List Mgmt. FA & trade wash up, what list spots & draft picks do we have?

[Seedsfan]

I think you severely over-rate the players we let go. They are only worth what clubs are prepared to pay, and the fact is there was little to no interest in them. That in itself tells you where they are in their careers. Is it better to keep them rather than trade them for pittance? No way! The just clog a spot on your list which could go to an unknown who may turn out to be a 200 game player. There is also an issue with attitude. Why would u want to keep a player who you are trying to get rid of and a player who knows where they are on the pecking order and so wants to seek other opportunities.

The pies did what needed to be done. We needed to get rid of players who weren't getting better. They get worse and drag the rest down with them. Better for morale to not have these guys at the club.

Yet guy like Mayne and Wells aren't clogging spots neither off them have long term futures at the club

 

[Temploar]

How I feel about our trade period:



I just got my internet back in my place and found out how today went.

I want to hide under my bed.

 

[jackcass]

So what happens if brown has a bid on him before 28.does that mean we use 28 or 44.

Wouldn't that depend on how the 197 point discount moves the bid?

So the wrap up is:

Cloke gone. He left and is playing for mimimal salary. We recieved a pittance in return. FAIL. Would have been better retaining.

Brown gone. Exercised his free agent rights to play at another club for minimal salary. His wage was so little we failed to obtain compo. FAIL. Would have been better off retaining.

Witts gone. We received 46 and 62. Past trades for comparably aged and talented rucks valued him at 18-35. The team that ultimately dealt for him has 2 second rounders they aren't likely to use. FAIL. Should have held firm or retained.

Frost gone. The way the deal works out astonishingly we may actually have paid to trade him out! I'm not too fussed to lose Frost, however the return was terrible. FAIL. Should have held firm for Close or Freeman to sure up a developing key forward.

Williams gone. A return of pick 105 is insulting. FAIL. Given his talent would have been better off retaining as depth.

We have bled key forwards, key backs, and a ruck for no return. We only managed to bring in one undersized tall back who's best is gone past him. We didn't even try for someone like Stewart who went for a pick in the 70's. It's perplexing. Our tall stocks are now awful.

We did get Wells who is an excellent addition. WHE is also a good get but probably should have tried to include some of GWS key position depth players as insurance. Mayne and Dunn are both very underwhelming selections.

To add insult to injury, we failed to obtain a first round selection such is the poor return we received on our players. So while we will have a lot of salary cap next year, we are poorly placed with our picks to deal on any trades. We would be hoping for a free agent perhaps, but all the good ones are midfielders an area we are actually okay in.

I can't say I'm very proud of my club tonight. I'm terribly disappointed in fact.

I'll reserve judgement till I see how the guys we've brought in perform but disagree that it is as bad as you project. I've spent as much time as anyone on these boards defending the players who have left but even I have acknowledged the limitations of each of those players.

I think Witts will haunt us, I think Williams could potentially turn it around and forge a career. The rest I'm ambivalent about. Good luck to all of them but I think we've done okay.

 

[Troglodyte]

I thought we broke even over all - got rid of some dead wood, brought in WHE and some pace and forward pressure but there was some disappointment too, especially:

How can Marley Williams be worth nothing?
Jarrod Witts is a young, developing 209cm ruckman. We should have got more.
Pick 28 is very risky in terms of having to give it up for Brown. Turning this into a pick around 21/22 should have been a priority.
Frost could have been used to upgrade 28. Not unhappy with the current deal but if things go bad next year, we could end up paying to get rid of him.
If Stewart was only worth pick 77, why didn't we have a go?
Given our shortage of talls, Ricky Henderson and Xavier Richards and Dean Towers were options. Maybe we should have grabbed one of them although they probably will be available as free agents anyway.

 

[jackcass]

Hine also said we'll try to improve our draft position today -FAIL.

Who is to say he didn't try?

 

[Temploar]

I thought we broke even over all - got rid of some dead wood, brought in WHE and some pace and forward pressure but there was some disappointment too, especially:

How can Marley Williams be worth nothing?
Jarrod Witts is a young, developing 209cm ruckman. We should have got more.
Pick 28 is very risky in terms of having to give it up for Brown. Turning this into a pick around 21/22 should have been a priority.
Frost could have been used to upgrade 28. Not unhappy with the current deal but if things go bad next year, we could end up paying to get rid of him.
If Stewart was only worth pick 77, why didn't we have a go?
Given our shortage of talls, Ricky Henderson and Xavier Richards and Dean Towers were options. Maybe we should have grabbed one of them although they probably will be available as free agents anyway.

I just mentioned in another thread that I'm disgusted we gave away our players for basically chips.

Witts, plays a position that is not in great supply due to the size requirements, he's massive, decent tap ruckman, still not in his prime. 2 Late 3rd round picks? WTF!

