I’d go the other way, and target 9 with our 20s picks. Again to delay bid on Dean, and they end up with a couple stabs in the 20s in the draft.
Take 5 6 and 9 (pre bids).
Blues will have a couple ways to approach it. But either way we should use bidding on Dean as leverage to maximise our hand.
Ironically, we’ll probably delist Hobbs
I know this sounds desperate but if you can request trades to break your contract, and picks can be traded until draft time.
What is the possibility a player and club can just agree to tear up a contract and agree to be desisted. Hypothetically Hawks have time now to reflect and find the picks that would have done the trade. Hawks find suitors for all those “first round picks” on offer and actually find a pick inside top 10, pair it with their pick 10, maybe one of those second rounders if they still have one, and give them to us for a future 4th. We delist Merrett and Hawks sign him (or take the picks and hold Merrett lol).
Id prefer not to have Merrett at the club but I also want something better in return than what was offered.
And that is on Brad.
Failure to give him game time as a mid and develop him.
Yeah, I make no claims of informed knowledge on the draft crop , but gut feel says that 5/6/15 is better for us than 6/9/11. I think I like the Sharp / Cumming duo idea.
But of course, no guarantee that GC feel the need to turn 15 into more points. Probably will depend on draft night events.
I think most fans think Essendon’s predominant focus is about brining numerous in high end draft talent.
I think Essendon’s more important priory and focus should be ‘all in’ on addressing off field performance.
Until Essendon fixes high performance, it wouldn’t matter how good the young talent they bring in are. They won’t progress.
Yeah he knows what he is doing. Still their list manager worked well.
Similarly they had a tough free agency period like us seeing TDK and Silvagni go.
And they responded well I think in trade week. Sure Curnow is another big out but they are remodelling their list.
I think Rosa and Obrien as list managers know how to do that. And Vozzo put them in charge of the list.
Suns will trade it out before matching bid as the first pick gets used when bid matching…so more points is better
They’re gonna wipe out all their picks anyway , but how many more points they’ll need will depend firstly on whether Uweland bid comes at 2 , 3, 4 etc.
They did very well.
It’s more than just Carlton though, player agent through negotiations and Sydney understanding what it would take to land their player.
Hawthorns plan backfired, they refused, were stubborn ( like their coach ) and it might comeback to bite them not giving a future first 2027 for ultimate prize.
After the Merrett non-deal it looks like we currently have 3 available list spots to use at the draft. If we are serious about bringing both our NGAs this year then 2 of Lual, Setterfield and Hobbs will get the flick. If we want to keep one list spot available for SSP (Clohesy from Geelong maybe?) then all three will get the flick. We will use pick 21 and 27 to swap with GC or Carlton to get up the board and reserve pick 30 for Sweid. The club will be hoping no bids on El-Achkar and to land him as a Cat-B rookie.
To me it’s a tiny bit unders. Maybe that could’ve improved if we had any interest, maybe not.
Either way it’s close enough that I could live with it.
Why would we need to change? We simply need to “stop being walked all over” and add a dash of “swagger” and we’ll be instantly successful (just like when we “stopped being walked all over” the last 8 or 9 times)
I think all 3 need the flick, re rookie Lual, he has swagger plus Alot of effort and energy needs guidance for positioning on the field which will come with leadership and experience
I do think that a lot of people miss the fact that our list spots are tight and that there may not be a trade market for too many picks in the 20’s if we’d ended up with 4 of them, when evaluating the Merrett offer. Pick 10 was one thing, but pick 22 was actually awkward without an obvious, agreed trade up option.
Given all the players that left the suns…they may need to keep picking.
they have the two early boys - Uwland and Patterson and another in the 20’s Addinsall
I don’t think they expected giving up both 7 and 8 for petracca, as keeping one would have been good to get points from
So many psychic’s and fortune tellers on this site reading tea leaves and making outlandish statements.
How about we just wait and see.
And thank you for bookmarking a second comment talk in 12 monyhs👍
Petrero is a rubbish manager. If he was doing his job correctly he would have read the room on day 1 when Rosa clearly identified our strategy.
And he would have gotten his client at least two genuine quality destinations leading into trade week. Petracca had Gold Coast and Adelaide and publicly visited both.
Curnow Geelong and Sydney.
Apparently Adelaide were in the conversation for Merrett? Where was Merrett at Adelaide airport?
Then once there was some genuine solicited offers - work with your genuine target(ie hawthorn) like Curnow worked with Sydney and Petracca worked with the Suns.
None of that happened - at least not publicly which it probably needs to do to apply some pressure to get two parties together.
I think people have lost their minds a bit and have convinced themselves two firsts and an early second is “unders” 
But probably not the clear “overs” many people were after.
This will likely remain a polarising debate on Blitz for years to come!
The way I see our list right now
Precious few actual or likely future A graders. A handful of actual current B graders, most of whom have injury issues
And preeeeetty much the rest of the list is guys who are likely to end up as B or C or D graders. I reckon it’s really hard to project where someone like May ends up vs Clarke, or Hayes, or Reid for eg. But there’s probably 20-25 guys in that bucket.
All that adds up to is this. Next year we need to find out about plenty of them, and make calls accordingly. So 2026 or even 2027 picks have plenty of value to us. Maybe even more than picks this year.
(Using the vague groupings of A grader = legit star; B grader = legit best 18 player; C grader = a footballer; D grader = not good enough)