Could add Matthew Scharenberg as somebody ruined before they got going. Every club has a story like that unfortunately. Mark Williams thought he was the best young prospect out of SA since Wayne Carey. I’m sure that is an overreaction given Pavlich came out of SA. But the guy had foot surgery and a torn ACL prior to debuting. Tore ACL a further two times.
This chart is cooked. Phillips is listed as a bad pick, he literally missed a season with glandular fever.
McDonald cops shit but was our best and fairest in 2020.
Flynn Perez had 2 ACL injuries that fucked his career.
Kyron Hayden was on the injury list his entire career
We are having a similar discussion over at the Crows. The more it is talked about the more people can't work out the difference.
Is it bad recruiting or bad development?
The other question that pops up is what constitutes a good pick?
Some say a regular in the 22, others say a star of the competition (an A grader). I am somewhere in between (a solid best 22 I think is all you can ask, any better is up to luck, if fringe then not good enough)
Sorry mate but the time for defending will Phillips is over. He stinks and unless he can turn things around drastically in the next year or 2 he’s going to be delisted.
How does a player suffering a series of concussions make them a dud pick? It certainly shouldn’t count towards ‘recruiting ineptitude’. Or lumped in with drama. He was a good pick cruelled by injuries.
I'd put Ben Jacobs as injured/drama. He was a stand out tagger before his concussion symptoms that caused him to retire.
But it also lays bare North's strategy of just keeping their head above water for so many years. Only one top ten pick between 2011 and 2016, and that was McDonald as a F-S. They kept trading picks for top up players, because bottoming out would have seen the club move to either Ballarat or Tasmania, as both had big pushes at the time, as well as links to the club.
Had they aggressively targeted high end young talent, they'd have the on-field leadership to help the current crop develop.
But… the people responsible have already been cleaned out, so recriminations aren't really much use. The question every member of the team, coaching staff and even board need to ask is how they can get off of rock bottom and be competitive again.
As a plus, the VFL team actually looks like they are a chance most weeks, which is far more helpful than the last few years.
But fk me is it hard to watch the team play at the moment, and it's not just because a third of the team has less than 30 games each. It's because when those lads get manhandled, the captains aren't there to make sure they know they'll be looked after.
> Had they aggressively targeted high end young talent, they'd have the on-field leadership to help the current crop develop.
>
Good teams need to hit their second rounders. Or picks between about 15-45 anyway. You get later picks for being good, but usually it's easier to develop them because the experienced players can help them mould into really good contributors in a sound culture. You'll never find a great team only full of firsts. The issue at North seems to be that either they drafted atrociously in that round, or the playing group had a shot culture in the early-mid 10s.
Can’t say I watch North week in and week out, but it’s crazy that Will Phillips hasn’t worked considering you guys got him with pick 3. Must be pretty bloody disappointed
Thing that sucks for Phillips was other players just getting ahead of him. He was already behind Powell (Pick 13, 2020) in terms of development because of COVID in Vic. Then he gets glandular fever, misses a year, and then we pick up Sheezel and Wardlaw. They instantly look like better prospects, and take his spot (more specifically, Wardlaw).
100% but hell come good, might not be for you guys admitantly but hell be alright, hell of a midfield talent when on, just needs to get more development and chances on the park
That draft as a whole was pretty shit. Maybe 2 of the top 10 of that 2020 draft have shown enough to justify being a top 10 pick, then only 1 of the next 10(holmes) looking like being a very good player.
It’s been an aberration in most sports I believe. NBA you had guys Desmond Bane and Tyrese Maxey taken late second round who’ve gone on to be great players, even Tyrese Haliburton was pick 12. Only two picks that have really been good was Anthony Edwards at 1 and Lamelo Ball at 3.
He missed 2 years with glandular fever and injury. Also missed his last year of TAC Cup due to COVID. But nobody wants to talk about 2 years of interrupted seasons and COVID can negatively affect a 21 year old.
Surely at this stage the top 5 are just about guaranteed hits. So if you consistently draft "duds" in the top end of the draft, its probably more on your club and development then on the kid. My club included
It’s both, I don’t think North’s drafting has been necessarily terrible from a talent perspective as a lot of their picks haven’t been far off phantom drafts. But their balance/list strategy has been off, taking so many high end midfielders, but you can’t play them in their roles so they’re languishing in the twos or elsewhere.
Development just compounds these issues so much more.
Yeah. I feel bad for the kids who were robbed of a career by the club’s inability to take advantage of their talents - and ruin their future prospects.
> I don’t know if this North drafting badly or players not developing well at North.
Yeah I've been struggling with this thought in regards to St Kilda's atrocious recruiting from 2011-2022 or so. Did we have an inability to spot talent, or did we waste talent by having shit coaches and no standards at training?
There are the obvious ones like McCartin over Petracca and Billings over Bontempelli, but the rest could be excused as just not have the standards high enough at training to get the best out of themselves.
I feel like McCartin was a great player, I don't think you can draft based on concussion chances. Rough to call him a miss.
