Matthew Clarke

[Smoking Aces]

Reckon we thought he'd be a mid swapping forward Captain. Averaged 27 possessions a match at the Champs in his draft year.

Got voted Vic Metros's best player (won the title that year), All Aus and Morrish Medal.

It didn't work up the ground, but he's still comfortably a first 18 player at AFL level and a tough match-up.

Clarke has made bigger mistakes than drafting Jack Higgins.

In 2018 we rolled Higgins in the midfield quite a few times. And with success. But when you have a midfield in their prime consisting of Prestia, Martin, Cotchin, Edwards, Lambert etc he was never going to stay there. Something went horribly wrong during 2020 where we happy to off load for not much in return.

Higgins will move to Moorabbin along with pick 21 and a future fourth-round selection, while the Tigers will gain pick 17 and a future second round pick.

The blowtorch should be shone on Blair on why we got duded in that trade deal.

 

[RoarEmotion]

What this thread proves is most of us know our draft mess ups and very very few of us know other clubs mess ups.

 

[momentai]

I think the surprise success of Tylar Young means we have a surplus tall down back, which is Gibcus who can now go forward. Gibcus is streets ahead of JVR in my book. Great drafting of Young by the way out of literally nowhere.

Have to disagree. Tylar played a terrific season in our VFL team last year, raw but with great promise. Fast and determined with little experience and great upside. No surprises there.

 

[tigerdell]

On the selection of Jack Higgins at 17 in the 2017 ND I think it's clear that it was best available. It's inconceivable that RFC instructed Clarke to select a small full forward with the pick.

There are two schools on the success of the selection-

A/ Higgins is a 13 touch, 1.72 goal a game forward pocket and that makes him a good player.
B/ Higgins is a Cody Weightman (1.82 goal a game) type, not worth two bob.

For the record, I'm not unsympathetic to School B.

What is not subjective is that he is no longer at RFC. School B says that's good.

I count the selection as a total bungle. (I'm ok with bungles - mistakes are overrated.) In what National Draft ever is a marking small forward the best available player? The 2017 ND?

I leave it to you to decide -

​

With no due deference Mr DE and no dothed caps et al, I fear that you're concentrating too deeply on the single picks and not the trends.
A classic case of seeing trees and woods, or miss universes and beauty queens.

A bungle or not, Higgins was picked.
But what does the trend tell us?
Higgins. Baker. Coulthard.
There are others.


We know the club values attributes differently to rabbles and clubs of disrepute (the whole lot of them except us).
Conventional wisdom has it that players of short stature dont make it in the game.
No matter how good, how fast, how football smart. Short guys aint no good.
Its very wise in my opinion, anyone under 190cm is evolutionary backward and probably useless. But lets not digress.

Richmond has a different algorithm.
Look at the trend. We pick runts who can play footy.
A moneyball move, these are players who have higher attributes that would see them picked higher if they were in fact higher. Baker QED.
Higgins (as Dear Leysy points out) was targeted to be a mid / forward. High value. That he might be a bungle isnt the problem, because we were aiming high.

 

[tigerdell]

On Clarke the trend for his first round picks is ambitious.
Higgins
RCD
Dow
Gibcus * no problem with this selection

It might be time for him to aim for more blue chip, dependable selections.

 

[seven]

Where’s lynch gone

Still in the moon boot

 

[bullus_hit]

Have to disagree. Tylar played a terrific season in our VFL team last year, raw but with great promise. Fast and determined with little experience and great upside. No surprises there.

State leagues are your bread and butter at the deep end, as are small forwards, Clarke knows the drill and executes well. It's actually the opposite to Jackson who struggled a bit with late selections very early on in the piece. I think Clarke can turn things around with some Frank conservatism, it's actually a very minor tweak and things can turn around very quickly as we've seen with Melbourne. This year is no-mans land for a top end mid or tall, if there's a desire to nail one this year we'll need a late teens pick. If not then there needs to be heavy investment in next year's draft, similar to 2021, things can happen rapidly and a Butters/Rozee type combo always on the cards. The other recent trend of key forwards sliding out to the 6-15 bracket should also be reason for optimism, but this needs to be addressed ASAP as even the best need a 3 year apprenticeship.

