So on this previous post, I made a comment that I think we have a coaching and development problem and not a player talent problem -
www.dockerland.com/index.php?option=com_...Itemid=251&id=490662
There has been a lot of discussion about us not having early draft picks, not having the "A-grade" talent at our disposal and suffering as a result of a lot of B-Grade players. I was interested to look where players actually got drafted and what effect it had on ladder position.
I went back and did some analysis on 3 random teams and the results are below (*). Naturally, the lower the number indicates more players taken earlier in the draft - i.e. a score of "22" means the team had 22 number 1 picks:
Adelaide - the current ladder leaders:
Total score - 1398
Average draft position - 63
Number of selections within the top 20 - 5
Number of former rookie list players - 8
Western Bulldogs Premiership Team
Total score - 1136
Average draft position - 51.6
Number of selections within the top 20 - 4
Number of former rookie list players - 5
Fremantle Dockers team that lost to Brisbane
Total score - 1012
Average draft position - 46
Number of selections within the top 20 - 7
Number of former rookie list players - 4
I.e. we had on average a team of players that were selected higher up in the draft than the WB premiership team and current ladder leaders. So we are either not picking the right players, not coaching them well or not developing them (my guess is the second / third)
* - disclaimers - it is possible I've messed up data. I have assigned a draft number of 100 to rookie list selections in the absence of that data.