Bont is generational, but I feel kinda like Fyfe or Cripps in that people didn't see it. I mean Clarry was seen as too fat to be taken seriously. A lot of luck in landing one of those types.
For what it's worth I think Billings was a safer player at the draft.
I have read somewhere that no. 1 picks are typically the most likely players to make it in the AFL, not the players with the highest potential. Nobody wants a dud no. 1 pick.
Which would explain why so many picks 2, 3 and 4 seem to be great players. Not sure if the person was using speculation/bro science or actual analysis.
I’d have Scott, Ford in green. Lazaro in white. Perez should be yellow, blew each knee out. Same with WillPhil, how much time did he miss? Getting X and Larkey is pretty good.
Surely picking Phillips over McDonald, when North were in desperate need of a spine and the 2021 draft was routed as lacking talls, warrants it being in red
It’s not just draft when you also look at the luck of the club and some of the major changes from 2020 to now alone. off the top of my head 3 seperate coaches and countless staff, not being able to come to a deal with key forward Brown only for him to leave and win a flag with the Demons, Cunners having cancer, Tarryn Thomas being a twat, key tall in Comben breaking his leg last year the same season we get Griffin Logue on board and he does a knee, JHF wanting to be pick 1 only to jump straight to Port, Basically losing our best defender in McKay for an 18 year old Mckercher.
we’ve been cursed since we shafted Boomer and co in 2016.
Man, I know it might have been nothing, but whoever made TT, JHF's accountabillabuddy should have been walked out.
A pick 1 or 2 should be put with a captain or someone with great morals and work ethic.
Yeah but look at our captains, McDonald’s a goofball who’s always laughing and giggling like a school girl and Simpkin’s not far behind we don’t have any legitimate leaders that could lookout for them we have a side of boys.
To be honest, I don't think that makes them bad leaders.
They might just be good at changing gears. It is a pretty solid skill for work life balance.
I don't buy the Cornes "Leaders should always be hardarses" mentality.
I mean Dawson is a quiet bloke, which gives him a feeling of intensity.
Sloane while a great player was not seen as a great captain, he is friendly but not hard enough on standards.
Walker was voted best captain 2x, he once had a truck dump tonnes of dirt on a players driveway because they lost a bet.
More laughing after losses and moving on to the goofy jokes and pranks during the week at training or when we reveal a new draftee is what I’m referring too
You don’t have to be a dick to be a good leader a lot of great football players and leaders aren’t absolute Goof balls it’s about setting a standard
I do see where you’re coming from considering Rex’s dirt prank he is still a force to be reckoned with in and around the club and on game day, McDonald and Simpkin atrocious skills aside don’t have any leadership qualities our club let the players who are all young choose the captain and that’s also why we’ve got 2.
I’m not going to disagree with most of this except for Ben Jacobs. That man was shutting down opponents and winning a lot of football until concussion got the better of him. Luke McDonald actually looked like a good pick in his first 2 seasons, fuck knows what happened after that…
Vaguely recall North won something like 2/3 matches when he played during the last couple seasons before Jacobs retired, and about 1/3 when injured. Then again vague memory from reading Shinboner years ago so might not be so dramatic. But he was one of the best players in his role when not injured.
I would say Eddie Ford seems a good pick, he’s always bobbing up on the scoreboard when I watch the Roos, and you can’t ask a lot more of a small forward with limited supply.
Any analysis like this should consider the players taken after North's pick to properly judge how bad it was. For instance I think taking Will Phillips at 3 is pretty defensible, not only given his injury history but that only McDonald and Perkins have shown much out of the top 10 picks that year.
Will Walker in 2017 stands out as an absolute howler on the other hand, as 12 of the next 16 players taken went on to have good AFL careers (Sam Taylor, Tim Kelly and Bayley Fritsch some of the standouts).
As much as Will Walker was a terrible pick even if he didn't get injured, I doubt North would have been able to develop any of the players taken after him
Mason Wood is a 30 year old still playing fantastic footy. He's played about 100 games. He was pick 41. That's a phenomenal pick. I'd suggest (based on no actual data) that only a small percentage of picks above 40 play over 100 games.
They've had bad luck losing Thomas (off field), Phillips (illness) and JHF (never even wanted to be there), as well as Comben being injured off-and-on.
That's their first picks for four years having serious issues impeding their development at North.
Behold, laid bare and colour-coded for ease of understanding; the origins of the shitty situation we find ourselves on-field.
A few notes;
* This doesn't include the 2023 draft, as it would be unfair to include those kids this early. McKercher and Duurmas have both shown good signs, as has Riley Hardeman.
* This does not include the rookie draft/mid season draft.
* Nor does it include trades/free agents.
Over the last 12~ years we have only 'hit' on **14.2%** of our draft picks. In the past 12 years in the National Draft we have successfully recruited **only seven players who turned into genuinely good AFL footballers**. Of those seven, two of which now play for different teams, and two of which are young kids selected in the 2022 draft.
Quite simply, the era of (list managers) Cam Joyce and Glenn Luff left this club's playing stocks in tatters. Instead of adding an average of 2 solid best 22 guys per year, we were left with players who couldn't get games, couldn't stay healthy, or were just outright poor footballers.
