List Mgmt. Contract, Trade and Draft Discussions - 2024 Edition

What should we do with our 1st round draft pick?

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    Votes: 46 15.3%

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    Votes: 20 6.7%

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DanWCE said:
English started last season looking a million bucks, and Baz was struggling. The appeal was obvious. But English cooled through the year and Baz went full beast mode. To that we've added Flynn.

No longer seems plausible that we'd stump up the coin for him. Beyond madness to think we'd dangle draft collateral as part of any agreement. Much of his appeal is that he's "free" in that regard.
Click to expand...
The only hope for this is the change of CEO.
 
A couple of things to consider here in regards to English.

Firstly a five year deal as opposed to seven would make me feel more comfortable however rucks generally play on well into their 30's

Dean Cox played til he was 33
Aaron Sandilands til he was 36
Shane Mumford til he was 35
Ben McEvoy til he was 33
Paddy Ryder til he was 34
Todd Goldstein is 35
Max Gawn is 32

Yes 34 is a risk but it's probably only a risk for his final year at worst.


So then if we are offering a long term deal how durable is he?

Well he has had a relatively injury free career to date with

20 games in 2019
18 games in 2020
22 games in 2021
16 games in 2022
23 games in 2023

The Dogs have played a total of 118 games over these 5 years, this includes 7 finals. Tim has played 99 of them. That's a percentage of just under 84 percent. So he's at least durable.

Does he fit a need?

Yes and No.

As a pure tap ruckman probably not. We just secured Flynn and we have Bailey Williams who can play ruck along with potential prospects in Callum Jamieson, Harry Barnett and maybe Jack Williams.

First of all Bailey doesn't want to play ruck. Whether or not he can play forward we shall see but if we keep forcing Bailey to play where he doesn't want to he may very well decide to piss off back to Victoria when his contact is up. As for Callum Jamieson this year is make or break for him. If he doesn't perform in the twos he may be gone come the end of the year. So now that leaves Barnett who is nowhere near physically ready to play seniors and was always a project ruckman we knew would take a little time and big Jack who is a forward.

Our ruck stocks are not as deep as we like to believe.

Tim is also very good at covering the ground. He's a strong option to kick to, averaging over 6 marks a game in 2023 and kicking 16 goals for the year. A lot of those goals were generated by him taking a pack mark up forward. Something we definitely need more of.

As a potential recruit he is young enough to give us a good 5-6 years of service, durable enough that we could expect a decent return of games and is a clear best 22.
As for an area of need? I don't think we are deep as others do so i say yes. Particularly if you take into account his marking and goal kicking.

Now as for wanting to spend our money elsewhere, that's great but there are a few small issues with this.

No one wants to come here. Seriously. Does anyone really think we only targeted Brockman, Sweet, Flynn and Robertson? We would have approached a lot of prospects but no one wants to play for us at the moment.

Brockman wanted to come home to W.A due to family. Twins are a handful.

Flynn decided to go with us over Demons as the poor bloke has played second fiddle for most of his career and we assure him he was the first ruck for 2024.

Deven decided to stay with the Lions to chase a flag despite his position not being guaranteed, knowing all too well another Ashcroft is on the way AND us offering more years and more money than the Lions.

Sweet preferred to be second fiddle again at Port behind Soldo and they already have multiple rucks on their list.

No one wants to come and play for us!!! So then what are we to do with all the money we have? We can only front load so many contracts and even then we have to pay the minimum amount of the cap to the squad. No matter what.

Where's the money going?

Allen, TK and Barrass would be on decent deals but Gaff, Yeo, Darling, Cripps, McGovern will all be out of contract in two years. There is a chasm in our list and quite frankly we will be overpaying a lot of middling players more than they deserve just so we have a list.

I am all for throwing money at Sam Taylor to get him home or Chad Warner etc etc but both will cost draft capitol or players where as Tim English will be a free hit. How often does a club get to bring in an AA for nothing?

Shit! Our best established recruit in 38 years has been Tim Kelly and look what we had to give up to get him.

Who is next? Probably one of Jetta, Redden, Wellingham, Stenglein or Chick. We're not exactly a destination club.

Simple truth is we win more games to attract players, let alone keep the ones (H. Reid) we currently have. Money alone is not going to get the job done. Tim helps us do this.

If we can get Tim without giving away anything more than salary cap then we are ****ing crazy not to do it.
 
