Look, you can continue complaining about the system that’s been in place (for over 20 years) or actually embrace it and use it.
I’m so sick of people complaining about how hard we’ve had it, yet we don’t try anything new.
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The evidence unquestionable says that the AFL will not assist you unless you have multiple years in the bottom 3 with hardly any wins and with supporters who subsequently do not show up reducing gate receipts and viewerships. Essendon have fulfilled none of these criteria hence we don’t get help. This is the way…
i’d really like to see May get a game. Given his ruck history as a junior and big body. Could put him together with Caddy at a young age and can develop together.
Geelong and Collingwood are a bit of an outlier as they have had sustained success and other factors that allow them to keep topping up. It also helps that they have both been blessed with great Father/son selections and older blokes that play at the same great level that they did when they were kids.
Most others realise you need to at some point cop your medicine. Crows played in a GF and then won a spoon which got them Thilthorpe.
North should never be used an example as they are just as big of a basket case as us and have botched all their rebuilds, assistance etc.
It’s not just the priority picks though but if you want to get a good look at a draft you can’t keep finishing mid table, eventually you have to fall into that bottom 3-4 region
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Cutting edge supplements program?
Flying a plane to a regional town instead of taking a bus?
Flash mobs?
The pressure cooker?
Club sanctioned “active supporter” group?
Why doesn’t our 2022 count when people complain about always finishing mid table?
I’d say it counts. It depends on what exactly you mean by mid table, but bottom 4 should count. I’d say roughly Essendon’s last 10 seasons have been 8 mid table finishes (assuming this year is) and 2 bottom finishes (2016 care of the AFL, and 2022). That’s not literally always, but it’s pretty close.
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Because we ballsed up our drafting.
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Need 3 years of bottom 4 finishes and when you are there, you trade out senior players and allow FA (Parish, Redman and now Draper) to leave.
Our draft hand is already good, if you get aggressive and trade a couple senior players and have Draper walk you can have a sublime draft hand.
At the very least you test the waters on Langford, Wright, Ridley, Parish, Redman and McGrath, who knows what other clubs would be willing to offer especially if we pay some salary as well.
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But, how are we going to savour those sweet, juicy 1 goal wins over North and West Coast if we give up all our good players 
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The changed academy rules certainly helped us with Kako.
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And did that stop them getting hand outs? No. They’ll also argue the players wanted to leave.
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They didn’t finalise it until quite late in the season, and Kako was the only NGA player it had any impact on. If it was a collingwood player rather than an Essendon player, people would have been ■■■■■■■■ about how much the AFL bends over to help the pies.
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Exactly. It’s fine to complain that the system shouldn’t be how it is, but that’s a totally separate conversation to what a team should do given the system is how it is.
Should teams have been rewarded back in the early 2000s with a pre-first round pick if they got less than 5 wins, did it encourage clubs to throw games? Interesting discussion. If you were having a ■■■■ year sitting on 4 wins with three rounds to go, do you send everyone in for surgery and play a small forward in the ruck? Abso-■■■■■■■-lutely.
Edit: just went and checked. It was actually a priority pick if you ended on less than 20.5 points. A five win season would given you an extra pre-first round draft pick. Now you’ve got to win 5 games in three years and the AFL might chuck you an end of first round pick and some VFL players.
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So thats 12 players gone and where do we get these replacements from?
errrrrr the Draft
Of course but not in one go.
And drating thay many players is not fessible we would need to trade some players in the talent pool drops off after the first 30 picked.
It’s a strategy not a single one season move.
Richmond had 7 picks inside 30 last year. It can absolutely be done.
Agree but most one here want half the team gone in one off season.