 

[zippadeee]

On Clarke the trend for his first round picks is ambitious.
Higgins
RCD
Dow
Gibcus * no problem with this selection

It might be time for him to aim for more blue chip, dependable selections.

The one that destroys me is the Higgins selection.
I can't find it but check my comments on the day we picked him.
We were still pissed from the GF. That could be the only reason.

 

[nikolasmia]

Our recruiters did not think JVR would make it, and still don't think he will make it as a forward

They may be right, but with 5 picks in the top 30 that year, and our list as it is, we needed to come away with something more than just Gibcus as a tall

especially since we knew we where going to trade picks for some established mids a long way out

 

[Scoop]

What if our Key is Gibcus though Scoop?
What if our intent is not to recruit them via the draft because the failure rate is so high, and we take the Lynch model (obtain via FA).
I don't disagree we appear to have a problem. What I disagree with is the pages and pages basically saying the same thing over and over jumping to conclusions. We simply don't know what is going on behind the scenes. We don't know the strategy. Just because we don't know or understand it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
If we get to Feb, and our forwardline consists of Miller, Bauer and Cumberland because Lynch is still injured and Gibcus is our CHB.....I'm likely to ask you where the pitchforks and torches are though.

If your best strategy to getting a key forward is getting key back and hoping you can make him a forward, your strategy is wrong.

We don't understand the strategy because there isn't any proof that there has been one. And unless we play a rabbit out of the hat, there is every chance we have Lynch and some parts of Miller, Bauer and Cumberland. Even if Lynch is playing, the strategy is still questionable. Draft people in the roles they excelled at in junior football. Get them to the club and explore but it can't be your plan to turn back into forwards. It happens organically, you can't build your list around that.

 

[momentai]

Bully and all, you have talked about those who shouldn't be on the on offer list and I agree. Balta, Bolton and DRioli.
Such an approach will leave a bloody mess, but I still believe it to be in the best interests of the club and terribly important while we have some value and before Tasmania.
I have suggested Dusty and NV, with some contribution of our TPP, are our most valuable and could be headed to GC. Maybe I have an inflated view of their value, (Flanders and their 1st round pick,- probably necessitating their use of some of their future picks for Academy players).
What would these two ageing champs be worth?

 

[TigerFurious]

A *smile* key forward is worse than no key forward at all. No point picking them for the sake of ticking a box that says “balanced list”. I’ll die on that hill too.

 

[tigersnake]

A *smile* key forward is worse than no key forward at all. No point picking them for the sake of ticking a box that says “balanced list”. I’ll die on that hill too.

That's it. You have to rate them regardless of needs. We didn't rate JVR obviously, and we may have got it wrong in hindsight, but if we didn't rate him we didn't rate him. The thinking is sound

 

[Dont Argue]

That's it. You have to rate them regardless of needs. We didn't rate JVR obviously, and we may have got it wrong in hindsight, but if we didn't rate him we didn't rate him. The thinking is sound

Then perhaps our rating system is wrong which loops back to Clarke anyway.
JVR looked promising from a couple of games in at VFL level. Ended having a very promising year.
How did we get it so wrong? Or why did we get it so wrong?
Might then be able to narrow it down to who got it so wrong.
I don’t buy into “it is what it is”.
That’s accepting failure

 

[The_General]

If your best strategy to getting a key forward is getting key back and hoping you can make him a forward, your strategy is wrong.

We don't understand the strategy because there isn't any proof that there has been one. And unless we play a rabbit out of the hat, there is every chance we have Lynch and some parts of Miller, Bauer and Cumberland. Even if Lynch is playing, the strategy is still questionable. Draft people in the roles they excelled at in junior football. Get them to the club and explore but it can't be your plan to turn back into forwards. It happens organically, you can't build your list around that.

