Recruiting AFL Trade & Free Agency XII - 💰💰💰

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Spoiler: 2024 Draft Order

 

[Happyskeret]

Essendon has flagged considerable interest in Stone, a 189cm goal kicker, who has overcome five hamstring injuries and disc and arthritis problems in his back.


Oh Jesus

W
T
A
F

I think we are applying Injuryball theory.

 

[Armoooo]

Here's how it will work.
We won't do anything until draft night. Our preference is to take our Pick 9 - then match a bid for Kako later on. Draft over. We will have a contingency planned lined up.

If Saints do an early spite bid on Kako, we will trade into next year with another club. St Kilda won't gain any benefit by bidding. The question of who blinks first will come on draft night - but all Essendon has to do is sit back and wait.

What if the saints offer is the best? If you're offered Geelongs, GWS, Melbourne, Dogs and saints do you think essendon will take a lesser offer as retribution?

North, West Coast and Richmond won't make an offer. I'm not sure there are many teams you can categorically say will be worse than us next year.

It would be pretty foolish IMO to shoot yourself in the foot for revenge.

I really have no horse in this race because I want us to keep our future first.

 

[Armoooo]

I actually don’t mind 27 and your F1 for 9 if we can also word up Freo (11 preferably) or GWS to buy back into this years first round on draft night (it’s some of the unrealistic suggestions from your board that makes me roll my eyes)

I've played a bit of devils advocate on our board which hasn't been well received.

If the Bolton trade doesn't go through you could do the following (assuming you accumulate enough points from Stringer and Shiel)

Trade 9 for Freos first
Trade freos first to Carlton for pick 12
Carlton Trade freos first back to Freo for pick 11.

You guys get Kako and pick 12.
Carlton get a free one pick upgrade.
Freo get a free two pick upgrade.

 

[Keystone agony]

What if the saints offer is the best? If you're offered Geelongs, GWS, Melbourne, Dogs and saints do you think essendon will take a lesser offer as retribution?

North, West Coast and Richmond won't make an offer. I'm not sure there are many teams you can categorically say will be worse than us next year.

It would be pretty foolish IMO to shoot yourself in the foot for revenge.

I really have no horse in this race because I want us to keep our future first.

Look if your offering F1 and F2 for 9 then absolutely im taking it unless Dees offer the same, then id probably take dees if you guys bid

 

[JayJ20]

What if the saints offer is the best? If you're offered Geelongs, GWS, Melbourne, Dogs and saints do you think essendon will take a lesser offer as retribution?

North, West Coast and Richmond won't make an offer. I'm not sure there are many teams you can categorically say will be worse than us next year.

It would be pretty foolish IMO to shoot yourself in the foot for revenge.

I really have no horse in this race because I want us to keep our future first.

Melbourne are coming hard for our pick 9 according to reports and they look to be the best offer. Reports say they will offer us a future first and a second (I believe it's an F2) for our pick. Our trade for Stringer and possibly Dylan Shiel to GWS can give us enough points to match a Kako bid. If we trade pick 9, I believe it'll be Melbourne.

Two of their stars want to leave so it seems like they're ready implode. Probably why they want another top 10 selection this year because Oliver and Petracca leaving seems inevitable. St Kilda should significantly improve as they demonstrated in the second half of the season so I prefer Melbourne's future picks.

 

[jdstorm]

I dont necessarily think your looking at it the right way

Sure maybe Martin, Kako, Caddy, HJ, 2MP, Davey could have better years and kick more goals

But why not couple that with Stringer aswell. Stringer makes us a better side there is no doubting that

I was all for trading Stringer but im expecting a combined worth of about pick 30-35 in return.... otherwise i dont see the point. Id rather get another 35-40 goals from him next year and see if he can still be playing in 2027 (3 years)

If its just for pick 50 ill be asking for Dodoro back

Honestly because I don’t think Jake was best 22 last season.

As a forward he was rarely taking the best defender with those guys going to Wright/Langford then Draper and Caddy later in the year.

Structurally him and Langford don’t fit together and Jake was playing as a pseudo pressure forward and while he was able to kick goals as your 5th option with a height advantage he was a 1 way player and it hurt us.

structurally things clicked into place with Jake as a mid and he had a few really good games. Just couldn’t maintain it. Setterfield was probably a more impactful mid all things considered but Jake was getting picked on reputation as Essendon didn’t have selection accountability and likely wanted to trigger Jakes option.

