The Goodes and the bad of the 1997 Draft

[ItsAllGoodes]

Interesting little article on how so many teams failed to draft the best player to come out of the 1997 Draft

http://www.aflinsider.net/1997-afl-draft-the-goodes-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

[Layby]

Good article, but Goodes was considered 'injury prone' and 'soft'.

Its not like we took him with our first (or even second) pick either

Just highlights again what a lottery the draft sytem is

[NMWBloods]

Seems a bit funny in spots.

Goodes is unlikely to have made a huge difference to Melbourne or Essendon or Carlton in 1999-2001.

I'm not sure how much Brisbane would be desperately keen to have swapped Black or Power for Goodes.

No doubt all sides would like to have picked Goodes, but I think they are overstating his influence prior to 2003.

[goswannie14]

Good read, glad we got him and not WCE, that would have been frightening.

[Mike_B]

It's one of those things that is crystal balling. Who knows what might have happened had he been drafted by another club - would he be an even better player than he is, or perhaps he might have turned into another of those players tobe drafted but not amount to much. And then add results on top of it all, and you have a cascading effect, and just add in more and more permutations.

I'd have preferred to just see them state who was picked before him and leave it at that, rather than make any assumptions on who would and wouldn't have won grand finals, wooden spoons and everything else.

[wheels27]

Originally posted by Layby
Just highlights again what a lottery the draft sytem is

I agree to a degree, but I think all clubs do a lot more research nowadays than they did then.

I would like a lottery where I could weigh each ball and measure all dimensions, gauge smoothness and run sample draws given these measurements to see which numbers are more likely to come up, would not guarantee the bucks, but it might improve the odds a bit.

[swantastic]

Originally posted by Layby
Just highlights again what a lottery the draft sytem is

Spot on there Layby,but the swans have picked up some very handy players with late draft picks.Just goes to show you that you need good scouts(Barham)

[Plugger46]

That's a lot of rubbish - hindsight is a wonderful thing.

[SimonH]

So, half the teams in the AFL could have had an extra premiership or two if they'd just called out Goodesie's name in the 1997 draft? Apart from being an indulgence in 20/20 hindsight (gee, wouldn't Germany have been a better place in 1945 if they hadn't invaded Poland 6 years earlier?), I don't buy it as an assertion of fact.

You can't just take the 2006 model Adam Goodes who plays for Sydney, drop him into say the 2000-era Melbourne side, and say, 'Gee, you might win the flag over Essendon now'. Doesn't take into account:
a) his on-field role and how that gels with the team gameplan (a huge issue for Goodes, that it took us about 7 years to work out)
b) team balance (what type of player drops out to give him a spot?)
c) if he does turn out to be a star-- salary caps will have the effect that you either can't retain your full roster including your existing stars, or can't trade in players you'd like to pick up. You can't just look at the team list for the Sydney v Freo 2006 PF, and have Goodes swap sides
d) the mental element-- without diminishing Goodesie's level of self-motivation, who knows how he would have developed at a club in a different city, with different personalities, different intraclub issues, possible interpersonal conflicts etc?
e) 'random' impact injuries can happen, um, randomly. It's unknowable whether playing different games on a different ground, his number might have been up one day, and-- just like that-- he misses a season, with a difficult rehab to try to get himself back to full form and fitness subsequently
f) you can never account for performance in individual matches-- the champion players are more likely to perform on the big stage, but not 100% guaranteed. Goodes could easily have had no impact at all in any notional GF he played with another club, particularly as up until 2002 (and arguably to a lesser extent in 2004-5 as well) he was notoriously inconsistent.

[liz]

One thing that article fails to mention is the impact of the "One 17yo" rule that was in place back there. As the name suggests, it limited each club to drafting just one 17yo each season.

IIRC, the only club that hadn't picked a 17yo before Sydney was West Coast. Of course, it doesn't negate the premise that Goodes is significantly better (now) than almost all the other players picked (though Cornes and Simon Black, maybe Luke Power, could at least put up a contest). But it certainly explains why Sydney picked Campbell before Goodes. They knew that Goodes would still be there a few picks later whereas Campbell might not have been.

[Chow-Chicker]

Goodes might have helped Melbourne more than Travis Johnstone did in the 2000 GF?????? Schite, he would have had to have kicked 11 goals that day to have some sort of impact on the scoreboard!

[Legs Akimbo]

A forced and silly little piece masquarading as semi respectible hypothesis. You could write the same piece for any number of other players. Yes, draft decisions do make a difference, but we knew that already. Yes, players from the draft are important, but they first much reach their potential which surely has much to do with the environment in which they develop.

In absence of actual footy, journalists should instead write about cricket.

[Bloody Hell]

Originally posted by SimonH

a) his on-field role and how that gels with the team gameplan (a huge issue for Goodes, that it took us about 7 years to work out)

I think this is the crux of it he would have been seen as a KP, which he's not really suited for. If he'd played with another club he most probably would have ended up on the KP scrap heap (which is always quite large)...showed promise but not good enough.

His breakout year was 2003 when he took on ruck duties. That was a personel problem for the swans and he just filled a hole. His influence there translates to the role he plays today.

[Bloody Hell]

Re: The Goodes and the bad of the 1997 Draft

Originally posted by ItsAllGoodes
Interesting little article on how so many teams failed to draft the best player to come out of the 1997 Draft

http://www.aflinsider.net/1997-afl-d...-and-the-ugly/

I'm starting to develop a real annoyance with Australian journos.

This is terribly written.

Pick___ went to _____. They picked _____, ______, _______. Goodes is better than these players.

Pick___ went to _____. They picked _____, ______, _______. Goodes is better than these players.

Pick___ went to _____. They picked _____, ______, _______. Goodes is better than these players.

et al.

[laughingnome]

I think we're all forgetting that it was only under Roos' tuteledge that Goodes became a bona-fide star. Who's to say he would have gotten anywhere near that with another club? Eade is thought to be one of the better thinkers of the coaches and he could never really pin him into a game plan, so what makes people think anyone else could? If Wallace had taken the reins and not Roos then Goodes might well have become just an "average" player after a good start where he won the rising star.