Reply to thread

Danny88, it's Bigfooty ... speculate away! Long way to catch most other boards, eh Sainters.

If, if, someone was leaving and either Neale or Heppell became an option, then yes, I think we should be interested. But a lot of factors to weigh up - $ cost, who's position does he effectively take, and hence who else might be pushed backwards and are we prepared to lose them? I'd also hope by season's end that we've looked at Hopper and Matty Kennedy and assessed their potential more closely. Unfortunately both Neale & Heppell are the same (or near) age group as our fifth year players, so we don't get any spread of ages. And who goes out of the team? Probably Toby Greene on current team list/form, with Steele, Hopper & Kennedy further back in the queue to replace Griffen when he retires in a few years. That might cost us a prized academy kid - are we prepared for that? (IMV though, we need to be absolutely clear-headed in our decision-making if it's going to improve our team.) But if we want to take the next step on the field, we do seem to need more clearances and my view would be Heppell would improve us for sure, and Neale too.

How the deal gets done would be the other point. Last year some of us would have traded Neale for Sunshine, but even if Neale wanted to leave, I doubt we'd get that from Freo now. But it might not cost us too much more, hard to tell. If it was Lachie Whitfield & he was happy to go to Bombers, then probably not too much of a trade imbalance (if any, given the Bombers' circumstances), and you never know, Heppell might want to get out of the limelight after the past few years. So, it probably is doable. My pragmatic view is that we've got the academy kids for this year's draft covered, so anyone who wanted to go back to Melbourne we'd be better off getting an experienced player to fill a deficiency than simply getting more draft picks.