Football Department Review

[Thryleon]

Slightly offside but probably one reason why neither Bolton or Teague have been helped....interesting article in The West over here today about our recruiting/drafting from 2010-2014....so in the 4 or 5 years leading up to the rebuild and the mega draft of 2015. I can't remember the exact numbers but something like 34 or 35 players drafted and only two left on the list....Cripps and Curnow. It made comparisons with the more successful teams and how many players those clubs still have on their lists from those years.

Reference was made to how many of those players would/should be around the 200+ game mark now. I know the draft isn't an exact science and every club has had their disasters....but to only have 2 players left from those 4/5 years of drafting is an incredibly poor result and certainly wouldn't have helped the club over the last 4-5 years.

Yep its not surprising for a Carlton supporter to see.

This is probably why we went for the Lachie Plowman, Caleb Marchbank, Adam Saad, Zac Williams, Jack Martin, Matt Kennedy group of players to help bridge that gap of experienced older heads.

We have a decent future ahead of us.  I think our middle period of players recruited is still hurting us, and that we are likely to have a better future for it.

What I find most interesting is the layer of players we have recruited that really have had a taste and are on what looks to be slower heat.

Just for those who are a bit miffed at the lack of older players, I think we can fill those gaps now, knowing we have a few to come through that could be anything (or nothing):

Carroll
Durdin
Ramsay
Philp
Honey
Kemp

These guys are all a relative unkown quantity at AFL level so will be interesting to see what happens moving forward.

Add guys like Boyd and Mirkov, we have an interesting layer of youngster coming through.  We probably need a bit more class in through the draft, and depending on whom ends up on the outer at the end of this season, but we could improve really quickly if any of these guys have the requisite ability to come on and show something quickly at AFL level.

Guys like O'Brien, Dow, SPS, Setterfield, Ed Curnow, Murphy, Casboult are probably all varying degrees of not moving us forward, but we could conceivably have a fair turnover and not cause too much top end damage to our list which means improvement is not far away (hopefully). 

Its really important we dont get emotional and dump some of the aforementioned too soon.  I wouldnt be moving on SPS, Dow or Setters in a hurry unless they too want to go because Curnow, Murphy and Casboults days are all numbered.