Swans Drafting and Trading History

[Mug Punter]

There's been some talk here that we trade well but don't draft well, which I must admit was my gut feeling.

Had a look at the last 10 years

Stats are for draft pick and senior games played for the Swans (in brackets)

2003-2007
2003 Willoughby 16 (-) Schmidt 29 (17)
2004 Moore 31 (68) Spriggs 47 (5) Traded for Darren Jolley for Pick 15 (118)
2005 Laidlaw 51 (1) Thornton 54 (8) Traded for Ted Richards for Picks 19 and 50 (173 and counting)
2006 Daniel O'Keefe 15 (-) Currie 49 (-) Traded for Spida Everitt for Pick 33 (39)
2007 Vezpremi 11 (11) Meredith 26 (16) Traded in Mattner 28 (115) and Playfair 44 (16) and Schneider and Dempster out

Would classify 2003, 2006 and 2007 as LOSS trade years and 2004 and 2005 as BREAK EVEN years only because we traded in premiership players. Moore our best top 2 draft picks in any years with 68 games. Honourable mention to Craig Bird drafted at 59 in 2007 which could upgrade 2007 to BREAK EVEN perhaps

2008-2012
2008 Lewis Johnston 12 (2) Hanneberry 30 (101) plus Shaw for Pick 46 (99)
2009 Rohan 6 (27) Jetta 14 (78) Reid 38 (56) plus Mumford traded in 28 (79), McGlynn (81) and JPK (98) for picks 39,46, 70 Seaby (18) in Hall, Jolley and Buchanan traded out
2010 Lamb 21 (12) Parker 40 (57) and AJ 57 (45)
2011 Mitchell 21 (14) and Lockyer 43 (-) with Walsh, Armstrong and Morton traded in
2012 No drafted players have made a senior debut yet

2012 obviously too early to call but 2008, 2009 and 2010 have to be WINS (2009 a truly inspired trading period) with 2011 about BREAK EVEN.

Conclusion: There's no too much wrong with our recent drafting record and our trading record is second to none

[liz]

People tend to look at drafting and ignore the rookie draft. We're far from the only club to find some gems on the rookie list, but I don't think we'd have won the 2012 premiership without the bargain basement pickups of Jack, Smith, Pyke and Grundy.

[Mug Punter]

People tend to look at drafting and ignore the rookie draft. We're far from the only club to find some gems on the rookie list, but I don't think we'd have won the 2012 premiership without the bargain basement pickups of Jack, Smith, Pyke and Grundy.

Agreed, and think this is an area the better clubs tend to use better than others. It's much less risky as they've already been in the system. Just goes to show how much of a lottery the draft is

[Jewels]

Great work Mug, makes for some interesting reading and changed my opinion a little on our draft history.
Funny if just a few things changed though. For example as you correctly say Birdy drafted at 59 in 2007 would probably upgrade 2007 to break even, but if he had been our first pick at 11 and played 110 games and counting, in my opinion that would make 2007 a win and if we had gotten Spida in 2005 when we wanted him, we would have probably been back to back premiers and that would have made 2005 draft a big win also.

[Mug Punter]

Great work Mug, makes for some interesting reading and changed my opinion a little on our draft history.
Funny if just a few things changed though. For example as you correctly say Birdy drafted at 59 in 2007 would probably upgrade 2007 to break even, but if he had been our first pick at 11 and played 110 games and counting, in my opinion that would make 2007 a win and if we had gotten Spida in 2005 when we wanted him, we would have probably been back to back premiers and that would have made 2005 draft a big win also.

Cheers, yes it is all quite subjective and clearly you are never going to get it right. It does really dispel, though, the notion that we haven't chosen our picks well (in recent times anyway).

Will be interesting to see how Towers, Marsh and Membrey kick on this year in terms of judging our 2012 draft picks.

[SimonH]

People tend to look at drafting and ignore the rookie draft. We're far from the only club to find some gems on the rookie list, but I don't think we'd have won the 2012 premiership without the bargain basement pickups of Jack, Smith, Pyke and Grundy.

