I’ve only been keeping one eye on trade week. Can anyone confirm whether the Petracca deal includes Melbourne paying part of his salary, and if we made a similar offer with Merrett?
No, Melbourne aren’t paying any of his salary. Well as far as I know.
Only covering ≈ half of Oliver’s.
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No, imo this wasn’t normal brinksmanship , because it feels like Hawthorn were flailing about in the dark. A lot of Hawthorns moves lacked logic , not least the time ultimatum when they’d clearly already stirred up a hornets nest of anger in the club they were trying to raid.
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Next season if it’s Hawthorn or bust again for Zac.
Quite simply I’d be happy with half their offer. Ie 2026 first and say a 2027 second even.
I just really don’t rate Harry Hustwaite or Pick 10 and 22 based on what we already hold this year.
And there was no trading out of this years draft during trade period with 9 or 10/22. Hawthorn tried.
It’s that simple. It wasn’t a compelling enough offer for us to simply walk away.
Because they based everything around the belief that EFC would cave. Oops!
“Take this offer now, or we’re doing something else with that pick” is stock standard trade week stuff. We’ve done it, plenty of other clubs.
Presumably they had a plan B that involved that pick 22, that never ended up panning out?
I still wish he was gone
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Agree with this. Which adds to my bemusement that Hawthorn seemed to arbitrarily decide that the solution was to focus on 2025 pick #22 and downgrade 9 to 10.
Ultimately, everyone’s position comes down to their opinion on whether Merrett should be held to his contract, and if not for what return. Hawthorn never cracked that nut, and as it turned out never had the tools to do so ( or at least the complete interest in doing so) .
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I think you are right on extending contracts too early and we could go a bit harder on some delistings of older guys. But currently we are a young side already, are we not in a rebuild right now with so many young players and another 3-4 to be drafted soon?
Suns traded in 7
Dogs will need to trade in top 10 picks for Butters next year to get the deal done.
Serious clubs will find a way
Compromised drafts make it hard now, First rounders are not what they used to be. Need to talk top 10 not first round anymore
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Same but I really don’t mind him running out for us.
It will be an interesting spectacle next season.
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Anyone who deems pick 22 offering a first rounder is a genuine tool.
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Everyone should take solace in the fact that not only did Hawthorn lose players and become weaker as a side, they also didn’t trade in any of their targets because their arrogance knows no bounds.
To quote Saladin; “FOAD”.
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Yeah it was a very average period for the hawks.
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I would have preferred Merrett gone, but the deal wasn’t the right deal and I understand why they didn’t cave – which is refreshing.
Hawthorn only had to listen to Rosa’s interviews before and during the trade period to get an idea of what would have pricked Essendon’s interest. He said they wanted to move up the draft order and were interested in role players and A Grade talent.
Nothing like that was offered, in fact Hawthorn split pick 9 and the best pick in their final offer was worse than their first offer. They had a week and a half to come up with something but put little effort into making it work. No surprise it fell over in hindsight.
If the roles were reversed, would Hawthorn have accepted the deal?
Assuming Merrett wants out again next year, if he hasn’t sacked Petroro, I expect him to have to earn his money and arrange a decent deal that works for Essendon instead of the bollocks he dished up this time around.
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We put a serious dint in Hawks premiership chances by not trading Zac.
That’s a win fark the Hawks and that grub Mitchell
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It was pretty clear it had to be a decent deal.
Hawthorn tried to trade ice to Eskimos.
Worse picks than we hold along with a young list clogger that we already have plenty of.
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You need to get off Big Footy, and stop caring about what opposition supporters think.
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After Petroro’s performance through this, I’d wonder if the Essendon coach remains part of his clientele.
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You could tell by the despondent body language they seriously thought we were bluffing the entire time
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