Last edited:

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For what it's worth cox and sandilands were terrible in their last couple of years so not sure they support the argument for a 5 year contract for TEnglish.
I'd have yeo in front of kelly at this stage as far as recruits coming from other clubs.kennedy is clearly the best player we've brought back tho
If Flynn doesn't work out then sure we might have to look at TEnglish but I'd really hope its not on a mill a year. He's just not worth that much to us
Thought I'd quoted @the puma#9
On SM-G973F using BigFooty.com mobile app
 
mattyc75 said:
For what it's worth cox and sandilands were terrible in their last couple of years so not sure they support the argument for a 5 year contract for TEnglish.
I'd have yeo in front of kelly at this stage as far as recruits coming from other clubs.kennedy is clearly the best player we've brought back tho
If Flynn doesn't work out then sure we might have to look at TEnglish but I'd really hope its not on a mill a year. He's just not worth that much to us

On SM-G973F using BigFooty.com mobile app
Click to expand...
Yeo and J.K would definitely be the top of the list but i tried to list established players who were coming in with a bit of pedigree.

Looking at my list now i mentioned Cripps when i meant Wellingham but i should have also put Jetta and Redden on the list. Truth is though none of them were AA calibre players, more so great role players. I think i might edit that to further avoid confusion.

I agree with your sentiments on the ruckman i mentioned all being average in their last years which is why i gave Tim till 33ish (6 years) more so than 34 years. I mentioned when they went on to but i agree the last years of some of those players we very average.

It's not without risk but we need to take every advantage we can to get out of this list hole we find ourselves in and free agency is a big one.
 
mattyc75 said:
For what it's worth cox and sandilands were terrible in their last couple of years so not sure they support the argument for a 5 year contract for TEnglish.
I'd have yeo in front of kelly at this stage as far as recruits coming from other clubs.kennedy is clearly the best player we've brought back tho
If Flynn doesn't work out then sure we might have to look at TEnglish but I'd really hope its not on a mill a year. He's just not worth that much to us
Thought I'd quoted @the puma#9
On SM-G973F using BigFooty.com mobile app
Click to expand...
English’s main attribute is his unusual athleticism. One major injury and he could end up being useless in his later years
 
ThePuma #9 said:
Yeo and J.K would definitely be the top of the list but i tried to list established players who were coming in with a bit of pedigree.

Looking at my list now i mentioned Cripps when i meant Wellingham but i should have also put Jetta and Redden on the list. Truth is though none of them were AA calibre players, more so great role players. I think i might edit that to further avoid confusion.

I agree with your sentiments on the ruckman i mentioned all being average in their last years which is why i gave Tim till 33ish (6 years) more so than 34 years. I mentioned when they went on to but i agree the last years of some of those players we very average.

It's not without risk but we need to take every advantage we can to get out of this list hole we find ourselves in and free agency is a big one.
Click to expand...
The new CEO was reported as indicating he wanted to utilise every means of building the list.

He mentioned free agency as one of the major ways of doing this so he might be in favour of a move to recruit English if he wants to return to WA.
 
Last edited:
ThePuma #9 said:
Yeo and J.K would definitely be the top of the list but i tried to list established players who were coming in with a bit of pedigree.

Looking at my list now i mentioned Cripps when i meant Wellingham but i should have also put Jetta and Redden on the list. Truth is though none of them were AA calibre players, more so great role players. I think i might edit that to further avoid confusion.

I agree with your sentiments on the ruckman i mentioned all being average in their last years which is why i gave Tim till 33ish (6 years) more so than 34 years. I mentioned when they went on to but i agree the last years of some of those players we very average.

It's not without risk but we need to take every advantage we can to get out of this list hole we find ourselves in and free agency is a big one.
Click to expand...
I just think paying top dollar for English will hamper the team in the later years of his contract. We'll have some young guns coming out of contract who'll want to get paid.
I can understand why you'd like him but I also think targeting every WA guy out of contract or wanting to come home hasnt generally worked well for freo in the past so I think targeting specific needs is better.
And I guess I'm just not a huge fan of his..

On SM-G973F using BigFooty.com mobile app
 
ThePuma #9 said:
A couple of things to consider here in regards to English.

