At least your response was a bit more dignified, send the memo to Redford. But in all honesty, when someone spends the time doing all this extra stuff, comes back from a long break, only to cop a repeat performance, it gets tiresome. I don't like people digging up my posts & being misquoted, the inference being I'm a sneak in a game of one upsmanship, when the reality is everything I put forward is timestamped & fully documented. This has now been turned into me being a try hard recruiter in some fantasy world, which reeks of double standards given it was done to avoid accusations of 'having my cake & eating it'.
Anyhow, carry on folks, I can move on from this, quite easily, it just won't involve all the extra graft, and that's my point, not one of you are prepared to fill the void & put out rankings yourself so I guess that's the final curtain call for this type of experiment on PRE, it was fun for awhile & thanks to all those who have offered support. I will still take PMs for those who have collaborated with me over the years, big shout out to previous posters like Gus, Phantom, Scoop and the interstate watchers, the lists were always a culmination of everyone's input, yours too Spook as I know you generally have a good eye.
I also think the recent success has made this gig is too much of a hot potato, understandably given the all benchmarks have been met in the form of 3 premiership trophies. Hopefully we're in good hands, time will tell.
I didn't misquote you or take you out of context or accuse you of anything of the sort. You had stated that you would have traded your 2019 first-rounder to get two picks to take Williams and Bytel in 2018. You then said you would have traded out of 2020 to get back into 2019. So you wouldn't have had pick 17 in 2021, which we obtained at the 2020 draft by trading the 2020 first-round pick you'd already traded in your hypothetical to get Bytel and Williams. So you couldn't have Johnson as well. That is all fact. If anything I just typed is wrong, I asked you at the time to explain how, which you didn't. Because it wasn't. You said I didn't credit you with the player you would have picked in 2019, but as far as I can tell you didn't nominate anyone, so it's a bit tough to credit you with Player X. I said you had that 2019 pick, just that you couldn't have Johnson.
If you put your opinions out there as strongly as you do - especially if you're going to compile threads that are basically "this is what I would have done" - you have to expect them to be questioned at times. And you have to have a thicker skin than claiming persecution when they are. Some people are blunter than others. Be the duck's back. It's a forum. Opinions fly back and forth and none of it should be taken too seriously.
As to your rankings, while I appreciate you put a lot of time into them, there is no void if you don't. No one asks or expects you to produce them, you've done that off your own bat. Some, as they've said, appreciate them because they don't get to see the kids. Others, who do watch the kids to greater or lesser extents, take them as no more or less than just another opinion like we all have. There are plenty of rankings put out by other pundits and they are all opinion, and none of them with the exception of Twomey's late mail turn out to be all that accurate.
(I rose to allybabe's bait in 2010 and posted my own top-75, so I understand a lot goes into compiling rankings. I'll never do it again because I don't have the depth of knowledge. I don't go to under-18s games. I don't know the kids or their families or circumstances. My opinions are all eye-based, from the vision available. You like to dig into analytics and testing more, that's fine. But I'd bet you don't go to under-18 games either, or at least not many.)
As you say, there are many fine contributors to draft threads. It's one of the things that makes PRE what it is. But we're all just arseholes with opinions. Some, like Reds and Bengal and Kong, know people and are told stuff and/or are even involved with under-18 clubs. Some like Scoop have other contacts and go to a few under-18s games. Some like me don't know anyone and back our eye.
You are not the guru. Neither am I, neither is Reds, neither is Scoop. None of us are. But we all have something to add. How others take it is not for us to worry about. I didn't give a *smile* last year when Kong bagged my judgement - he said there were only seven good players in what has turned out to be one of the deepest drafts in history, so what would he know! Scoop and I are famous for having similar usernames and vastly different player preferences. We disagree all the time, often vigorously, but neither of us takes it personally. Redders and Leysy challenge everyone to back up their calls and aren't shy if they disagree or find a flaw in your logic.
I think all that is part of what makes this a great forum. If you don't, no one is forcing you to be here. No one is persecuting you either. As Redders and I have both said, if you stay, great, we'll read your thoughts with interest. And if and when we have a problem with your reasoning, we'll probably continue to say so. It would be a boring forum otherwise.
