Recruiting AFL Trade & Free Agency XII - 💰💰💰

[Lore]

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Spoiler: 2024 Draft Order

 

[eth-dog]

The club doesn’t think Setterfield is the answer unfortunately so I think we definitely need to go out and get a really good defensive inside midfielder to help with the balance.

I don’t think there is another better, realistic option out there. Peatling is probably a better option but not realistic , the other one is maybe Dev Robertson given the Lions are about to get seeded by another couple of quality academy mids.

Jack Graham is good, relatively young, and free.

 

[Snake Charmer]

And one of the few who can actually kick.

Lack of defence is overated as he is such a good kick the ball is not getting turned over, therefore not putting defence under pressure.

Good offence is why we are not winning. We get the ball inside 50 but we kick it to the opposition and nobody keeps it there.

Yep the forward line is a mess but I’m not sure where it begins. There’s never any space in our forward line, Forwards don’t create space? We seem to either kick high to the top of the square or into the pockets and so often seem to attack from the flanks. Stinger and Langford don’t work together. There’s big issues and I can’t blame our wingers for falling victim to being bad defenders when the ball is flying out of our back line. It’s an issue we need to sort out more than anything imo

 

[Snake Charmer]

Jack Graham is good, relatively young, and free.

Id take Graham. A+ professional by all accounts and can play half forward. Body let’s him down a lot tho

 

[Milanista28]

Graham also a very tidy kick and fantastic finisher, loves a goal on the run, similar to Zaharakis.

 

[Zach Package]

Jack Graham is good, relatively young, and free.

Is Graham realistic? I love him as a player but my understanding was that he is signed, sealed and delivered to WC.

 

[Snake Charmer]

Is Graham realistic? I love him as a player but my understanding was that he is signed, sealed and delivered to WC.

Sounds like it all but done.. what about Jai Culley? Hasn’t really come on like they thought in WA. 194 mid who can go forward. Another one who hasn’t had the best of runs at it with injury tho

 

[ant555]

Of course they do.
But Merrett, Caldwell and parish are at their most effective in the middle.
Durham is effective in and out,

For Hobbs to be best utilised I think he would need a 70% - 30% split inside and I just don’t think there’s enough minutes for him to do that.
So then it’s another parish situation where he gets pushed to a half forward where he isn’t best suited, and his career whittles away. Cause I don’t think he has the tools to be a high half forward, link up player. Won’t too slow and doesn’t have the tank.


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Yet we lack physical hard players across the whole team and Hobbs is one .
Parish has had a long term contract injury the last two years. Perkins is not a midfielder but played a lot of midfield minutes. Shiel has a couple of years left compared to Hobbs.

Just seems pointless to me to trade out a young bloke who plays hard inside footy when we do not have a lot of blokes who play hard inside footy. He provides a good rotation for Caldwell and Durham.
Parish / Merrett / Caldwell can play one of the forward slots in rotation with the midfield and we do not have to use Menzie .
The sub will go if the rumours are right so there will be 5 on the bench .
It was only 3 yeas ago we had no midfield depth and Ham onto a wing was our only move .

 

[Snake Charmer]

Yet we lack physical hard players across the whole team and Hobbs is one .
Parish has had a long term contract injury the last two years. Perkins is not a midfielder but played a lot of midfield minutes. Shiel has a couple of years left compared to Hobbs.

Just seems pointless to me to trade out a young bloke who plays hard inside footy when we do not have a lot of blokes who play hard inside footy. He provides a good rotation for Caldwell and Durham.
Parish / Merrett / Caldwell can play one of the forward slots in rotation with the midfield and we do not have to use Menzie .
The sub will go if the rumours are right so there will be 5 on the bench .
It was only 3 yeas ago we had no midfield depth and Ham onto a wing was our only move .

Yeah would be madness to trade Hobbs.

 

[ant555]

Hawthorn has 4 quality smalls in their front half. Including D'ambrosio. Essendon has one Merrett. Unless you count Gresham and Menzie.
Hawthorn moves the ball with run, carry and link by handball and with speed. They set up easy goals for themselves by opening up space. Just the kind of footy you want to see. When Essendon moves the ball it's all very careful. Or just a long bomb to tall marking targets that often crash into each other because there's so many of them. Essendon has been too big and slow for more than 20 years. We are the dumbest football club on the planet.
Yet you manage to come here with excuses every day. I think I understand the way you and Brad Scott want to play, but I prefer the way Hawthorn does it.
D'ambrosio was a terrific mistake.

