2023/2024 Gold Coast Draft & Trade periods

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Ripping the bandaid off now rather than pay for it in the future. Its smart. The club now has realised its better to focus on a premiership list rather than stockpiling talent.

Gold Coast list boss Craig Cameron knows his club is about to contravene list management’s only truism — the more first-round picks you amass the stronger your position.
Stuart Dew’s Suns will in coming weeks donate their No. 7 overall pick to a club who takes on Jack Bowes’ contract.

Gold Coast gave up pick 10 for him only six years ago.

Using two top-10 selections to hand on an exciting player doesn’t just alter conventional list management strategy, it turns it on its head.

But as Cameron told the News Corp on Monday of the club’s new-age approach: “Salary cap space is a weapon for clubs”.

As revealed by the News Corp, Gold Coast will this off-season off-load $2 million of salary cap space and overpriced contracts in a dramatic bid to realign their salary cap space.

It will mean they give up top-10 picks they would normally give their back teeth for and hand over players who might become first-choice players in rival sides.

But having been forced to overpay almost every player on their list given the go-home factor amid threats they would join the list of departures, there comes a time to bite the bullet.

Bowes will head to a Victorian club who absorbs his $1 million-plus salary over the next two years, Brayden Fiorini looks set to join Collingwood, and Jeremy Sharp will eventually find his way to the Dockers.

What goes unsaid at Gold Coast is that none of these players are in the Suns’ best 22 that is now about building a premiership team rather than gathering random talent.

“We have collected talent,” says Cameron.

“When you collect it you have to retain it and we have had some favourable contracts for guys when a lot of players left back in 2018.

“And we need to tidy that up a bit but we also have the pillars with the young guys and (Jarrod) Witts and (David) Swallow and (Touk) Miller in career-best form. We have the pillars to build on to take the next step.

“To do that we need cap space. We look at what Richmond can do in bringing in two A-grade mids and what Geelong has done. It’s not until you are convinced you have the pillars that you can do what those teams have done.

“They can do it in different ways to us but we still want to try to achieve the same outcome which is to bring in players when we are ready. So we need to engineer enough room in our player payments that we can be active in the market to top off the list.”

Gold Coast will lose Izak Rankine to Adelaide as one of nine first-round picks taken in the past four years including Ben King, Jack Lukosius, Matt Rowell, Noah Anderson, Sam Flanders, Elijah Hollands, Mac Andrew.

Academy players Mal Rosas Jnr, Alex Davies and Joel Jeffrey add to the exceptional list of talent, but Cameron said the cost of first-round picks is also a drain on an emerging list.

“The easiest way to explain it is if you are anywhere in the top six to eight players you are going to demand nearly $400,000 in your third year, coming off a collective bargaining agreement getting paid $100,000 to $110,000,” he says.

“If you have nine of those in four years, that’s almost $2.7 million in your cap very quickly, before a lot of them have reached that level of performance.”

The club is crestfallen to lose Rankine to Adelaide but knows his family motivations for returning home were out of their control.

“This footy club did everything right for Izak. There is a scenario around his family that we can’t solve,” he said.

St Kilda, Geelong and Essendon are among the clubs interested in Bowes, with Cameron adamant the list space multiple salary dumps will provide will pay off in the long run.

“There are a few clubs in the market that are interested in the package we put to them. For us the outcome is space for us to be active,” he said of the Bowes transaction.

“And we know Jack wants to play midfield and we have spoken to him about that and said we think it’s going to be difficult in our team.

“If the (loss of top-10 picks is) only way you are going to measure the transaction you are going to look at it and scratch your head but it’s part of an overall strategy.

“Each transaction we do leads to an outcome we want which is cap space and the ability to go to the market. That is our strategy. People will have their own view on what we are doing, but the bottom line is we don’t shy away from this. This is a definite strategy we have and if we are doing something different, so be it.”

The crazy early contracts for Ben King and Jack Lukosius are proof the Suns have had to pay more for interstate stars.

Cameron admits the Suns have often been “a little bit on the back foot” in contract talks but believes the conversation is now evolving.

“We are now feeling there is a shift towards players wanting to come to us not just to pick up money at the end of their career, but because they believe the club is heading in the right direction.”

Cameron says the AFL is on board with their strategy, having made clear to clubs last week they will allow salary dumps of a more extreme nature.

