Fark me, he’s only our most potent forward…but yeah, drop him for an untried kid or a 29yo who “adds a more rounded game”
I’m mainly strategy 2…don’t mess with the process, develop our own and make sure the team processes get sorted until they are instinctual.
The only loss that he really annoyed me was Round 1…no matter how young or inexperienced you are, you shouldn’t lose from 7 goals up.
And our victory against the Eagles was not a result of their injuries…how many first choice players were we missing that night…it was based on the growing belief that we are never out of a game.
Winning is important to build culture. For me, it is mostly Strategy 1, but with recruitment purely focusing on the draft (or under 23 gun). We are building for a 2023-24 tilt, so our best players needs to be circa 26-29 around that time.
If we went Strategy 2 or 3, we wouldn’t be playing anyone over 29, however, we are clearly doing this.
I don’t want us to go full GC or Dees from 10 years ago when they have a bunch of 22 year olds running around like headless chickens. Our current structure, imho, is just perfect. Maybe less games for Zaka Ambrose and more for Cahill and BZT, but is just splitting hairs.
2022 - pushing the 8 or bottom half of top 8
2023 - 3-6
2024 - shot at a flag
Rebuild nowadays should be no more than 2 to 3 years, challenging within 3 to 4. Any longer and you’re into another generation of players and coaches sacked.
Strategy 3 is tanking. If someone wants to play Eyre instead of Hooker, or whatever, just own it. It’s a reasonable position to take.
Tbh I think the line between 1 and 2 is super blurry, because plenty of “I’m in camp 2” would want to win if we were 5 points behind with a minute to play, and would prefer us to take on the game and push for that victory for a minute rather than play to some mythical structure.
Also 1) doesn’t mean you have to want to trade, and 2) doesn’t preclude wishing we had more depth, especially developing midfield depth
I am 1.5 say. Develop while winning, but leaning towards development in gamestyle and selection, but expect us to try and win on matchday. Players need to learn to win. To understand momentum, to read the game. That is learning and development that needs to be ingrained from the start.
We’re also incredibly light on for midfield depth, and I expect us to hit the draft hard over the next couple of years to bolster that area. But I also have my doubts about the difference between say pick 7 and pick 4 as being worth not actively trying to win on matchday.
Can easily see this rejuvenation landing us smack bang in the middle of the ladder and more or less stranded once again.
the tricky part about this transition is that as the younger players come on over the next 2-4 years, quality seniors such as hepp, hooker, shiel and smith are likely to be gone or going, which means we’ll still have significant gaps to fill.
we somehow have to get ahead of the curve, but we have basically nothing we’d be willing to trade to help us turbocharge the list rebuild.
winning 8-10 games a year feels good but it’s not going to propel us to the top 4 any time soon.
probably a good case study is melbourne. it has taken a hell of a lot longer than 4 years for them to build a list that looks like it might finally be a contender.
lots of pointy end draft picks(including many failures), some significant trades and some draft gems. wasn’t quick for them and i highly doubt it will be for us.
I am happy to lose games in the seniors while developing kids (I sit pretty comfortable in tier 2 & 3). That said, for this strategy to be effective and not just get the stink of only knowing how to lose, we need a very good VFL side. If we have a dominant side in the 2’s it shows we do have the depth and we can send young blokes back to keep the feeling of winning alive. Currently, we do not have a dominant VFL side let alone a consistent comp for the kids to play in and enjoy romping home. So with our 2’s side made up of bit parts and not being able to play consistently this year, I don’t see how we can fast track development and I think if we go the route of trying to go hard at wins because we have some new shiny talent on the senior list, we will end up in no man’s land again.
The groups aren’t meant to be exact, Blitz is a big place with plenty of views.
I don’t think #3 is tanking, but I can see how some might see it that way. Frankly, with no priority picks anymore I initially didn’t think anyone would deliberately lose games again. However, your point about draft cut-offs is real (even if you argued the other way). There are some drafts where there is a clear pick split. E.g.
2016: everyone talked about McGrath, McCluggage and Tarranto. And they were right. The next group (Ainsworth, SPS, Brodie, Scrimshaw, Setterfield) has been a much lower standard (except Logue).
2015: if you wanted a midfielder in 2015, you needed a top 5 pick to be certain. Hence Melbourne traded into that group.
2013: Top 4 outside Boyd were generally much higher standard than the next picks.
And so on. So there are some circumstances it might be warranted.
don’t disagree with your sentiment here at all, but there’s no such thing as an optimal rebuilding strategy or process. some happen relatively quickly (port, sydney), some take fkng forever (melbourne), some don’t work at all (fc, fremantle) and some never really bottom out (geelong, west coast).
sure, the average seems to be a 2-3yr cycle, but there’s no definitive measure.
West Coast definitely bottomed out (and got a priority pick, Gaff at #2). I’m not sure if Port really “rebuilt”, or just had one down year with lots of picks while working away at their trajectory.
Tanking is definitely real, and there are obviously tiers in any draft. I guess my thought was that given we were clearly looking for a mid that there was less likelihood that there would be a big difference between the supposed tier 1 and tier 2 mids if that was the gap.
Obviously the talk was all about Horne (? Or whoever) being the clear #1 a year out (in spite of no bottom age form against his peers), and in that case the tank was perhaps on. But we’ve shown we’re not there, even though the lineups we’ve been playing (out of necessity) would likely have been the lineups that we were thinking would get us a top 3 pick. Given that, actively tanking was/is going to involve more than the “soft tank” which we were happy to go with this year.
The plus side is that at the end of the year were a much better chance to keep Merrett than we had thought (and he’s playing good football). The downside is that if Merrett doesn’t leave it makes the tank less valuable as we likely don’t get the extra pick from free agency.
So I guess the “full tank” would be play horribly, don’t try and win, encourage Merrett to go. Take 2 picks in the first 5.
I think that’s off the table now.
Anyway. Development year, go back to the draft. Don’t try and get Dunkley. Take as much mid depth as we can. Retire a couple of senior players.
Do it all again next year with the view to getting a pick before any Davey bids. Take the best mid + Daveys. Depending on how it’s shaping (or if Daveys likely to eat our 2nd rounder) consider a trade for needs if there is one.
Etc.
And if we get food between now and then, just try and win. As much as we’re “miles off”, this comp is also very even, and I’d you get a chance you have to have a crack. Richmond are well drilled and clearly better than us, and if we were playing them on the last Saturday in September it would be scary. But if Dusty did a hammy in the first 5 minutes…you never know