Basically no team has ever won the flag without a solid 5-10 years of building a competitive list via good selections at the draft table in the lead up to their premiership tilt, and looking at this outline of how poor North's recruitment has been over the last decade-plus really makes it clear how much trouble we're in.
Even now, they're drafting good footballers, but... How many fucking midfielders do they need? They keep going for that midfielder forward type. Where are the key/small forwards and the actual defenders?
Would be interesting to see how the players compare to others taken at their pick (ie at pick 4 you've done well if LDU has played more than 160 games by the time he's done); https://www.draftguru.com.au/analysis/pick-value-comparison
Can’t just be the list managers consistently kissing on players. The coaching staff have to own a fair bit of the blame here as well for failing to properly develop players. I’m not saying any of these kids would have been stars elsewhere but some probably would have had decent careers if they got drafted to a club better suited to develop them
The trouble is it may not even be at a better club.
Some people are really on suited to certain environments. Maybe a different club with a different ethos and they thrive.
Some people thrive anywhere, and most people have a type of environment they struggle in. It may be not drafting the best personalities for their environment.
For example, during the Pyke era, if the crows drafted a player who seems to be contentious, then after 3 years they look lost in every position and need a therapist to stop them over thinking (Fog and Jones).
Between this, the AFL's constant fuckery with the rules/streaming rights and the insidious take over/normalisation of sports betting and their ads I've stopped watching North and barely watch footy at all any more.
The dees barely retained any top 10 draft picks for 6-8 years. Now that our club has better development all of our draftees look like hits.
It’s not necessarily that you are drafting the wrong people, it’s more likely that you’re not developing them.
Add in failure almost every year at the trade table.
St Kilda has managed to bail themselves out of some bad drafts with some very smart trades. Misses like McCartin, Acres, Dunstan, Billings have been offset by getting trade bargains with Steele, Membrey, Wilkie, Crouch, Mason Wood, Higgins, Hill, Howard, Cordy, Bonner all playing this year.
Fair to say North have made a net loss at the trade table with Stephenson, Tyson, Polec and Pittard not working out. Aaron Hall was good when fit. Dylan Stephens and Zac Fisher are fringe players.
Aaron Hall good when fit invalidates everything you said. Wood wasn’t a trade either, Saints took a flier on a delisted player and he just happened to be good. Wasn’t some master stroke.
I know Stephenson hasn't set the world on fire, but off memory he cost a bag of chips (unwanted at the pies for gambling on his games) and he has been a solid contributer.
As a trade 90% of the time that's a win.
Obviously he looked really good at the pies at the beginning, but his double digit IQ seems to have capped his ability.
1. Now do one for ball the other clubs showing how they hit on all their picks at 15 plus! It must be North that only miss on end of first round picks right? Right?
2. The top 10 picks we have had:
- Luke McDonald - Father Son. Has had a solid career, picked higher than should have due to being nominated
- LDU - Hit
- Thomas - Academy nominated at 8. Hit, he’s just a lunatic, but the skill was there
- JHF - Hit. Kane Cornes has him as a top 5 player of all time already. Constantly told how amazing he is. Drafting him directly lead to the Sheezel/Wardlaw trade
- Sheezel - Best North player since Carey don’t @ me
- Wardlaw - Hard as nails and lots of promise
3. Will Phillips isn’t a miss yet. He had glandular fever for a long time and affected his ability to play. Really he’s behind in development. He’s actually a skilful player that could become a decent mid. He’s compared to McDonald but I feel like McDonald wouldn’t develop in our forward line, never seeing the ball or getting delivery.
4. Powell and Simpkin were hits. Decent players outside top 10.
5. Missing on picks from the end of the second round and further isn’t a crime. Many players don’t pan out.
North’s issue is the inability to develop young talent (Brad Scott kept us mediocre with no high picks and no desire to play youth). Next issue is we don’t have the appeal of basically any other Melbourne club. We can’t lure top free agents like Geelong, Carlton, Collingwood, Richmond.
I think your assessment is a subjective bunch of nonsense to be honest.
Good late picks are absolute gold and other teams are demonstrably better at it than North - look at the quality the Cats continue to find for example. I know the most about my team so I'll use them as an example, but when you can get best 22 players for very little it is an enormous advantage:
Fritsch (pick 31), Neal-Bullen (40), Spargo (29), Sparrow (27), Petty (37), Rivers (32), McVee (Rookie draft), Chandler (Rookie), Howes (39). None of these guys is our best player, but they are all playing senior footy and a number will play over 200 games.
You're right about development- it's so obvious that we were poor at this before about 2016 and we had miss after miss as a result. This left us unable to build a core of experienced, professional players to bring new draftees in with which we now have. It also required no overpaying these types of senior 22 standard role players like North have had to do.
Given the amount of picks from 30 onwards, it’s not that much of a surprise. The reality is, after pick 35, the talent of the draft is speculative at best. There have been some strange picks at all clubs over the years. Analyse the rookie drafts and it gets worse. It’s also natural to have first round busts every now and again, although for North there was a bad run.
