Overrating our club

[Auntie.Gerald]

When your values are clear your decisions are easy !!

I will take the path the Swans have taken the last decade any day of the week..............doesnt mean I dont want a premiership

[Sauce]

^^^ hey, back to your own depressing thread thanks. There is still optimism in this one.

How about you remove those rose coloured glasses and see what really is happening?

As per my previous post you could add west coast as well. Here we were as a collective only a year ago or even 6 months ago laughing at how much the weagles have sunk..they tank or throw away 2 seasons and currently they are in a better position than we are. Now who's laughing?

[Sauce]

When your values are clear your decisions are easy !!

I will take the path the Swans have taken the last decade any day of the week..............doesnt mean I dont want a premiership

In hindsight..i wish we tanked seasons 2007-08.

[jono2707]

[QUOTE=Auntie.Gerald;537173]When your values are clear your decisions are easy !!QUOTE]

Nicely said! Tanking may work for some teams, but that's not the way I want my Swannies to play....

[Bleed Red Blood]

Sorry about the late reply. I lost the thread.

Who specifically do you think we have currently running around in our reserves who's ability to come in and make an impact is due to Roos not giving them enough earlier games? I am really struggling to think of anyone who's physical readiness was evident last year or the couple of years before and who didn't get a go.

I'm not talking about players currently on the list, exactly. Most of them have only been around the last couple of years, and thats sorta more my point. It's the lack of development of younger players while we we're 'up' in 05 and 06.

Not one player drafted in 03 is still at the club.
Only Moore and Grundy from 04.
Only Jack from 05.
Only Currie, White and Smith from 06.
Even as recent as 2007, we only have Meredith and Bird left.

So from FIVE drafts Roos, only Smith, Jack and Currie are best 22 each week. (And all we're originally drafted as rookies)

And that's where we are missing players at the moment, there is a big gap between the over 28s, Jude, Goodes, O'Keefe et al
And then the good young players, like Jack, Hanners, Bird.

Paul Roos clearly can't develop players. Instead he traded for average players. Who knows how many from those drafts could've played 150 under a different coach? Lots of early 20's guys we're brought in, cause we clearly lacked KPP depth. Guys like Vogels, Rogers, Guy Campbell, none of them really got a chance from Roos.
And what about when Everitt was on his last legs? Any other club woul'dve given Currie a debut, just a couple of games as the back-up.. but no.

[Xie Shan]

BRB, I was going to reply to your earlier post about Roos not playing the youngsters, it's a valid point, because the issue was not that the youngsters on our list didn't have talent, they just didn't get enough games in the seniors for us to see if their talent would translate to the big time. And this is the predicament we are in right now, because guys like Hannebery, Johnson, Reid who you would expect to be the nucleus of our team in the years to come are still very inexperienced in terms of number of games played. You're exactly right, there's a big gap between the over 28s and the good young players.

I think your reasoning does suffer a little from hindsight bias though, because I remember in around 2005 on 2006 we were lauded for having the most number of players who had played every game in the season (or something like that?) and the ability of players like Jude, O'Keefe et al to play through injuries and contribute their experience during the finals was a huge factor in us winning the flag. One of the reasons why Geelong have been so good in the last few years is that they had a very stable line-up in that time which allowed their players to rack up a lot of games playing together, under the same game plan, and develop an understanding of how each other plays. It was similar with us in '05-'06, we were nowhere near as talented as the Cats but because our players had played a lot of games together they knew each others' games intimately, which gave us a massive edge come finals time because we were so well-drilled.

As a result of this, however, we did sacrifice the chance to get games into our youngsters, and I think Roos was too slow to realise when our window had passed in 2007-08, which probably put us back a year in terms of the development of our younger players.

But even my analysis can't escape hindsight bias, because as we all know we were a few seconds away from going out of the finals in straight sets in 2005, and then the criticism of Roos for not playing the kids would have been valid!!

[liz]

There isn't convincing evidence that Roos couldn't develop kids. Certainly there is evidence that he / the club preferred the approach of recruiting mid-range players to fill specific gaps, and that this gave the drafters less to work with. But there are hardly ex-Swan youngsters carving it up with other teams and hence demonstrating that the Swans failed to use their ability. Maybe the recruiters made some poor choices (with the benefit of hindsight). Maybe the club had a particularly bad run of luck with injuries suffered to young players during the development phase.

Laidlaw definitely had talent but his body couldn't stand up to the rigours of playing / training. Thornton was developing nicely until his knee injury and then a succession of soft tissue injuries forced him out. Veszpremi has yet to play a senior game for the Dogs, despite them not being able to believe he couldn't get a game for the Swans. DOK was a bust, and I suspect he didn't play a single game for the reserves without struggling for fitness. Bird has been developed and has contributed despite a relatively bad run with injury. Meredith and Johnston both had their first couple of seasons curtailed by injury and the jury is still out. Schmidt was starting to contribute before his knees forced him out of the game. (And if you have seen any glimpses of him running around with Balmain in the SFL this season, you will see evidence that he was always going to struggle with weight issues.) Phillips and Faulks have both found their way back onto a senior list, but Faulks hasn't played a game yet (I think) and Phillips has hardly set the world on fire.

I really struggle to see that more games into any of those players during 2004-8 would have had the slightest impact on the state of our current list.

