List Mgmt. 2023 Draft/Trade/FA thread

[Scythe94]

Seems a good time to pin this:


OOC players:

• Michael Hibberd (retired)
• Deakyn Smith (delisted)
• Andy Moniz-Wakefield
• Jake Melksham (delisted, will be re-drafted as a rookie)
• Luke Dunstan (retired)
• James Jordon (signed with Sydney as a Free Agent)
• Kye Turner (delisted)

Traded out:

• James Harmes (Bulldogs)
• Brodie Grundy (Sydney)

Traded in:

• Tom Fullarton (Brisbane)
• Jack Billings (St Kilda)
• Shane McAdam (Adelaide)

Drafted:

• Caleb Windsor (Pick 7)
• Koltyn Tholstrup (Pick 13)
• Kynan Brown (Rookie)

 

[BaliDemon]

6 Brownlow votes in 15 games this season.

Would be lucky to be top 25

It was 13 h/a games. No Brownlow votes in finals. His last 3 h/a games returning from long term 10-week injury lay off. Played with hamstring and foot issues earlier in the year. Clearly underdone in 2023.

Clarry’s polled something like 114 Brownlow votes on his career so far. He’s an absolute freak of a footballer. If that’s not enough for you listen to the 18 AFL coaches who collectively declared him the best player in the AFL …. TWICE ✌

He wouldn’t be traded for anything less than a King’s Ransom.

 

[Lord Nev]

Goldstein off to the Bombers.

 

[Mich0]

You're claiming the brownlow means anything but conveniently ignore the 2x aflca awards, the most respected award in footy. I've back the 18 coaches over some guy on bigfooty. you overrate the draft.

You’re claiming past awards from previous years.

That’s like me saying Hawkins or Ben Brown won a bunch of Coleman’s previously so they must be the best full forward.

You can deny it as much as you want but Bontempelli, Butters, Gulden, Petracca, Neale, Daicos are as close to the top echelon of the AFL as you can get which showed in Brownlow results.

Meanwhile old mate Oliver is sitting with 6 votes, a bloke who can’t hit the side of a barn inside 50 and we played better when he was out of the team. Viney and Petracca dropped right off when Oliver came back in as well as our midfield balance.

I’m not saying his shit, what I am saying that if we want to plug gaps and not have a plan that revolves around bombing the ball 50 times a match then we need to sacrifice in an area where we have a great supply of players to uplift other areas.

If you could pickup pick 2 and 3 for him you would have to consider it.

 

[BaliDemon]

JFC are you guys still talking about trading Clarry??? Let it rest ffs. How is this board still discussing this, i came in here 2 weeks ago and y'all were talking bout trading him, i come in here today, talking bout trading him. It isnt gonna happen, the club thankfully isn't as dumb as whichever of you guys are suggesting this. If you want to post dreamy trade trade scenarios, how about you go get us a key fwd that will help us next yr and lay off trading our best players for some unknown pick 1. Seriously absurd. We've been tormented by decades of being a laughing stock, we're finally a good team with 3 top 4 finishes in a row and you guys wanna go back to being a laughing stock with only potential to dream about.

Yeh it was a disappointing finals 2 yrs in a row, but if we kicked straight, if Melk or Petty didnt get injured we would've beaten Collingwood, certainly Carlton and then who knows what would've happened. The difference between having another year of development into Rooey, getting Petty fit, having another yr of development for some of our young guys and if we stay healthy we are firmly in our premiership window for another couple of years. If we traded Trac, or Clarry for an 18 y.o we would drop back to middle of the pack, may as well trade Gawn, Viney, May and everyone else while we're at it and next yr we'll get a pick 1! Wooohoo! If pick 1s were as important as premierships we'd be the most successful team of the last 40 yrs.

Now, we need a 2nd ruck/ a ruck/fwd and or a key fwd to hold down a post while Jefferson puts on another 5kgs. how about we go after Tom Lynch who makes no sense for Richmond, or go after Riley Thilthorpe and if that isnt possible we add Mcadam and a 2nd ruck from somewhere then add in some elite youth with our picks and we try and make the most of the best Melb squad that we've had since the 60s and try and win another premiership while Clarry and Trac are the right side of 30. If we recruit well with these picks who knows maybe we can actually extend the window. Harley Reid may be a gun but he's one player and i trust our recruiting team to make the most of our picks. End rant.

agree with every word.
Great post.

Harley Reid could be the next Cam Rayner who as I recall was touted to be the next Dustin Martin. Rayner has had an ordinary career so far and did sweet f-all in the GF.

