Pre-Game Prattle: AFL Rd 10: Carlton vs St Kilda at Marvel

[PaulP]

If Judd gets on the television  and says "we weren't expecting to be 1 and 8" you have to take that at face value. He didn't have to say it. He could have answered any questions  in another manner.

He means, at some point between the preseason and 3?, 4? weeks ago, the club thought they would have more wins on the board. His comment clearly doesn't put a timeframe on it, nor does it specify a number. What were they expecting ? 9-zip ? 2-7 ? 4-5 ?

[madbluboy]

I'm sick of people bringing this swap up for all the wrong reasons. You have pointed to many of the right reasons.
I'll go a step further and add this one.

Is it possible that Stocker (rated pick 6) is better than any player in the upcoming draft?

That is pick 1 from this draft is a worse pick than Stocker.

Therefor not only did we get a better player (Stocker) than we could get this year, we got a bonus 1st round pick (Adelaide) on top of that.

Alternatively, perhaps the next draft is so relatively even that you can get an a-grade talent no matter where you pick in the first round.

Either way, looking at where our pick is vs where adelaides pick is as justification for a good/bad trade is ignoring a lot of other factors that probably carry more weight by comparison.

The experts are saying the top 2 are better than Walsh.

[PaulP]

That is beside the point though Lods.

Does any club ever expect to be bottom 2?

If they do expect it, then they are probably not doing their job properly.
If they do expect it, and they say it publicly, then they are definitely not doing their job properly!
This goes to what i was saying above.

Malthouse played that game and said he couldn't see where we'd lose a game. How did that work out for him?

The club is gunshy on putting out expectations because if they are not met, even with legitimate reasons as to why (ie half your list injured) the media and general public are not very understanding/forgiving and the pressure increases exponentially.

Why do players trot out the '1 week at a time' and equivalent cliches? Because if they say anything of substance, its used against them and the club. Say nothing, and you have nothing to worry about.

And Ratten stated a top 4 finish for 2012, and fell on his own sword. How many other clubs out there get asked where do they expect to finish every 30 seconds ?

[kruddler]

So now stocker is pick 1 in the 2019 draft.
Ok fair enough the club obviously expected to finish bottom 2 just didn't want to  tell us.

Extrapolation Lods. Use the grey matter.

Has jimbo hacked your account?

[kruddler]

The experts are saying the top 2 are better than Walsh.

I always have a laugh about this kind of stuff.

Experts said Walsh is the best prepared, AFL ready kid to EVER be in the system.
He is the only player in history to have 24 or more touches in his first 6 games. 50% better than everyone else to ever play the game.

.....but NEXT year, 2 are better than him?

It may well be true.....but seems unlikely.

In any event, that is only part of the puzzle.

The stocker trade has a simple equation.....but a very subjective answer.

If Stocker + Crows 2019 pick > Carlton 2019 pick, then we win.

All i was saying is that it is possible that Stocker > Carlton 2019 pick.....and if so, Crows pick is a pure bonus.

[madbluboy]

Stokker doesn't need to better than pick 1. We traded one first rounder for two first rounders.

[kruddler]

Stokker doesn't need to better than pick 1. We traded one first rounder for two first rounders.

Oy.

I know he doesn't.

People are just losing their minds saying we gave up pick 1 for him. That in itself is 'proof' that we did the wrong thing.

I'm saying bollocks for multiple reasons.

The simplest reason that COULD be bollocks is if Stocker is better than pick 1 this year. Nobody can argue we lost that trade if true. Obviously, its unlikely, but from there we can make people see that its not as simple as giving up pick 1. ESPECIALLY when you factor in we still have a 1st round pick to use.

[Lods]

Extrapolation Lods. Use the grey matter.

Has jimbo hacked your account?

No  what I'm actually getting is a rather confusing picture. It seems the suggestion is that the club are being a bit cagey with the true picture and that they never really expected an improvement. Either they did or they didn't or things have gone off the rails
Which is it? Stocker may have been rated a pick 6 by us. But it seems no other club rated him that high. So he went where general expectations were or perhaps a bit ahead of that. I understand the need to look for justification for a position but don't close your mind to alternative opinions.

[kruddler]

No  what I'm actually getting is a rather confusing picture. It seems the suggestion is that the club are being a bit cagey with the true picture and that they never really expected an improvement. Either they did or they didn't or things have gone off the rails
Which is it? Stocker may have been rated a pick 6 by us. But it seems no other club rated him that high. So he went where general expectations were or perhaps a bit ahead of that. I understand the need to look for justification for a position but don't close your mind to alternative opinions.

You may recall how excited i was when the whole prospect of live trading was being talked about. I had called for as much for a long time, using the NFLs workings to point out the advantages of such a system and how it could benefit us.

Many were scared of the whole concept. Until SOS did THAT trade with Stocker and people started to believe. Now people are scared again after seeing a potential problem with that trade. I'm just pointing out things that many seem to overlook when evaluated such a trade.

Too many folks on here, yourself included, are fixated on what the club expected and what that means for that trade....and as a club.

Firstly, the whole rating of players in the same draft is hard enough. Yarran vs Rich vs Ziebell thread shows how quickly a 'win' can turn into a 'loss' and back again.
Obviously, rating players from different drafts adds a whole other layer of complexity to the already very subjective method of rating players. Not the least of which is the fact that we are getting a player with 1 year of development behind them over whoever we could take next year.

Secondly, the clubs expectations would be reevaluated regularly as well. So whatever our initial expectations were about this season, i'm pretty sure it didn't take into account we'd lose our co-captain and equal best player for the whole season, again. So expectations pre-draft would differ from post draft would differ from day 1 of preseason to the final day of preseason etc etc.

Thirdly, If the club did have poor expectations going into this season, would it be in its best interests to make that public?
If it did, would we have record membership numbers? Probably not.
New sponsorship deals worth mega bucks? Probably not.
Would merchandise sales be down as a result? Yes
Would players be given an excuse for failing? Yes, and thats not ok.
Would attendances be as high? Definitely not.
Would there be increased media scrutiny on us if that was our expectation? Absolutely.

So again....is it in the clubs best interests to make this public? Hell no. Yes, some supporters, like yourself, would appreciate the honesty, but overall, its a very bad strategy.

Finally, is it possible that the club did NOT expect to be this bad? Yes.
Could that because of injuries (Doc etc) yes.
Could that be because of a lack of development in some players? Yes.
Could it be because the coaching group is failing? Yes thats true too.

My mind is open to so many permutations about where we are, where we should be and why we are where we are and where we will be in the future and how all this has happened thus far and who is on first and what is on 2nd.

[PaulP]

We won't know for a couple of years how good Stocker is (assuming he can stay on the park), but for the sake of the discussion, what numbers would constitute a win, assuming we stay within some kind of spectrum of reality ?

e.g we finish 16th, Crows finish 8th. They get pick 3, we get Stocks plus pick 11. Win or loss ?