Cloke, Premiership player, Late 4th round, WTF?

Marley Williams, Not a superstar by any means but has played a lot for us, has AFL experience, best 22 for most teams. Pick 105?!?!?!

I think Hine has checked out, or whoever the bloke negotiating our deals is, he has checked out! How can you accept pick 105 for someone that we were touting as potential AA a couple of years ago.

This is ****ed haha.

 

[ash84]

Did awful compared to Richmond, St Kilda and Fremantle.

So did 14 other clubs then mate.

 

[Quicky]

Mate sorry your delusional and I'll informed, it's borderline nonsense.

Why do you think that?

 

[Quicky]

Seriously though we have a better chance at getting players that are younger and give us more than the players that have gone out.

I don't believe that we do with pick 44 plus. I could accept that argument if we had better draft position, even a collection of sub 40s picks given the eveness of the draft. But we don't at all.

 

[jackcass]

Our second best pick in the draft is 44. I don't think the odds of pick 44, or the later picks we now need to fill our list with, are likely to be better footballers than Cloke, Brown, Witts or Williams.

Lots of good players taken after pick 44. Witts himself a very late pick, Williams a rookie.

I'm not comfident.
At 32 Wells is too old to figure in our next premiership, Mayne is a defensive forward who doesn't hit the scoreboard. Dunn is a VFL backman. WHE is a decent pick up. We have lost lots of experience for no gain. Our backline looks very vulnerable and our forward line is impotent. Our new Football Manager is on the verge of a lengthy suspension. These are darks times. Things are going to get pretty bad before they can start to get better.

Frost this year was a VFL backman, Witts a VFL ruckman, Cloke played VFL more than you'd like, Williams played more VFL than senior footy unless I'm mistaken. You can't on the one hand lament the loss of VFL level players while then being critical of recruiting VFL level players. I think Dunn could be more than handy and he brings a bit of mungrel which our defense needs. Time will tell.

 

[Quicky]

Wouldn't that depend on how the 197 point discount moves the bid?


I'll reserve judgement till I see how the guys we've brought in perform but disagree that it is as bad as you project. I've spent as much time as anyone on these boards defending the players who have left but even I have acknowledged the limitations of each of those players.

I think Witts will haunt us, I think Williams could potentially turn it around and forge a career. The rest I'm ambivalent about. Good luck to all of them but I think we've done okay.

I think I would have been more accepting if we'd kept Brown, received a fairer price for Witts, and used one of our junk picks or Frost to obtain a young developing tall. I don't think that was outside the realms of possibility. But we did very poorly at the trade table. We did well with free agency.

 

[Quicky]

Lots of good players taken after pick 44. Witts himself a very late pick, Williams a rookie.



Frost this year was a VFL backman, Witts a VFL ruckman, Cloke played VFL more than you'd like, Williams played more VFL than senior footy unless I'm mistaken. You can't on the one hand lament the loss of VFL level players while then being critical of recruiting VFL level players. I think Dunn could be more than handy and he brings a bit of mungrel which our defense needs. Time will tell.

Witts was a scholarship player. He would have gone higher if he was in the open draft pool. I'm not saying you can't draft good players at those picks, just that the odds are far worse.

 

[Temploar]

I think I would have been more accepting if we'd kept Brown, received a fairer price for Witts, and used one of our junk picks or Frost to obtain a young developing tall. I don't think that was outside the realms of possibility. But we did very poorly at the trade table. We did well with free agency.

Did anyone want to keep Brown though? He was a big reason why our transition footy never worked this year.

Yeah he guarantees that his direct man only kicks 1-2 at most while on him but whats the point if he basically gives a goal to someone else by kicking it directly to them while rebounding?

There's no place for that type of defender in the modern game. Presti did it so well and hid his lack of skills by becoming a true blanket and completely nullifying his opposition, Brown tried to mold his game on Presti and unfortunately it hasn't worked out because these days in AFL you can't afford to mask 1-2 players deficiencies whereas 6 years ago you'd have gotten away with it because the game wasn't as fast and skills based as it is at the moment.

Now it seems everyone is required to play on the ball and do their part, it's almost like there are 18 midfielders per side out there sometimes, there's no more "sit at home" defenders and forwards, there's a lot of movement, a lot of flooding, if you have the ball you need to be expected to use it properly because coughing it up is usually going to result in a huge momentum shift due to the slingshot transition footy being played by a lot of teams to clear the flood and try to find a loose player on the break.

You need all 22 players on the team to be 100% confident in their abilities at all times to get the best result, if you have even 1 player coughing things up then it turns into a ripple and suddenly it's sucked the momentum out of the team and they have to work hard to get it back. Then it just becomes a domino effect.

Couldn't be happier that we are now a better kicking side (on paper) than we were last year, just absolutely disgusted with the picks accepted for them, not to mention Brown left for free.