It all gets a bit silly this time of year.

 

[dazzledavey36]

Well he has been according to the coaches mate. The coaches rated him the best player for 2 straight years. This year was a right off due to 10 weeks of injury. He'll win another couple.

Going off past tense you mean? I was actually meaning more this year.

Touk Miller also won it in 2021. Would you say he's top 5 in the AFL? I wouldn't, even though he's an absolute gun.

His form this year prior to injury wasn't even that flash at all. He was sitting 11th on the AFL coaches award the week he got injured and Butters was sitting 1st. Butters went on to win it and had Oliver not gotten injured then his placing wouldn't have changed much at all.

 

[dazzledavey36]

Melksham set to play on next year as confirmed on AFL.com

 

[BaliDemon]

Going off past tense you mean? I was actually meaning more this year.

Touk Miller also won it in 2021. Would you say he's top 5 in the AFL? I wouldn't, even though he's an absolute gun.

His form this year prior to injury wasn't even that flash at all. He was sitting 11th on the AFL coaches award the week he got injured and Butters was sitting 1st. Butters went on to win it and had Oliver not gotten injured then his placing wouldn't have changed much at all.

You can’t say definitively that Clarry wouldn’t have shot up into the top 5 by season’s end had he remained uninjured. He’s still more than capable of producing best-in-comp or close-to-best-in-comp footy.

2023 was a write off for the guy. Ffs let’s cut the 4-time Bluey, 2-time AFLCA winning premiership hero some slack!

 

[deeman87]

agree with every word.
Great post.

Harley Reid could be the Cam Rayner who as I recall was touted to be the next Dustin Martin. Had an ordinary career so far and did sweet f-all in the GF.

It all gets a bit silly this time of year.

Exactly. How often is pick 1 actually the best player in the draft let alone a hall of fame level player...Not very often, maybe JHF will be with the exception of Daicos and Ashcroft might be (would've been 1 had he not been f/s) but the difference between Harley Reid and say Duursma or McKercher may not be as big as ppl are making it out to be. (I'm not a recruiter, maybe it is I dunno but from what I've heard the top 6 or 7 is pretty good this yr)

Like if the club decided he is worth it and we use 2 or 3 firsts on trading for Reid then so be it but that's a totally different decision than trading a top 10 player in the comp for him who's in his prime when our list is a clear contender. Reid will be lucky to be 80% of what Clarry is. I think Ppl are forgetting how bloody good clarry is coz he was out half the yr after the hamstring. Go watch the 21 finals series and look at the ALFCA votes the past few years if you've forgotten how good he is. He will go down as one of our all time best players, the only player who is more important/ better is Gawn and maybe or maybe not Trac. These 3 are the best Melb players of my lifetime (I was born in the late 80s so I'm not counting Robbie coz ive only seen old tapes of him) and we are lucky to have all 3 along with May, Viney and Lever all in the same team.

We need to fix our fwd personnel and how we go into our fwd line and if any big sackings happen it should be the coach though that won't happen just like Clarry won't get traded and im not advocating it should. Just gotta tweak a few things, we def should change our fwd line coach, we recruit well and come back better next yr and hopefully not get such crucial injuries come finals. Tho it would be nice to have more fwd line depth so that 2 injuries don't ruin our season. Not to mention it would be nice if we found a way to be more efficient going inside 50.

 

[Mich0]

Melksham playing on, his another I wouldn’t mind playing a forward coach role. Prob one of only blokes on our list who knows how to play as a forward.

 

[danster168]

Going off past tense you mean? I was actually meaning more this year.

Touk Miller also won it in 2021. Would you say he's top 5 in the AFL? I wouldn't, even though he's an absolute gun.

His form this year prior to injury wasn't even that flash at all. He was sitting 11th on the AFL coaches award the week he got injured and Butters was sitting 1st. Butters went on to win it and had Oliver not gotten injured then his placing wouldn't have changed much at all.

do you think a 26 year old forgets how to play football? Form is temporary, class is permanent. So an injury riddled season means nothing. You use Butters as an example. What did he do in the finals? Absolutely nothing. Oliver played well despite playing underdone and through injuries. Charlie Curnow some people said was the best player in the game. What did he do? He got towelled up 3 weeks in a row.

But personally, I think its mystifying how people rate petracca higher. Year in, year out the coaches tell us that they rate Oliver higher. The other coaches tell us through their voting and our coaches tell us through the BnF votes. People talk about kicking. Oliver is a better kick. Petracca is the worst kick in the afl over the last 3 years for players that have kicked over 10 goals. Let's not forget that. Oliver is technically a much better kick and his ball drop is much better than Petracca's. So if you're going to trade Oliver, than you've gotta be willing to trade Petracca too.