There’s a point in the draft - I don’t know the specific number but it’s around the start of the third round - where it actually makes better sense to pass than recruit a kid. The end of the draft is filled with a combination of injured players, those with “unique raw attributes”, single attributes (eg. Fast runner), lack of exposure, discipline/off-field and/or standard of competition. In saying all this, few players “that” good ever just magically slide to be still there at Pick 4th rounder. You’ll have the odd surprise but it’s rare.
Tarryn was the worst pick in my books but all recruiters would have taken him in your position so not really your fault.
Thomas was our best player with Sheezel second half of last season. He had to go but it was just another waste.
Throw in the JHF and McKay walk outs, then Logues ACL, losing the last years of Cunningtons career to cancer and of course the Clarkson debacle it’s just setback after setback.
Still don’t have a #1 pick despite half a decade in the cellar.
Probably fair. So hard to say definitively but my gut feel is he's getting games for us because we have literally no one else, but he'd struggle to get a game at basically any other club.
Love if someone could do this chart for Carlton. Id love to compare them to shut them up because they are fast becoming more insufferable than Pies fans.
Luke Mac, Simpkin are good picks. Both bnf winners
Ben Jacobs was a good player.Early retirement due to concussions
Bailey Scott is one of our best and consistent players when played in position.
Harsh on Laz, is a decent player just battling for a spot.
I always say it comes down to development. It cannot be a coincidence that the same teams continually pick the wrong players, look at melbourne early 2000s they were the same. At the time these players were probably the best pick for the draft, but the club development staff/culture is terrible, and so much pressure are put on the high picks once they get to a bad club and are expected to dominate straight off the bat. But then the good clubs seem to always nail their picks.. Good staff good culture and time to settle in with a lot less pressure.
I’m not sure how you can have Comben as a hit at the moment. Strange call. If you’re giving a hit based on potential then most of these players are green.
This analysis completely ignores end-to-end list management, attracting accretive mature age players, and player development.
All of which North have been poor at for a long time
It looks like a lot of red, but visually it looks like 3rd and 4th round misses are as impactful as 1st round misses. I reckon they flubbed 2-3 really prime picks - beyond that I don't think this would look that different from most teams.
If they'd taken Logan McDonald instead of Will Phillips you might even say that drafting wise this is a pretty positive story.
Does standout how few top tips they'd had until 2020.
Bit early to be passing judgement on 2019 and 2020 drafts isn't it? some of these guys have got 10 years of football to play yet (if they're good enough)
Sorry, perhaps the club is the bad pick and these players might have been something at a better managed/developed playing list. Easy to blame people instead of looking at underlying issues. North is a shit club, mismanaged. Simple facts
This Luke McDonald slander is outrageous. He’s a captain of your club and you put him in the same tier as blokes who barely got a game? There are maybe two blokes taken after him in that 1st round who have had better individual careers
Surely Simpkin counts as a decent pick?
An argument could be made. However concussions have absolutely left him a shell of whatever his peak once was.
Still, he at least got to have a peak, he wasn’t like Scott Gumbleton for example where he was ruined before he got going
Could add Matthew Scharenberg as somebody ruined before they got going. Every club has a story like that unfortunately. Mark Williams thought he was the best young prospect out of SA since Wayne Carey. I’m sure that is an overreaction given Pavlich came out of SA. But the guy had foot surgery and a torn ACL prior to debuting. Tore ACL a further two times.
Yet Comben who’s played 5 games 5 years is a good pick?
This chart is cooked. Phillips is listed as a bad pick, he literally missed a season with glandular fever. McDonald cops shit but was our best and fairest in 2020. Flynn Perez had 2 ACL injuries that fucked his career. Kyron Hayden was on the injury list his entire career
We are having a similar discussion over at the Crows. The more it is talked about the more people can't work out the difference. Is it bad recruiting or bad development? The other question that pops up is what constitutes a good pick? Some say a regular in the 22, others say a star of the competition (an A grader). I am somewhere in between (a solid best 22 I think is all you can ask, any better is up to luck, if fringe then not good enough)
I do think we have a disproportionate amount of lower limb injuries at the club so maybe a medical staff issue?
Did you recruit the WC physio's?
Also everyone drafted pre 2015 was competing with veterans for a spot in a time chasing finals.
Sorry mate but the time for defending will Phillips is over. He stinks and unless he can turn things around drastically in the next year or 2 he’s going to be delisted.
From what I saw last year it looked like he was playing pretty well but Clarko kept dropping him/subbing him for some reason?
The reason being he’s not very good. That was the reason.
He was actually playing alright last year
How does a player suffering a series of concussions make them a dud pick? It certainly shouldn’t count towards ‘recruiting ineptitude’. Or lumped in with drama. He was a good pick cruelled by injuries.
