Essendon fans know of the great work that Ian Hume puts in as co-host of the Don the Stat podcast alongside Jonathan Walsh.
His contributions have provided listeners with a deeper understanding of the statistical nuances that shape the outcomes of matches, and influence team strategies.
Ian's balanced perspective and ability to detail data into actionable insights, make him, and Jonathan, a must listen to.
Now we're all used to hearing to his dulcet tones through our subscription to the podcast, but here, I have the opportunity to share with you a piece written by Ian that delves deep into the tenure of Essendon list manager Adrian Dodoro.
With a keen eye for detail and a passion for uncovering the truth behind the numbers, Ian takes on the enormous challenge of dissecting Adrian's legacy with the football club.
I'm sure you will find it enlightening, intriguing and most of all enjoyable, to be reading a comprehensive analysis of Dodoro's record.
I know I certainly did.
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Analysing Essendon’s Drafting History in the Age of Dodoro
Introduction
He’s either the mastermind or the antichrist.
A master operator or the single cause of Essendon’s woes of the past 25 years.
Few people have polarized Essendon fans more than departed List boss Adrian Dodoro. Having been involved in the list management of the club since 1998 until stepping back in 2023, he’s had a big impact on how the club has developed over that time and few, if any, list managers have been as ubiquitous as him.
In some ways, it’s easy to determine whether a list manager has been successful. The simple question is, have they developed a successful list? For Dodoro, the answer, unfortunately, is no.
He joined in 1998, whereafter only Ramanauskas and Barnes would be added to what would be the successful 2000 side, whilst Mark Mcveigh and Danny Jacobs, both drafted in 1998, would play a part in the losing 2001 Grand Final. Essendon, famously, hasn’t reached that height since and, again, famously hasn’t won a final since 2004.
So, on that metric, Dodoro’s time at Essendon has not been successful (that said, if in the next 3 - 4 years Essendon were to be a Grand Final quality side, you would be able to make the case that he has built a successful list)
However, team success isn’t solely built on how a playing list. Coaching, injury luck, individual brilliance and other key factors play just as big a part in taking a talented AFL list, which numerous commentators have described Essendon’s list at various stages of the last two decades, and turning them into a champion side. So the inability of the list to be successful can’t solely be put down to Dodoro. So let’s start looking at some of the things he has had influence on over his tenure.
Methodology
One of the key aspects of a person in Dodoro’s role is the management of the list. This particularly deals with list decisions about players to retain and for how long, players to trade out or delist and looking for opportunities to pick up players from other clubs. Whilst Dodoro has been involved in this since 1998, he certainly hasn’t been the sole voice, with key personnel like Merv Keane, Noel Judkins and particularly Kevin Sheedy having various levels of influence, particularly early on. Post the Sheedy era, Dodoro has had more control, but this is still difficult to quantify in a numbers sense to make a judgment on his effectiveness.
Another key aspect is trading.
Trading players in an out, once again, is a key part of the list management role. Given you have data on the picks you’re trading out in terms of the average games such picks play, as well as being able to see how many games a player plays once being traded, either in and out of the club, you would be able to give a numeric value on how successful the Dodoro era has been trade wise. However, there’s so many permutations - multiple picks traded for a single player, straight up pick trading and the trades that are sought but don’t get through, that once again, it’s hard to put an objective value on this as a metric. I imagine it would be possible, but it's going to be outside the scope of this post.
Focusing on Drafting
So, probably the easiest area to quantify the Dodoro era is by looking at the level of success achieved at the draft. With the Draft in various forms running for over 30 years now and the excellent Draftguru website, we can start to put a numeric value on whether a draft pick is successful, by comparing where a player was taken in the draft and looking at how their games number compares to the average games played by a player taken at that draft pick.
For the scope of this analysis, the years 1998 through to 2018 will be taken into account. In my view, more time needs to pass with regards to the last 5 years of drafting before we can make a firm judgement on the success of those drafts, especially since the majority of players taken in those drafts are still in the AFL. That means we will be looking at players taken in the National, Rookie and Pre-Season drafts. The Mid-Season draft only began in 2019, meaning it is outside the scope of this analysis. Furthermore, players taken as Supplementary picks don’t count as they’re not able to be compared as easily as players with a distinct draft number. Another thing to remember is that the players are being compared to the average for a pick across the entire history of drafting. A better analysis would be to limit the average games of these picks across the period of 1998 to 2018 rather than all time, but I am unable to simply the data to that level at this stage.
Obviously, the rules of the draft have changed over time and that can have an impact on how a player compares to the average games played of the position they were taken in. For example, the rules regarding Father-sons have changed often over the years and it’s not until the modern iteration since 2015 that we really get a sense of where a player would go in an open draft. Jobe Watson was drafted in a system where Father-Sons were taken as third rounders - given Jobe’s condition in his draft year, it’s likely he would have been picked up lower than the 40 he was taken if he was in an open draft. Conversely, Joe Daniher, taken at 10 in 2012, would likely have gone at number 1 in the open draft. In my view, these differences average themselves out over time and apply to all clubs equally (except the Bulldogs, who seem to have some sort of captive breeding program going on at Whitten Oval)
Each player Drafted since 1998 has been included in the below spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QajgOMLlR_9_ObNcuPXU04GeUaOnlAyJFDaAx_UpnrM/edit?usp=sharing
For each player, the data for what draft they were taken in, what pick they were taken at, whether they are still an active player, whether they had played AFL before being taken at Essendon, games played at Essendon, games played overall and the average number of games played by players taken at that draft pick have been included. Their games played for Essendon and their overall games are then compared to the draft pick average to determine whether they have outperformed or underperformed expectations.
