Of course there is no guarantee. Draftees fail. But, between trades, leveraging our cap, and finishing low we would hope to get a number of picks, especially low ones. This would increase our odds, and create a cohort coming through together.
Carlton and Melbourne both failed with their first rebuilds. Melbourne then won a premiership with their second, and Carlton is (unfortunately) looking promising to challenge.
It’s a myth you can win a premiership without either a rebuild or a big advantage.
Here’s 18 that could go without it meeting my personal criteria for a full rebuild, and perhaps not even for a “rebuild”
Heppell
Goldstein
Stringer
Shiel
Hind
Kelly
Laverde
Guelfi
Weideman
Gresham
Setterfield
Hunter
Baldwin
Wanganeen
Davey
Davey
Menzie
Lual
Not suggesting they should all go, and I have hope that a bunch of the younger guys actually come good, but the guys over 27 in this list are definitely expendable in my view.
I think a partial rebuild has already begun and the removal of Dodoro is the biggest tell. There’s no way we would be able to do a mass cull if Dodoro was still around (he’d cause too be conflict with players and coach).
We have got only a couple more years to cut the list deep and rebuild and trade smartly, before Tassie come in and effectively set us back another 20 years. I hope the club have the right strategy???
Not a single name on that list would generate any value though. I reckon the only player on our list who is worth something in the first round and who could actually generate that value because he isn’t tied to a an overs contract is Langford.
He had a bad second half to the year, but he’s one of our only good players and will not be getting traded. Who are you replacing him with? They will back him to bounce back next year.
Yeah, I wasn’t suggesting there was much value to trade there. My point was you could cull half the list without really venturing into “full rebuild” territory.
By the same token I’m probably not holding onto, say, Stringer if he’s not in the view of how I want to the list to develop going forward just because I can’t get trade value. At this stage the “he’s worth more to us than we would get in trade” doesn’t really hold for a bunch of these sorts of guys. They might be better players than their trade value, but we’re looking forward, so they also aren’t hugely valuable to us.
I guess it depends on how paying part of a contract works. What if it was a deal where new club pays 80% of the first two years, 50% of the third, 20% of the last two?
The highest risk portion of that contract (the final years) would primarily be paid for by us. A lot of the risk is then mitigated for a potential suitor, and we could probably negotiate a better return in a trade.