Firstly a five year deal as opposed to seven would make me feel more comfortable however rucks generally play on well into their 30's

Dean Cox played til he was 33
Aaron Sandilands til he was 36
Shane Mumford til he was 35
Ben McEvoy til he was 33
Paddy Ryder til he was 34
Todd Goldstein is 35
Max Gawn is 32

Yes 34 is a risk but it's probably only a risk for his final year at worst.


So then if we are offering a long term deal how durable is he?

Well he has had a relatively injury free career to date with

20 games in 2019
18 games in 2020
22 games in 2021
16 games in 2022
23 games in 2023

The Dogs have played a total of 118 games over these 5 years, this includes 7 finals. Tim has played 99 of them. That's a percentage of just under 84 percent. So he's at least durable.

Does he fit a need?

Yes and No.

As a pure tap ruckman probably not. We just secured Flynn and we have Bailey Williams who can play ruck along with potential prospects in Callum Jamieson, Harry Barnett and maybe Jack Williams.

First of all Bailey doesn't want to play ruck. Whether or not he can play forward we shall see but if we keep forcing Bailey to play where he doesn't want to he may very well decide to piss off back to Victoria when his contact is up. As for Callum Jamieson this year is make or break for him. If he doesn't perform in the twos he may be gone come the end of the year. So now that leaves Barnett who is nowhere near physically ready to play seniors and was always a project ruckman we knew would take a little time and big Jack who is a forward.

Our ruck stocks are not as deep as we like to believe.

Tim is also very good at covering the ground. He's a strong option to kick to, averaging over 6 marks a game in 2023 and kicking 16 goals for the year. A lot of those goals were generated by him taking a pack mark up forward. Something we definitely need more of.

As a potential recruit he is young enough to give us a good 5-6 years of service, durable enough that we could expect a decent return of games and is a clear best 22.
As for an area of need? I don't think we are deep as others do so i say yes. Particularly if you take into account his marking and goal kicking.

Now as for wanting to spend our money elsewhere, that's great but there are a few small issues with this.

No one wants to come here. Seriously. Does anyone really think we only targeted Brockman, Sweet, Flynn and Robertson? We would have approached a lot of prospects but no one wants to play for us at the moment.

Brockman wanted to come home to W.A due to family. Twins are a handful.

Flynn decided to go with us over Demons as the poor bloke has played second fiddle for most of his career and we assure him he was the first ruck for 2024.

Deven decided to stay with the Lions to chase a flag despite his position not being guaranteed, knowing all too well another Ashcroft is on the way AND us offering more years and more money than the Lions.

Sweet preferred to be second fiddle again at Port behind Soldo and they already have multiple rucks on their list.

No one wants to come and play for us!!! So then what are we to do with all the money we have? We can only front load so many contracts and even then we have to pay the minimum amount of the cap to the squad. No matter what.

Where's the money going?

Allen, TK and Barrass would be on decent deals but Gaff, Yeo, Darling, Cripps, McGovern will all be out of contract in two years. There is a chasm in our list and quite frankly we will be overpaying a lot of middling players more than they deserve just so we have a list.

I am all for throwing money at Sam Taylor to get him home or Chad Warner etc etc but both will cost draft capitol or players where as Tim English will be a free hit. How often does a club get to bring in an AA for nothing?

s**t! Our best established recruit in 38 years has been Tim Kelly and look what we had to give up to get him.

Who is next? Probably one of Jetta, Redden, Wellingham, Stenglein or Chick. We're not exactly a destination club.

Simple truth is we win more games to attract players, let alone keep the ones (H. Reid) we currently have. Money alone is not going to get the job done. Tim helps us do this.

If we can get Tim without giving away anything more than salary cap then we are ******* crazy not to do it.
Click to expand...
Fantastic summary
 
mattyc75 said:
I just think paying top dollar for English will hamper the team in the later years of his contract. We'll have some young guns coming out of contract who'll want to get paid.
I can understand why you'd like him but I also think targeting every WA guy out of contract or wanting to come home hasnt generally worked well for freo in the past so I think targeting specific needs is better.
And I guess I'm just not a huge fan of his..

On SM-G973F using BigFooty.com mobile app
Click to expand...
It will be a heavily front-ended contract. We will have significant salary cap space with the numerous expiring overpriced contracts over 2023/24 and you can bet that $1MM a year will actually mean significantly more in the early years such that it is reducing as the likes of Reid, Ginbey, Hewett etc start to come into significantly higher contracts.
 