Jakes going to be really good for GWS and be the star they want as he fits their side really well since they don’t have a Langford and do have pressure forwards.

Probably kicks over 50 goals next season. Just wouldn’t do that here in a useful way

 

[FootyGuru]

I've played a bit of devils advocate on our board which hasn't been well received.

If the Bolton trade doesn't go through you could do the following (assuming you accumulate enough points from Stringer and Shiel)

Trade 9 for Freos first
Trade freos first to Carlton for pick 12
Carlton Trade freos first back to Freo for pick 11.

You guys get Kako and pick 12.
Carlton get a free one pick upgrade.
Freo get a free two pick upgrade.

I’ve heard Essendon trades 9 and leverde for 7

Everyone happy

 

[ant555]

Crazy to think we were like the 5th most for i50 tackles

I think the issue is we dont have Daniel, Jones, Bedford ect

We have Gresham

The problem with Gresham is we played him as a high forward at the contest 70% of the time. Hard to have an impact I50 pressure wise when your work is being done 40 to 100 meters from goal whenever there is a stoppage. that is why he was only 4th for us as far as tackles inside 50. He is not quick so he is not a great pressure player but when he does play 80% plus forward he had some good pressure games.

The issue with Jake this year is it was a bit all or nothing. He had some very good defensive games and some zero impact pressure games. In saying that he was not alone. Once Langford hurt his hip he was pretty much ineffective.

As you say tackles inside 50 we rated 5th. The issue was consistency from all players over the season. It was not totally a Jake Stringer problem. We are also a mid table side for pressure acts and worse than mid table for one percenters which does not help. Have not got the breakdown of the pressure acts in front of me but i suspect forward half pressure acts would not look great.

You are right. We lack speed in the small forwards but I am not hanging it just on Gresham. They are all slow except Davey and there is no speed in the medium guys either. Lets face it without Caddy or Jones who have good speed for KP the rest are a slow bunch including 2MP who gets run off by everyone. If there was a slowest man in the comp award he would get it easily.

 

[The Donners]

I’m not sure who Ben Cotton is of Fox Sports but an article he wrote suggests Essendon aren’t looking to bring any talent in, only push them out (during FA/trade period).

Have there not been suggestions we’re interested in Conor Stone, Jaxon Prior, Finn McGuniess (though probably setting up for a crack next trade period)?

 

[ant555]

I dont necessarily think your looking at it the right way

Sure maybe Martin, Kako, Caddy, HJ, 2MP, Davey could have better years and kick more goals

But why not couple that with Stringer aswell. Stringer makes us a better side there is no doubting that

I was all for trading Stringer but im expecting a combined worth of about pick 30-35 in return.... otherwise i dont see the point. Id rather get another 35-40 goals from him next year and see if he can still be playing in 2027 (3 years)

If its just for pick 50 ill be asking for Dodoro back

And I do not think you are looking at it in the right way. The whole forward mix is not quite right which is part of the reason why we do not get advantage of the high amount of inside 50 entries. In general the forward line is slow across all sizes and they are not great marks combined either. The point for me is something has to change. It is not just Jake at fault and I am not saying he is a horrible player. He is just the one who is 30 and closer to the end with only one year left. My view is you only fit one of Stringer or Langford. Langford wins out as he is a bit younger and is contracted for longer. I am not confident it will happen but we really need to see more of Cox and Perkins forward to have a good look. I am not sold on Jones as a forward as I do not like his marking consistency but does he look better as a forward without Stringer commanding the ball.
My opinion is we are not in challenge mode yet. We are not a total basket case either but what we need to do is keep bringing in a few top 20 picks every year but also find a position for the likes of Cox / Jones / Perkins. That means mvoing some of the old stock out.
As for the price ? well no a pick in the fifties is not a great win just looking at it but there are two factors. 1 - the price will be cheap as lets face it not many are beating down the door to get him. 2 - it is still points to stop us from going into deficit next year. Would be good to get more out of it for sure which is what they will aim at but my view is we need to move him and Shiel and Laverde out to get a look at the next bunch and right now he is the only one moving.

 

[dnbassador]

Bizzare that the media are writing negative articles about Essendon not being active in the trade period lol

 

[The Donners]

Bizzare that the media are writing negative articles about Essendon not being active in the trade period lol

Pretty confident we’d already said some time ago we wouldn’t be very active.