I prefer the way Hawthorn does it but realistically to get to there it would take us 4 or 5 years. In that time having Mass would not be making a lot of difference .
I do not think you understand anything I have said at all .
The only thing I have said is the mistake is our system is wrong which is why I have not been hugely bent out of shape about D’Ambroio .
It isn’t something that we can quickly fix .
I know Dan well how the Hawks move the ball . I have commented on it a lot. We do not have the cattle. They are faster in the back half . They are better contested ball winners on the midfield and faster in the front half .
Their list is more balanced and by time we get to their stage which has been built over the last 5 years Mass will be 27 plus .
Different story if we had the small forwards and the sp ed in the back half and were a better contested teams all around.
He is a good player with the kicking skills we need but he is not making us top 4 in the next 3 years and I don’t junk Roberts will fill the role going forward and he is a bloody good kick and much more aggressive around the football.
If we find a couple of decent half backs Martin / Roberts / Duursma / El-Hawi can be used on a wing .

 

[ant555]

Lack of defence is overated as he is such a good kick the ball is not getting turned over, therefore not putting defence under pressure.

Good offence is why we are not winning. We get the ball inside 50 but we kick it to the opposition and nobody keeps it there.

Can not get many kicks if we do not have the football. It is not just his defensive side . He is another who size for size has no marking impact . He is not a contested ball winner and he is average pace .
Kicking for us is a big issue for sure but so is defensive transition and a lack of contested ball winners across the side
Anyway I am done with it .

 

[Blind Turn]

You don’t need to think Massimo is an All Australian or better than Martin to think we should have kept Massimo

Ant’s post on why he was not held was a good one. Yes for us he would have probably been at half back and no he’s not a great defender. So in the short term.. perhaps understandable.

Though I personally think his point of difference was so clearly valuable to us that we should have found a way to look beyond the short term.

But anyhow, the best question now is.. if you could have him back for free, would you take him?

And the answer would surely be 100% yes.

Undoubtedly. And we probably would’ve liked to keep him too but we didn’t value him as highly as the Hawks did which was the error on Essendon’s behalf. My response was a more general critique of the gushing over Mass and seeing him as being in AA contention. It’s an over-hype of his season. He’s really not an AA quality player at this point and we have a guy playing off half-back/wing who’s not getting the same kudos at the moment because we’ve fallen off a ledge yet he should be, in my opinion, a few notches higher in the pecking order.

 

[cavalcade]

I prefer the way Hawthorn does it but realistically to get to there it would take us 4 or 5 years. In that time having Mass would not be making a lot of difference .
I do not think you understand anything I have said at all .
The only thing I have said is the mistake is our system is wrong which is why I have not been hugely bent out of shape about D’Ambroio .
It isn’t something that we can quickly fix .
I know Dan well how the Hawks move the ball . I have commented on it a lot. We do not have the cattle. They are faster in the back half . They are better contested ball winners on the midfield and faster in the front half .
Their list is more balanced and by time we get to their stage which has been built over the last 5 years Mass will be 27 plus .
Different story if we had the small forwards and the sp ed in the back half and were a better contested teams all around.
He is a good player with the kicking skills we need but he is not making us top 4 in the next 3 years and I don’t junk Roberts will fill the role going forward and he is a bloody good kick and much more aggressive around the football.
If we find a couple of decent half backs Martin / Roberts / Duursma / El-Hawi can be used on a wing .

You're saying 5 years but anything can happen in 5 years. It's virtually impossible to plan a team that far ahead.
Hawthorn have been pretty ordinary for a while but in one off season Watson Ginnivan and D'ambrosio has given them wheels.
I agree that the draft picks can take time but 5 years, nope I can't swallow that.

 

[Snake Charmer]

You're saying 5 years but anything can happen in 5 years. It's virtually impossible to plan a team that far ahead.
Hawthorn have been pretty ordinary for a while but in one off season Watson Ginnivan and D'ambrosio has given them wheels.
I agree that the draft picks can take time but 5 years, nope I can't swallow that.

The hawks have been aggressive in there list build and done really well. We haven’t been aggressive at all and are turning the list over to slowly.

 

[jdstorm]

Wonder if we could get in on this Petracca buisness.

Parish, Wright + our first for Trac, F2nd and some less valuable pics/points to get Kako is pretty interesting

Would transform our team overnight

 

[faible]

Would transform our team overnight

He'll be 29 before he plays a game next year, meaning we have a narrow window with him at his peak, and would still leave us riddled with holes, don't think it's the move.

Unless we're trading for a star that's < 25 I don't think we want to be giving up big currency.

 

[ant555]

Wonder if we could get in on this Petracca buisness.

Parish, Wright + our first for Trac, F2nd and some less valuable pics/points to get Kako is pretty interesting

Would transform our team overnight

No chance he leaves .
Plus it is a very short term view. If I am trading round 1 I want someone who has 10 years left in him .

 

[jdstorm]

No chance he leaves .
Plus it is a very short term view. If I am trading round 1 I want someone who has 10 years left in him .

