I’m not sure what’s going to happen in the AFLW draft, but I’m pretty sure Carlton are stuffed.
Don’t get me wrong, the Blues recruited some great players in the offseason – or I think they did. Still only 20 years old, Tayla Harris remains one of the most exciting prospects for the future. The concern is that, like the Gold Coast Suns or Majak Daw or fusion power, she’ll always be one of the most exciting prospects for the future.
Certainly she didn’t do much in Brisbane’s first season to justify the enormous effort made to grab her, and that was in the second-best team in the competition. The delivery into the forward line won’t be any better at Carlton, who conspicuously lack a midfield.
Nicola Stevens is also young and has the advantage of having actually proven that she’s one of the best players in the country. Put alongside Brianna Davey, her inclusion gives Carlton easily the strongest half-back line in the AFLW – unless they move either Davey or Stevens, or both, onto the ball. Given their lack of midfielders, they probably will.
The problem is that between acquiring her and Harris, Carlton pretty much gave up all their early draft picks plus two of their better young players, Bella Ayre and Nat Exon. Bianca Jakobsson also left for Melbourne in exchange for a second-round pick, presumably to be spent on the best midfielder still available.
(Image: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
There’s a long history of this kind of thing not working out in the AFL, where coaches have found the allure of a sure thing outweighs the prospect of an uncertain draft pick or a current young developing player. You can understand where a coach is coming from, thinking his team definitely needs one particular type of player and looking at the draft to find uncertain prospects in those positions.
While there are some great prospects in this year’s draft, the only forward with Harris-like prospects is Chloe Molloy, and even she’s not a pure tall-marking forward like Harris. If Carlton wanted that high-leaping, long-kicking dream, they were right to conclude that it was Harris or nothing.
But in giving up their first-round pick in exchange for Stevens – to say nothing of their second and third-round picks, also for Stevens – they lost the chance at either Izzy Huntington or Monique Conti as well. It would be a very brave person to suggest that Stevens will be certainly better than either of those two in years ahead.
Carlton couldn’t have picked anyone of equal standard in rounds two and three of the draft, but the biggest thing missing from AFLW lists in season one was depth. Football is not basketball – one great player can’t just dominate on her own; she needs teammates of similar ability to get the ball to. If Stevens makes great plays next year to kick the ball to teammates who then fumble or can’t beat their opponents one on one, Carlton’s position will not have improved.
(Image: AAP Image/Joe Castro)
Losing Exon only makes the midfield hole even deeper, but with no draft picks left, they’ve very little to spend on filling it. Move Stevens and Davey into the midfield and Carlton’s backline will suffer.
But there’s a broader principle at work in the AFLW’s early days than just this technical matter of who is worth what. Remember Emma George? In 1995 she set the pole vaulting world on fire with a then enormous jump of 4.25 metres. Eventually she pushed world record after world record until her best height was 4.60 metres in 1999, and she impressed everyone so much that women’s pole vault was finally included in the Olympics in Sydney 2000. People seriously wondered if anyone would ever beat George’s last world record because no-one had ever seen a female vaulter jump that high before.
The current women’s world record is 5.06 metres.
This always happens in ‘new’ women’s sports where the participation, talent and professionalism are surging. People think the existing talent is surely the best that women can ever get only to be proven very wrong a few years later. Experience tells us that there are female players coming down the pipeline who will leave even Daisy Pearce and Erin Phillips in their dust. But whoever they are, they’ll never end up playing for your team if you keep trading draft picks for established stars.
Carlton will no doubt be a greatly improved team in the second season of the AFLW, but tapping the increasing tide of new talent will mean the other teams should improve even faster.
In addition to his interest in sport, Joel Shepherd is a professional Science Fiction author. You can read more by him here.
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