Overrating our club

[Bleed Red Blood]

BRB, I was going to reply to your earlier post about Roos not playing the youngsters, it's a valid point, because the issue was not that the youngsters on our list didn't have talent, they just didn't get enough games in the seniors for us to see if their talent would translate to the big time. And this is the predicament we are in right now, because guys like Hannebery, Johnson, Reid who you would expect to be the nucleus of our team in the years to come are still very inexperienced in terms of number of games played. You're exactly right, there's a big gap between the over 28s and the good young players.

I think your reasoning does suffer a little from hindsight bias though, because I remember in around 2005 on 2006 we were lauded for having the most number of players who had played every game in the season (or something like that?) and the ability of players like Jude, O'Keefe et al to play through injuries and contribute their experience during the finals was a huge factor in us winning the flag. One of the reasons why Geelong have been so good in the last few years is that they had a very stable line-up in that time which allowed their players to rack up a lot of games playing together, under the same game plan, and develop an understanding of how each other plays. It was similar with us in '05-'06, we were nowhere near as talented as the Cats but because our players had played a lot of games together they knew each others' games intimately, which gave us a massive edge come finals time because we were so well-drilled.

Yes we certainly developed a 'team' that stuck together, knew each other strengths and weaknesses etc. I think they burnt out really quickly, too, because not only did Roos want them to play as much as they possibly can (in terms of games) but we also play such a strong, exhaustive brand of football (remember quotes from opposition players saying we we're the hardest team to play, I wonder what kind of stats we could find on teams winning % the week after they play us) which led to our players retiring early (Fosdike) and was also a problem for players coming from the Canberra league, already a massive step-up to AFL and then not being given a proper chance to adjust (like the many players who got a game, and then we're dropped the next week)

How many premiership players do we even have left?
LRT. Bev. Jude, Goodes, ROK. All I can think of.

There isn't convincing evidence that Roos couldn't develop kids. Certainly there is evidence that he / the club preferred the approach of recruiting mid-range players to fill specific gaps, and that this gave the drafters less to work with. But there are hardly ex-Swan youngsters carving it up with other teams and hence demonstrating that the Swans failed to use their ability. Maybe the recruiters made some poor choices (with the benefit of hindsight). Maybe the club had a particularly bad run of luck with injuries suffered to young players during the development phase.
I really struggle to see that more games into any of those players during 2004-8 would have had the slightest impact on the state of our current list.

Okay, maybe its not that Roos CANT develop players. but he didn't really give it a go, imo. Perhaps if instead of putting all his thought into who we can 'recycle' and who can 'play a role' we might have found someone like Johnson, who stepped in and just looked really settled straight away. And instead we might've been able to trade for someone a bit younger (like 23ish, who'd be in their prime now) which is what we are really missing, instead of a group of versatile without being really good players, and are approaching 30.