Originally, I only included players that had not played AFL before being drafted by Essendon as the focus was to be on being able to identify new talent. However, I came around to including them as they were taken in a draft and thus the opportunity cost of picking them over another player should be analysed. They are only analysed on the games they played since they were drafted by Essendon. For example, Paul Salmon, taken at pick 50 in 2001, is only judged on the 15 games he played following being taken at that draft pick, as opposed to the 324 total he played in his career. Treating them as a new player takes into account the opportunity cost by not taking a different player with that pick.
So, let’s get stuck into it.
Analysis
Overall, between 1998 and 2018, Essendon drafted 158 players - 93 taken in the National Draft, 55 taken in the Rookie Draft and 10 taken in the Pre-Season Draft. Those 158 players, on average, have played 49.6 games for Essendon of AFL Footy in their careers (to date in some cases - 16 of these players are still on AFL lists). The combined average for the draft picks those players were taken at is 49.7, meaning that on average, Essendon has underperformed the mean by 0.1 in this time. This is basically a dead heat, meaning that, in terms of drafting for Essendon, Dodoro’s time has seen Essendon perform at the average level in terms of drafting players.
However, you can’t judge talent solely by how they perform at one club. When you take into account the further games played by players at subsequent teams (eg. Bachar Houli playing 26 games for Essendon, but playing 232 overall in his career), the average games in this period played by Dodoro era players jumps up to 60. This means they have performed 10 games better on average than the players selected at the same draft picks. On this metric, you could make the argument that Dodoro is indeed an above average judge of talent, a clear sign as to why he survived so long in the role despite the lack of on-field success.
Drafting Numbers 1998 - 2018
Let’s dig into some of the sub-categories a bit further. Focusing on the National Draft first, players taken in that draft in the Dodoro era have averaged 65 games for Essendon and 78 games overall. The average for players taken at those picks is 63, meaning the Dodoro era outperformed the average by 2 and 15 games respectively.
National Draft 1998 - 2018
Next, let’s look at the Rookie draft. Before looking at the numbers, given the reputation of finding ‘diamonds in the rough’, I was expecting above average results, better than in the National draft at least. However, the numbers show that that isn’t the case. On average, Rookie drafted players played 25 games for Essendon and 33 overall. With the average games played by players taken at those picks being 28.7, you have a differential of -3.7 and +4.3 respectively.
Rookie Draft 1998 - 2018
Turning to the Pre-Season draft, we return to both differentials being positive, with games played for Essendon being +0.7, whilst overall games played being +11 compared to the players taken at those picks.
Pre-Season Draft 1998 - 2018
One final thing I’ll look at is the success of top end National Draft picks, those taken at the pointy end of the draft. Other than Jobe Watson, who was taken as a father son, for the last 25 years Essendon has struggled to generate high end elite talent in the period covered by this analysis, which most premiership sides have had. Most of these players come from the top end picks. That said, being elite is an intangible outside the scope of this analysis, so once again, let’s focus on how these top end players have gone in terms of the games expected of their draft pick.
Starting with players taken in the top 10, Essendon has took 13 players in that draft range between 1998 and 2018. 6 of these - Andrew McGrath, Darcy Parish, Aaron Francis, Dyson Heppell, Jake Melksham and Joe Daniher, are still active and so these numbers are still moving (it’s also worth noting that three of these are no longer at the club). The Average games expected for those picks are 103. These players, on average, played 127 games for Essendon and 156 all up, meaning that in both instances they have exceeded the expectations of their draft pick. Only Scott Gumbleton and Jason Laycock failed to clear the bar set by their draft pick (Andy McGrath is still behind the games expected of a number 1 draft pick, but barring a calamity should go past his expected number of games)
Top 10 National Draftees 1998 - 2018
If we expand it out to the top 20, Essendon took 25 players within that draft range. Kyle Langford and Jayden Laverde go with the previous 6 players mentioned as the only active players left. Once again, the Dodoro period has still exceeded expectations with regards to draft pick performance, playing on average 18 games for Essendon more than expected and 36 overall. In that period, only James Davies, Shane Harvey, Elliott Kavanagh and Tom Hislop failed to meet their expectations. This means, of the top 20 picks taken by Essendon in the 1998 - 2018 period, 19 out of 25 have played more games than the average for their draft picks, a hit rate of 76%
Top 20 National Draftees 1998 - 2018
Conclusion
It’s possible to dive even deeper down into draft performance over this time. Ideally, we would run this comparison against other clubs, particularly ones that have been successful long term over the time period looked at here, such as Sydney, Geelong or Hawthorn. That might be the subject of a future post.
As to my conclusions on the Dodoro era, the numbers suggest that, from a Draft perspective, Essendon performed above the expected average over the period in terms of identifying AFL talent. The fact that, on average, players over-performed their expected number of games is a good indicator, suggests that talent identification was not the problem over this period of Essendon history. It’s not the only way that he should be judged, but on this metric i’m confident in saying that this small aspect of the club performed beyond expectations during this period, which, in my view, goes in the credit column of Dodoro’s tenure. That, combined with some external factors probably led to him being kept on longer than he arguably should have given the lack of club success.
There’s still 5 more years of picks to give more time to play out to see how they fare, up to 2023 selections. With the arrival of Matt Rosa, it will be interesting to see how things change in this space, although it will be close to a decade before we can do a similar analysis for his tenure as what was done here.
If you’ve made it to the end of this, well done. Hopefully it made sense. Go Dons!
Ian Hume (Don The Stat Co-Host)
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