 

[Bunk Moreland]

Bizzare that the media are writing negative articles about Essendon not being active in the trade period lol

They’re crying because it gives them no clickbait.

Trade period is the #1 media event of the AFL year and a click frenzy. Dodoro was a Batman villain, he was a gift for them - attach his name to anything and the chooks gobbled it up.

Essendon is one of the biggest draws in the league so to have us quiet is a huge blow for them.

 

[ant555]

I’m not sure who Ben Cotton is of Fox Sports but an article he wrote suggests Essendon aren’t looking to bring any talent in, only push them out (during FA/trade period).

Have there not been suggestions we’re interested in Conor Stone, Jason Prior, Finn McGuniess (though probably setting up for a crack next trade period)?

There are not many left in the media who do a lot of research now days. I know we asked about Houston as well but it did not go far due to us not coming to the conclusion that 9 would be better spent in another way.
Some of the Fox writers just collate snippets from trade radio , the AFL shows on Fox Footy and various other shows and roll them up into one article . You can see in the article that it has quotes from other journos.
They all seem to jump on some stupid theory without looking into it. I predicted 3 moths ago it would be a quiet trade period for us because we have limited options pick wise and genuine trade value wise. Sure it would be good to improving the list but the reality is no one is giving us Dan Houston for Will Setterfield. What they also do not see is we have to find pots for Tstatas / Hobbs / Hayes to actually find out what we have. Also need to see more of Jones forward or back. More of Perkins as a forward or somewhere other than midfield. Find a genuine spot for Cox. Play Caddy. That is what we have to do but they miss that as they do not deep dive enough and the comment is all about we should be improving to make the finals but it does not look like we are doing it. The reality they miss is we really do need to work a bunch of guys into the side to find out if we have to restart a rebuild because the players chosen by the previous football department to start the rebuild are not up to it.

 

[Vindicater]

Who will they turn too to become their new villain?

SOS or Mackie leading the charge.

 

[joey_jo_jo]

The problem with Gresham as we played him as a high forward at the contest 70% of the time. Hard to have an impact I50 pressure wise when your work is being done 40 to 100 meters from goal whenever there is a stoppage. that is why he was only 4th for us as far as tackles inside 50. He is not quick so he is not a great pressure player but when he does play 80% plus forward he had some good pressure games.

The issue with Jake this year is it was a bit all or nothing. He had some very good defensive games and some zero impact pressure games. In saying that he was not alone. Once Langford hurt his hip he was pretty much ineffective.

As you say tackles inside 50 we rated 5th. The issue was consistency from all players over the season. It was not totally a Jake Stringer problem. We are also a mid table side for pressure acts and worse than mid table for one percenters which does not help. Have not got the breakdown of the pressure acts in front of me but i suspect forward half pressure acts would not look great.

You are right. We lack speed in the small forwards but I am not hanging it just on Gresham. They are all slow except Davey and there is no speed in the medium guys either. Lets face it without Caddy or Jones who have good speed for KP the rest are a slow bunch including 2MP who gets run off by everyone. If there was a slowest man in the comp award he would get it easily.

Re jake dropping off with the pressure some games, I think the coaching team also have to acknowledge poor strategy in that regard.
At start of year Jake was hardly used in the center and Scott showed faith in the younger mids like durham/caldwell.
Stringer was used as a surprised centre bull for anzac day and it worked a treat. But by the pointy end of season it felt like Scott's fall back whenever the midfield was struggling was to throw stringer in the middle.

Sure you could argue when parish/setters/hobbs were injured and shiel was still finding form in the 2s that we had no other option because caldwell/durham were starting to understandably drop off as it was their first season as full time mids. But even when the cavalry came back they kept using stringer as one of our main centre mids (worst example was the Saints game).

Then against freo he plays mainly forward and surprise, surprise he has huge inside 50 tackle numbers and is a matchwinner.

 

[joey_jo_jo]

Re jake dropping off with the pressure some games, I think the coaching team also have to acknowledge poor strategy in that regard.
At start of year Jake was hardly used in the center and Scott showed faith in the younger mids like durham/caldwell.
Stringer was used as a surprised centre bull for anzac day and it worked a treat. But by the pointy end of season it felt like Scott's fall back whenever the midfield was struggling was to throw stringer in the middle.

