Do you still believe in drafting best available? Then do you also accept the consequences of that?

We all know the old drafting best available vs drafting for needs argument, and I think most here would advocate for going for best available.

Fair enough.

But what about the likely consequences of that?

The Lions seem to have a team of giants, and we have half a team of mostly good inside mids.

Surely the consequences of this philosophy is that you have to be willing and able to trade what you have a surplus of?

Yet fans go off their brains when this is suggested. "Oh, it will wreck the fabric of the team etc"

Well, the inconvenient truth is that we have lots of inside mids, and bugger all fast, skilful players, true forwards or good tall forwards (especially after Stringer leaves).

In the next couple of years, should we be shopping around one or two of our big name inside mids to get what we need?

We don't have too many inside mids. In fact we could do with a couple more to release Bont to the outside and Dahlhaus forward

A couple of years ago maybe we did but Stevens is gone, Honeychurch likely delisted, Smith mostly forward after his 3rd ACL, Prudden's gone

Dunkley's the only one we've picked since Bont/Honey in 2013

Go best available if they aren't what we need because what we need isn't in the draft then trade to other clubs for what we need,personally I still believe we have a good balanced list, it's our set up that's not working between the line coaches. We go into our forward 50 more than any other club, just lower the eyes and deliver properly and problem solved , I know that seems simple but seriously Why is football so statistic driven and over analyzed?
It's a two kick game in the simplest and easiest manner for a footballer to understand, one kick out of the centre to the forward line then one through the sticks.
Does my head in how the media, the clubs,the coaches go so far in depth they make the bloody simple look like rocket science it seriously must do a lot of naturally gifted footballers heads in. Meetings and meetings about stuff that's out the door once they are on the field and chase a ball with milliseconds to get it and dispose of it.
Sorry my rant I've had it now.
Go back to my first sentence.

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Originally Posted by boydogs

We don't have too many inside mids.

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Well we must have too many of something else given the holes in our list.

Best available with early selections is still the way to go. There has to be a bit of commonsense applied though.

Recruit the best players and trade for gaps is the right approach

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Originally Posted by Dry Rot

Well we must have too many of something else given the holes in our list.

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Too many of these:

Tall defenders (Collins, Young, Adams, Roberts, Cordy)
Mid size forwards (Dickson, Stringer, Greene, Lipinski, Crameri, Clay Smith)

And the holes are there due to lack of quality. Look at our key forward stocks: Cloke, Redpath and Boyd. 3 is probably ok to have on a list but those names are shocking. One is almost on the retirement scrap heap, one has dodgy knees and an even dodgier off field attitude, and Boyd is a hybrid ruck/forward.

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Originally Posted by GVGjr

Best available with early selections is still the way to go. There has to be a bit of commonsense applied though.

Recruit the best players and trade for gaps is the right approach

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Agreed. I don't mind later picks in the draft to be a mature player for need.

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Originally Posted by comrade

Too many of these:

Tall defenders (Collins, Young, Adams, Roberts, Cordy)
Mid size forwards (Dickson, Stringer, Greene, Lipinski, Crameri, Clay Smith)

And the holes are there due to lack of quality. Look at our key forward stocks: Cloke, Redpath and Boyd. 3 is probably ok to have on a list but those names are shocking. One is almost on the retirement scrap heap, one has dodgy knees and an even dodgier off field attitude, and Boyd is a hybrid ruck/forward.

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Young was drafted as a forward.
Adams can play both ends as he proved in the WAFL.
Dickson and Smith are both small forwards.
What is the dodgy off field attitude you speak of with Redpath?

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Originally Posted by always right

Young was drafted as a forward.
Adams can play both ends as he proved in the WAFL.
Dickson and Smith are both small forwards.
What is the dodgy off field attitude you speak of with Redpath?

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A) Young is a defender for now.
B) Adams has played his best footy in defence, his ability as a forward is unproven.
C) Fine, Dickson and Smith are small forwards. As a collective, we've got too many mid sized and small forwards then.

re the comment about Jack Redpath i.e "one has dodgy knees and an even dodgier off field attitude", could the poster elaborate on this ? Redpath is by all accounts pretty popular at the Club. I think you need to back up that comment or withdraw it.

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Originally Posted by westbulldog

re the comment about Jack Redpath i.e "one has dodgy knees and an even dodgier off field attitude", could the poster elaborate on this ? Redpath is by all accounts pretty popular at the Club. I think you need to back up that comment or withdraw it.

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There is a clique of players who come from the central Victorian towns of Bendigo, Castlemaine, Marybourough and around there who are fairly tight with one another and don't always do the right thing by their teammates in terms of preperation and recovery. You can't have a football club where most of the group are doing the right thing but are being let down by a lack of professionalism from their teammates.

This now has gone past Jake saying that he is going to change his ways to the coach. He also has teammates as well that he has to convince he is serous about his footy. They think Jake is taking the piss while they are doing everything right.

It depends how much we're reaching by favouring needs over the best available.
We reached for Tim Walsh and Jarrad Grant and arguably Andrejs Everitt.

I look forward to this iteration of Needs versus Best available resolving a consensus once and for all!

Realistically, it depends on what your list's needs are at the time and the evenness of talent in the pool. If there's a marginal difference between the best available, and a player who fits the needs, then if your need is desperate you'd go for the latter - particularly if that type of player (i.e. key positional) is rarer than others (i.e. inside midfielders).

Hard and fast rules are silly.

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Originally Posted by jeemak

I look forward to this iteration of Needs versus Best available resolving a consensus once and for all!

Realistically, it depends on what your list's needs are at the time and the evenness of talent in the pool. If there's a marginal difference between the best available, and a player who fits the needs, then if your need is desperate you'd go for the latter - particularly if that type of player (i.e. key positional) is rarer than others (i.e. inside midfielders).

Hard and fast rules are silly.

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It's like winning the toss in cricket. You might think about bowling but you always choose to bat. You might think about going needs but you go best available with early picks or you're overspending by taking a player that would have gone later with an earlier pick and missing out on the quality player that pick would have bought.

The sensible thing to have done was to trade that draft pick for the quality player to address the gap during the trade period. If you're drafting to fill gaps then it's effectively too late. You're gambling on a draftee (and taking him with a higher pick than he would normally go for) to fill a gap. Not to mention the fact you are leaving a quality draftee in the pool for a competitor to gobble up. By that stage it's time to cut your losses and go best available. You can't have too many quality footballers, you'll find a position for them to play them.

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Originally Posted by Twodogs

It's like winning the toss in cricket. You might think about bowling but you always choose to bat. You might think about going needs but you go best available with early picks or you're overspending by taking a player that would have gone later with an earlier pick and missing out on the quality player that pick would have bought.

The sensible thing to have done was to trade that draft pick for the quality player to address the gap during the trade period. If you're drafting to fill gaps then it's effectively too late. You're gambling on a draftee (and taking him with a higher pick than he would normally go for) to fill a gap. Not to mention the fact you are leaving a quality draftee in the pool for a competitor to gobble up. By that stage it's time to cut your losses and go best available. You can't have too many quality footballers, you'll find a position for them to play them.

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So what you're saying is that hard and fast rules are the way to go?

What if we had pick four, and we closely rated an inside mid as the fourth best player over a genuinely talented KPF at five. We went through the analysis and found there was only a marginal percentage difference in our scoring criteria.

We have a glut of inside midfielders, and a shortage of key position forwards.

Would you still choose the inside midfielder?