saintsRrising wrote:meher baba wrote:
Costa and Thompson and others at the club implemented a strategy in the early 2000s which was very similar to that developed by Thomas, Butterss and Waldron at the same time. That is, build a strong playing list based on young guys recruited through the draft and get them to develop close teamwork and use this platform as the basis to become one of the top clubs over a long period:
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Err yes GTrain, Hamill, Capuano, Voss, Lawrence, Powell, Black, Penny, Knoble, Guerra, Ackland, Rix, Stone, Murray, Fiora were all young guys recruited through the draft!!!! Not to mention others such as Brooks and Watts.
Similar strategy. Pigs arse..... the Cat's approach was poles apart from the Saint's strategy. One can argue the merits of each, but similar there were not.
The Cat's main departure from drafting kids, was their search for big guys that could kick goals....Mooney, Ottens and lately the Pod. The Saints by contrast have had a constant Foreign Legion approach. Sure we were fortunate to finish bottom in an era of the priority pick coming in, and gained BJ due to the Blues cheating..but bother were dumb-arsed luck rather than the cat's methodical approach.
Even the Cat's attitude to bad apples was different. They turned SJ around, whereas we showed Everitt and Hall the door.
Don't let facts get in the way of a love affair!!
It's good to see that your love affair with Ross Lyon (and/or your irrational under rating of GT), which seemed to dim for a bit late last year, is coming back to full flower.
If you can't see that, up to 2006, there was a certain broad similarity between our club's approach and that being pursued by Geelong and then, under Lyon we went in a different direction, then I don't think there's much point in arguing with you.
As far as I can see, under Butterss and Waldron and Thomas we were persuing a strategy of trying to recruit a group of players - both through the draft and through recycling - who would form the nucleus of a team that would develop over a 5-10 year period. Apart from the very poor choice of Capuano (and I'm not sure whose choice he was) all of the guys you have listed were assessed, when they were recruited, of being capable of playing 100 games or more for our club. Moreover, all of them were throught to possess skills relevant to the sort of Brisbane Lions/rolling attack game plan.
Lyon and those managing the club while he was with us, collectively took a different approach. They wanted players who could perform certain roles in the here and now. Lyon's strategy was far more defensively-oriented and gave more emphasis to athleticism and work ethic than to ball skills. His approach was ground-breaking and brilliant and almost snatched us two flags. But it was different to the one we had before 2006 and there is now perhaps a price to pay for that difference. Geelong, meanwhile, keep rolling along.
On the whole, I'm prepared to accept the argument that we needed to change horses in 2006 in order to come so close in 2009 and 2010. But sometimes I wonder if there was some way we could have reached those heights while also retaining some of the concept of building for the long-term: eg, with a coach other than GT or Lyon and certainly with more effective football management cadre than we seem to have had in recent years.
The wheels completely fell off our list management strategy at the end of 2009. We alienated Ball and then lost him for no compensation while continuing to proclaim that he was a required player. We ditched Goose (who might be a bit useful to us right now) and X. We then engaged in an orgy of recycling: Lovett, Peake, Smith, Pattison and promoting Dawson and Miles, with Winmar as our only significant newly drafted talent. It was unquestionably a disastrous year in terms of long-term list development and, while it didn't affect us signficiantly in the short-term (ie, we all but won the premiership again in 2010), I am certain we will be paying a long-term price for this disaster. Perhaps we can simply heap all the blame on the departed Matthew Drain - and I'm sure he was responsible for a lot of the poor decision-making - but I believe that the approach the club took in late 2009 was sypmtomatic of its overall strategic thinking: looking for a certain type of player to top up the list in the here and now, with no great interest in whether they would still be playing for the club in five years time.
It seems to me that Geelong have been able to have their cake and eat it too: steadily evolving their list as their stars leave one by one, but retaining their place at the head of the table. Perhaps that was never going to be possible for us, but I suspect that the brains trust at helm of the club in the late 2000s wasn't even considering it as a possibility. Fair enough in some ways: we only have one premiership and would just about sell our souls for a second one. But right now I see it as a bit of a shame.
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."
- Jonathan Swift