Meanwhile, Jack, Grundy, Smith, Malceski have all matured into mainstays of the team under Roos.

[Big Al]

Has there been a youngster that Roos didn't develop or give game time to that had gone on to prove him wrong??

I would have thought that getting the best out of players was one of his strengths. The fact we were successful without access to top draft picks and a list that most would argue was never the most brilliantly talented says a lot I think.

Roos always said he would not give game time to players who didn't deserve it. As Liz has pointed out it's a myth that Roos refused to play kids. He just refused to play kids that in his opinion weren't ready.

[Melbournehammer]

Has there been a youngster that Roos didn't develop or give game time to that had gone on to prove him wrong??

I would have thought that getting the best out of players was one of his strengths. The fact we were successful without access to top draft picks and a list that most would argue was never the most brilliantly talented says a lot I think.
Roos always said he would not give game time to players who didn't deserve it. As Liz has pointed out it's a myth that Roos refused to play kids. He just refused to play kids that in his opinion weren't ready.

I never really subscribed to this view. The nature of the draft means that rarely do sides have it all. The Eagles had a diamond encrusted midfield. But their forward line was shambolic. We on the other hand had a forward line of hall, mickey o, davis and o keefe. Perhaps they were not really high draft picks but they were all capable of being all australians.

I think going to the heart of it is this - for a few years we played almost the same side. This was partly due to some recruits being duds, some not making it and a lack of injuries or poor form in the seniors so the need to replace playyers was relatively small. There was neither the push up or the pull up factors occurring.

I dont think the original premise is wrong however if it is redefined as being - for whatever reason we do not have a really strong core of home grown players in the 25-29 year bracket. And there were some dud decisions with the drafting which may have effected things - chambers and everitt (1) we paid over the odds for. But equally we've done very well out of our trades - hall, jolly, maxfield, schauble, bolton, shaw, mattner have all been very good for us and the list can go on. And the draft is what it is - a lottery. We have spun the dice and lost on a few occasions but then goodes, rok and potentially even AJ have all shown that once you get past the first 6 or so in a draft the good player is as likely to come from the second or third round as it is from the first.

if the question is whether our list could have been improved through better drafting i think the answer is yes - but what team wouldn't also say that. if the question is whether those who we drafted were good enough the answer is maybe not, but this has as much to do with bad luck as bad management.

And I always really liked tim schmidt. i was pretty sad he didn't get a few more runs - has he become a billy brownless ?

[Bleed Red Blood]

BRB, I was going to reply to your earlier post about Roos not playing the youngsters, it's a valid point, because the issue was not that the youngsters on our list didn't have talent, they just didn't get enough games in the seniors for us to see if their talent would translate to the big time. And this is the predicament we are in right now, because guys like Hannebery, Johnson, Reid who you would expect to be the nucleus of our team in the years to come are still very inexperienced in terms of number of games played. You're exactly right, there's a big gap between the over 28s and the good young players.

I think your reasoning does suffer a little from hindsight bias though, because I remember in around 2005 on 2006 we were lauded for having the most number of players who had played every game in the season (or something like that?) and the ability of players like Jude, O'Keefe et al to play through injuries and contribute their experience during the finals was a huge factor in us winning the flag. One of the reasons why Geelong have been so good in the last few years is that they had a very stable line-up in that time which allowed their players to rack up a lot of games playing together, under the same game plan, and develop an understanding of how each other plays. It was similar with us in '05-'06, we were nowhere near as talented as the Cats but because our players had played a lot of games together they knew each others' games intimately, which gave us a massive edge come finals time because we were so well-drilled.

Yes we certainly developed a 'team' that stuck together, knew each other strengths and weaknesses etc. I think they burnt out really quickly, too, because not only did Roos want them to play as much as they possibly can (in terms of games) but we also play such a strong, exhaustive brand of football (remember quotes from opposition players saying we we're the hardest team to play, I wonder what kind of stats we could find on teams winning % the week after they play us) which led to our players retiring early (Fosdike) and was also a problem for players coming from the Canberra league, already a massive step-up to AFL and then not being given a proper chance to adjust (like the many players who got a game, and then we're dropped the next week)

How many premiership players do we even have left?
LRT. Bev. Jude, Goodes, ROK. All I can think of.

There isn't convincing evidence that Roos couldn't develop kids. Certainly there is evidence that he / the club preferred the approach of recruiting mid-range players to fill specific gaps, and that this gave the drafters less to work with. But there are hardly ex-Swan youngsters carving it up with other teams and hence demonstrating that the Swans failed to use their ability. Maybe the recruiters made some poor choices (with the benefit of hindsight). Maybe the club had a particularly bad run of luck with injuries suffered to young players during the development phase.
I really struggle to see that more games into any of those players during 2004-8 would have had the slightest impact on the state of our current list.

Okay, maybe its not that Roos CANT develop players. but he didn't really give it a go, imo. Perhaps if instead of putting all his thought into who we can 'recycle' and who can 'play a role' we might have found someone like Johnson, who stepped in and just looked really settled straight away. And instead we might've been able to trade for someone a bit younger (like 23ish, who'd be in their prime now) which is what we are really missing, instead of a group of versatile without being really good players, and are approaching 30.