Ah well, we can still manipulate the system with rookie draft, given the number of main list spots and rookie spots is adjustable by 2
Do you really think that?
I don’t think so. Best way to get elite talent is to be down near the bottom and trade out your older elite talent for high end draft picks.
So we have paid all that money (McKay etc) and increased contract length to NOW start our rebuild ? We are starting from scratch without any draft capital. Then when we have our good draft hand Tassie come into the picture. It’s going to be a long 3-5 years.
We have 2 more drafts after this before Tassie comes in, we’ll probably look to trade our 2027 F1 and bring it forward anyway to account for Bewick, plus Tassie is going to be forced to trade some of their picks for players. If we doubled down on youth right now I think we’d be in a decent position
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I actually don’t mind the strategy to be honest.
We’ve signed all these guys to longterm deals so they have to stay around, otherwise we will have to get overs in a trade for them to go.
You won’t get a lot of detail out of the club about their plans, but maybe you can offer some nuts and bolts about your plan?
Yep I’m not reading into the plan we are undertaking a full rebuild. They have identified we are short on elite young talent and going to go hard on getting some next 2 years. This strategy might still fail as a bet each way but at least it’s a strategy.
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I’m assuming it’s till we sack the coach!
It seems it is difficult for some people to accept that the ‘strategy’ might involve both hitting the draft, retention of a contracted core of mature players and targeting of free-agents. The binary ‘full rebuild’ versus ‘topping up’ is a relic in list building. This is probably the new normal.
And yes, I would have liked the current comms around list strategy to have started 12 months ago - so not pretending the club has made all the right steps. Selection this year will be extremely interesting, it was by far the most confusing\baffling issue of last season.
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This is my issue. Are these the right players to be retaining long term?
Merrett is a gun
Parish and Ridley have far too many soft tissue issues.
McGrath and McKay are panic merchants
Redman is inconsistent.
You’d want to be building a list around a reliable core.
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And a commitment to getting them development and exposure
Bryan “not being ready” for the last 2 years is blood boiling stuff. And basically the problem in a nutshell. Club not prepared to do any hard yards.
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exactly this. Our senior group have shown us so many times they cant handle the pressure at the business end of the season/
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Sure, but it’s all a matter of degrees.
Nobody’s delisting/trading 30x players in an offseason, but a lot of clubs have traded more than 1x. This is a very, very limp attack on the draft. Goldstein re contracted, Lav retained etc etc - taking the 9th best hand to the draft by total points.
Also interesting that even this very mild approach - trading out 1x old bloke - has upset the boomers…
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we actually tried to get rid of him & shiel but no one was interested
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ok.
No matter the approach we take there will be people critical of it until we succeed. It might seem unfair but there’s really no trust we will get it right after getting it wrong so consistently in the past.
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Eeexactly
The approach has nearly always been half of one, six a dozen of the other. People are extremely critical of Disco but this is what he did. His draft/trades were nearly never terrible but never actually got us enough in to build on.
What’s (significantly) different this time? Nothing.
No (significant) commitment to rebuild. No significant capital (players) used to get deeper into the draft.
Just wishy washy.
Again.
Starts at the top…
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9th in points but have dees future first less our future third.
Tigers likely the ones who may wish to trade out a first rd during live draft and grab a future first at some point.
I forgot (and @EssendonPride1 reminded me) that we could actually add him via the SSP providing he nominates for the draft. So, yeah, it doesn’t have to be the rookie draft. My bad.
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