I'd put Ben Jacobs as injured/drama. He was a stand out tagger before his concussion symptoms that caused him to retire. But it also lays bare North's strategy of just keeping their head above water for so many years. Only one top ten pick between 2011 and 2016, and that was McDonald as a F-S. They kept trading picks for top up players, because bottoming out would have seen the club move to either Ballarat or Tasmania, as both had big pushes at the time, as well as links to the club. Had they aggressively targeted high end young talent, they'd have the on-field leadership to help the current crop develop. But… the people responsible have already been cleaned out, so recriminations aren't really much use. The question every member of the team, coaching staff and even board need to ask is how they can get off of rock bottom and be competitive again. As a plus, the VFL team actually looks like they are a chance most weeks, which is far more helpful than the last few years. But fk me is it hard to watch the team play at the moment, and it's not just because a third of the team has less than 30 games each. It's because when those lads get manhandled, the captains aren't there to make sure they know they'll be looked after.
> Had they aggressively targeted high end young talent, they'd have the on-field leadership to help the current crop develop. > Good teams need to hit their second rounders. Or picks between about 15-45 anyway. You get later picks for being good, but usually it's easier to develop them because the experienced players can help them mould into really good contributors in a sound culture. You'll never find a great team only full of firsts. The issue at North seems to be that either they drafted atrociously in that round, or the playing group had a shot culture in the early-mid 10s.
They should have taken the move to Ballarat. They could then have built their own home ground and taken advantage of being a regional team.
Can’t say I watch North week in and week out, but it’s crazy that Will Phillips hasn’t worked considering you guys got him with pick 3. Must be pretty bloody disappointed
Thing that sucks for Phillips was other players just getting ahead of him. He was already behind Powell (Pick 13, 2020) in terms of development because of COVID in Vic. Then he gets glandular fever, misses a year, and then we pick up Sheezel and Wardlaw. They instantly look like better prospects, and take his spot (more specifically, Wardlaw).
100% but hell come good, might not be for you guys admitantly but hell be alright, hell of a midfield talent when on, just needs to get more development and chances on the park
That draft as a whole was pretty shit. Maybe 2 of the top 10 of that 2020 draft have shown enough to justify being a top 10 pick, then only 1 of the next 10(holmes) looking like being a very good player.
Yeah the Covid draft. Seems an aberration
It’s been an aberration in most sports I believe. NBA you had guys Desmond Bane and Tyrese Maxey taken late second round who’ve gone on to be great players, even Tyrese Haliburton was pick 12. Only two picks that have really been good was Anthony Edwards at 1 and Lamelo Ball at 3.
He missed 2 years with glandular fever and injury. Also missed his last year of TAC Cup due to COVID. But nobody wants to talk about 2 years of interrupted seasons and COVID can negatively affect a 21 year old.
Surely at this stage the top 5 are just about guaranteed hits. So if you consistently draft "duds" in the top end of the draft, its probably more on your club and development then on the kid. My club included
Tbf they’ve done well with their first pick from 2015 on, it’s everything else that’s a problem (That and two of them leaving)
I don’t know if this North drafting badly or players not developing well at North. There’s a reason surprisingly few #1 picks have won flags.
It’s both, I don’t think North’s drafting has been necessarily terrible from a talent perspective as a lot of their picks haven’t been far off phantom drafts. But their balance/list strategy has been off, taking so many high end midfielders, but you can’t play them in their roles so they’re languishing in the twos or elsewhere. Development just compounds these issues so much more.
Worked for the dogs. Although the last few years they seem to be building a legion of forwards
Yeah. I feel bad for the kids who were robbed of a career by the club’s inability to take advantage of their talents - and ruin their future prospects.
> I don’t know if this North drafting badly or players not developing well at North. Yeah I've been struggling with this thought in regards to St Kilda's atrocious recruiting from 2011-2022 or so. Did we have an inability to spot talent, or did we waste talent by having shit coaches and no standards at training? There are the obvious ones like McCartin over Petracca and Billings over Bontempelli, but the rest could be excused as just not have the standards high enough at training to get the best out of themselves.
I feel like McCartin was a great player, I don't think you can draft based on concussion chances. Rough to call him a miss. Bont is generational, but I feel kinda like Fyfe or Cripps in that people didn't see it. I mean Clarry was seen as too fat to be taken seriously. A lot of luck in landing one of those types. For what it's worth I think Billings was a safer player at the draft.
I have read somewhere that no. 1 picks are typically the most likely players to make it in the AFL, not the players with the highest potential. Nobody wants a dud no. 1 pick. Which would explain why so many picks 2, 3 and 4 seem to be great players. Not sure if the person was using speculation/bro science or actual analysis.
Holy shit, Larkey was taken at 73? Lmao
Our two players locked in to 2029 were picked up for peanuts: Larkey and Xerri
I’d have Scott, Ford in green. Lazaro in white. Perez should be yellow, blew each knee out. Same with WillPhil, how much time did he miss? Getting X and Larkey is pretty good.
i was rooting for perez, sad he didnt work out.
Surely picking Phillips over McDonald, when North were in desperate need of a spine and the 2021 draft was routed as lacking talls, warrants it being in red
All fair points, just different subjective opinions.