Yeah true I didn’t realise he was 28 already. Time flies

Still think Parish + Wright for Trac is Interesting but agree that the first shouldn’t be involved

Edit: say that’s the trade

Trac Tsatas Durham Merrett Sheil Caldwell Hobbs is a pretty strong mid group going into next year.

Forwards Draper (or other FF) Caddy Langford Perkins Kako Gresham

Def McKay Hayes Ridley Redman McGrath Roberts (or whoever)

 

[Bunk Moreland]

Mini reset.

Throw the emotion in the bin, get real with where we are at and be decisive*

Our core - retain. Leaders, established senior players
Merrett
Langford
McGrath
Draper
Caldwell
Durham
Jones
McKay
Martin

Get games into. Some will work out, some won’t. We need to find out
Tsatas
Hobbs
Perkins
Hayes
Bryan
Caddy
Reid (little trade value - hope his body comes good)
Cox (little trade value - find him a position and see what we can do)
Davey
Roberts
El-Hawli

Look to trade for picks - all have trade value - you have to give to get
Parish - we have a midfield glut blocking younger players, he has good trade value
Shiel - some trade value for a contender. We are not near a flag and he's not playing in a flag for us.
Ridley - plenty of trade value, yet increasingly injury-prone. McKay is a lot more like him than we anticipated - intercepting is his strength. We don't need both.
Stringer - some value for a contender. We are not near a flag and he's not playing in a flag for us.
Redman - we have a stupid amount invested in him as a running defender, which isn't exactly a difficult position to fill. Scott already seems to prefer others in this role anyway. If we're not using him there, his value is greater to us as trade currency.

Only trade target (player)
Luke Parker

26

Luke Parker

Age

31

Ht

183cm

Wt

88kg

Pos.

Mid

Career

Season

Last 5

D

24.2

5star

K

12.6

5star

HB

11.6

5star

M

3.8

4star

T

5.6

5star

CL

5.8

5star

D

22.1

5star

K

12.3

5star

HB

9.9

5star

M

3.9

4star

T

5.0

5star

CL

5.5

5star

D

21.2

5star

K

11.4

4star

HB

9.8

5star

M

2.0

3star

T

8.0

5star

CL

5.2

5star

- play AFL, VFL, set standards with the coaches and leadership group. Will come cheap.

* We are Essendon and will never do this. We don't trade players out unless they demand it - we're petrified they might play decent footy for somebody else, and Dodoro collects players as individual assets rather than managing an overall list - all about Ridley, Redman etc as individuals rather than where our overall list is, what we actually need and what value we have to give up for it.

 

[joey_jo_jo]

Now it's Hawthorn, before that it was Collingwood, before that it was Richmond, before that it was Hawthorn again..

I quote the great Carl Jung: "if the path ahead is clear, you are probably on somebody else's"

Are people ever tired of trying to copy the latest clubs method? it doseht work, it never works. We need to find out own path that shakes the competition and has them wanting to copy us.

All those other clubs didn't just stumbled on their game style overnight, they drafted for it and prepared for it , grew into it. It's nonsense to think you can just go copy another style despite your player list not being compatible.

We do hav our own unique style, slow methodical uncontested ball movement from backline with players who go at 50% kick efficiency and dump kicks into the forward 50 to create forward half pressure with Four talls that cant take a contested grab between them and two smalls that are slower than the talls. tell me thats not going to shake the competition!

 

[Snake Charmer]

Mini reset.

Throw the emotion in the bin, get real with where we are at and be decisive*

Our core - retain. Leaders, established senior players
Merrett
Langford
McGrath
Draper
Caldwell
Durham
Jones
McKay
Martin

Get games into. Some will work out, some won’t. We need to find out
Tsatas
Hobbs
Perkins
Hayes
Bryan
Caddy
Reid (little trade value - hope his body comes good)
Cox (little trade value - find him a position and see what we can do)
Davey
Roberts
El-Hawli

Look to trade for picks - all have trade value - you have to give to get
Parish - we have a midfield glut blocking younger players, he has good trade value
Shiel - some trade value for a contender. We are not near a flag and he's not playing in a flag for us.
Ridley - plenty of trade value, yet increasingly injury-prone. McKay is a lot more like him than we anticipated - intercepting is his strength. We don't need both.
Stringer - some value for a contender. We are not near a flag and he's not playing in a flag for us.
Redman - we have a stupid amount invested in him as a running defender, which isn't exactly a difficult position to fill. Scott already seems to prefer others in this role anyway. If we're not using him there, his value is greater to us as trade currency.

Only trade target (player)
Luke Parker - play AFL, VFL, set standards with the coaches and leadership group. Will come cheap.

* We are Essendon and will never do this. We don't trade players out unless they demand it - we're petrified they might play decent footy for somebody else, and Dodoro collects players as individual assets rather than managing an overall list - all about Ridley, Redman etc as individuals rather than where our overall list is, what we actually need and what value we have to give up for it.

