They have room in their cap but run a very strict pay structure that pretty much pays everyone mid tier. So what you basically get is spuds like McKay and Douglas running around on $450k.
I’d be seriously looking at Matt Crouch who comes out of contract at end of 2018. Even though I reckon he will stay with his brother he is currently on a touch over $150k!
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He’s clearance numbers have been his major strength.
So basically what he hope Francis will become?
That’s staggering! Both Crouch’s could waltz into our midfield so maybe we should get both 
On the surface their pay structure sounds like it opens them up for exploiting but they don’t seem to lose many players so it must be something most buy into.
Lyons will be top 5 in the B&F and possibly better in my opinion. He would’ve been a great addition to our side.
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Fair enough
fwiw I wasn’t having a crack, I just legit wouldn’t know a single thing about the Suns 2017 campaign
No worries mate. It read like a legitimate question.
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I’d actually typed top 5 & then thought maybe I overrated him because I was spewing we didn’t swoop.
Off the top of my head, Gunston, Bock, Davis Tippett, Dangerfield in the last 10 years. Lyons was low balled disgracefully with a offer of 2 years at $180k, no wonder he couldn’t wait to get out of the place
yeah I guess i didn’t count players lost to the expansion clubs & Sydney as they have a cap you can’t compete with anyway and you never really know if the “go home factor” is real or not. Lyons was the 1st time it was very clear money was the sticking point. Have the Crows had many going back the other way? Thompson obviously was a while back & they were able to poach Jenkins from us but how does their structure work with a guy like Eddie? Surely he must have been offered more than a mid tier wage to go there? The offer to Lyons is mind blowing after he had such a break out year.
Betts was $500k x 4
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Anybody who get Lever is getting a player of Hurleys quality, he is a deadset gun.
Talk that all of Lever, Charlie Cameron and McGovern all going on the pregame tonight. I’ll take CC thanks!
CC still contracted for next year and only wants to move to GC
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Oh well!
Another response to @JBOMBER 's big post.
No, I’m not kidding you. I went back, and checked, and its 19 top 20 picks from 2001 to 2014 (which is what I meant when I said from 2000). But if we include 2000, sure its 20 top 20 picks. I actually got the number of top 5 picks wrong – we got 2, not 3 (Heppell was #8). I also got finals wrong, and forgot 2005 we missed, so you’re right it’s 6 times. Still, not very many.
To be clear – I don’t consider the finals successes. I consider some of them failures. I said around 2009 we should be bottoming out and getting priority picks, not finishing top 8 with a team that still needed cuts made. My point is though, despite how bad we’ve been, we’ve only missed finals 6 times between 2000 and 2014. That isn’t many opportunities to get good draft picks.
Compare that to Hawthorn in the seven years to their premiership (i.e. less than half the time we’re talking about for Essendon). They had 13 top 20 picks to our 20, but they had 4 top 5 picks and 4 more top 10 picks. In 15 years Dodoro had 2 and 7 to play with. If you add in picks #21 to #30, Hawthorn had 6 in the years before their premiership, we’ve had 10 in fifteen years.
Look at Collingwood’s decade prior to their premiership. This included multiple grand finals, yet they still had 3 top 5 picks, 4 more top 10 picks, plus other assorted picks. They averaged slightly less top 30 picks than us a year (1.9 vs. our 2.0), but more of theirs were cream of the crop (including a pick #2, #3, and if I’d included 1999 they’d have had a #1, #7 and #18 to add to those picks).
Bulldogs in the 15 years before their unexpected premiership (so same gap as for us). 7 top 5 picks, 3 top 10, 8 top 20, and 8 top 30. So they had less picks than us (26 vs. our 30), but far more cream of the crop (7 top 5 picks vs. our 2). Obviously this is also impacted by trades like the Boyd one where they traded out another top 5 pick.
I don’t think we’ve had top draft picks, although in pure numbers we’re probably about even. I think that isn’t Dodoro’s fault, I doubt he’s allowed to trade out a Lucas or Hille (both suggestions I made in 2007 & 2008) without the board and coach’s approval. We’ve never done a full rebuild, which again I believe is board directed (hell, until 2007 or so our goal was to make finals every year).
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Another response to @JBOMBER 's big post.
On the top ups, I don’t necessarily think they had a big impact. But I do think they reduce the number of “wild card” later picks to get a gem in the rough. The less times you roll the dice, the less chance to win.
Murphy is a good example. Sure, for a short term gain he didn’t hurt. But he did mean for two years we had an older player with a fixed ceiling on the list. Gamble on a kid instead, and maybe we have someone to help us when we’re going up in 2012 and 2013.
So as I said, I don’t think it had a huge impact. But we didn’t have cream of the crop picks, and we cut down our chances to get late gems.
As others have said I believe there is exciting news coming - hopefully announced very, very soon.
Not talking about trades or free agency.
Gah!
well, take what we can get I guess.
Final response to @JBOMBER 's big post (ignoring follow ups).
You mean is list?
This was a rubbish list. You start with 18 players over 12 years (I’m assuming Thompson is S. Thompson, who moved in 2005). But you can’t include players who chose to go home where Essendon isn’t home (Dangerfield, Polec, Ebert, Beams, Thompson), which cuts the list down to 13. You can’t include guys who weren’t big fish (Ball, Kennedy, Dal Santo, Tyson, Vince), which cuts it down to 8. And players who went to teams considered top 4 contenders weren’t likely to choose us either (Mitchell, O’Meara, Griffen), which leaves 5. Five guys who could seriously have changed clubs to us (Judd, Treloar, Burgoyne, Ward, and Prestia), over a 12 period. One who shifted during the saga, another who went for the bucket loads of cash that GWS offered. Even with 16 clubs, that means 11 have missed out. So Dodorro isn’t under-performing in that category, hardly anyone who isn’t in a unique location, or a top 4 contender gets big midfield fish.
On your second bit, where you’re sick of the excuses and asked if I’m just defending him out of club loyalty, obligation. No. I have some significant doubts. However, I’m also pretty clear that he’s been done over by the clubs philosophy, of which I have no idea how much he’s a part. I have no doubt he was primed towards 2013 => 2015, and that we got scuttled then. I’ve got some real queries which I’ve raised here on the list management philosophy and his trading, but the real problem is I have no idea who drove the list management philosophy decisions.
There are clearly a few teams who do it better than us, with the main one being the Swans. But I’m not sure if there are more than 2-3 clubs who outperform us year after year. And the real kicker is that there are 17 other clubs all trying to excel in this space. If Dodoro is top 5, then the odds of us getting a better replacement are very very long.
So really, you need to prove he’s worse than average if you’re going to convince me to get rid of him, or show me evidence that he’s the one making the decisions on the clubs’ directions.