Sure you could argue when parish/setters/hobbs were injured and shiel was still finding form in the 2s that we had no other option because caldwell/durham were starting to understandably drop off as it was their first season as full time mids. But even when the cavalry came back they kept using stringer as one of our main centre mids (worst example was the Saints game).

Then against freo he plays mainly forward and surprise, surprise he has huge inside 50 tackle numbers and is a matchwinner.

To add some stats to illustrate my comment better.
Vs saints in rd 20, Stringer had 20 CBAs (only behind merrett/draper whereas parish had 13 and caldwell/duz/shiel all had 10)
A week later against freo 0 cbas and he leads the team for inside 50 tackles (7) and kicks 4 goals. Just mind boggling stuff by the coaching team.

I keep harping on it but it really feels like post bye we threw everything out of the window that worked in first half of year because we got spooked by our terrible inside 50 iefficiency vs suns and blues.

The midfield rotation is one example but the insistence of playing jones and cox as wingers, running with three wright/draper/goldy/bryan for far too long and shifting duursma to backline seem to all be knee jerk reactions to this.

 

[ant555]

Re jake dropping off with the pressure some game, I think the coaching team also have to acknowledge poor strategy in that regard.
At start of year Jake was hardly used in the center and Scott showed faith in the younger mids like durham/caldwell. Stringer was used as a surprised centre bull for anzac day and it worked a treat. But by the pointy end of season it felt like Scott's fall back whenever the midfield was struggling was to throw stringer in the middle.
Sure you could argue when parish/setters/hobbs were injured and shiel was still finding form in the 2s that we had no other option because caldwell/durham were starting to understandably drop off as it was their first season as full time mids. But even when the cavalry came back they kept using stringer as one of our main centre mids (worst example was the Saints game).
Then against freo he plays mainly forward and surprise, surprise he has huge inside 50 tackle numbers and is a matchwinner.

Agree. When they used him in the center they just blew him up. His pressure game was more consistent late in the year . You mention the Fremantle game. That was the high point and was great. 10 tackles. 25 PA. However the next two games with no center clearance work. GC 2 tackles and 11PA. Sydney 3 tackles and 14PA.

 

[ant555]

Who will they turn too to become their new villain?

SOS or Mackie leading the charge.

Dogs are doing a good job but seem to fly under the radar. Every year there is a sticking point. Going back to the Stringer trade they wanted the moon and stars for a bloke they wanted to push out the door. Happens every year with them.

 

[FootyGuru]

Bizzare that the media are writing negative articles about Essendon not being active in the trade period lol

Essendon are a talking point, because it gets clicks.

I will say though, I feel letting stringer and Shiel go in a trade doesn’t make us a better team, it weakens us, but not enough to ensure bottom 4 next season.

I wanted to see a clear direction, where we trade some senior players for actual draft currency, or try and add more talent through trades and fa.

I feel we are just stuck in the middle again.

 

[ghostdog]

Bizzare that the media are writing negative articles about Essendon not being active in the trade period lol

Stirring up social media clicks from impatient nuffies who just want to win trade week or bring in Oliver or something.

 

[Corleone]

Bizzare that the media are writing negative articles about Essendon not being active in the trade period lol

Makes sense. Without a megalomanic suffering from narcissistic personality disorder driving things it was always going to be quieter for us.

The only group that ever benefited from Adrian working at Essendon was Trade Radio. I'm surprised they haven't made him a regular guest on the show.

They'll (the Media) have some work finding someone to fill his boots. My money is on Sam Power or SOS.

 

[Kyptastic]

Conor Stone staying at the Giants

 

[DonsRule]

 

[joey_jo_jo]

This is amazing stuff.
Start of season 1 we were told Scott came in late so didn't have a chance to get a good read on list.
Start of season 2 it was Scott has only had one season with them and it's his first preseason with list, he's just read them the riot act re afl standards so expect significant list changes after this season.
We were also assured that the extensions given to guys already under contract and long contracts given to mcgrath/parish/redman were more about salary cap management so we could bring in the A grade talent we clearly lacking.

So where are we now, haven't been able to convince any role players let alone A grade talent to come in, and the only player we are moving out is a 30 year old who has no trade currency so at most we bring in 2 first rounds (largely due to the kindness of the AFL not any smart strategy by us) and two late picks.

Are the club telling us they rate the list and there isn't much work to be done? If so their who list management strategy should be posted in the Delusional Pearlers thread. If not their timidness is as embarrassing as dodoros chest thumping.