Ummm you do realise he wants to play more midfield time and he was considered one of the best midfielders in his draft year untill he broke his leg…
Talk of trading him is silly.
But forcing somebody like Francis into a trade would be easy (though morally questionable).
Club: “Hi Aaron, sorry to say this but the Club would really like to trade you”
Francis: “But I don’t want to be traded. I want to stay here. I love this place. The other guys, the coaches. I don’t agree to a trade. You can’t trade me unless I agree”
Club: “Its great that you are so committed to the club. But here is the thing. Your progress hasn’t been as we had hoped. I’m not sure there will be much opportunity in the senior team for you this year if you stay. I can almost guarantee that you will play in the VFL all year if you stay. Almost guarantee it.”
If there aren’t any out there, why not draft one? Crazy thought.
Ummm you do realise he’s now had 5 years to prove he can do even a bit of midfield time, and he’s not managed to do that.
All the midfield
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Ummm because the doggies have played him out of position and into a forward more than a midfielder because thats what they needed most for their team & structure. If you watched alot of games you would see stringer had spurts in the midfield. Not to mention when he was streaming from packs and kicking a few goals in the matter of minutes.
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Totally agree. I’ll take Francis who goes hard and just needs to increase fitness base over some players who I won’t mention (out of hope they change) that pull up short or don’t go hard, or watch the player (key fed) rather than the ball and let the key fwd kick a bag. Those players will actually cost us games, Francis if he gets his fitness right will win us games
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That’s all well and good but let’s be honest every time we been linked to player we don’t end up getting said player so can’t blame people for not having faith.
Unless his manager says ‘f*ck you. He’s staying’. He’s well within his rights to stay. In fact the law would suggest exactly that.
Yeah of course that can happen.
But why would you - you are fringe player who’s just been told you are going to play VFL all year.
Not sure it’s come from Essendon internally, but Dodoro noted the other week on radio that Francis has attracted interest from a few clubs but the club wants him to stay. That’s probably where all the talk has stemmed from.
I thought it was mainly coming from Donnington but that sounds plausible as well.
It’s lolworthy that people think Stringer will ever player more than like 10% of a game in the midfield. Sure he played some midfield minutes as a junior but for christ sake so did Angus Monfries. He’s not ever going to be a midfielder, and this whole thread stinks of blitz just hoping that we pick someone up to say that we’ve landed a big fish. I’d be perfectly content with us going to the draft with pick 11 in the event that an actual decent midfielder isnt available in trade period.
It’s only coming from morons.
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Tell that to Woosha. Who said specifically he had no doubt Stringer could play midfield.
You must know more than Woosha…
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We have
hepp
zerrett
parish
and by all reports mcgrath in there.
Again we will also have zaka, myers and goddard there.
We will also likely have raz tippa and hopefully begley to rotate through the midfield.
If player progression continues, we wouldn’t need Stringer to spend the majority of the games in the midfield, he could spend 5 mins a qtr in there to break things up.
It’s all well and good to say we want and need an out and out midfielder come draft day, but the likelyhood is unless he is an out and out gun, he wouldn’t be breaking into the midfield til 2019 at best anyway, more likely 2020.
So you’re drafting an unknown kid for a position if all things work out, we may not need covering in in 2-3 years, and could be obsolete, similar to what lav and lang are atm.
A first year player, unless the ilk of zerrett or mcgrath ( which is not a guarantee) isn’t going to be changing the dynamics of the midfield next season.
Stringer would, hopefully he’d be in there more than goddard FFs.
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Barrett believes Stringer to Geelong with Essendon waiting in the wings. Thinks he’ll be at Geelong but the 600k might be the problem for them.
Says Essendon won’t be giving up pick 11 though.
Just letting you know.
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When did he say that?
Just then on Footy Classified - Sunday night edition
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Footy classified
Also said pick 20 is about right
Loolll