He’s been better every year. If not in stats, then in maturity.
He’s always looking for Zerrett to hand off to now, perhaps a little too much.
And surprise surprise, he’s arrived between 50 and 100 games, as everyone said he would.
Not his fault he was held back a year, either.
I think we sign Draper, but another club may pry out Bryan. I would have been upset before the ACL, but its probably a risk to have two players coming back from long term injuries next year in the same position.
The issue for Bryan is he probably hasn’t performed well enough for a big deal, maybe he extends for a season or two, but would likely get bigger contracts from elsewhere.
Stating the painfully obvious but losing our two developed ruckmen like this is calamitous. I think I’ve been in denial. Our rebuild, if that’s what it is, just took an enormous step backwards. And no I don’t think it suddenly fast tracks a project ruck/forward or whatever. Even if it does, that was the backup and there’s not backup to the backup.
There are no positives to be gained out of losing both Bryan and draper for the season.
Anyone suggesting otherwise are kidding themselves
I think Bryan would be a second ruckmen at most clubs, he may as well stay at Essendon where we play two rucks. I actually think we should trade him because I like the look of Vigo and I think we would get a high second for him.
For the people that think we are hopeless and we should just be trying to get the highest pick possible it great. If you are like me and want us to be as competitive as possible and try and play finals, we need to hope Goldy has something in the tank and that Vigo can stand up when needed. This week will be very interesting.
I’m extremely play the kids, if they have the physical prep for it. This year is the same as last year. We aren’t scoring near enough, but just enough to stay mid table. I don’t care as long as we get real AFL games into the young ones and are already 3 years into future planning on AAA acquisitions.
I dont about this. Was probably beaten by Gawn in the cntre bounces but help up if not beat him around the ground. Was shapng to have a great year. From that point the injury is a bit of a tragedy.
There are some positives they just don’t come anywhere near matching the negatives. As far as I can tell there are three main positives.
These minor positives, however, only hold if we accept that we are not competing for finals this year.
Even factoring in draft picks, I can’t see being a “less good team” as a positive. It’s just depressing.
We are already no good, I fail to see how we will be less good.
We might be more bad, though.
Less good team is a negative. The separate positive is better draft picks. IMO, the negatives outweigh the positives. I’m just saying they are still there.
I’m in the camp we can do both.
Be competitive and develop players on our list.
Goldy is a competitive old veteran. handy we have him on the lsit, I wouldn’t have expected him to play many games this year, but here he is. I wouldn’t have expected Wright to also hold a Key focal point in our forward line with Langford and Caddy there.
Goldy gives us our best chance around stoppage now and to further our midfield development.
The only player missing out development wise is Tsatas. It’s not ideal, but he likely needs to knock the door down or wait for an injury he is first midfielder in. And he can still work on his footy at the VFL.
Vigo is playing 1st ruck in VFL and working on his craft, with carrot that he will likely debut at some stage this year.
Davey is developing at VFL, would be nice to come on and contribute at AFL, as it is a contract year.
I expect we’ll give him a 4 to 5 year contract worth between $700k and $850k per year.
It’ll be front loaded as we aren’t going to be targeting free agents in the next few years. By the middle and end of the contract, it’ll be below market value. If he plays well and chooses to leave, we can at least hold him to his contract or trade him for something decent.
Give him a one year contract, and we might get a decent draft pick compo. But he’s unlikely to have as good a year in his first year after the injury and I doubt it’ll be good enough for the 1st round pick we’re all hoping it’ll be.
There’s no point giving him a two year contract and gambling on getting a draft pick compo then because Tasmania will be in the draft by then. So whatever compo you get, at best it’ll be behind Tasmania’s picks and that’s before it gets to our obligatory 5th worst ladder ranking.
IMO, three years is about right as far as considering the risk of not returning to his best, but doesn’t give much flexibility to front load a contract. So the variance in the first year to the last year may not be big enough to give us flexibility to go hard at a free agent. That’s why 4 or 5 years is where the sweet spot will come about where you have flexibility to front load and have a greater percentage of the player salary cap across multiple years.
But why?
Once he hits 10 years he’s unrestricted anyway.
There is a small silver lining in getting a 3rd mid season draft pick.
Given the growing trend of finding good players out of the VFL (and sometimes WAFL or SANFL), we get a 3rd stab at that. That is if we are prepared to say we will see out the season relying on Goldstein, with support as needed from 2MP and Vigo, which I quite like, given we are not even close to being in contention for finals.
We’re in rebuild mode and we need as many stabs at drafting young players for the future as we can get.
If we use the 3rd pick on a short term backup ruck to get us to the end of the season, then it’s no silver lining.
Ralphy going with uncertainty over drapers big pay day.
Basically saying contract should be on hold
Ralphy also said Stringer would kick 7 goals in his first game for GWS.
John Ralph misrepresents himself all the time. Wears a business suit when he should clearly be wearing a clown’s outfit.
John Ralph is the most absolutely nothing “sports journalist”, news reporter, personality or whatever the ■■■■ you want to call it.
His name seems to be everywhere, but he’s never actually anywhere. Hes the least footy involved footy reporter there is.