Shiel played his first game in 2012. So he was notionally in the 2011 Draft ( although assigned to GWS as an underage player a year earlier)
Its interesting to note that not one player we picked from the 2011 main draft is with Essendon anymore. (but we still have Mark Baguley ) Kav, and NOB are long gone, and now Jerret.
So I guess when we include Devon Smith ( Pick 14) we got 2 first round picks out of that draft after all and in a way, the talent the AFL sucked out of the draft pool for those 2 years has been somewhat re-distributed, with Essendon the major beneficiary at this point, followed closely by Collingwood.
Collingwood have Trealor, Adams and Hoskin-Elliot with the first two for several years now. They are in front by a fair margin in getting good players from GWS. Carlton on the other hand are miles ahead when it comes to securing GWS seconds team.
Going to be so good watching him ripping ball out of the center,running past a couple of FC players and then hitting Joe on the tit lace out while Carlton fans sitting in the stands in disgust that Sheil picked Essendon over them while Joe lines up at goal
Interesting point regarding the redistribution of talent from those draft pools. It was always suggested that the plan was to let the expansion teams get an overload on talent, they then have a shot at success (increase membership, fans etc etc) and then face salary cap pressure and slowly āreleaseā that talent back into the league.
So far, other than GC being a miserable failure, from the pure draft aspect it has pretty much gone to plan. With a steady stream of top end talent looking for opportunities elsewhere and then a major cap squeeze this year.
Iām not a big fan of how the AFL go about it in general but this is one strategy that seems to have worked out. However I would have Pies in front at this stageā¦ with us a close second.
You mean it was easy trading with GWS for players they didnāt actually want to keep?
We traded for a All Australian midfielder who was under contract and could be retained to that contract due to some salary cap dumping of other players. The trade played out exactly as it was always going to and exactly as any other club wouldāve handled it. Just because some deluded nuffies with no idea thought weād get him for peanuts doesnāt mean it was ever going to happen.
I guess even the numb-nuts at the AWFL must have projected that it would happen that way.
At least we are one of the top 2 beneficiaries of that plan and it remains to be seen if Treloar+WHE+Adams > Shiel+Smith+Stewart.
Interesting wtching the R10 GWS game again on the weekend - Shiel doesnāt have the best of games it must be said although still some nice passages. The thing that stood out to me was how many times Zach Merrett and sometimes Heppell buried Shiel in tackles almost immediately once he had gained possession of the ball - gave him absolutely no chance.
Going to be nice to watch the Shiel-Zerrett-Heppell combination, no doubt about it.
Side note from this game: Laverde. He didnāt do much, but what he does do is very good IMO. I am still incredibly optimistic about this guy, backing him to come on strongly this year.
We literally crushed them pressure wise in that game. I remember thinking we were going to get demolished in that last quarter and their key mids actually couldnāt get near it & we just took the game away from them.
We had Raz starting first few centre bounces of last Q as well. The impact he was having with his speed and nouse was great.
