As well know, we got the Hawks pick 8 or 9 or whatever it was anyway via the trade with Carlton which I believe was two second rounders (late 20’s picks??)
That Pick slipped to 13 and I think we nabbed Sharp with it
So at the cost of two second round picks we got Sharp and kept Merrett. I think this was the right decision at the time. We made a statement that contracted players just can’t stand up and demand a trade (an issue that will rear its head with more than 1 player this year). Contracted players should require from the interested party a premium price, probably overs and Hawthorn certainly didn’t match the type of deal appropriate for a club captain, 6-time B&F winner with 2 years to run on his $1M per annum deal.
The problem however was always going to be how well Merrett would re-engage with the club and his teammates and frankly, its not been great - he has not been the player he was although some will use his current role as an excuse. I don’t. He is playing ok but in his position a player of his calibre, given a free run across the half back line, should be killing it. He’s not.
Of greater concern is the negative vibe has spread to other senior players (you could argue that it already existed with the likes of Parish and Ridley before Merrett’s trade request.) However I reckon Merrett has now set an unacceptable bar and while on the surface his drop in numbers still makes him one of our better players, the similar drop away for Ridley and Parish, even Langford, Redman, Mackay and McGrath just makes them average at best.
In AFL, a drop of even 5% in effort, concentration, willingness to get hurt is catastrophic in terms of results.
Yeah It kinda sounds ok if you ignore the other 2 firsts that were tabled.
For the record Sharp cost us an end of first round pick plus two seconds. We also received a pick in the 40s.
We could have had Sharp, Schubert, the final pick of the first round last year and an extra first and 2 early seconds this year.
Woulda been pretty handy.
Sure, we’ll get something for him this year, but I’d be surprised if it’s more than a first and a second, which we could already have on top of others.
The offer last year was essentially 10,22 and ‘26 1st.
We will likely get ‘26 1st so it has essentially cost us 10 and 22 to stand our ground and make a statement. Was it worth it? History will show that no it wasn’t, but I can understand why we made the decision.
Players are still going to as for trades before their contract has expired, players will always want out and clubs will still speak to our contracted players so what exactly has standing our ground got us?
More mockery from the entire industry and oppo fans, a couple of blokes who don’t want to play for us and everyone at the club knows this, including our new crop of promising young players who should just be enjoying getting a few chances to run out and strut their stuff, and an extra year of waste that should’ve been spent on genuine rebuild, is my take.
Oh, and we missed a shot a few more very promising young players
I understand the sentiment but if the alternative is simply agreeing to trade every contracted player who asks, to a single destination of their specific choosing, while under contract then I’m not sure that’s necessarily a superior result for the club either?
We gave up three second rounders (#21, #27, #30) for pick #9 and #43 (also technically a second rounder).
They offered pick #10, a future first, and #22, with a few bits and bobs that can probably be ignored. That offer makes it amongst the best offers for any player in the last 10 years. The only comparable offers would be Jackson, Pettracca and Curnow offers. All of which were similar. Although none of them were captains, all of them were top players and all younger than Merrett. Curnow and Petracca were contracted for longer.
This was a very good deal we turned down.
This was always a concern, yes.
A second concern was that even if Merrett stayed, under a more optimistic but realistic scenario we still weren’t going to be finals competitive for years. In which case it was always a very likely scenario we would lose him for far less.
With the exception of Caldwell, Durham and Duursma, every other of our senior players is from the 2016 or earlier drafts; i.e. over 28. I would argue that as long as we got decent value for them anyone and everyone was tradeable. Taking the Merrett deal would have been seen by every non-Essendon fan as similar to the Curnow and Petracca deals; i.e. nobody would really be talking about it, and it was a fair deal.
The problem is we’ve broken the spirit so bad that every senior player is now playing like dogshit. Their value is tanked. Which will put us in a big bind if they ask to leave - sell at a low point or keep underperforming players around during a rebuild who don’t want to be here and are already set financially.
If we’d traded Merrett, at least the senior players would know if they want out, and perform well, we’d take a fair deal. Now if they want out they probably consider themselves imprisoned with no benefit to playing well or badly.
A 27 year old Jeremy Cameron was traded for 13, 15 and 20 while also giving up two second round picks. Albeit he was out of contract at the time.
But I don’t get how some have convinced themselves Hawks offer was crap. It may not have been overs but it was certainly a fair trade for a 30 year old.
it’s achieved an unknowable, unlikely, unmeasurable benefit of signalling that if you want to get a big trade done with us start early and don’t pisss us around assuming we’ll cave near the deadline.
ie achieved probably nothing, or
possibly something but if so we’ll never really know.
I was lead to believe by the media reports that everything was sorted out in the first week back at training last November/December? No locker room disharmony or fragmentation. Everyone singing from the same hymn book (literally in Andy McGrath’s case most likely).