ThePuma #9 said:
A couple of things to consider here in regards to English.

Firstly a five year deal as opposed to seven would make me feel more comfortable however rucks generally play on well into their 30's

Dean Cox played til he was 33
Aaron Sandilands til he was 36
Shane Mumford til he was 35
Ben McEvoy til he was 33
Paddy Ryder til he was 34
Todd Goldstein is 35
Max Gawn is 32

Yes 34 is a risk but it's probably only a risk for his final year at worst.


So then if we are offering a long term deal how durable is he?

Well he has had a relatively injury free career to date with

20 games in 2019
18 games in 2020
22 games in 2021
16 games in 2022
23 games in 2023

The Dogs have played a total of 118 games over these 5 years, this includes 7 finals. Tim has played 99 of them. That's a percentage of just under 84 percent. So he's at least durable.

Does he fit a need?

Yes and No.

As a pure tap ruckman probably not. We just secured Flynn and we have Bailey Williams who can play ruck along with potential prospects in Callum Jamieson, Harry Barnett and maybe Jack Williams.

First of all Bailey doesn't want to play ruck. Whether or not he can play forward we shall see but if we keep forcing Bailey to play where he doesn't want to he may very well decide to piss off back to Victoria when his contact is up. As for Callum Jamieson this year is make or break for him. If he doesn't perform in the twos he may be gone come the end of the year. So now that leaves Barnett who is nowhere near physically ready to play seniors and was always a project ruckman we knew would take a little time and big Jack who is a forward.

Our ruck stocks are not as deep as we like to believe.

Tim is also very good at covering the ground. He's a strong option to kick to, averaging over 6 marks a game in 2023 and kicking 16 goals for the year. A lot of those goals were generated by him taking a pack mark up forward. Something we definitely need more of.

As a potential recruit he is young enough to give us a good 5-6 years of service, durable enough that we could expect a decent return of games and is a clear best 22.
As for an area of need? I don't think we are deep as others do so i say yes. Particularly if you take into account his marking and goal kicking.

Now as for wanting to spend our money elsewhere, that's great but there are a few small issues with this.

No one wants to come here. Seriously. Does anyone really think we only targeted Brockman, Sweet, Flynn and Robertson? We would have approached a lot of prospects but no one wants to play for us at the moment.

Brockman wanted to come home to W.A due to family. Twins are a handful.

Flynn decided to go with us over Demons as the poor bloke has played second fiddle for most of his career and we assure him he was the first ruck for 2024.

Deven decided to stay with the Lions to chase a flag despite his position not being guaranteed, knowing all too well another Ashcroft is on the way AND us offering more years and more money than the Lions.

Sweet preferred to be second fiddle again at Port behind Soldo and they already have multiple rucks on their list.

No one wants to come and play for us!!! So then what are we to do with all the money we have? We can only front load so many contracts and even then we have to pay the minimum amount of the cap to the squad. No matter what.

Where's the money going?

Allen, TK and Barrass would be on decent deals but Gaff, Yeo, Darling, Cripps, McGovern will all be out of contract in two years. There is a chasm in our list and quite frankly we will be overpaying a lot of middling players more than they deserve just so we have a list.

I am all for throwing money at Sam Taylor to get him home or Chad Warner etc etc but both will cost draft capitol or players where as Tim English will be a free hit. How often does a club get to bring in an AA for nothing?

s**t! Our best established recruit in 38 years has been Tim Kelly and look what we had to give up to get him.

Who is next? Probably one of Jetta, Redden, Wellingham, Stenglein or Chick. We're not exactly a destination club.

Simple truth is we win more games to attract players, let alone keep the ones (H. Reid) we currently have. Money alone is not going to get the job done. Tim helps us do this.

If we can get Tim without giving away anything more than salary cap then we are ******* crazy not to do it.
Click to expand...
This is an excellent post and great to have the other side of the argument as seems most in here (myself included) don’t want to sign English.

A few points I’d like to make:

There’s no mention of English’s concussion/migraine issue that’s kept him out of contract drills this preseason. Sure he’s been ticked off to train now but say he gets a recurrence of symptoms or another head knock where does that leave us with a long contract on big $$$ tied up? It’s an absolute tragedy what happened to Venables and to a lesser extent Shep in a life sense (not just a footy sense) and I’d hope the governance of the club is good enough to learn from the plight of these guys and proceed accordingly with a player with a huge concussion question mark over them.

