The big issue for the clubs is who of any value is going to leave a Richmond or Collingwood to go to Gold Coast? Your not going to win over Gold Coast with a number of fringe players and any first choice players of a reasonable age will want to have a tilt at a premiership. That said if Richmond win again, there might be some that decide on a big pay cheque.
You just know Cochrane’s going to come out and say they want Dusty.
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It’ll be much the same as Jarryd Lyons
Offered peanuts to stay. 3-4yr contract from GC and guaranteed senior game time.
If football is your job and you could triple your pay and further security they’d go.
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Blokes on the fringe of a side or in the last years of their career are the last thing the Suns need. They need two or three solid and thoroughly professional 26yos from a strong culture who will crack in on the field and lead off it. They need to establish a culture from scratch and to do that they’ll need blokes who’ve been around for a while and who are unambiguous and unquestioned best 22 players so they won’t be seen as being gifted games, and who will be around for a while longer so they can help mould the new high picks that’ll be coming through. They’ve got to rebuild fron scratch and that takes time, they’ll need leaders who’ll be around for the journey.
Basically, they need guys that other clubs will fight tooth and nail to keep. Which is not going to make it easy for them. GWS did amazingly well with kids or lower-profile guys like ward and Mumford as their moral leadership core when starting up, but they could do that cos their list was mostly kids who’d never played a game. That ship has sailed for GC now. Whoever GC bring in isn’t just going to have to set an example for a bunch of 18yos, they’re going to have to change career-long habits for a bunch of hundred gamers. Tough, tough gig, and everyone in footy watched Ablett fail at it. Not surprised nobody is lining up.
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This is the same club that traded pick 2 for ■■■■■■■ Wellar from Freo.
They should just take the pick 3 compo and hope like hell the AFL splash out more money to fix their off field issues. Having so many good players leave them is a disgrace by the AFL
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That’s not really fair. GC have had such a hard time getting any non-crap player to go there that when a decent player finally said they wanted to, they had to get it done. Freo knew that and screwed them to the wall.
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Should have just said bad luck. Pick 2? Really? Should have just told him to go to the draft if he wasn’t contracted
Freo has a pick 5 likely to leave from last year also. They have a hard enough time themselves.
just fold them already. They were given everything by the AFL and still can’t build a decent team. Most weeks the opposition fans out number their own fans.
Just let them die already.
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Last week I watched a bit of them v Fark Carlton and even early in the game when it was 50/50 it sounded like there was much more support for Fark Carlton
I’m not convinced about old guys not having any worth to them.
Personally I think they could do much much worse than finding a few old hardened heads just to beef up the leadership and re-enforce the coaching and gameplan.
GAblett seems to have left no lasting impression.
Harbrow, Rosa, Barlow, Hanley, Hall and Rischiteli are their experienced players now.
Jesus, no wonder they’re so ■■■■!!
A couple who were useful in their prime, but none of them worth a cracker now.
Hanley is OK.
Harbrow is good but flakey. Same with Hall.
Rosa is flakey but flakey.
Barlow one year too many.
Rischitelli is the most forgettable footballer to ever be forgotten, but at least he has a dip.
I think Hodge has been worth his weight in gold for Brisbane this year. And he was all but retired.
With Tigers being industry favourites to snare Lynch what could they offer GC better than pick 3?
Lets assume they win the flag and are top 4 again next year that leaves them with 2 picks around 18 - surely you’d take pick 3 in a strong draft?
Outside of a Miles type hard to see anyone moving from the jugganaut Richmond club to one of the bigger rabbles the AFL has seen in decades in a trade.
Pick 3 makes sense to take.
They know he is worth more than a priority pick (as it stands pick 3) but we have seen a many players who have gotten far less than predicted for Free Agents.
casisi.
No it doesn’t! The whole Free Agency system is failure. How many Free Agents in their prime like Lynch have said “You know what, I want to go to Gold Coast/Brisbane/St Kilda/Carlton?”
None. Pick 3 could be a bust or take years to develop and then want to ■■■■ off back to their home state.
Gold Coast do not have the academy like GWS where they can afford big name kids to leave knowing that they can just bring in another bigger gun kid (Hopper, Settersfield, Kennedy). The only half decent Academy kid they produced since induction is Bowes.
I just think the problems with GC run too deep to be fixed in a year or two, and with an guy who’s getting squeezed out of his current team because he’s getting to the end of his career, a year or two is all you’re likely to get. And it gets worse if the bloke you brought in to set standards starts struggling or slowing up - do you drop him and undercut his leadership role, or do you keep him in the side above better-performing kids and risk fostering resentment towards him from the exact same young guys you brought him in to mentor?
Bringing in an older bloke to provide finals experience etc and strengthen the leadership group might be worthwhile if you’ve got a few leaders of your own already, but the Suns don’t really.
Free Agency system was never intended to equalise the competition (though the AFL may have sold it that way) - it was intended to prevent the players from challenging the whole draft/salary cap edifice in court, because if they did everyone in the footy world knows that the AFL would lose.
100% agree that free agency and increased player mobility has generally made weak teams weaker though, especially in a post-Tom Boyd world where contracts mean nothing to players anymore.
The Suns Academy failing to produce players is nobody’s fault but their own. their player development at all levels has been shambolic, and their falure to find talent from their zone is just another manifestation of that. The Lions are doing just fine with a Queensland-based Academy (see Hipwood, E) after all.
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The AFL only has two ploys really.
Make GC the highest football department spend. If they have the best coaches and best facilities it would help.
Brown paper bags. They are going to have to offer silly money to attract top line players. They will need to need to give them salary cap or ambassador deals to do it.