Hope I explained it as well as I could.

 

[Temploar]

I must mention one thing though and that's the fact that a lot of people have been correct with their inside info this year.

Witts, Williams, Marsh, Hoskin-Elliott, Cloke, Mayne

A lot of it was called before it even looked like it had a realistic chance of happening.

To those that have doubted and criticized those that provide this inside knowledge, ha, suck it.

To those that post random shit they think they know but they just made up in their head, hmmm.... continue plucking from Damien Barrett's basket of bullshit, you might get a job out of what you're doing.

Pie Time, Scodog, BEEG(I think), and co. (know there are some others but I've missed your names) Keep providing us the goodies.
Not sure whether to be alarmed that so many leaks are coming out of our club, or impressed with the fact that we normally hear it here first on Bigfooty.

 

[BPikkers]

Yet guy like Mayne and Wells aren't clogging spots neither off them have long term futures at the club

So which free agents were there available that could fill the roles? It's not as if we went into the draft with much currency and we were obviously wanting to keep our 2nd round pick.

Wells makes us better, and Mayne tightens things up in the forward line. At least he has played just about every game at Freo over the past 4 years. That is a Freo who, apart from this year, was one of the strongest teams in the league.

Brown, Frost, Cloke, Witts, Williams were in and out and struggling in a team which was hit with injury and finished down near the bottom of the ladder.

 

[BPikkers]

I must mention one thing though and that's the fact that a lot of people have been correct with their inside info this year.

Witts, Williams, Marsh, Hoskin-Elliott, Cloke, Mayne

A lot of it was called before it even looked like it had a realistic chance of happening.

To those that have doubted and criticized those that provide this inside knowledge, ha, suck it.

To those that post random shit they think they know but they just made up in their head, hmmm.... continue plucking from Damien Barrett's basket of bullshit, you might get a job out of what you're doing.

Pie Time, Scodog, BEEG(I think), and co. (know there are some others but I've missed your names) Keep providing us the goodies.
Not sure whether to be alarmed that so many leaks are coming out of our club, or impressed with the fact that we normally hear it here first on Bigfooty.

Powerful

 

[Quicky]

Did anyone want to keep Brown though? He was a big reason why our transition footy never worked this year.

Yeah he guarantees that his direct man only kicks 1-2 at most while on him but whats the point if he basically gives a goal to someone else by kicking it directly to them while rebounding?

There's no place for that type of defender in the modern game. Presti did it so well and hid his lack of skills by becoming a true blanket and completely nullifying his opposition, Brown tried to mold his game on Presti and unfortunately it hasn't worked out because these days in AFL you can't afford to mask 1-2 players deficiencies whereas 6 years ago you'd have gotten away with it because the game wasn't as fast and skills based as it is at the moment.

Now it seems everyone is required to play on the ball and do their part, it's almost like there are 18 midfielders per side out there sometimes, there's no more "sit at home" defenders and forwards, there's a lot of movement, a lot of flooding, if you have the ball you need to be expected to use it properly because coughing it up is usually going to result in a huge momentum shift due to the slingshot transition footy being played by a lot of teams to clear the flood and try to find a loose player on the break.

You need all 22 players on the team to be 100% confident in their abilities at all times to get the best result, if you have even 1 player coughing things up then it turns into a ripple and suddenly it's sucked the momentum out of the team and they have to work hard to get it back. Then it just becomes a domino effect.

Couldn't be happier that we are now a better kicking side (on paper) than we were last year, just absolutely disgusted with the picks accepted for them, not to mention Brown left for free.

Hope I explained it as well as I could.

Yeah I understand and appreciate that. I have said very similar myself, although argued we could get Brown to play to his deficiencies by being more conservative in his decision making. I believe his problem was attempting kicks beyond his skill level, more than just being a bad kick. It was a decision making issue that could have been addressed.

My issue is that we now have no decent full back. Goldsack is undersized. And I don't particularly rate Dunn or Keeffe. And there is now zero depth. I think it was really important for us to retain Brown, so i'm disappointed we didn't. I hope that Keeffe returns to his best, or Reid plus 3 dynamic 190cm players form a great defensive unit and make my concerns look silly; but i'm not confident.

 

[jmac70]

Lots of good players taken after pick 44. Witts himself a very late pick, Williams a rookie.



Frost this year was a VFL backman, Witts a VFL ruckman, Cloke played VFL more than you'd like, Williams played more VFL than senior footy unless I'm mistaken. You can't on the one hand lament the loss of VFL level players while then being critical of recruiting VFL level players. I think Dunn could be more than handy and he brings a bit of mungrel which our defense needs. Time will tell.

