The Inevitable Rebuild

[frosty]

@Ants

@Nocturnal

@Ants

I’ve been thinking for a while this board and Scott are sleepwalking us into the same position North was in. They (North) went hard, topped up, but failed to develop/recruit young players. When they finally realised that they needed to rebuild, the older players had very little value. They “let” a few leave, but got a handful of second and third rounders for them. All of which left them with the bare bones of a list, no meaningful additional picks and a ten year rebuild.

Covid definitely impacted their rebuild , but Tassie will also impact us.

We’re in a situation where the trade value of Merrett, Langford, Parish, Wright, Ridley, McKay, McGrath, Gresham are all way less than at any point in the last 5 years. We saw this with Stringer, Shiel and Lav, losing them for less than what we’d have got for biting the bullet earlier.

Yet the youngest of those guys i listed is 27. If we take three years to be ready they’re all post 30, many with terrible injury histories, a historical EFC track record of not keeping players going post 30 and question marks on commitment. If they’re all gone and we’ve replaced them with 2-3 successful first rounders (including our 2026-2028 firsts) , how will the team be good enough? Cause it ain’t good enough now.

Which risks us falling into the North difficult rebuild. Let alone if we lose a youngster such as Caddy, Sharp, Robey etc to Tassie for twiddly winks.

I agree there is a real chance that the AFL level players we have get too old before we find enough to fill the hole and get us ahead of the curve. Then when they finally get to the point of realising we need to accelerate a rebuild and offload Parish, Merrett, Ridley, Langford, whoever etc they will have no value and we will be too far down the track and in the middle of a Tassi compromised draft.

This has a real chance of spiring out of control if they are not careful, and where north is at now is a real chance. The easy is first two years development - the hard is getting them from AFL player to top 20% and then top 10% for their areas in the league and doing it consistently.

Brad hasn’t done that with Redman, Langford, Parish, Ridley, McGrath, Caldwell etc, so who says he is even capable of doing it for the next generation, and he clearly never did it at North. He only had 4 AA nominations in his 9 years and none repeated AA, he never got the side good enough to play well enough for long enough to make top 6, let lone contend and were not realistically close in prelims.

If they go chasing a bunch of mid range top up like Polec, Higgins types second tier players, you know we are cooked and Brad is trying to save his job.

Just copying to this thread as relevant and for posterity.

Just checking, is Fiorini Polec, and Gresham Higgins?