“They understand that salary cap space is a weapon for clubs. It’s not something we will drop on their tables, we will work through it with them.”

Queensland 194cm power forward Jed Walter will be one of the early picks in next year’s draft as a Gold Coast academy player and the Suns will stockpile 2023 picks in a superior national draft.

The Suns will only truly know if they have enough talent when their star midfield marries with a 2023 forward line that will include Ben King, Joel Jeffrey, Mabior Chol and Levi Greenwood.

But they know they cannot continue the doom loop of overpaying for kids without at some stage taking the brave step of setting the team up for a legitimate crack at a premiership.

“It’s always a debate as to whether you have broken through to that point where your list is ready and until you are there you don’t really know but it feels like we have some pillars in place to allow us to compete,” Cameron says.

“We are unique in what we are doing. We have had a lot of picks and we have still got them but now we need to engineer that cap room and we have to be aggressive in that space.”
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Jen2310 said:
Ripping the bandaid off now rather than pay for it in the future. Its smart. The club now has realised its better to focus on a premiership list rather than stockpiling talent.


Click to expand...

So sharp isn’t best 22 but Atkins is? Atkins is on more then sharp..

interesting comments to say the least.

Bit of covering my own ass I think
 

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Ben Drever said:
Find it interesting we saving over 2million in coin for a big raid.

Yet we can’t even find a B grade talent to come here.

2million will buy us 4-5 C grades next year or 2024
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Or it re-signs Anderson, Rowell, Hollands, Flanders, Jeffrey etc going forward. I know what's more important to me.
 

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Supersuns said:
Or it re-signs Anderson, Rowell, Hollands, Flanders, Jeffrey etc going forward. I know what's more important to me.
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Pretty much. The coaching staff seem to believe that the talent we have is what will win us a flag and want to keep them. Keeping players who were best 22 2 or 3 years ago but have fallen out of the side makes little sense especially if they're on 'please stay' money.
 
ajhgcs said:
Pretty much. The coaching staff seem to believe that the talent we have is what will win us a flag and want to keep them. Keeping players who were best 22 2 or 3 years ago but have fallen out of the side makes little sense especially if they're on 'please stay' money.
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If Caleb Graham is anywhere near best 22 we are no where near a flag
 
Happy for Jack to play mid, its a spot everyone is desperate to see him play. Hopefully he can choose wisely, and that club take the full salary.

Time to move on, that article linked by Jen is a clear and open strategy, we are the trailblazers.
 
Things to occur this trade period:

  • Ben Drever to continue posting negative comments
  • Crows supporters to be smug and entitled to Rankine for free since since we are doing a salary cap dump
  • Suns supporters to blow up over the salary cap dump and loss of Bowes, Fiorini, Corbett, Rankine, Sharp etc
  • Me to drink heavily and make bad decisions
 
“Collingwood is at the front of the queue for Gold Coast midfielder Brayden Fiorini but the Suns are unlikely to hand a quality pick to the Pies if they decide to take on his $600,000 back-ended 2023 salary.

The Pies could consider spreading that salary across two seasons.
The Suns would be happy to keep Fiorini, who is understood to have met with Collingwood last week”.

 
CommittedSuns said:
Things to occur this trade period:

  • Ben Drever to continue posting negative comments
  • Crows supporters to be smug and entitled to Rankine for free since since we are doing a salary cap dump
  • Suns supporters to blow up over the salary cap dump and loss of Bowes, Fiorini, Corbett, Rankine, Sharp etc
  • Me to drink heavily and make bad decisions
Click to expand...
.4.....sounds like me :thumbsu:
 
Looking promising. Re-signing both Rowell and Anderson in the off-season would be a shot of confidence after Rankine surprise.
The club is optimistic it will secure young stars Noah Anderson and Matt Rowell on new deals over the summer after early talks between their managers and list boss Craig Cameron.

“We have started preliminary discussions with their managers,” Cameron told the Herald Sun.
“Those guys are on their break so when they come back we will ramp up discussions. They are invested in what the club is building so it will just be a normal contract discussion.”

Cameron believes the club had enough midfield depth to lose Bowes and still absorb any injuries next year after the starting onball unit barely missed a game.
“We have got younger fellas coming through like Alex Davies, Elijah Hollands and Sam Flanders,” he said.
“They add a different mix to what we have got athletically and even in the way they play their footy.”
Click to expand...
 
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