Our height

Filthy · Post by **Filthy** » Sun Nov 26, 2006 9:46 am

Some friends have questioned our recruiting and the list height wise. I am bemused a bit whilst acknowledging that there will 3 significant retirements in the next 3-5 years in the 190cm plus area.

Consider this:

Name Age Hgt/Wgt
Bolton 27 195/91
Bradley 21 198/103
Fletch 31 199/103
Hille 25 202/109
Johns 21 194/92 (bullshit)
Laycock 21 200/90 (")
Lee 20 196/90
Lloyd 27 193/92 (")
McPhee 25 190/90(")
Natrat 24 190/85
Lucas 29 192/97
Neagle 18 190/99 (")
Ryder 18 197/88
Watson 21 191/90

Plus

McKinnon 20 204/99 Rookie
Gumbleton 17 197/92 Draftee
Michael 29 197/100 (?)

Plus

The Rookie Draft to come I'm betting we will recruit tall.

All the rest 180-188cms. Remember the ball is on the ground 90% of the time.

Windy_Hill · Post by **Windy_Hill** » Sun Nov 26, 2006 1:11 pm

Still, that a fair few talls.

Reminds me of the 84/84 era

antcl · Post by **antcl** » Mon Nov 27, 2006 12:19 pm

Given their ages, its crap.

Hird, Fletcher, Michael, Lloyd & Lucas will all be 29+ at the start of next season. Bolton, McPhee and NLM cannot play KP.

Ignoring rookies (who are rookies for a reason) and rucks, we've got Johns, Lee, Bradley & Gumbleton as young talls. Thats pretty damn light for potential KP players.

tom9779 · Post by **tom9779** » Mon Nov 27, 2006 12:31 pm

We will go tall next year in the draft,I don't think it is a huge concern.

I wouldn't trade at least our top 3 for anyone elses, I think we completely nailed our first three picks.

I think we did better than carlton, and the blues had a better top 3.(1,17,19).

Collingwood going for talls also didn't help.

2007 should hold more success than this year and 2008 will be a great year for essendon.....

antcl · Post by **antcl** » Mon Nov 27, 2006 5:09 pm

There were 10 talls gone by the time we got to our second pick (Hansen, Gumby, Thorp, Sellar, M. Brown, N.Brown, Riewoldt, Frawley, Reid & Everitt) plus two rucks (Leuenberger & Hampson).

So I've got no problem with the selectors picking up midfielders, as we effectively got the 6th & 8th best midfielders in the draft. And by the time we got to the next selection (#36), there weren't any top talls left. So I can understand why we went so short.

However, that doesn't mean we don't have a problem, or that unlike Filthy's first post we are light on for young talls.

Espescially given that talls take longer to develop, and are usually more risky picks. With bad luck on the injury/form front, we could easily lose Lloyd, Hird & Fletcher within 2 years. Even if all our young talls turn out 100% top players (damn unlikely), we'd struggle to replace them and still have enough talls in the first 22.

antcl · Post by **antcl** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 12:50 pm

Actually, at pick #36 Garland was available. Maybe we should have gotten him.