It's Easy to Criticize With Hindsight

With the draft approaching, past draft choices naturally becomes a popular subject in articles and blog posts.  But this article on AFL.com was a little misguided, IMHO.

The article goes through, club by club, the most successful and most costly draft picks in history.  I do think it's neat to see how picks in the later rounds turned out to be spectacular players.  That's just fun.  However, to call out all the high draft picks who never reached their potential and call them "misses" seems a little flaky.

Every year, there's lots of talk about which players are the best picks, the surest bets, the ones everyone agrees are destined for stardom.  And then there are a whole bunch of other players who get drafted and make up the majority of the sides we see on the field every week.  With the top picks, clubs always take the high-profile players, whether they really "need" them or not.  After that, each club does its best to fill immediate or imminent holes with the best player available.

Occasionally,  the un-heralded draftees become great players, which makes for a great story.  And sometimes the hyped-up players never go on to greatness, at least not at their first club.  But unless you were there advising publicly and clearly against a specific player, what point is there in declaring, years later, that choosing him was a "miss"?  Especially if injuries were the primary factor in the player's inadequacy?  For example:

Biggest miss: Scott Gumbleton

It's been well documented that the Bombers used pick No. 2 on the key forward in 2006, only to watch as he struggled to overcome injury after injury. Lachie Hansen, Matthew Leuenberger, Travis Boak, Joel Selwood, Ben Reid and Jack Riewoldt are among the names that went after him in that draft. Essendon cut its losses last month, trading Gumbleton to Fremantle for pick 55, after just 35 senior games for the Bombers.

 My guess is Gumbleton was considered a stellar player in 2006, and no one thought it was foolish to pick him instead of the other players mentioned.

I would certainly agree that these players ended up being huge disappointments to all involved, and that's a valid topic of discussion.  But again, unless you were the prescient soothsayer, it doesn't seem very helpful to present the topic as if the club messed up and could have chosen so many other great players.