Possibly not the right choice of words, however I do think they clearly made an attempt at ongoing competitiveness and failed (for a variety of reasons)
As a result the bottom out rebuild has become their next best option, driven by players requesting trades.
4 first round picks for Bolton, Baker and Rioli is good persuasion.
Yep, I agree. As you put it though, they āfailedā in its effort to take another course. And thatās exactly what Iām saying! Geelong donāt fail to make the right decisions and thatās why they remain a force, defying gravity.
Thatās a big point, I think. Being in the middle of the table doesnāt mean the top and bottom are actually equally far away. The eagles finding an extra 6 wins over the next couple of years to get themselves to 11 is far more likely than Essendon (or the other 11 win teams) finding an extra 6 wins to get to 17.
Conservative, risk-averse, easy decisions can reliably get a team to 10-12 wins. Very few teams donāt get to the point where they can go 50-50. Getting up to 14-15 wins is a lot harder, and 17+ wins is harder still.
Making those decisions about whoās good enough for a middling team are often pretty obvious. The extra ruthlessness required to say āgood enough for the AFL, but not good enough for us to be goodā about a player is somewhere I think weāve really struggled over the years.
Richmond will be interesting. They were an absolute basketcase for the best part of 20 years, their fans jumped on during the glory years and with where they are tracking, I donāt see them coming back for a very long time. How they won a wooden spoon so quickly is actually remarkable.
I think it needs to be acknowledged how incredibly rare it is for a club to have this level of sustained success, without bottoming out.
Itās amazing really.
You can correlate Richmondās rise and fall with Dustyās career.
This decision to rebuild will either be inspired and gutsy, or another example of a club imploding and being mismanaged into a prolonged and unnecessary period of on field misery. Its not certain either scenario.
Extraordinary really.
Yet still win a final before us
I worry about trading Hobbs. Heās got a bit of Selwood about him!? Ted Richards haunts me.
Thatās the pessimistic viewā¦
Youāre probably spot on their mate. It certainly wasnāt Cotchin and Riewoldt that made the difference, and they were probably their next best players for a large period of that.
The one thing I think that will favour Richmondās rebuild is they are not trading out the cake, they are trading the cream for high value.
Structurally they wonāt be much different, and they were performing poorly with those players anyway.
Gee Iām not sure about that. Theyāre nearly decimated I reckon. They will likely be no stronger next year and they have ageing and broken Prestia and Lynch leading themā¦
True
Heās courageous as all get out and has lifted when needed.But he aināt a scratch on Joelās boots.
Iām a Hobbs fan but everytime that is said, it really sells short how good a player Joel Selwood was. And sets an unrealistically high bar for what people think Ben Hobbs should be.
Unless you mean one of the other Selwood brothers. In which case yeah, thereās arguments heās at least as good as two (Adam and Troy), and could be better than the best of Scott.
Iām slightly more optimistic 
Absolutely. But they finished last anyway. I donāt think Rioli, Bolton and Baker were going to drive them into a future finals appearance.
They all rely on the work of others. Better to turn them into first round picks to try and find the next Martin, Cotchin, Rance and Reiwoldt.
Then target the cream back in via trade and FA.
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