Yep. SANFL U18’s can be hit or miss due to school eligibility. I’m told he will play seniors in the next month and he will need to show something to get back to that top region of picks
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So West Coast, Richmond x 2 (North’s pick) and St Kilda are all below us and Melbourne. West Coast could get first round pick for Allan.
That is 5 picks before we get our two picks.
Basically, if you look at live players available at the top end, other than Academy / FS:
1 Sharp
2 Duff-Tytler
3 Lindsay
4 Duursma
5 Grlj
(Uwland, Annable and Patterson would get a bid early).
We are most likely going to miss the cream of the crop again.
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First off, if that’s the top 5 then it leaves us with excellent options still on the board. Those 5 are not “the cream of the crop” and then it drops off. Not in my mind anyway.
Secondly, we still have several rounds left, there’s nothing settled about the draft order. It could get better for us, it could get worse.
Honestly, it sounds to me like you just wanted to come in here and have a whinge.
Sometimes the draft goes our way and sometimes it doesn’t. In the last two drafts we’ve been extremely fortunate as far as I’m concerned.
Two years ago we literally got just high enough to get into the tail end of the elite prospects and picked Nate Caddy who’s looking like a gun. One spot later and we’d have been out of luck.
Last year we got gifted Kako essentially for free mid way through the year from nowhere.
This narrative that we’re always unlucky when it comes to the draft really needs to die.
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Sorry if you’ve answered this a bunch of times already @noobermensch but who do you have as the other excellent options that should be considered at the pointy end?
Greeves and Marsh? Maybe Cumming/NHH?
Love Greeves and Marsh. NHH is a little more difficult. He’s struggled since his return from injury, might be too risky. Has some incredible traits but very uncontested and not great with ground balls.
Cumming and Fred I’d be happy with at the back end of the top 10 or early teens. Schubert we probably don’t need any more but he’s in that mix, and I would have had Barker in there but he’s just done an ACL on the weekend.
Oh and I really like Jacob Farrow. He’s a bit more of a risk but hopefully he can play some senior WAFL in the run in and remove some of the uncertainty.
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With all this talk about it being a weak draft, why does El Achkar seem to only be talked about as a pick in the 20s-30s compared to Kako going so early in a better draft? Where would he have gone in last year’s draft and how would he compare to Kako?
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Goddard was also slow and had the turning circle of the Queen Mary.
Good question
Those three NGA guys are irrelevant to us. It might add 3 to the draft order but we’re not getting and neither is any club in the early order other than their host clubs.
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Not looking to criticise anyone, but I would say that the “weak draft” narrative is an overly simplistic way of looking at it.
There are no Harley Reids in this pool - not the worst thing in the world, there were no Harley Reids last year either.
There are fewer tier 1 prospects in general this year. Last year I felt the tier 1 went into the middle teens and this year we’ll probably end up with 10ish.
There’s a solid batch of tier 2 prospects in my eyes, through into the mid to late 20s, BUT…
There are a LOT of club tied prospects - which are included in those brackets. So if you remove those kids that are already spoken for, it becomes weaker.
So with that in mind, I don’t think its surprising to think that Huss will get a bid in the 20s - especially when you consider club tied kids often do go a bit later than they would if they were in the open pool.
Also worth remembering that Huss has had two strong games in a row after some less impressive performances. Recruiters tend to have better long term memory than most forum posters.
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He’s not as quick or athletic as Kako. He didn’t test super well in preseason so we wait for the combine to double check those numbers and see if he can improve them. He’s playing deeper than Kako did last year, but as @Bully has mentioned before Huss has played plenty of midfield through juniors and is only a relatively recent convert to this deep small forward role so he may be used very differently at AFL level. For Calder Kako would roam up the ground more and even played a decent amount of midfield as the season progressed. Huss has been playing deep basically the entire season. Huss has generated more scoring attempts than Kako did, although Kako was no slouch either in that regard.
Some considered defensive pressure as a weakness for Kako - I thought he was decent in that area… but Kako was quite a bit better at it than Huss has been. I just feel like Huss’ lack of pace will mean that its always something of a weakness for him, but you never know.
Huss LOVES a goal. Kako was always very team focused and always looking for options. Huss gets a little more goal fever when he gets a sniff at the big sticks. Huss has also produced some notable setup kicks into the forward 50 this year though so I wouldn’t call him a hungus.
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I do wonder if Huss has a bit of room to improve athletically once he is an elite training/nutritional environment.
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Ruours that WC are open to splitting their pick 2 (Oscar Allen). Considering this is a weak draft should we look at offering our two firsts for pick 2?
They are open to splitting a pick they don’t have?
And I’d suggest this is precisely not the draft to do that. The 5-8 range looks okay.
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I consider the top 10ish to be very even, so the only reason to trade up within that bracket would be if we really want one kid in particular for whatever reason, perhaps list needs. In that scenario 2 for 1 would be a pretty huge overpay I feel.
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He is very tidy with the groundballs. Doesn’t fumble and looks to have decent pace too. I like him!
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Doesn’t fumble, not for us then.
They’re not getting pick #2 for Allen. He’s a free agent so if he retires early Brisbane have to keep his entire salary in the cap. No way they offer band 1 salary and length with that risk.
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It will be a pp nicely disguised as a compo pick.
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This wouldn’t necessarily be the worst thing for the Eagles, who appeared set to receive a band one compensation pick, given Allen, according to Nine’s chief AFL reporter Tom Morris, had been offered a six-year deal by the Lions, likely on $1m a season.
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