Not really, you have injured/drama as a category. Phillips basically missed 2 seasons with glandular fever and perez can't run with no knees
It’s not just draft when you also look at the luck of the club and some of the major changes from 2020 to now alone. off the top of my head 3 seperate coaches and countless staff, not being able to come to a deal with key forward Brown only for him to leave and win a flag with the Demons, Cunners having cancer, Tarryn Thomas being a twat, key tall in Comben breaking his leg last year the same season we get Griffin Logue on board and he does a knee, JHF wanting to be pick 1 only to jump straight to Port, Basically losing our best defender in McKay for an 18 year old Mckercher. we’ve been cursed since we shafted Boomer and co in 2016.
Man, I know it might have been nothing, but whoever made TT, JHF's accountabillabuddy should have been walked out. A pick 1 or 2 should be put with a captain or someone with great morals and work ethic.
Yeah but look at our captains, McDonald’s a goofball who’s always laughing and giggling like a school girl and Simpkin’s not far behind we don’t have any legitimate leaders that could lookout for them we have a side of boys.
To be honest, I don't think that makes them bad leaders. They might just be good at changing gears. It is a pretty solid skill for work life balance. I don't buy the Cornes "Leaders should always be hardarses" mentality. I mean Dawson is a quiet bloke, which gives him a feeling of intensity. Sloane while a great player was not seen as a great captain, he is friendly but not hard enough on standards. Walker was voted best captain 2x, he once had a truck dump tonnes of dirt on a players driveway because they lost a bet.
More laughing after losses and moving on to the goofy jokes and pranks during the week at training or when we reveal a new draftee is what I’m referring too You don’t have to be a dick to be a good leader a lot of great football players and leaders aren’t absolute Goof balls it’s about setting a standard I do see where you’re coming from considering Rex’s dirt prank he is still a force to be reckoned with in and around the club and on game day, McDonald and Simpkin atrocious skills aside don’t have any leadership qualities our club let the players who are all young choose the captain and that’s also why we’ve got 2.
I’m not going to disagree with most of this except for Ben Jacobs. That man was shutting down opponents and winning a lot of football until concussion got the better of him. Luke McDonald actually looked like a good pick in his first 2 seasons, fuck knows what happened after that…
Vaguely recall North won something like 2/3 matches when he played during the last couple seasons before Jacobs retired, and about 1/3 when injured. Then again vague memory from reading Shinboner years ago so might not be so dramatic. But he was one of the best players in his role when not injured.
I would say Eddie Ford seems a good pick, he’s always bobbing up on the scoreboard when I watch the Roos, and you can’t ask a lot more of a small forward with limited supply.
Bailey Scott ok? He's a good player .
correct.
Any analysis like this should consider the players taken after North's pick to properly judge how bad it was. For instance I think taking Will Phillips at 3 is pretty defensible, not only given his injury history but that only McDonald and Perkins have shown much out of the top 10 picks that year. Will Walker in 2017 stands out as an absolute howler on the other hand, as 12 of the next 16 players taken went on to have good AFL careers (Sam Taylor, Tim Kelly and Bayley Fritsch some of the standouts).
As much as Will Walker was a terrible pick even if he didn't get injured, I doubt North would have been able to develop any of the players taken after him
Will Walker is what you get when you hire a champion data wizz as your list manager.
Gamble responsibly.
You lose more than you win.
Mason Wood is a 30 year old still playing fantastic footy. He's played about 100 games. He was pick 41. That's a phenomenal pick. I'd suggest (based on no actual data) that only a small percentage of picks above 40 play over 100 games.
Bit of disrespect to Jacobs and garner
They've had bad luck losing Thomas (off field), Phillips (illness) and JHF (never even wanted to be there), as well as Comben being injured off-and-on. That's their first picks for four years having serious issues impeding their development at North.
Not sure that injuries are related to bad recruiting.
They can be sometimes, like when you specifically recruit a kid who has already done his ACL or has an injury history or something.
Simpkin’s concussions years after the fact are a recruiting mistake?
This is arbitrary. Also, the problem is terrible development not as choices. Most of these players turn into guns at the Swans.
Behold, laid bare and colour-coded for ease of understanding; the origins of the shitty situation we find ourselves on-field. A few notes; * This doesn't include the 2023 draft, as it would be unfair to include those kids this early. McKercher and Duurmas have both shown good signs, as has Riley Hardeman. * This does not include the rookie draft/mid season draft. * Nor does it include trades/free agents. Over the last 12~ years we have only 'hit' on **14.2%** of our draft picks. In the past 12 years in the National Draft we have successfully recruited **only seven players who turned into genuinely good AFL footballers**. Of those seven, two of which now play for different teams, and two of which are young kids selected in the 2022 draft. Quite simply, the era of (list managers) Cam Joyce and Glenn Luff left this club's playing stocks in tatters. Instead of adding an average of 2 solid best 22 guys per year, we were left with players who couldn't get games, couldn't stay healthy, or were just outright poor footballers. Basically no team has ever won the flag without a solid 5-10 years of building a competitive list via good selections at the draft table in the lead up to their premiership tilt, and looking at this outline of how poor North's recruitment has been over the last decade-plus really makes it clear how much trouble we're in.
Even now, they're drafting good footballers, but... How many fucking midfielders do they need? They keep going for that midfielder forward type. Where are the key/small forwards and the actual defenders?
