I think it’s difficult to assess the Shiel trade without taking into account some of the other difficulties we’ve had over recent years.
I think it’s fair to say we wouldn’t have traded for Shiel if we didn’t have an AA key forward on the list that we expected to be back to his best. Shiel was never going to take us to the promised land without a fit daniher. I suspect we’d be addressing his contribution differently if we’d seen the best out of jd through 2019 and 2020.
In any event I think we over estimated where the list was at at the end of 2018 and overestimated how much Shiel would elevate the list.
I also wonder if he hadn’t hit the post so often early 2019 how we’d be assessing his performance.
I think there are some similarities here to the Judd trade. Shiel and Judd have some similar traits, both are fast burst midfielders with average field kicking. Judd clearly was a better finisher in front of the sticks and a better accumulator generally but not even he could elevate an average list to premiership contention. Did that make him less of a player?
Shiel is a very good midfielder who made us a better team but his addition was more than offset by injuries to other key players over the last couple of years. Not even Judd would have made us great owing to those injuries.
Fair analysis, Thanks for that. Going forward though do you see him being necessary ? or are we better off looking else where and off loading him whilst he still has plenty of value and continue to develop youth coming through with the chance of also obtaining a 25 y/o Josh Dunkley…
Why can’t Shiel (who is super fit) still be strongly impacting for us in his 30’s?
Travis Boak turns 33 in Aug this year. 2nd in Brownlow last season and very good 2021 now also, no doubt he goes around again next year with how he is playing and where Port are at. And Port are not where they are at as have a bunch of under 25’s, it’s the older group driving them.
Shiel is only 28 right now. He is still going to be at the club as we make the next push.
I do not see him being traded nor understand the obsession people have to do so.
Except Judd was a brownlow medalist before he got to carlton, and became another one at Carlton.
Shiel got an AA bench spot one time. These aren’t comparable players.
The club (and some supporters) over rated the fark out of him, to the point that he could never really deliver what was expected, as those expectations were too large.
He’s a damn good player, but he’s no star, and he was never really our missing piece, fit JD or not.
Still plenty of time left on his contract - and career - to still have a real impact with us, so it’s not a dead cause imo. In fact, hearing an interview with him on radio during the week, he sounded like a very impressive and determined individual.
Our midfield is far from being top in the comp without him. Is there an alternative available, will we be able to hang onto Zerret? Why offload him based on the current level of uncertainty?
The Dogs had top class mids in 2020 but they were still desperate to cling on to Dunkley, and even bring another top class midfielder in.
Look at them now . Why do we want to get rid of one of our best mids, in exchange for an unknown.
Lets look again when the Zerret picture is resolved.
that was kind of my point. Judd wasn’t good enough to elevate Carlton and he was better than Shiel. I think a fit daniher would have seen shiel’s contribution perhaps see us over the line in a final.
i also agree that the club overestimated the player he was and he was also probably not the player we needed.
Going forward i do think he can help us elevate our training standards across the board and i do think he can have an impact as a high half forward rotating on ball but we can’t keep sacrificing guys like parish for him.
i think the question of whether we trade him is really dependent on what merrett does. If merrett buys in and wants to stay he deserves to be set up with as many good players as we can muster around him. If there was a deal that turned shiel into say Dunkley you’d look at that for balance. I still think Shiel has fair bit of good footy in him though and his output will be looked on more favourably in an improving side.
if merrett goes all bets are off and we should be looking to hit the draft as hard as possible, shiel, smith, hepp, stinger you would look at what you could get for all of them.
But when he was just chatting footy in general; trends of the game, what makes the top teams so good, areas to improve etc. He showed some legit footy IQ, to the point that I was thinking “Damn, I wish some of this intelligence translated to his decision making when kicking a footy.”
I might go for that. But the picture may change, depending on how Perkins and Caldwell go this year. At 190cm, Dunkley is just in the big bodymid class, but we need to be careful, are faster mids in the 185-190 cm class like Perkins and Caldwell more compatible with the new AFL rules going forward.
True, but until his injury he was our top clearance winner in 2021 and was our best in 2020 and 2019.
His biggest problem was accuracy when kicking very long. He improved when he stuck pretty much to passing to team mates, rather than trying to kick goals from outside 50.