I think that's borderline insulting to the club Scoop. I respect your opinion, but to believe there's no strategy because the club doesn't do what you would do isn't right. It doesn't mean the strategy wasn't a failure (eg free agent re-negs etc), but cmon.
Surely you don't think that Blair - the same guy that helped navigate us toward a list that had 3 premierships - forgot how to do his job all of a sudden?

 

[toothless]

That's it. You have to rate them regardless of needs.

That's fine if you nail your first rounders, we have demonstrated to have not done so recently.

 

[tigersnake]

Then perhaps our rating system is wrong which loops back to Clarke anyway.
JVR looked promising from a couple of games in at VFL level. Ended having a very promising year.
How did we get it so wrong? Or why did we get it so wrong?
Might then be able to narrow it down to who got it so wrong.
I don’t buy into “it is what it is”.
That’s accepting failure

Its not about accepting failure. It about objective assessment and benchmarking. As I've said like a stuck record, you can't sack someone because they stuffed up a draft pick, no recruiter would last more that 2 seasons, and not many would last that long. You can "fail' on individual picks, happens all the time to every club and every recruiter, but success or failure overall is a completely different thing.

Is the rating system "wrong"? I don't know, I've attempted to look at it objectively. Dunno how successfully. Like any recruiter, Clarke has had his hits and misses. How does he rate in comparison to other recruiters? What is is strikerate and how does it compare? That's the question to ask, not how did we stuff up pick X.

By my comparative analysis, he isn't bad, above average even, is he good enough? I don't know, beyond my amateur payscale.

As for JVR, we didn't rate him. Yes we may have got it wrong, but I can see why we didn't, not that tall, not that quick, and not much of a leap. I think he will be a good player, but to me, I can see why we weren't convinced. I can see why we didn't rate him, and I understand that if we didn;t rate him, we wouldn't take him.

As I've said, there would be convos like this one going on on every fan site.

 

[Scoop]

I think that's borderline insulting to the club Scoop. I respect your opinion, but to believe there's no strategy because the club doesn't do what you would do isn't right. It doesn't mean the strategy wasn't a failure (eg free agent re-negs etc), but cmon.
Surely you don't think that Blair - the same guy that helped navigate us toward a list that had 3 premierships - forgot how to do his job all of a sudden?

You can be successful in building a list buy get sections wrong. We got the key forwards part wrong. They had a strategy but it hasn’t worked.

 

[BillyJean17]

Its not about accepting failure. It about objective assessment and benchmarking. As I've said like a stuck record, you can't sack someone because they stuffed up a draft pick, no recruiter would last more that 2 seasons, and not many would last that long. You can "fail' on individual picks, happens all the time to every club and every recruiter, but success or failure overall is a completely different thing.

Is the rating system "wrong"? I don't know, I've attempted to look at it objectively. Dunno how successfully. Like any recruiter, Clarke has had his hits and misses. How does he rate in comparison to other recruiters? What is is strikerate and how does it compare? That's the question to ask, not how did we stuff up pick X.

By my comparative analysis, he isn't bad, above average even, is he good enough? I don't know, beyond my amateur payscale.

As for JVR, we didn't rate him. Yes we may have got it wrong, but I can see why we didn't, not that tall, not that quick, and not much of a leap. I think he will be a good player, but to me, I can see why we weren't convinced. I can see why we didn't rate him, and I understand that if we didn;t rate him, we wouldn't take him.

As I've said, there would be convos like this one going on on every fan site.

I still maintain that Bauer has similar skill set to jvr just 20 Sen games behind him in development

 

[The Mole]

Have to disagree. Tylar played a terrific season in our VFL team last year, raw but with great promise. Fast and determined with little experience and great upside. No surprises there.

Not to you and I maybe, but certainly to the wider football community it was a surprise.