loris bertolacci

AFL Development and Carlton

Martyn Pyke on SEN today spoke as well as I have heard on developmental needs in the AFL. He was straight to the point and objective and not going on and on about the week that was and one game in isolation or individuals. He was talking about how Carlton missed their opportunity to draft players in 1999 and then 2000 versus other clubs like Geelong who jampacked their list with good kids. Not the best but good. But he then simply spoke about the “equations” required for success in the AFL. Draft heaps of good young kids then nurture them for 5 to 8 years in an environment where they have some older players and some relative success and wait. Get other areas up and running and after 8 years see the good times roll ( ie win a few games and be competitive and give some hope). So if everything is set to go he pointed to things such as administration as areas needing to improve for instance to win a flag. The mistake he said was trying to put a heap of kids together in the absence of leaders without any success for year after year. IE That it is not as easy as sticking 22 Franklins in one team. This is why Guerra is at teh Hawks and how many pre-seasons has Campbell Brown done now? Quite a few. He also spoke about young players in good teams looking better early than others and how he was better at Kangaroos than Fitzroy. IE A young player in Geelong versus one at Carlton this year. Often I find people use the presence of one or two young players as evidence that fast tracking can occur. Can happen but rarely. Simply what I liked about his comments were that they were objective and general. Not that this club and that club had better coaches or the odd star player or whatever. The one little point I wanted to pick him up on was when he spoke about the Baby Bombers and how they were an exception but really one must remember they had many great older players ( Salmon / Thompson /Harvey / ODonnell and hard heads like Grenvold and so on) and really there only a few young ones. Paul Hills had been there since 1988 and the others were at U/19’s in 1990. Hird / Mercuri /Calthorpe / Olarenshaw with Fletcher being the youngy and anyway I think Kernahan kicked a few anyway! . So really he was saying that in a draft, success is cyclical as we know and is what the AFL wants but moreso by mentioning “years required” was almost getting back to that 10 years of practice needed in elite sport and the predictable nature of the AFL competition. This is why coaches cannot outlast these “years required” unless they simply survive!. People cant wait 8 years without a final. Geelong won the VFL final in 2002, just missed the finals in 2003 and then made finals in 2004 and 2005 so played 5 finals and had relative success and gave some hope to supporters as against a Carlton. So if a coach can take over when players are 23.5 to 24.5 on average and almost 80/90 games with more young than old but heaps at 24/26 and a few good oldies ( ie a slightly skewed bell curve to the left) he might just get some early success if they can play a bit ( IE Within 3 years!) Seen that before haven’t we! Good unemotional stuff on Radio as I was driving to Wandong at 7pm for my wifes 50th. Happy Birthday Pamela!

July 23, 2007 - Posted by Loris Bertolacci | AFL, Development