I’d trade Langford before I trade Ridley. But yeah overall wouldn’t mind us being a little more aggressive with a few older established guys who have good value

 

[Mercurial89]

The hawks have been aggressive in there list build and done really well. We haven’t been aggressive at all and are turning the list over to slowly.

They also have a coach who is incredibly hands on in many areas including direction and the types of players they acquire and draft. There is a real unity in that football department and single direction.

We are not a club that would do that and give a coach that kind of power, I mean without it ending in a massive doping scandal.

My frustration is seeing what they are doing and thinking, this is what I'd like my team to do. It fits a lot of how I would like things to be done. It may crash and burn but I do like the way they go about it.

 

[Mercurial89]

Mini reset.

Throw the emotion in the bin, get real with where we are at and be decisive*

Our core - retain. Leaders, established senior players
Merrett
Langford
McGrath
Draper
Caldwell
Durham
Jones
McKay
Martin

Get games into. Some will work out, some won’t. We need to find out
Tsatas
Hobbs
Perkins
Hayes
Bryan
Caddy
Reid (little trade value - hope his body comes good)
Cox (little trade value - find him a position and see what we can do)
Davey
Roberts
El-Hawli

Look to trade for picks - all have trade value - you have to give to get
Parish - we have a midfield glut blocking younger players, he has good trade value
Shiel - some trade value for a contender. We are not near a flag and he's not playing in a flag for us.
Ridley - plenty of trade value, yet increasingly injury-prone. McKay is a lot more like him than we anticipated - intercepting is his strength. We don't need both.
Stringer - some value for a contender. We are not near a flag and he's not playing in a flag for us.
Redman - we have a stupid amount invested in him as a running defender, which isn't exactly a difficult position to fill. Scott already seems to prefer others in this role anyway. If we're not using him there, his value is greater to us as trade currency.

Only trade target (player)
Luke Parker - play AFL, VFL, set standards with the coaches and leadership group. Will come cheap.

* We are Essendon and will never do this. We don't trade players out unless they demand it - we're petrified they might play decent footy for somebody else, and Dodoro collects players as individual assets rather than managing an overall list - all about Ridley, Redman etc as individuals rather than where our overall list is, what we actually need and what value we have to give up for it.

That core is a steaming pile of shit.

 

[eth-dog]

The hawks have been aggressive in there list build and done really well. We haven’t been aggressive at all and are turning the list over to slowly.

Have they? This is a nothing phrase that gets thrown out by Essendon fans when complaining that a rival is ahead of us. We both started our rebuilds at the same time, end of 2020. Let's look at the players still on each list from that year in itself:

Essendon: McGrath, Draper, Parish, Langford, Merrett, Shiel (probably getting traded), Ridley, Laverde, Heppell (retired), Jones, Bryan, Stringer (OOC, possible trade), Redman, Guelfi. 14 players. At least 3 of which are possibly gone. The only ones I'm sure will still be around next year are McGrath, Merrett, Ridley, Jones and Redman.
Hawthorne: Morrison, Mitchell, Impey, Worpel, Sicily, Reeves, Jiath, Nash, Moore, Hardwick, Gunston, Wingard, Breust. 13 players, 9 of which have contracts heading into next year.

We've drafted 6 FRP in that time, all bar one top 10. Likely two more this year. They've done 5. They've drafted better than us, that's definitely true, but we've had about the same aggression in terms of turning over the list. Do I wish the opposite was true? Yes. But in

 

[faible]

Have they? This is a nothing phrase that gets thrown out by Essendon fans when complaining that a rival is ahead of us. We both started our rebuilds at the same time, end of 2020. Let's look at the players still on each list from that year in itself:

Essendon: McGrath, Draper, Parish, Langford, Merrett, Shiel (probably getting traded), Ridley, Laverde, Heppell (retired), Jones, Bryan, Stringer (OOC, possible trade), Redman, Guelfi. 14 players. At least 3 of which are possibly gone. The only ones I'm sure will still be around next year are McGrath, Merrett, Ridley, Jones and Redman.
Hawthorne: Morrison, Mitchell, Impey, Worpel, Sicily, Reeves, Jiath, Nash, Moore, Hardwick, Gunston, Wingard, Breust. 13 players, 9 of which have contracts heading into next year.

We've drafted 6 FRP in that time, all bar one top 10. Likely two more this year. They've done 5. They've drafted better than us, that's definitely true, but we've had about the same aggression in terms of turning over the list. Do I wish the opposite was true? Yes. But in

I'd have said they started with the 2019 draft and Will Day

 

[eth-dog]

I'd have said they started with the 2019 draft and Will Day

I got my drafts mixed up, thought he and Magginess were 2020 haha. Well, given that, we've turned more of our list over in that time.