What Hawks do is recruit players that can kick and aren’t scared of their shadows. My point is that we don’t have talent.
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Nope i just think its not all doom and gloom
But they played inexperienced guys in important roles, they built resilience, they’re tough now.
Our kids are learning new positions because we keep playing plodders in the important roles.
How long have you felt this way?
I respect this about the Hawks and also the Cats. These successful teams are evidence that high draft pick-focused rebuilds are overrated.
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You realise they are stacked with elite kicks, endurance and speed freak runners and a raft of gun small forwards?
All things we don’t have much of. The best way to acquire these is to get good draft picks. Doesn’t guarantee it and you can still get lucky with addressing some of these needs with later picks or via trade but top picks give you a better chance.
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I’m not necessarily pro finishing bottom 4.
What I am for is restructuring the list and by extension the team, if that results in some bottom 4 finishes while the team adapts then so be it, at least we get access to the top end while we build.
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We could absolutely finish bottom 4 next year.
We probably won’t because a couple of other teams might turn to sh*t and be worse than us.
We could though !
There is zero guarantee we finish above ANY of Saints, Crows, GCS, Demons, Coll.
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So one could say that Essendon are clearly over achievers.
That’s if you can attract elite talent via the trade and free agency
Bailey Smith anyone?
The strong get stronger and weak (us) just make up numbers. Geelong recruit locals and then their siblings. The comp is ■■■■■■ for sides like us.
We simply need to get a lot more elite talent onto this list. By my count, only Richmond and Saints have had less top 30 draft selections over the past 6 years.
We could easily buck the trend, by delisting all of our senior players.
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Way fewer inside 50’s but then our centre clearances would get a boost and end up first in the comp.
Agree.
Maybe we are just no good at footy.
Every other club seems to make it work
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I reckon Gorth will finish above us, if not next year ,the year after
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Every other club (except Gold Coast) has reached a Prelim in the last 15 years.
Maybe the problem isn’t the AFL or their Draft/trade/FA Systems.
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I mean you’re using our team as the measuring stick there, and we aren’t exactly up to industry standards.
I also put little weight in the brownlow after seeing them give out 3 votes to efforts like JHF 13 touch, 0 goal, 1 tackle game.
I’d love Darcy’s 2023 a lot more if he’d managed to kick over 60%, possibly manage maybe 1 one percenter, but more importantly actually pick the head up and show some leadership when things got hard.
Some folks see stats and are happy with that as the only metric that matters. But his body language sucks, he’s not robust, he’s the same as our other mids, he’s not for me.
You can value him as highly as you clearly do, but doesn’t mean all of us have to
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