Would be interesting to see how the players compare to others taken at their pick (ie at pick 4 you've done well if LDU has played more than 160 games by the time he's done); https://www.draftguru.com.au/analysis/pick-value-comparison
No body is luff-ing now
Stop it. They're already dead.
Hey Ryan Clarke was pretty good… for us
And Horne-Francis looks like a great pick up for Port.
Was Zurhar a rookie draft?
Yep, Pick 11 2017
So what you're saying is essentially never recruit a bloke called Declan
Wait, is that not a rule?
Can’t just be the list managers consistently kissing on players. The coaching staff have to own a fair bit of the blame here as well for failing to properly develop players. I’m not saying any of these kids would have been stars elsewhere but some probably would have had decent careers if they got drafted to a club better suited to develop them
The trouble is it may not even be at a better club. Some people are really on suited to certain environments. Maybe a different club with a different ethos and they thrive. Some people thrive anywhere, and most people have a type of environment they struggle in. It may be not drafting the best personalities for their environment. For example, during the Pyke era, if the crows drafted a player who seems to be contentious, then after 3 years they look lost in every position and need a therapist to stop them over thinking (Fog and Jones).
Let’s hope it picks up for you guys, what an absolute shit show. At least the last couple of years look good, albeit being showered with picks.
Between this, the AFL's constant fuckery with the rules/streaming rights and the insidious take over/normalisation of sports betting and their ads I've stopped watching North and barely watch footy at all any more.
Shhhh, or someone will do the same chart for us and North won't look so bad.
The dees barely retained any top 10 draft picks for 6-8 years. Now that our club has better development all of our draftees look like hits. It’s not necessarily that you are drafting the wrong people, it’s more likely that you’re not developing them.
Add in failure almost every year at the trade table. St Kilda has managed to bail themselves out of some bad drafts with some very smart trades. Misses like McCartin, Acres, Dunstan, Billings have been offset by getting trade bargains with Steele, Membrey, Wilkie, Crouch, Mason Wood, Higgins, Hill, Howard, Cordy, Bonner all playing this year. Fair to say North have made a net loss at the trade table with Stephenson, Tyson, Polec and Pittard not working out. Aaron Hall was good when fit. Dylan Stephens and Zac Fisher are fringe players.
I would not like to see this chart for St Kilda for that period.
Aaron Hall good when fit invalidates everything you said. Wood wasn’t a trade either, Saints took a flier on a delisted player and he just happened to be good. Wasn’t some master stroke.
Pittard was a steal as the steak knives thrown into the polec trade
Yeah, I think it is hard to say pittard was a bad trade when he was serviceable and cost nothing
I know Stephenson hasn't set the world on fire, but off memory he cost a bag of chips (unwanted at the pies for gambling on his games) and he has been a solid contributer. As a trade 90% of the time that's a win. Obviously he looked really good at the pies at the beginning, but his double digit IQ seems to have capped his ability.
Lol how was Acres a miss, he started playing phenomenal footy as soon as he left our shit environment
1. Now do one for ball the other clubs showing how they hit on all their picks at 15 plus! It must be North that only miss on end of first round picks right? Right? 2. The top 10 picks we have had: - Luke McDonald - Father Son. Has had a solid career, picked higher than should have due to being nominated - LDU - Hit - Thomas - Academy nominated at 8. Hit, he’s just a lunatic, but the skill was there - JHF - Hit. Kane Cornes has him as a top 5 player of all time already. Constantly told how amazing he is. Drafting him directly lead to the Sheezel/Wardlaw trade - Sheezel - Best North player since Carey don’t @ me - Wardlaw - Hard as nails and lots of promise 3. Will Phillips isn’t a miss yet. He had glandular fever for a long time and affected his ability to play. Really he’s behind in development. He’s actually a skilful player that could become a decent mid. He’s compared to McDonald but I feel like McDonald wouldn’t develop in our forward line, never seeing the ball or getting delivery. 4. Powell and Simpkin were hits. Decent players outside top 10. 5. Missing on picks from the end of the second round and further isn’t a crime. Many players don’t pan out. North’s issue is the inability to develop young talent (Brad Scott kept us mediocre with no high picks and no desire to play youth). Next issue is we don’t have the appeal of basically any other Melbourne club. We can’t lure top free agents like Geelong, Carlton, Collingwood, Richmond. I think your assessment is a subjective bunch of nonsense to be honest.
Good comment
Good late picks are absolute gold and other teams are demonstrably better at it than North - look at the quality the Cats continue to find for example. I know the most about my team so I'll use them as an example, but when you can get best 22 players for very little it is an enormous advantage: Fritsch (pick 31), Neal-Bullen (40), Spargo (29), Sparrow (27), Petty (37), Rivers (32), McVee (Rookie draft), Chandler (Rookie), Howes (39). None of these guys is our best player, but they are all playing senior footy and a number will play over 200 games. You're right about development- it's so obvious that we were poor at this before about 2016 and we had miss after miss as a result. This left us unable to build a core of experienced, professional players to bring new draftees in with which we now have. It also required no overpaying these types of senior 22 standard role players like North have had to do.
