Opinion Best U/23 squad, peaking between 2025-29, and avoiding the Tassie expansion draining the best players curse, like the GC and GWS expansion.

[Peninsula Boy]

My thoughts on our team for the future.

TEAM FOR THE FUTURE

Rioli, Georgiades, Finlayson
Powell-Pepper, Marshall, Butters
Bergman, Wines, Duursma
Burton, Aliir, Jones
Byrne-Jones, KEY DEFENDER, Burgoyne

RUCK, Rozee, Horne-Francis
Houston, Sinn, Fantasia, Drew, Bonner

Issues with the team is RUCK and KEY DEFENDER.
The coaches will know whether we will need to draft or trade of if we have guys already on the list to take these spots.

RUCKS - Hayes, Visentini, Teakle
KEY DEFENDER - Pasini, McCallum
MIDFIELD DEPTH - Drew, Mead, Jackson

If Kozzy Pickets wants to come back to the Power, even though we just loaded up on small forwards, you throw a lot at Melbourne to grab him. He also fits our young list age profile. If we trade for a ruck and key defender, it would be ideal if they were in that same age profile.

Midfield looks young and full of massive potential.
Really happy with the forwards. I think a new coach will help them.
Instead of playing forward, Finlayson could play 2nd ruck and rest up forward.
If Finalyson played 2nd ruck, I wouldn't be adverse to Rioli, Fantasia, Powell-Pepper and Kozzy Picket terrorising backmen.
Good back line but a bit of height wouldn't go astray. The full back position may be up for grabs this year. Hopefully someone steps up like Burgoyne did last year.
We have a young ruck problem. Hopefully someone can step up.
With the ruck and key defender problem, it might take time for adjusting. I hope a young ruck gets to play some time with Wines, Rozee, Horne-Francis, Butters.

The full team has a lot of talent but has some old players and some positions need to be upgraded.
They could surprise next year.

I am hoping it is the last year of Hinkley. I don't think we can really assess any of our players fully until a new coach comes in.
When Hinkley goes, I think the captain should be Rozee. I like Wines but he seems to be a Hinkley guy and I don't know if you can get the stink off of him. I want the new captain to be a great player like Rozee who is aggressive and wants to win badly. You can tell he has that. He would be young but I think he has the cajoles for it. Horne-Francis to eventually VC if he is up to it. Another aggressive, winning type of guy.

If I could have any coach for 2024, it would be Hardwick.

I have a feeling that a lot of coaches will see the potential of the playing list and throw their hat into the ring. We have talent and are poorly coached. A few changes and player movements and some real strategy and a good coach could really makes us contenders for a long time.

 

[Granny Duurs is Lovely]

I'm not someone who prescribes to the idea that we changed anything significant post 2017. The free agents we recruited we perfect stopgaps (or better) for a list that was losing all depth for very little draft capital. It wasn't like we pushed out Impey, Young or Ah Chee + lost Austin and Lobbe in the same trade period.

In that situation if you don't pick up the likes of Rockliff, Motlop, McKenzie, Thomas, Trengove that year then we just pad the list for a guaranteed 2 years of project players/plodders at the end of the draft.

Really we made a trade for Watts, and chose to push what draft capital we accumulated back to 2018 in a draft we were already targetting. That was clearly an intentional move in 2017 and we now know it let us get our next generation of stars.

I think there's also merit in almost skipping every second draft year so to get more quality players coming through together. This helps to ensure that players peak at the same time and you truly get the best out of your squad. Honestly our recruitment team get 10/10 for me, they're super consistent and outperforming the rest of the joint by some way.

 

[shewho]

I'm not someone who prescribes to the idea that we changed anything significant post 2017. The free agents we recruited we perfect stopgaps (or better) for a list that was losing all depth for very little draft capital. It wasn't like we pushed out Impey, Young or Ah Chee + lost Austin and Lobbe in the same trade period.

In that situation if you don't pick up the likes of Rockliff, Motlop, McKenzie, Thomas, Trengove that year then we just pad the list for a guaranteed 2 years of project players/plodders at the end of the draft.

Really we made a trade for Watts, and chose to push what draft capital we accumulated back to 2018 in a draft we were already targetting. That was clearly an intentional move in 2017 and we now know it let us get our next generation of stars.

I think there's also merit in almost skipping every second draft year so to get more quality players coming through together. This helps to ensure that players peak at the same time and you truly get the best out of your squad. Honestly our recruitment team get 10/10 for me, they're super consistent and outperforming the rest of the joint by some way.

Maybe- but the pick we gave Melbourne for Watts got them Fritsch.

 

[Fizzler]

Maybe- but the pick we gave Melbourne for Watts got them Fritsch.

People use this argument often but it doesn’t hold much weight, no guarantee Fritsch would become anything in our system given we’re only now seeing really good dividends from Marshall, and there’s even less of a guarantee that we even go for Fritsch with that pick a year after Marshall.

 

[Peninsula Boy]

Maybe- but the pick we gave Melbourne for Watts got them Fritsch.

In the thread of Do we need a Monster Forward, I went with talking about getting a monster defender but my 2nd choice was to say, we just need a good forward not a monster forward. A guy like Fritsch would be awesome. Just a great forward who does a lot especially kicking goals.