SA Footy

A few years ago the Crows had the chance to draft Cameron Wood but drafted John Meesen instead.

Now it looks a possiblity that Meesen will go and Cameron Wood could come home.

Why wouldn't the crows have picked Cameron Wood in the first place?

The Crows I believe do not always seem to go for SA boys. However it appears more and more that when you pick young lads especially from Victoria they always seem to go home.

What other people's thoughts

Just have to look at the Crows history re drafting etc, didn't they have the opportunity to grab Pavlich, yes, Campoerale (or however you spell it) yes and they are 2 I can think of off the top of my head, both ended up great players in the AFL. One really wonders sometimes WTF is going on down at Crow land

We are terrible at drafting, TERRIBLE.

Meesen will be a good AFL player but considerig he and Wood were considered to be very even prior to the draft, why they didn't go for the local lad is beyond me.

i often wonder if the crows are just 50% terrible at drafting and 50% terrible at development of young players

I have said this since day one !!!

The crows seem to have a love affair for media hyped players - Angwin and Watts are other examples.

In juniors terms it is a lot easier to be a stand out big man because @ that level size really does matter - IMO. When it comes time for then to play against men alot do struggle.

Develop the lads that have had to work harder and you will find a champion - Dean Cox is my example.

I get sick of hearing that the crows had a chance of drafting Pav, FFS people, stop making the easy observations

lets get to the facts, yes the crows missed Pav as a 17 year old draft selection, however so did 15 other clubs, not one club wanted to draft Pav as their 17 year old selection, not one, so the truth is, 16 clubs missed the Pav opportunity

Freo was lucky enough to draft Pav the following year

In regards to Adelaides Drafting performance, I agree we have done poorly with our ONLY 2 top 10 draft picks in Angwin and Meesen, however, I believe we have done extremely well with our second and third round choices and through our rookie selections

sydney-dog wrote:I believe we have done extremely well with our second and third round choices and through our rookie selections

Agreed

Any doubters should go back through the records there and have a look

Meeson was rated more highly than Wood and its pretty much as simple as that ... The scouts had him going before the Crows selection came up, and it was deemed a coup at the time Adelaide took him.

Hindsight might suggest otherwise, but I think every club plays the percentages most of the time ... Hard to fault the Crows on this one.

Constance_Perm

good post, I would not have an issue if Meesen stay at the club, if he did hopefully he may kick on, lets be honest regarding Woods. he has not set the world on fire, yes he won a rising star nomination, but for mine, he had an 6 possession game that day, Griffen can consider himself unlucky.

I believe Meesen will eventually become a forward that can ruck, the Crows are very keen to retain Meesen, and Meesen does love Adelaide, I now believe he may stay

Is there any reason why Cameron Wood is touted to return to Adelaide, apart from the fact he is originally from South Australia? Adelaide may well have made an approach to Wood's management, but that's a long way from saying that he's a chance to come to Adelaide for the following reasons

- from what I hear he is quite happy in Brisbane
- he is by no means the third string ruckman behind Charman and Leuenberger and will get quite a few senior games in 2008.
- he is contracted to the Brisbane Lions for 2008
- Brisbane have a history of having, at the very least, three-four ruckmen on their list at any one time and are firmly of the belief that at least two very good ruckmen are needed to win a premiership. Given Wood is only 20, they see him as playing a big part in the Lions' next tilt at a cup.

Ruckmen at the Lions in order of seniority
2001*: Keating, McDonald, Charman, Knobel, McLaren,
2002*: Keating, McDonald, Charman, McLaren
2003*: Keating, Charman, McDonald, McLaren
2004**: Charman, Keating, McDonald, McLaren, Spaanderman
2005: Charman, Keating, McDonald, Wood, Spaanderman
2006: Charman, Keating, Wood, McDonald
2007: Charman, Wood / Leuenberger, McDonald
2008: Charman, Leuenberger (will definitely stay) / Wood, McDonald (both contracted and from what I hear are required). Mitch Clark is a forward.

* premiership
** runners up

sydney-dog wrote: however, I believe we have done extremely well with our second and third round choices and through our rookie selections

You may have a long time ago but its been very ordinary in the last 5 years IMHO.
http://www.footywire.com/afl/footy/td-adelaide-crows

You've had a total of less than 200 games out of your rookies, 2nd and 3rd round draft picks in the last 5 years despite picking 27 players, that's less than 8 games for each one on average!

If you go back further you did very well out of rookies picked in 2001 (Rutten, Mattner and Bock) but you spent your only 2nd/3rd draft pick on Ben Finnin.
Who?

That's a good website Wedgie BTW!

Interesting to look at Port's stats and they are fairly similar at a quick glance I wonder if all the teams have low averages by virtue of fact that young kids drafted in the last year or so wouldn't have played much? Plus every team has mis-fires unfortunately.

For mine re the Crows in the last 5 years I look at Gill, Campbell, Tippett, Griffin, Hinge, Douglas, Vince, Porplyzia, Maric, Knights, VB, Meesen, Hudson off the top of my head and think thats a solid drafting effort despite what the stats might say