Pick 2 and 3 in 2020 was Thilthorpe and Will Phillips. imagine trading Oliver for these guys.

 

[Mich0]

do you think a 26 year old forgets how to play football? Form is temporary, class is permanent. So an injury riddled season means nothing. You use Butters as an example. What did he do in the finals? Absolutely nothing. Oliver played well despite playing underdone and through injuries. Charlie Curnow some people said was the best player in the game. What did he do? He got towelled up 3 weeks in a row.

But personally, I think its mystifying how people rate petracca higher. Year in, year out the coaches tell us that they rate Oliver higher. The other coaches tell us through their voting and our coaches tell us through the BnF votes. People talk about kicking. Oliver is a better kick. Petracca is the worst kick in the afl over the last 3 years for players that have kicked over 10 goals. Let's not forget that. Oliver is technically a much better kick and his ball drop is much better than Petracca's. So if you're going to trade Oliver, than you've gotta be willing to trade Petracca too.

Pick 2 and 3 in 2020 was Thilthorpe and Will Phillips. imagine trading Oliver for these guys.

Why did you cherry pick 2020?

2022 was Ashcroft and Sheezal
2021 was Darcy and Finn Callahan
2019 was Anderson and Jackson

Arguably all 3 of those combos would suit our team better right now then Oliver.

 

[BaliDemon]

Why did you cherry pick 2020?

2022 was Ashcroft and Sheezal
2021 was Darcy and Finn Callahan
2019 was Anderson and Jackson

Arguably all 3 of those combos would suit our team better right now.

Darcy & Finn Callahan over Clarry? No thanks!

The other two combos look alright but that’s still a 50/50 chance you’re going get a lesser return than just keeping Clarry. Not worth the risk.

Plus there’s generally a 2 to 4 year wait to find out how good a draftee is going to be. We’re not in a rebuild. We were a couple of goals off a premiership. It makes no sense at all to trade out our best player now for kids.

 

[Mich0]

Darcy & Finn Callahan over Clarry? No thanks!

The other two combos look alright but that’s still a 50/50 chance you’re going get a lesser return than just keeping Clarry. Not worth the risk.

Finn is an absolute jet who can hit targets at long distance and a tall forward who can pinch in the ruck? Exactly what we need right now.

Opposed to another inside mid whose team mates drop off when his in the team?

 

[danster168]

Why did you cherry pick 2020?

2022 was Ashcroft and Sheezal
2021 was Darcy and Finn Callahan
2019 was Anderson and Jackson

Arguably all 3 of those combos would suit our team better right now then Oliver.

Ashcroft was really pick 1. Gws just didn't bid on him because they wanted to support Cadman.

Anderson and Jackson is about the only one I'd consider. But when Viney retires and all of a sudden we're getting smashed out if the middle each week, it'll be embarassing to say that we traded the best clearance player to have ever played the game. You're really underselling Oliver something chronic.

 

[Mich0]

Ashcroft was really pick 1. Gws just didn't bid on him because they wanted to support Cadman.

Anderson and Jackson is about the only one I'd consider. But when Viney retires and all of a sudden we're getting smashed out if the middle each week, it'll be embarassing to say that we traded the best clearance player to have ever played the game. You're really underselling Oliver something chronic.

Cadman and Sheezal then if you want to play swapsies.

You need to remember this is a team sport, having 5 blokes trying to play the same role is doing us no favors.

We also have Kynan Brown who will come in to fill Vineys shoes.

 

[BaliDemon]

Ashcroft was really pick 1. Gws just didn't bid on him because they wanted to support Cadman.

Anderson and Jackson is about the only one I'd consider. But when Viney retires and all of a sudden we're getting smashed out if the middle each week, it'll be embarassing to say that we traded the best clearance player to have ever played the game. You're really underselling Oliver something chronic.

I want Tracc & Clarry as Melbourne superstars until they’re 33-35yo, 300+ game red & blue legends. Just like the Pies got out of Pendles & Sidebottom, Cats got out of Ablett & Selwood and so on. No reason why our guns can’t win multiple flags as well.

 

[dazzledavey36]

You can’t say definitively that Clarry wouldn’t have shot up into the top 5 by season’s end had he remained uninjured. He’s still more than capable of producing best-in-comp or close-to-best-in-comp footy.

