You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships every day. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity. ― Epicurus
Team balance is about filling current holes, but also about future holes.
They would have been looking 2-4 years ahead and thinking of boyd, cross, gilbee being on the way out and libba, wallis and howard on the way in. Whats wrong with that? Most young players take 2-4 years to establish themselves, if they are going to at all. Any sooner than that and the player wither unusually talented/physically developed or the team is unusually crap.
Howard has had 2 seasons so far hasnt he?
Last edited by stefoid; 16-04-2011 at 04:30 PM.
Remember back in the day when blokes like Dipper and Tuck played 100 games in the reserves before their debut. We would be freaking out if they did that now!
If they were first round picks we would. Rookie listers? Not so much (though I agree, it would be closer to 50 games than 100 that they would get to show improvement/make an impact).
Even 'back in the day' talented young players debuted and made an impact before their 20th birthdays...
What should I tell her? She's going to ask.
Some were only 15 or 16 (Grant,Watson) so now I suppose due to the TAC being a more proffessional competition than a metro league, I would expect them to be ready to play at about 20, at the latest.
I wonder if we looked back ,say 20-30 years, is the first game players age still rating around the same age nowadays?
err, whoops:
http://www.afl.com.au/news/newsartic...3/default.aspx
Thats not a thumbs up for the recruitment of Howard. (at this early stage)
These draft debates are always interesting. It's easy to take a pot at the recruiters if a kid hasn't debuted after a couple of seasons. It's also easy to say "give the kid time". I guess the reality is that you never know until you know.
It's definitely not great having a first round pick not come on immediately, but we had quite a few not come on at all during the Clayton era, so while it was Dalrymple's first draft he's not necessarily done any worse than might have happened anyway.
This last draft seems to have gone very well (F&S helped but the other kids seem to be doing well) so our depth of young players looks OK.