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  1. #1
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    Forward Planning - The Age 1995

    I was asked to dig up this article a while back but I thought a few others might be interested as well.

    This is from the Age back on the 10th of December, 1995 that had journalist Richard Hinds spending time with the Bulldogs leading into the National Draft.

    The draft pool was very shallow and ended up being a disaster for us but I still find it an interesting read.

    I can't really scan it because the home scanner is A4 and of course the Age prints on A3.

    We had 4 picks that year 9, 29, 43 and 51. Originally we had pick 13 but a trade with Adelaide for Kym Koster moved us up the order. We shipped pick 13 off to Freo for the rights to Hugh Reimers, a key defender who was highly touted, and Brad Wira a hard nosed small defender that the club hoped would cover the loss of Koster.

    The aim was to draft Allen Jakovich but we knew that 13 would be too late with Collingwood positioned at number 10. The aim was to get ahead of them in the draft order.
    Western Bulldogs Football Club "Where it's cool to drool"

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    Re: Forward Planning - The Age 1995

    Part One

    It was two days before Footscray was to play Geelong in the third qualifying final.
    In his office at the Whitten Oval was the Bulldogs football Manager Garry O'Sullivan was about to dodge yet another call from one of the dozen of acquaintances, fans and others who always rang at this time of the year hoping to score tickets.

    This time however, the name of the man waiting on the line got his attention. "The tickets aren't for me" explained Allen Jakovich. They were for a supporter who suffered from a serious bone marrow disease. O'Sullivan was happy to oblige.

    Then out of interest, he kept the conversations flowing. Was Jakovich over his injury? Had he done any training? Would he be putting his name in the draft?

    The answer to each question was yes. O'Sullivan took Jakovich's phone number and said he would give him a call once the Bulldogs finals campaign was over.

    Two days late Footscray's season ended - horribly. An 82 point loss to Geelong meant that for the second consecutive season the Bulldogs had crashed out of the finals. The post-mortem began immediately.

    For the past two years, Footscray had used the National Draft to bring in raw talent to the club. By 1995, 18 of its senior list were 20 years or younger Those names were the distant future, but at Footscray the momentum created by the club's 1989 survival campaign had slowed.

    It needed onfield success immediately, and in the wake of the Geelong debacle, the match committee decided that they only way to get it was by recruiting "ready-made" players who could fill specific positions in the senior team.

    Recruiting Manager, Mark Kleiman was told his priority was to identify a full-back, centre half-back, midfielder and a key forward. If they were not available in the draft, the club would trade players and draft choices to get them.

    Meanwhile O'Sullivan had mentioned his conversation with Jakovich to coach Alan Joyce. Now they decided to get Jakovich in for a chit chat. What did they have to lose? The club had tried various options at full-forward - Richard Osborne, Chris Grant, Illja Grgic - but the club had not had a reliable multiple goal kicker since Simon Beasley retired in 1988.

    The week before the grand final, Jakovich met O'Sullivan and Joyce at the Bulldogs office and immediately expressed interest in playing with Footscray.
    But Jakovich's reputation for erratic behavior, on and off the field preceded him. At Melbourne he had exhausted even the vast amount of goodwill granted a player who had averaged more than 4 goals in 47 AFL games. After back surgery in 1994, Jakovich failed to attend several of his early morning rehabilitation sessions and his weight had ballooned. Finally, the Demons called a news conference to announce that he would be cut from their list.

    So before it took a chance on a 27yo with a chequered past, Footscray needed more information. In the following weeks Jakovich was examined by the club orthopedic surgeon David Young, the Bulldogs studied his medical records and they checked that he was indeed working out regularly with a personal trainer.

    All the reports were positive and eight weeks before the draft, Footscray had made up its mind. Allen Jakovich would be its full-forward. Whats more Jakovich seemed to be doing all he could to become a Bulldog. (Coach Joyce would have been pleased to hear the usually outspoken Jakovich tell a news paper reporter a week before the draft that he didn't want to be interviewed because he had made an agreement to keep a "low profile")
    Western Bulldogs Football Club "Where it's cool to drool"

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    Re: Forward Planning - The Age 1995

    Part Two

    When the pre-draft trading period began in November, the Bulldogs got busy, swapping Ben Sexton, who had never quite grasped his chances at full-back and full-forward, for James Cook, who had lived in Steven Kernahan's shadow at Carlton. Recruiting another full-forward seemed a strange move but Cook had already expressed interest in trying centre half-forward or centre half-back, and there was no guarantees that Jakovich would be drafted.