Even best case scenario we get 5-6 years out of him? So what? I would be elated but shocked if we won a flag in that time so what’s the point in tying all that money up in a ruckman? We have 2 more than serviceable young ruckmen on our books in Flynn and BWilliams with Barnett and Livingston (with JWill and A Reid pinch hitting) coming through who will be the rucking for our next flag.

If reports are to be believed BWilliams is already in talks to extend his contract beyond this year, doesn’t appear he wants to go anywhere. If we were to go after English we’d almost have to trade BWilliams as him and English would play the same position assuming Flynn stays in best 22 and if he doesn’t then why the * did we recruit him?

Most importantly, Sam Taylor will be a free agent end of 2025 so he actually won’t cost anything. Covering Gov in 2-3 years is far more pressing than a $1m a year ruck in my opinion which is why I want us to go hard after him and Buss. If we get Taylor then obviously a large amount of our cash is spent on him but if not there are plenty of contracts we can front end. Any of the boys in their 1st or 2nd year we can sign to longer, smoother deals by topping up their existing contract in 2025/26 and paying less in subsequent years extension. Eg we bump up Harley’s first 3 years to 500k (from 200k) and instead of extending him for 3 years at 800k we extend him at 500k. Same contract $$$ over 6 years but all of a sudden we have an extra 300k a year for the last 3 years which might be the difference between getting a Sam Taylor who would be the AA for no draft/player capital you’re after. We could do the same thing with Oscar and load up his contract for the next 2 years and have him extended on less money in subsequent years.

I also think it’s fair to say that no one is moving to Perth because they get to play footy with Tim English, not a deal breaker.

Again, love your post and glad we’ve got different views being discussed, just don’t think he’s the right fit for us at this point in our list build.
 
If we're talking best players we brought in from another club, Crippa would be neck and neck with JK.
 

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UseR2006 said:
If we're talking best players we brought in from another club, Crippa would be neck and neck with JK.
Click to expand...
No Way Wtf GIF by Harlem


Look, Cripps has been great. But not JK great. Not even in the ballpark.
 
Kane Lucas has to be neck and neck
 
Brad Dick?

There's some short memories around here
 
We might be the only fan base that actually gives a shit about ruck craft, and that's only because we've had a subpar midfield that (outside of a couple months in '18) was carried by Nic Nat's possession-like taps/physicality when he played.

It's the most overrated bullshit in the world.

English covers serious ground, takes a very good intercept mark - which is critical to maintain forward half pressure/start scoring chains - has great disposal for a man his size and can push forward and kick goals.

The age thing is overblown, he'll be near his prime when we're contending, and we couldn't be in a better place or time to absorb his contract and pick him up for zero draft capital.

He's also playing for a feckless coach that places zero value on rucking - there's plenty of RFI.

This board is constantly (and fairly) asking for new thinking from the club. It would be a conservative, chicken little, move to squib out on acquiring the biggest fish in this year's FA pool.
 
We should go for English. Front end his contract while our young stars are developing and his salary shouldn't be a problem. He's arguably the best ruckman in the league that hopefully we can get 6/7 years out of (definitely in the flag window) I don't get the discussion around Flynn being a first choice ruck? yes this season he will be until we can land English or Barnett develops further. The truth is though he's not a premiership calibre ruckman, ideally he's good depth and i believe that's how the club views him long term. Due diligence will obviously have to be done on English's migraine/concussion problems, which is my only real concern.
 
Ishmael_ said:
We might be the only fan base that actually gives a s**t about ruck craft, and that's only because we've had a subpar midfield that (outside of a couple months in '18) was carried by Nic Nat's possession-like taps/physicality when he played.

It's the most overrated bullshit in the world.

English covers serious ground, takes a very good intercept mark - which is critical to maintain forward half pressure/start scoring chains - has great disposal for a man his size and can push forward and kick goals.

The age thing is overblown, he'll be near his prime when we're contending, and we couldn't be in a better place or time to absorb his contract and pick him up for zero draft capital.

He's also playing for a feckless coach that places zero value on rucking - there's plenty of RFI.

This board is constantly (and fairly) asking for new thinking from the club. It would be a conservative, chicken little, move to squib out on acquiring the biggest fish in this year's FA pool.
Click to expand...
On the bolded, that's all well and good, but he's very ordinary in actual rucking contests.
 
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