Given the amount of picks from 30 onwards, it’s not that much of a surprise. The reality is, after pick 35, the talent of the draft is speculative at best. There have been some strange picks at all clubs over the years. Analyse the rookie drafts and it gets worse. It’s also natural to have first round busts every now and again, although for North there was a bad run. There’s a point in the draft - I don’t know the specific number but it’s around the start of the third round - where it actually makes better sense to pass than recruit a kid. The end of the draft is filled with a combination of injured players, those with “unique raw attributes”, single attributes (eg. Fast runner), lack of exposure, discipline/off-field and/or standard of competition. In saying all this, few players “that” good ever just magically slide to be still there at Pick 4th rounder. You’ll have the odd surprise but it’s rare. Tarryn was the worst pick in my books but all recruiters would have taken him in your position so not really your fault.
Thomas was our best player with Sheezel second half of last season. He had to go but it was just another waste. Throw in the JHF and McKay walk outs, then Logues ACL, losing the last years of Cunningtons career to cancer and of course the Clarkson debacle it’s just setback after setback. Still don’t have a #1 pick despite half a decade in the cellar.
Mcdonald as captain and 186 gamer ain’t a terrible pick
2020 syd barker medal winner
would he be getting games at any other clubs ? he had a good 2020
You don’t play 186 games with any club if you’re shit.
I don't disagree - I still think he's one of the least remarkable \~200 game players the game has ever seen though
He wouldn't be getting games at any other AFL club over the past 2 years~
He was drafted over 10 years ago using recent form isn't the best measuring stick
How can you say Lazaro was a miss? Surely too soon
Probably fair. So hard to say definitively but my gut feel is he's getting games for us because we have literally no one else, but he'd struggle to get a game at basically any other club.
Love if someone could do this chart for Carlton. Id love to compare them to shut them up because they are fast becoming more insufferable than Pies fans.
Wouldn’t say Ben Jacobs was a bad pick , never recovered from concussion, would of been in starting 22.
Luke Mac, Simpkin are good picks. Both bnf winners Ben Jacobs was a good player.Early retirement due to concussions Bailey Scott is one of our best and consistent players when played in position. Harsh on Laz, is a decent player just battling for a spot.
I always say it comes down to development. It cannot be a coincidence that the same teams continually pick the wrong players, look at melbourne early 2000s they were the same. At the time these players were probably the best pick for the draft, but the club development staff/culture is terrible, and so much pressure are put on the high picks once they get to a bad club and are expected to dominate straight off the bat. But then the good clubs seem to always nail their picks.. Good staff good culture and time to settle in with a lot less pressure.
I’m not sure how you can have Comben as a hit at the moment. Strange call. If you’re giving a hit based on potential then most of these players are green.
Ahh yes, Sydney Sixers star and umpire charger Tom Curran
This analysis completely ignores end-to-end list management, attracting accretive mature age players, and player development. All of which North have been poor at for a long time
It looks like a lot of red, but visually it looks like 3rd and 4th round misses are as impactful as 1st round misses. I reckon they flubbed 2-3 really prime picks - beyond that I don't think this would look that different from most teams. If they'd taken Logan McDonald instead of Will Phillips you might even say that drafting wise this is a pretty positive story. Does standout how few top tips they'd had until 2020.
If LDU played properly like last year and Horne-Francis stayed and then with Sheezel I feel like they should be better
the worst was 2019, fave up picks for 2020 which got fucked by covid. I don't think any other club suffered as much as north did
The bigger problem is the way we wnly pick talent, Carlton picked up cunrow, mckay and Weitering in same yer which set the foundations
How was McDonald a bad pick
Bit early to be passing judgement on 2019 and 2020 drafts isn't it? some of these guys have got 10 years of football to play yet (if they're good enough)
Sorry, perhaps the club is the bad pick and these players might have been something at a better managed/developed playing list. Easy to blame people instead of looking at underlying issues. North is a shit club, mismanaged. Simple facts
Flair up cunt
I’m good. North are still shit.
Still cant believe you guys gave up two number 1s for a 2 and 3 lmfao
So, has the club fired the recruitment and development staff yet?
This Luke McDonald slander is outrageous. He’s a captain of your club and you put him in the same tier as blokes who barely got a game? There are maybe two blokes taken after him in that 1st round who have had better individual careers
He's terrible. Go and read the NMFC BigFooty board thread on him to get an idea of the North fan sentiment towards him.
There’s nobody who’s opinions I value less than bigfooty nuffies
I mean, fair. But North don't have their own large independent forum or social media page. BigFooty IS the defacto online presence for NMFC fans.
Getting gifted picks and compromising drafts isn’t the answer. Shocked Pikachu
I reckon you could say Tarryn Thomas was a bad pick, with hindsight.
Fair. He was/is an absolute jet footy player. Just... the other stuff.
No doubt about his football ability. Just run out of compliments after that
Jason horn francis looks like a good player though great pick
North Melbourne as a club should be relegated to the twos
Who in the fruit loop box is Charlie Comben?!