    The Bulldogs, however, were doing their best to ensure that he would. On-baller Kym Koster had returned to Adelaide and wanted to be traded to the Crows. Footscray suspected that it would not get Jakovich with its 13th pick. Adelaide had the ninth pick, maybe just good enough.
    Footscray did not want to lose the talented Koster, but with Jakovich in mind the deal was done.

    Having addressed its goalkicking problems, the Bulldogs next priority was defence. Already it had decided that Grant would be tried at centre half-back in the pre-season. But the Bulldogs wanted options.

    The 13th pick was traded to Fremantle for Hugh Reimers, an athletic South Australian who had been listed by Fremantle the previous season and Brad Wira, a rover from Claremont. But Reimers was untried. So when O'Sullivan took another call, this time from lawyer Stephen Peak, Manager and business partner of former Bulldog full-back Tony Campbell, he again showed interest.

    Campbell the would be entrepreneur who helped pioneer gloves in Australian football, had left the Bulldogs in 1993 to try his luck as a punter with an American football team.

    This year he had injured his achilles tendon playing for Perth and at 28 was a forgotten man. After two years out of of the AFL, Footscray needed to be convinced of Campbell's fitness. Again the club ran physical tests. Like Jakovich, Campbell passed.

    According to O'Sullivan, the Bulldogs meeting on the Thursday afternoon the day before the draft was a tense affair. Footscray's priority had been decided - Jakovich - but would he be there for them to take?
    Of the teams ahead of them in the order, the Bulldogs were fairly certain Hawthorn, West Coast, Fremantle and Sydney would not take Jakovich, but had no idea what Fitzroy or StKilda would do.

    "If someone took Jakovich, we had plan B" said O'Sullivan. "That was to sit there stony faced show no emotion and get on with it"
    Plan B was never enacted. When his turn finally came, Kleiman called Jakovich's name, to the surprise of some including it seemed, the Collingwood contingent that had the next pick, and who fell into an immediate huddle.
    Brisbane might have also been thrown by the Bulldogs choice. Footscray had been correct in assuming it would not have got Jakovich with its original 13th selection.

    With the rest of their picks they stuck to their plan to draft ready-mades. After short debate they took 22yo former Collingwood draftee Todd Curley ahead of a robust 17yo Luke Godden, eventually picked by the Magpies. With their 3rd they went for Mark West, a 22yo on-baller from Cairns via South Australia.
    As planned, Campbell was the 4th and final selection. Given the shortage of experienced key defenders the Bulldogs were unwilling to risk having Campbell train with them all summer and be drafted by someone else in February.

    While Jakovich was to be the subject of the most post-draft speculation, Campbell was another big gamble. The Bulldogs were unfazed by the inevitable criticism about their choice of older players.

    If they were uncertain before, by Saturday morning, the Bulldogs were well aware of the impact of Jakovich would have at the Whitten Oval. Already their new full-forward had appeared on the front and back pages of Melbourne's two daily newspapers. Maybe the Bulldogs hope that Jakovich would keep a low profile was optimistic, but when they called his name they knew they were not drafting a shrinking violet.

    "We needed firepower, we needed someone who was going to to ignite a bit of passion, someone to get the terraces jumping a bit - just someone who would make a difference" said O'Sullivan. "Allen Jakovich has all those qualities wrapped up in one"

    Now it remains to be seen if he can still kick goals.

    (GVG's notes)

    There is a picture of a white board that listed all the names for each selection

    9 - A.Jakovich, C.Groom, D.Healy, B.Williams, L.Godden
    29 - T.Curley, N.Credlin, A.Lamb, N.Carter, L.Trew
    43 - M.West, K.Fraser, A.Thompson, B.Cassidy
    51 - T.Campbell

    We would have selected Chris Groom if Jakovich wasn't still available.
    Western Bulldogs Football Club "Where it's cool to drool"

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    Re: Forward Planning - The Age 1995

    History will say this was a train wreck for us but I know that there was a hell of a lot of excitement around the club when all this fell into place.
    Jakovich was supposed to kick us a few bags of goals, Campbell and Reimers to help Grant as key defenders and Wira and Curley coming off solid WAFL seasons were to provide us with some midfield depth. West was highly rated as an impact player and Cook some insurance as a key forward.

    I'm not sure why I kept this article for so long but I haven't had a read of it in ages and thought some of you, perhaps the older guys more so, would enjoy it.

    The local council is giving everyone in my neighborhood a chance to clear out some of the junk that has been collected of the years and whilst there is old furniture and cupboards out on a number of nature strips, I don't think I'll throw out the collection of draft and Bulldog articles just yet.
    Western Bulldogs Football Club "Where it's cool to drool"

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  6. #5
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    Re: Forward Planning - The Age 1995

    For us 'younger' folk, what exactly happened to Jackovich?