Yep. When assessing the success or failure of a 'drafting year', you need to take account of all warm bodies who came in and out of your club in the off-season. I appreciate that the task of assessing success or failure becomes somewhat harder through that process, but the important thing is whether the year-on-year change to your list has been a positive or negative. For example, regardless of other trades and almost regardless of how well Hawthorn do in the draft, they would have to count the 2013 draft & trading period as a negative?at least until their first pick in the 2013 ND becomes one of the most celebrated players of his generation!

For Sydney, what seems to be merely a very good year in 2008 (the bust of Johnston, who was traded for what turned out to be limited value in Armstrong, being more than accounted for by the value we've had from pick 46 for Shaw, and one of the great steals of the last decade that Hannebery slipped through to pick 30) becomes an outstanding year when you remember that we got Mike Pyke at something like pick 57 in the rookie draft (the actual number doesn't matter, because in reality it was a direct-contract signing; he was never realistically on the open market).

2007 comes very close to a break-even when you bear in mind that we got not only Craig Bird with a late ND pick, but Nick Smith in the RD that year. (It was still a loss though, 'cos you shouldn't stuff up both of your first 2 ND picks in round 1 and round 2?luckily the 2003 and 2007 disasters didn't persist as a 4-year-curse in 2011 when we got the excellent Sam Mitchell.)

Bearing in mind that the ND picks we had to work with in 2005 were nonsense after we traded our only good ones for players (let's not forget that we traded ND pick 35 for the infamous Paul Chambers, and also picked up the list-clogging Ryan Brabazon at ND pick 57 or thereabouts), that year is a win when you add to Ted, one Mr Kieran Jack in the rookie draft.

Actually, if we didn't trade so well and use the rookie draft so wisely, a lesser club (e.g. Melbourne) and its supporters would still be whinging that cumulative failures in the 2003?2007 NDs had confined them to mediocrity for a generation, if they'd drafted as we have. The Swans, on the other hand, just roll on busily building a winning list any way they can. Including a flag right in the middle of the window period when your 2003?2007 players are supposedly the most important ones on your list!

The golden rule (that the Swans had seemingly worked out by 2005 at latest, but other clubs are just coming to): actual, real-life players who've proved they can play AFL are underrated in the draft/trade process. Draft picks, especially high draft picks, are overrated. I still remember the howling now about the ridiculous sums over market rates that we'd paid for a fringe player like Ted Richards, in giving up ND pick 19. They drafted Courtenay Dempsey with it. Dempsey, on 88 AFL games so far and solid but no star when he can get on the park, is probably travelling, if anything, above the average of players taken at around that point in the draft. But well and truly below Super Ted.

[ShockOfHair]

Fair points Simon. There's the famous story of Paul and Tammy Roos scrolling through the 20 years of the draft after he was appointed coach and figuring out that after pick 15 the ND is a lottery. Even the top 15 is a bit of a crapshoot - especially for us it seems. I'd love to see a detailed statistical breakdown of every top 30 pick and score them on the basis of age/body type/position against how many games they played and other stats. How many played 100+ games and whose stats were in the top 25% of players in their position?

The other thing about the Roos/Swans approach is that he's always said that the draft age is too young. Just on that alone you can see why they might take a punt on a mature professional sportsman like Pyke, or a Lewis Jetta who's been around a few years and is tearing it up in the WAFL. The one good thing about GWS/GOld Coast coming is that that's pushed other clubs to reach into minor leagues and give guys like Barlow, Callinan, JPod a go.

Plus the Swans have excellent player management. It's rare that a player wants to leave because of dissatisfaction with the club (Hall is the only one I can think of recently, and he left through an open door). That's a sign of a well-run club - the same applies to clubs like Hawthorn and Geelong. It must really help in landing players. It did with Buddy.

[SimonH]

Totally agree SOH that player management plays a huge part. 'Success' or 'failure' at the ND (or in a trade) is hardly a closed book at the time when the name is called out or the deal is signed.

