Re: List Building - More than one way to skin a cat
Reply #274 –
I don't think anyone would question the time and effort Kruddler puts into his analysis of list management and other discussion points. However, there's plenty to question about his methodology, assumptions and conclusions, and that's what helps make this place tick.
Again, I don't think anyone here would be unhappy if we were to draft the next Jonathan Brown, but there's a much greater chance that any club hoping for a Jonathan Brown will end up with a Jonathon Patton. Bringing in another Stephen Kernahan via trade or free agency would be far more likely to be successful.
The scuttlebutt is that we were interested in Louis Emmett but the Bulldogs snapped him up. Would the "draft a KPF" crew been happy with that? What about if the rest of the scuttlebutt is correct and he's going to be developed as a KPD?
What annoys me about the criticism of our list management team's work at the draft is not so much the bleating about not picking a KPF, no matter how banged up or unready for AFL he might have been. It's the downplaying of the fact that we snared the best KPP in the draft. All I read is 'he can't play on 200cm KPFs', 'we only got him because he's a father-son pick', 'he won't be ready for AFL', he's too short', 'he won't be as good as Jack', 'we've put all our eggs in one basket', 'we should have drafted a KPF instead of a KPD', why didn't we draft a State league KPP?', 'we could have taken [insert any delisted rookie KPP]' ...
Drafting Harry Dean (and Jack Ison) was a masterclass in NGA player development and astute list management. That is probably why both Fox and ESPN rate our work at the draft as equal third best ... but what would they know? And they're probably following an agenda.