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    Re: Forward Planning - The Age 1995

    I think he ended up playing 2 games kicked f-all goals and sat on the pine for the season before getting delisted......he ate a lot of pies too!

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    Re: Forward Planning - The Age 1995

    Quote Originally Posted by wimberga View Post
    For us 'younger' folk, what exactly happened to Jackovich?


    He got fat and was drunk most of the time.
    Have you been reading those Roddy Doyle books again, Dougal!?


    I have, yeah Ted, you big gobshite

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    Re: Forward Planning - The Age 1995

    I played football with both Jakovich's at South.

    One night, I gave Alan a ride home from training, and he was very excited to tell me that he had found some new runners, and pulled them out of his bag to show me.

    You know what is coming next - they were the runners I had bought that day (the club only gave us one pair / year!) and had put in my locker...

    Needless to say, he walked home to South Coogee.

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    Re: Forward Planning - The Age 1995

    All that has been said is true, except that when the judgement of those recruiting players gets so warped that they convince themselves that all you need to consider is the upside, then the club is on the down side.

    All Wheels work in laying plans for a long term future were being undone and recklessly so. Just like a more recent example of a few crazies bent on instant success.
    I believe there's nothing on this earth that we own. All we do is look after it for our children - Terry Wheeler

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    Re: Forward Planning - The Age 1995

    Interesting read. Too bad the doc didn't discover Jako's dodgy back.

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    Re: Forward Planning - The Age 1995

    He did manage to kick 3 against the saints at OO late in 1996 to give us a rare win that year in a game we had no right to win.

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    Re: Forward Planning - The Age 1995

    Quote Originally Posted by craigsahibee View Post
    He did manage to kick 3 against the saints at OO late in 1996 to give us a rare win that year in a game we had no right to win.
    I remember that game, it was shifted away from WO because of the condition of the surface. It was the day i started to think better times could be coming soon.

    I have only just come across this now. Thanks for posting it GVGjnr. I actually remember bits of it from reading it back then. Back in the mid 90's this kind of insight into an AFL club's planning was much more rare, so i guess it stuck in my mind. I remember being struck at the time by the 'stony faced' plan B (makes you wonder how many times something major has fallen through that you never end up hearing much about), and Jackovich's refusal to do a pre draft interview. It was evidence of how keen he was to come to the dogs, and by extension how committed he would be! The king hit on McKenna out at Waverly was the point where it started to become obvious that we'd backed the wrong pony.

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    Re: Forward Planning - The Age 1995

    Quote Originally Posted by Pembleton View Post
    I remember that game, it was shifted away from WO because of the condition of the surface. It was the day i started to think better times could be coming soon.

    I have only just come across this now. Thanks for posting it GVGjnr. I actually remember bits of it from reading it back then. Back in the mid 90's this kind of insight into an AFL club's planning was much more rare, so i guess it stuck in my mind. I remember being struck at the time by the 'stony faced' plan B (makes you wonder how many times something major has fallen through that you never end up hearing much about), and Jackovich's refusal to do a pre draft interview. It was evidence of how keen he was to come to the dogs, and by extension how committed he would be! The king hit on McKenna out at Waverly was the point where it started to become obvious that we'd backed the wrong pony.
    We'd backed a stablefull of wrong ponies.
    I believe there's nothing on this earth that we own. All we do is look after it for our children - Terry Wheeler

  16. #14
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    Re: Forward Planning - The Age 1995

    Quote Originally Posted by GVGjr View Post
    Part Two
    (GVG's notes)

    There is a picture of a white board that listed all the names for each selection

    9 - A.Jakovich, C.Groom, D.Healy, B.Williams, L.Godden
    20 - T.Curley, N.Credlin, A.Lamb, N.Carter, L.Trew
    43 - M.West, K.Fraser, A.Thompson, B.Cassidy
    51 - T.Campbell
    We would have selected Chris Groom if Jakovich wasn't still available.
    Great read, I also agree that Curley and Mark West played some reasonable footy for us and that Jakovich and Campbell were worth a punt, as plan B for each pick would have amounted to the worst draft by an AFL side in the history of the game.

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    Re: Forward Planning - The Age 1995

    Quote Originally Posted by westdog54 View Post
    Hmmm, that clears something up for me.

    At a game against West Coast at OO a few years back the 'Barkly St Boys' were in full voice, getting stuck into Glen Jakovich at the warm up. The best line that went out was 'Your brother owes me money Jakovich!"
    yes got into Crows fans that year at a game at the w/o . Had a chant going about South Australians which didn't go down well with our visiting fans.

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