I understand the point you are making but the Hawks also took Denver Grainger Barass at pick 4/5 and now they're looking at trading for Barass. So clearly spending a top 10 pick on a key position has a bit of risk associated with it as well.
If the club decides to trade down and grab a couple out of Trainor/Armstrong/Lalor/Berry/Langford/Hotton then I wouldn't be too disappointed if that's the move, but it may depend what we pick up in trade week as well as to what we do on draft night. I think we could add one key forward this draft at the 2nd rounder (if we don't slide back or move up) at worst and perhaps a small forward (Dattoli, Bradley, Depaoli-Kubank, Alger etc.) or defender (Mraz, Tauru) at the 3rd rounder or possibly we could trade our F2 into this year. There's also the possibility in next year's draft of taking Ludowyke or Duursma bro in the top 8 who might be more that key position anyway, so I wouldn't panic if we only get one kpf.
Given we lost TT you could argue we need a mid/wing/fwd to replace that level of class we lost.
We can win clearances but struggle to convert that into F50 entries and quality one's. That's a class problem.
Can LDU, Wardlaw and Phillips become more damaging by foot with their ball use? Not sure.
I do agree if we take a mid they have to be versatile enough to be able to play elsewhere on the ground.
That might be more FOS (wing), Draper (small fwd?), Smillie (back/fwd), Langford (fwd), Lalor (fwd) or Reid (fwd).
I'm not particularly convinced Simpkin or Phillips become a big part of the midfield group in 2 years time.
The same could possibly be said about Powell, although he's had the better year out of the three of them for sure.
Drafts are a crap shoot, but you still have to balance your list out at some point.
No good having elite mids all over the park with Pink and Teakle leading at them surrounded by 189cm mediums.
The backline needs work, too. Logue is an unknown at this point, Corr OOC next year and Dawson good depth. Will Dawson developing with the forwards(wtf)
Another 2 x kpf and 2 x kpd would be magic. Bring in a couple of decent stop gaps so they can develop in the VFL.
We can afford to keep developing the mids we have for another couple of years before revisiting that part of our list or trade for someone ready-made if we have a bust or 2.
Geelong and Hawthorn have good defences and good forwards with decent midfields kicking to them. They are getting maximum value at both ends are very well balanced teams.
On SM-G991B using BigFooty.com mobile app