and considered a bargain at 15.
Sporn was regarded as somewhere in the 20s and went earlier but all drafts from 11 - 30 is a raffle and clubs will choose the player that will suit a need in that grouping.

Three guys that were ranked as draft picks in the 30s by all the experts were O'Keefe, beasy and Campbell. We picked up Campbell at 31 , O'keefe at 43 and Beasy at 63 and the clubwould have been happy with that at the time. Angwin was pick 7 that year

Interesting that De Luca was also predicted to be drafted that year but was overlooked. Bannister was also ranked in the mid 30s and Essendan got him at 47. Guy Richards was ranked top 10 and didn't go till 37

So its a lottery and you can bemoan the fact that Johncock, petrie Charman, hadley, Coughlan, Hyde, Newman etc etc etc were all later picks.
At the same time other clubs are probably bemoaning their own crap picks and how they also overlooked Fevola and Thorton in earlier drafts

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Ecclesiastes 1:4, "One generation passes away, and another generation comes: but The Blues abide forever."

Been a hobby horse of mine has the 2000 draft and for what its worth I think its been a dismal failure..five seasons along and we have three players left from that draft of which two are in the Bullanst and the other is struggling and probably wouldnt get a game if we had other taller key back options.
In defense of the selections it was a weak draft and apart from the first three choices nothing else really stood out as a no brainer.
Sporn was considered a 30's pick and was expected to go to Essendon*..I wont ramble on and rehash what I have said many times before but that draft should have been bearing fruit for us now and those players should be winning us games which is part of our problem.....

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

I'd expect to get shot down over this, but is there a chance (just a thought), that given that we had only just started taking early draft picks seriously, that we selected the right guys but didn't necessarily have the experience or infastructure to properly develop and nuture them? By 2000 many other clubs had youth policies and draft strategies well and truly bedded down... I doubt that we did.

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Patrick Smith - Just another reason to HATE Essendon*!

Very true.
Carlton has made the worst transition from VFL to AFL of any of the victorian clubs. Everything from the draft, to salary caps, to hanging onto to Optus Oval for too long etc. had been poorly handled by a stubborn and arrogant Elliot administration. And til this today and for more years to come we are paying for it.
Carlton = very good VFL club
Carlton = very poor AFL club

OK so we got it wrong, lets say we recruited alot better since 2000 and we didn't have the recent draft sanctions would Lance be playing better football?

Replace our bottom six players with better players (from better recruiting) and I'm tipping Lance would be putting in more performances like he did on Saturday against the Swans.

Lance is an easy target for our current situation. We are struggling because of our poor recruiting. We lost Hamil and haven't introduced much class into the side since 2000 hence Lance has been struggling.