I’m paraphrasing but Dermot was defending Essendon yesterday on SEN.
Said against North,Essendon had 9 players who played 30 games or less with 5 of them playing less then 10 games.
Against Port it was 7 players with single digit games said we are so young
What ever you think Essendon has done right or wrong on this journey what we are seeing is a club attempting on doing full blown rebuild according to him
Also said only 3 players from the covid effected draft are in the top 50
Thilphorp was pick 2 which we didn’t have access to.
Goulden was a Swans academy player so we didn’t have access to him either.
Max Holmes you could argue we missed but every one thought he was an athlete except for Geelong
That was a crap shoot of a draft hard to blame that Essendon completely botched it imo.
Gave the media a clip too said do some research first instead of just pointing out what Essendon is doing wrong.
We have never taken 5 teenage picks until Rosa did so in 2024, 5 more teenage national draft picks in 2025. That is about as much of a focus on youth as we have ever done.
Not entirely sure of the Tassie draft rules but I believe they will receive 6 first round picks which must be used in trades (as opposed to the 7 they can uses in the draft)
would any of ur senior players attract a trade with Tassie for one of those picks.
My answer would basically be no. We’re not a club you’d want to get culture from, and none of our senior players outside Merrett have any “big fish” signing energy (assuming Merrett’s even at the club to be got anyway). I suspect the only way we’d get good picks in a trade with Tassie is if it’s a bad situation, like making the decision that it’s better to trade a contracted Caddy in 2027 rather than lose him as an uncontracted player in 2028 for a compensation pick.
It’s funny the media fawning over Richmond 2024 draft but I remember distinctly after 2021 everyone thought Cox was the next big thing and Perkins had shown heaps in his debut season.
They went absolutely all in and if they only hit 2 of their 7 first rounders that would be a disaster for them. So far Lalor looks a game changing gun. Hotton shown a bit of talent and the rest been pretty underwhelming IMO. Smillie can’t get on the park, Faull had moments but still question marks. Trainor and Simms look serviceable but not much more. Armstrong I’ve thought looks very underwhelming. Still early days considering there’s a few talls in there but still very much jury out on that draft for them.
I even heard Jake Niall talking about rebuilds essendon v Richmond and his comment was we’ve seen enough of the Richmond draft class to know they’ve done well and I thought, have we?
Totally agree. Its very surface level opinion. Everyone agrees with the strategy but the results are very much up in the air. At the moment their best players are still the older ones.
Another point that gets forgotten with Richmond is that their highest selection in the two drafts that preceded 2024 was pick 40. Over the last 4 years, they’ve taken then same number of top 20 picks as we have. Lalor is their only top 5 selection (who admittedly looks very good). They traded out Bolton, Rioli and Baker for 4 first-rounders, but gave up 3 first-rounders for Hopper and Taranto (who are roughly the same age as the former) right before that.
Media narratives rely on surface level perceptions, rather than assessment of the players themselves. In part, that is fair – it’s too early to make definitive assessments. However, there are some distortions too. Of that group of 7 players you mentioned, 3 of them were picked at 21, 23 and 28. Two of those players get the first-rounder label, but are historically in second-rounder range. The odds of finding A-graders in the 20s aren’t great.
If we’d traded Zach Merrett for the picks, I’d guess the media narrative around our youth be better than it is. It would’ve showcased more commitment to the rebuild and we’d be hearing more about how many first-rounders we have (regardless of where the picks actually fell) and the promise of our youth. It’d be more ok that we’re losing. In part, that is fair. However, there’d be no analysis of who we got with those picks, which is actually the thing that matters…
However, I would expect the majority of Roberts, Caddy, Kako, Johnson, Clarke, Nguyen, Robey, Sharp, Farrow, Kondogiannis and El-Achkar to get to 50 quickly relative to their draft class.
Assuming you’re just saying ND, then we did in 2006, 2010, 2015, 2016 and 2020.
Including rookie picks & PSD we took 2006 (6), 2007 (7), 2008 (9), 2008 (5), 2010 (6), 2011 (5), 2012 (5), 2015 (7), 2016 (6), 2019 (6), 2020 (6), 2022 (5) as well as 2024 (7) and 2025 (5). Including SSP and MSD would increase those.
The 2024 draft class is about 3 games into their second season. Of course there are question marks. Especially on talls. This is like some posters saying Gerreyn might be cut at season’s end.
