Tulip
Hall of Famer
- May 3, 2009
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They appear determined to go the Vince/Cross route of paying decent money to guys who have a bit left to give, which is a good call IMO. Quite a few like that in the comp who could both help get them competitive throughout the season and ensure the culture is right.Really don't see how that works. Established players with their heads screwed on aren't going to join the Gold Coast just for the prospect of lifting them from 18th to 11th over the course of five years.
If "established players with at least 4 years left" are good players, Gold Coast are going to be paying up in terms of draft picks, talent and/or salary to get them through the door. No one is going to be keen to join a s**t club just because the AFL wants them to be a success. If they're only after solid C grade citizens, then they won't cost that much but they can already do that without having a fire sale on their only decent kids. They picked up the likes of Young, Barlow, Miles, Murdoch, Lyons, Witts, Horlin-Smith, Hombsch, etc and they've been meh to OK to goodish, but a whole heap of those types of players is just going to root you to the bottom of the table for the next 5 years. They need some of their kids to turn into stars and stay at the club.
T.Walker, Gibbs, Murphy, Goldsack, Varcoe, Mundy, Burgoyne, Roughead, Frawley, J.Lewis, Thompson, Westhoff, N.Smith and Masten all seem like types who could play a year, some could play two, and then take development roles. If they could land three or four of these, they'd probably help a lot. If I was them, I'd be offering JPK two years at 900k a pop. He's probably coming to the end at Sydney, he's not the player he was, but man what a footballer and leader he's been.