Before I start, a quick word of warning. The following may bore the pants off some of you if you are not interested in figures.
One of the main problems with our level of success over the past decade (only one year missing the finals since 2003) is that we miss out on the top draft picks. It has been said in the past that, as a team in a fickle market, we can't afford to "bottom out" as many clubs do, as it will severely affect our local following. As a result, we traditionally "top up" with players from other clubs, and have been very successful in this method of list regeneration.
In recent years, Collingwood went from grand finalists in 2003 to gaining picks 2 and 5 only a couple of years later, enabling them to select Dale Thomas and Scott Pendlebury. West Coast, after beating us in 2006, followed a similar path, and now have Nic Naitanui, Luke Shuey, Brad Sheppard and Andrew Gaff.
Without going too far into who picked up who, I have looked at the top 20 draft picks since 2000. In the past 11 drafts, we have had both the fewest top 20 selections and top 10 selections. This is including Gold Coast, who have only participated once.
Top 20: 20 - Melbourne; 16 - Essendon, West Coast; 15 - Port Adelaide, Richmond, Western Bulldogs, 14 - North Melbourne, Carlton; 12 - Brisbane Lions; 11 - St Kilda, Adelaide, Fremantle; 10 - Collingwood, Geelong; 8 - Gold Coast; 7 - SYDNEY.
Top 10: 9 - North Melbourne; 8 - Hawthorn, Richmond, St Kilda, Carlton, Essendon, Western Bulldogs; 7 - West Coast, Melbourne; 6 - Brisbane Lions, Collingwood, Fremantle, Gold Coast; 5 - Port Adelaide; 4 - Adelaide, Geelong; 2 - SYDNEY.
Only TWO top 10 selections in 11 years. So we miss the silky smooth skills of the best available kids, and have to settle for the lesser abled players. Don't get me wrong, I love our players. It's just a pity that, because of our success and our market, we don't get the chance for something special. We're lucky that, next draft, we will have a potential top 10 pick come to us later through using our first pick for Tom Mitchell.
The other worrying thing about our numbers is what ends up happening to the players we select. Of out 7 top 20 picks, three are no longer at the club. Patrick Veszpremi was traded to the Bulldogs after only a handful of games, and is still yet to play senior game there. His replacement, Andrejs Everitt, was originally taken at pick 11, and has struggled with injury this year. Our other two, Daniel O'Keefe and Josh Willoughby, failed to register a game with us. So when we have the earlier selections, we tend to waste them. This leaves us with 4 of our top 20 selections from the past 11 drafts - Jarrad McVeigh, Gary Rohan, Lewis Johnston and Lewis Jetta. Two of these - Rohan and Johnston - have also battled injury in their time at the club.
Just a final note: in the year we selected Veszpremi with pick 11, Hawthorn used pick 12 to recruit Cyril Rioli.
Bookmarks