List build - where are we? Where are we going next (Part 1)

He’s a monster, looks like a dumb goon about to get bowled over by a barrel in an 80s Kung fu movie.

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At present we’ve got 1 mid leaving (Jobe) and we have 3-6 guys fighting for his spot.
If one of them can’t crack it, we have huge problems, whether we get Rockliff/Miles or not.

I still think our best move is Heppell into Jobe’s rotations. Easier to find a half back than a quality mid.

I’ve mentioned him before but I’d love to pick up O’Brian in the draft - I reckon he could get to our pick.

And that strategy is now outdated. If you can’t develop your picks within a couple of years you move down the line again. You still need to be able to draft and develop as well as bring in decent players via trading.

Code for we’re not a ‘destination club’.

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IF only we could be like Collingwood, and trade in about 6 big names a year, and play ugly footy, and never play finals. TRADEREEREEEEE ZOMG

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Or like Hawthorn

I dont know how any of us can try and laugh at other teams list strategy. We’ve been ■■■■■■■ awful for a long, long time and I can’t see us making a prelim anytime soon.
It’s time to pivot from the “draft and develop” strategy and be bold.

From 2005
Sydney - Premiers 2005, 2012
West Coast - Premiers 2006
Geelong - Premiers 2007, 2009, 2011
Hawthorn - Premiers 2008, 2013, 2014, 2015
Collingwood - Premiers 2010
Western Bulldogs - Premiers 2016

St Kilda - GF
Port Adelaide - GF
Freo - GF

Adelaide - Prelim
North Melbourne - Prelim
GWS - Prelim

Melbourne - Won Final
Brisbane - Won Final
Carlton - Won Final

Essendon
Richmond
Gold Coast

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Absolutely agree that the last thing we need is to bring in slow 190 type players. As you pointed out with the Adelaide example, and applies to Richmond, Port, Geelong and GWS too, a balanced midfield doesn’t have to mean small fast guys + big slow guys, it can be predominantly a bunch of balanced guys. Whether we should be working towards the latter, or optimising with the reality that we have the former is each to their own I guess.

Do you think that we have been in a position of trading in good players in the last 5 years?

Hawks and Geelong have been a destination club due to their ladder position.

We are now entering that level of depth on our list and I expect we will start to be a destination club.

I’m certainly envious of how Collingwood used to recruit.
They were by and large a draft club but went and got the guys they needed to, everyone was working to the same plan and the plan worked.

I’m certainly not envious of them now that their strategy seems to be “anything that moves”. Aish is terrible, Mayne, Wells, list goes on: they don’t know what they want.

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And yet we were supposedly in the conversations for O’Meara and now Kelly.

The reality is we were/are unable to get these deals completed.

Now is it the $$$? Possibly.

Perhaps similar to Jaeger, players want to live in the east and don’t want to travel to the west where the club is located.

I can’t imagine gun mids are all that enthused about propping up the worst midfield in the league either. These players we are chasing aren’t after midfield time, they are after success, so us being shithouse in the middle is not really a selling point.

If Xavier is as smart as he appears, he would already have the review well underway.

If Disco wants to hang his hat on his ‘draft and develop’ mantra then he and the club need to get off their arses and deal their way up the draft order.

Yet another aspect of list management that seems to have been a foreign concept for the last 15 years.

Keep going like this and watch north, carlton, saints and melbourne shoot straight past us in the near future.

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To be fair, they said that Melbourne and Saints would be above us this year and both most likely make the finals. They didn’t and we did.

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Very true.

I do legitimately wonder if this season of somewhat odd results means as much as we think.

I guess next year will tell the story.

Draper, Ridley, Mutch, Begley look like afl material. Redman is only 20.
Our concerns are what we do with Lav, Langford and Francis keep or trade.

Langford showed enough today to keep, and play in the seniors.

Langford is also only 20 and he’s shown a helluva lot more than Redman

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I’d like to see us look at taking Nick Hind, with Kelly retiring and McGrath midfield bound it wouldn’t hurt to look at a plus and play speedy HBF.

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Essendon asking the question whether these guys are available doesn’t mean that it’s a fail if the job doesn’t get done. When you go to an auction to buy a house you have a price in mind. Well the smart people do.

Now JOM has obvioously had more than his share of issues. Dodoro would have put a price on the table and JOM obviously thought the Hawthorn offer was better. Why would Dodoro get in a bidding war knowing where our list is at?

Hawthorn could afford to take a risk on JOM because their intention is to add depth to an old list to have one final crack. It’s pretty clear it’s backfiring.

Kelly is no different. I’m sure we have a price based on whee our list is at and they dont want to go over. Thats not even factoring in whether he’s even actually leaving GWS. If he goes to Carlton so be it. We all know how it turned out for them when they got Judd at a very similar stage of their development.

What annoys me is we lost so many of our players around the 2000 period because we overpaid some guys and yet here we are with people still wanting to go down that route.

The irony in your post is the rubbish clubs you have nominated to shoot past us don’t have anything to show for themselves. I think our list is n very good shape and is building towards a flag.

It’s clear that you dont.

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Common knowledge we did a bit more than ask the question KM.

If he ends up going to Carlton, then he is/was available and we’ve failed to secure the player we were interested in. Again.

Assumption. Cap management is also far more sophisticated than “paying player X $$$$ means other players are lost”. Or at least it should be if we’re doing it properly.

Except that 3 of them have basically outperformed Essendon over the last 10 years and the other isn’t far off. But other than that, sure. I also prefaced that with '(if we) keep going like this".

Context is always important KM. Its what separates us from the savages on talking farkcarlton.

I think the list is going okay, but we are ‘building towards a flag’ in the same way as 17 other teams.

From the forwardline, Hooker will be 29 shortly so we will need a progression plan sooner than most think. Green is just going and we should be looking to replace as soon as we can. both lang and Lav have failed to set the world on fire up forward and command a spot. Our scores for have gone through the roof this year and that is reason to be optimistic, but we still need to regularly bring manic pressure to our forward 50 so there is a bit to go still.

The backline has regressed from a couple of years back where we had an embarrassment of tall options and needs to be bolstered. Hurls is awesome offensively, but this comes at the cost of his previously solid 1-1 defending. Hartley cannot stop an opponent and cannot mark. Bags is 30 and will be gone soon. J.Kelly has been one of our best this year at 33yrs of age and is now goneski. Our great white hope midfielder is our best shut down (small) defender.

I think there is significant work to be done down there to ensure our backline in 2-3 years is as strong as it needs to be.

The midfield has a couple of great outside players in Zaka and Merrett who was also AA but we were still in the bottom 4 statistically as a midfield unit this year and if we’re honest we are struggling for quality contested players who fit our gameplan. The fellowship of the ring approach IMO also puts us at too much of a disadvantage when we need a different look through the middle.

We are ranked worst of the top 8 for scores against (by some way) and there are 4 teams below us (outside of the 8) who also have a better scores against result.

Defense wins premierships. Always has. Always will.

Its clear I think there is work to do.

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