GWS in 2011 and thereabouts mostly went down a disappointingly one-dimensional path towards building a list. The rules of their establishment gave them the perfect platform to pick the eyes out of mature state league players, and go in with a pretty competitive unit, balancing lots of young exciting talent with some size and maturity, in round 1, 2012. In reality, they signed Tim Mohr, Jonathan Giles (both successes) and Steve Clifton (failure) and that was about it. They put themselves in the position of having to manage an improbable number of young kids, almost all living away from home, without a good number of players across a spread of ages to act as informal mentors, and so of course some were and are going to flee as well. They will have a very very good team in 2016, don't get me wrong. But rather than GWS pushing other sides into accessing state league players by overloading on yet another half-a-dozen 'gunna be a megastar' skinny 18 year olds, GWS should have been accessing more of them itself.

Even though hard data tells us that 18yo is too young, the fact is that there are (going back a generation) kids like Tim Watson who started their VFL careers at age 16 without long-term disaster, and quite frankly there would be a legal challenge if an 18yo was prevented from playing AFL, and the AFL would never run the risk because it fears that the whole draft could be declared illegal. 'Increasing' the draft age relies not on preventing clubs from picking 18yos, but clubs using their common sense to recognise that picking 18yos may not be in their best interests. Common sense is pretty slow coming for some!

[tasmania60]

Agreed, and think this is an area the better clubs tend to use better than others. It's much less risky as they've already been in the system. Just goes to show how much of a lottery the draft is

watched fo 40 years and in the last 4 ------7 years they drafted as well as the golden years!

[Bloods05]

Totally agree SOH that player management plays a huge part. 'Success' or 'failure' at the ND (or in a trade) is hardly a closed book at the time when the name is called out or the deal is signed.

GWS in 2011 and thereabouts mostly went down a disappointingly one-dimensional path towards building a list. The rules of their establishment gave them the perfect platform to pick the eyes out of mature state league players, and go in with a pretty competitive unit, balancing lots of young exciting talent with some size and maturity, in round 1, 2012. In reality, they signed Tim Mohr, Jonathan Giles (both successes) and Steve Clifton (failure) and that was about it. They put themselves in the position of having to manage an improbable number of young kids, almost all living away from home, without a good number of players across a spread of ages to act as informal mentors, and so of course some were and are going to flee as well. They will have a very very good team in 2016, don't get me wrong. But rather than GWS pushing other sides into accessing state league players by overloading on yet another half-a-dozen 'gunna be a megastar' skinny 18 year olds, GWS should have been accessing more of them itself.

Even though hard data tells us that 18yo is too young, the fact is that there are (going back a generation) kids like Tim Watson who started their VFL careers at age 16 without long-term disaster, and quite frankly there would be a legal challenge if an 18yo was prevented from playing AFL, and the AFL would never run the risk because it fears that the whole draft could be declared illegal. 'Increasing' the draft age relies not on preventing clubs from picking 18yos, but clubs using their common sense to recognise that picking 18yos may not be in their best interests. Common sense is pretty slow coming for some!

Minor point: Watson was 15.

[Dosser]

Back then it wasn't all football, either. They had jobs outside of footy and only trained 3 nights a week. The toll on young bodies was minor compared to today.

[wolftone57]

People tend to look at drafting and ignore the rookie draft. We're far from the only club to find some gems on the rookie list, but I don't think we'd have won the 2012 premiership without the bargain basement pickups of Jack, Smith, Pyke and Grundy.

We have done really well from the Rookie draft but my point was that our first two round draft picks have rarely lived up to expectation. Looking at that list I think I am right in that. Lamb is now playing for GWS so that is another loss. We tend to do well with players drafted over 30.
Parker 40,
AJ 57,
Birdie 53,
Goodsie 43,
Hannas 30 (how did he last that long?),
Mal 64,
ROK 56,
Reid 38.

Then let us look at rookie elevations; Smithy, Reg, Rampe, /kizza, BJ, Harry & Biggs have all played seniors and some have played in premierships.

Add to that players we traded for Teddy 27, Joey 40, Benny rookie 55 & Rhyce 18. Not to mention Tip 32 & Buddy who was actually a first rounder at 5.