2023 was a write off for the guy. Ffs let’s cut the 4-time Bluey, 2-time AFLCA winning premiership hero some slack!

The top 5 in the coaches award at the end barely changed, so yes he would have found it hard to break into that top bracket.

do you think a 26 year old forgets how to play football? Form is temporary, class is permanent. So an injury riddled season means nothing. You use Butters as an example. What did he do in the finals? Absolutely nothing. Oliver played well despite playing underdone and through injuries. Charlie Curnow some people said was the best player in the game. What did he do? He got towelled up 3 weeks in a row.

But personally, I think its mystifying how people rate petracca higher. Year in, year out the coaches tell us that they rate Oliver higher. The other coaches tell us through their voting and our coaches tell us through the BnF votes. People talk about kicking. Oliver is a better kick. Petracca is the worst kick in the afl over the last 3 years for players that have kicked over 10 goals. Let's not forget that. Oliver is technically a much better kick and his ball drop is much better than Petracca's. So if you're going to trade Oliver, than you've gotta be willing to trade Petracca too.

Pick 2 and 3 in 2020 was Thilthorpe and Will Phillips. imagine trading Oliver for these guys.

Lol you use AFL coaches award as a starting point for your argument for being the best AFL player in the comp but then completely disregard Butters because of his finals series?

Fmd you can't continue to move the goal posts to suit your narrative. Is it best in finals now that you'rewanting to rate players on?? Oliver'sfinals series wasnt great either. People get so easily sucked in by stats but against Collingwood he was one of our biggest culprits going inside 50 with poor ball use. This was shown throughout that week in post game analysis on TV and radio.

I've seen Oliver influence finals like he did back in 2021 and he was no where near that level this year.

 

[Kapers]

If Oliver is thinking of leaving, I would happily empty all the picks that we have. I think he's the best mid in the comp.

What are the chances Melbourne actually let him go?

 

[Scythe94]

If Oliver is thinking of leaving, I would happily empty all the picks that we have. I think he's the best mid in the comp.

What are the chances Melbourne actually let him go?

I'd say less than zero – some are just hypothesising, which is all you can really do as a fan during trade period.

 

[PerfectFooty]

Melksham set to play on next year as confirmed on AFL.com

 

[Kapers]

I'd say less than zero – some are just hypothesising, which is all you can really do as a fan during trade period.

Fair fair, thought I would come into see if there was any truth to it.

Wouldn't be a player in the league that I would want more.

All the best for the trade period and next year!

 

[Lord Nev]

DEE TO GO ON

MELBOURNE veteran Jake Melksham

18

Jake Melksham

Age

32

Ht

186cm

Wt

85kg

Pos.

Fwd

Career

Season

Last 5

D

9.2

2star

K

5.8

2star

HB

3.3

3star

M

3.0

3star

T

1.2

3star

G

0.8

4star

D

9.2

2star

K

5.8

2star

HB

3.3

2star

M

3.0

3star

T

1.2

2star

G

0.8

4star

D

9.2

3star

K

5.6

3star

HB

3.6

3star

M

2.6

3star

T

1.2

3star

G

0.8

4star

is set to go on at the Demons next year after his knee reconstruction late this season. The 32-year-old has been out of contract and an unrestricted free agent after going down with the season-ending knee injury in round 24 against Sydney and missing the Demons’ finals series.

But the popular forward is set to play on in 2024, with details still to be worked through around whether he will be senior or rookie-listed in the deal. The injury will likely see him sidelined until past midway through next season.Melksham’s absence in the forward line was felt by the Demons in the finals series, having booted 16 goals from round 16-24 since returning to their line-up.
The former Bomber has played 221 games at the top level, having crossed from Essendon at the end of 2015.

 

[Scythe94]

Fair fair, thought I would come into see if there was any truth to it.

Wouldn't be a player in the league that I would want more.

All the best for the trade period and next year!

No harm in checking! I just couldn't see the club doing it unless he demanded out, and even then, he's signed until 2030 which would make us totally unreasonable at the trade table you'd imagine.

Best of luck to you, too!

 

[Mich0]

Fair fair, thought I would come into see if there was any truth to it.

Wouldn't be a player in the league that I would want more.

All the best for the trade period and next year!

I would do Oliver for Gulden straight swap in a heartbeat

 

[BaliDemon]

Fair fair, thought I would come into see if there was any truth to it.

Wouldn't be a player in the league that I would want more.

All the best for the trade period and next year!

Good to hear. He’s not much chop anymore according to some of our supporters, so appreciate the endorsement.