We have done very well at the trade in the past too. Hally, Plugger, Schwatta, Marty, Craig Bolton, N. Cordy, Cressa (played in Cats reserves), Nick Davis, Spida, Jolly, Jason Ball, Kappler, Healy, Maxfield, Merv Neagle, Schauble, Steve Taubert (mainly because he is the greatest ruck coach ever), Bernard Toohey, Willo, Greg Williams. I must admit we have had a fair amount of retirees in the early days coming up here and not earning their money. We have also had a lot of good players go the other way, the name Morwood stands out because there were so many of them.

[Mug Punter]

We have done really well from the Rookie draft but my point was that our first two round draft picks have rarely lived up to expectation. Looking at that list I think I am right in that. Lamb is now playing for GWS so that is another loss. We tend to do well with players drafted over 30.
Parker 40,
AJ 57,
Birdie 53,
Goodsie 43,
Hannas 30 (how did he last that long?),
Mal 64,
ROK 56,
Reid 38.

Then let us look at rookie elevations; Smithy, Reg, Rampe, /kizza, BJ, Harry & Biggs have all played seniors and some have played in premierships.

Add to that players we traded for Teddy 27, Joey 40, Benny rookie 55 & Rhyce 18. Not to mention Tip 32 & Buddy who was actually a first rounder at 5.

We have done very well at the trade in the past too. Hally, Plugger, Schwatta, Marty, Craig Bolton, N. Cordy, Cressa (played in Cats reserves), Nick Davis, Spida, Jolly, Jason Ball, Kappler, Healy, Maxfield, Merv Neagle, Schauble, Steve Taubert (mainly because he is the greatest ruck coach ever), Bernard Toohey, Willo, Greg Williams. I must admit we have had a fair amount of retirees in the early days coming up here and not earning their money. We have also had a lot of good players go the other way, the name Morwood stands out because there were so many of them.

Agree we pick up some diamonds later in the draft but our last 6 top 30 picks (Lewis Johnston, Hanners, Rohan, Jetta, Lamb and Mitchell) has seen 5/6 players who have kicked on well (believe Lamb will be a 100+ game player with GWS) and it's hard to argue against that. Previous years left a bit to be desired though.

[sharp9]

I know I'm being technical but Craig Bolton wasn't traded....we picked him up in the Pre-Season draft.....although having said that he was only in the pre-season draft because he wanted to play for us and walked out on Brisbane (well I'm pretty sure he wasn't de-listed)

We seem to have a habit of NOT picking and expected/rated player in the first round...(apart from Rohan and Lamb) and it's fair to say that this strategy has not been a success!

In fairness Josh Willoughby was an All-Australian......but Smokey O'Keefe????? As I recall no other team was even sniffing...I mean we could have had....Shaun Grigg, Mitch Brown, Tom Hislop, Gavin Urquart, Nathan Djekurra, Shane Edwards, Mark Austin or, or, or Bachar Houli...........actually that was a complete stinker of a draft......Kurt Tippett at 32 :-)

Lindsay Thomas, Robbie Gray and Tyson Goldsack down the 50s...plus Jesse White at 79!

Sam Jacobs, Clint Jones, Sharrod Wellingham, Matt Suckling, Brent MacAffer, Jarrod Harbrow, Tom Lonergan, Jaryn Geary and NICK SMITH in the Rookie draft. Would have to be the the thinnest year ever. West Coast managed to get 3 actual players in the ND which would be unique....Mitch Brown, Eric MacKenzie and Will Schofied.

HAving excused the recruiting department, it is worth noting that Daniel O'Keefe is the ONLY player in the top 50 of 2006 to NOT have a wikipedia page. That's a monumental stuff up right there. Maybe he would have got a game at a crap club so bad luck for him getting drafted by the Swans.

[Triple B]

I know I'm being technical but Craig Bolton wasn't traded....

Neither was Cressa, who was quite possibly the best mid-season draftee ever.

I suppose I'm guessing there because I have no NFI about other teams mid-season draft selections, but 200+ games at the top level is a fair career for a mid-season draftee. Dale Lewis may be the second best ever...