I understand what you are saying and it certainly makes sense. My primary concern is the high level of turnover we have every year. Since Bucks took over we have turned over more than an entire list. At the beginning of 2015 we were told that Bucks has the list he wants and improvement will follow, since then we have turned over another 20 players!

This level of change makes it very difficult to instil the necessary chemistry to play consistent footy. The latest incarnation will face similar issues, the difference being that Bucks is now on a clock. I hope like hell that it will work but I think it is more likely that we will struggle, particularly in defence. Should Buckley resign or be sacked next year we will have to start from scratch again.

 

[BPikkers]

Yeah I understand and appreciate that. I have said very similar myself, although argued we could get Brown to play to his deficiencies by being more conservative in his decision making. I believe his problem was attempting kicks beyond his skill level, more than just being a bad kick. It was a decision making issue that could have been addressed.

My issue is that we now have no decent full back. Goldsack is undersized. And I don't particularly rate Dunn or Keeffe. And there is now zero depth. I think it was really important for us to retain Brown, so i'm disappointed we didn't. I hope that Keeffe returns to his best, or Reid plus 3 dynamic 190cm players form a great defensive unit and make my concerns look silly; but i'm not confident.

I think we agree we are one big body defender short. I'd be very surprised if we didn't draft a 23/24 yr old key position backman from the VFL/WAFL/SAFL with a late draft pick. They are obviously out there, and clubs have done it in the past.

 

[Roverjg]

Why not? Even the guys you are saying we should have kept we're either rookies or selected well down in the draft.
There have been many great players who were selected after pick 44 as well as rookies who became fantastic 200 game players. Without even thinking about it, there was this kid named Dane Sean who was selected at 58. The list would be pages long. And to be honest, they wouldn't have to do a great deal to be better than the ones we moved on.

WE have not lost out by moving on or trading the players that have left. Here is a list of a few players that have been picked above Pick 40 in the past 16 years.
T. Langdon 65; J. Sicily 56; A. Aliir 44; L. Casboult 89; P. Puopolo 66; T. McDonald 53; A. Fasolo 45; Sinclair 62; M. Walters 53; Taylor Walker 75; C. Hooker 54; E. Wood 43; J. Steven 42; J. White 79; J. Westhoff 71; R. Gray 55; A. Swallow 43; B. Lake 71; D. Swan 58; P. Medhurst 56; G. Johncock 67; A. Krakouer 41; R. Okeefe 56; C. Enright 47

 

[Quicky]

I think we agree we are one big body defender short. I'd be very surprised if we didn't draft a 23/24 yr old key position backman from the VFL/WAFL/SAFL with a late draft pick. They are obviously out there, and clubs have done it in the past.

Yeah I hope we have some plan regarding that. Marsh leaving has really hurt us.

 

[Crazy Tails]

Yeah I hope we have some plan regarding that. Marsh leaving has really hurt us.

Hopefully we can convince him to stay.

If not Cam O'Shea 24yo, 80 games from Port (193cm defender) is still unsigned. Good endurance and leg speed. If he gets squeezed out he might be about the best mature body defensive option left (who could play straight away) as a delisted FA.


On iPhone using BigFooty.com mobile app

 

[DaVe86]

I'm underwhelmed.

If you look at the players who walked out, individually each of them was below AFL standard. However, they all walk out as a collective and it has impacted on our depth.

I just struggle to see the strategy.

OK, we have improved our top 22 marginally with some stop-gap type players. I don't think that takes us into a top 8 position though.

On the flip-side, we have done nothing to improve our future as we didn't upgrade our picks. The only real player who can offer us long term service is WHE so I was happy with that get (even though we paid overs again)

So to me it leaves us caught in the middle a bit.

If we make top 8 next year, it will largely be due to a good run with injuries, and getting players like Elliott, Keeffe, Scharenberg, Ramsey and Fasolo back.

I'm relatively comfortable with bringing in Mayne, Dunn and Wells. I just didn't want it to be at the expense of Williams, Brown and Cloke.

It will be interesting to see how we go next year. I'm worried about our Key Posts, but relatively confident that our best 22 is good enough if we can keep it on the park long enough.

I wouldn't call this an overly successful trade period though.

 

[DAWESOME!!]

I like what they have done, obviously every player who can't kick or is a questionable kick was a target or available during the trade period. The only exception to the rule was Witts who IMO has amazing skills for a player 209 cm tall.
Interestingly Greenwood survived.

Surely we can't put Greenwood's disposal in the same camp as Frost, Brown, Williams (and though he retired, not traded Toovey). I'll have to go back and re watch some games because the loathing for Greenwood from so many on here is a mystery to me. He's a solid competitive inside mid/tagged who is decent around goal from what I've seen. Not a star but miles away from being our biggest problem.

 

[NT.Thunder]

I'm underwhelmed.

If you look at the players who walked out, individually each of them was below AFL standard. However, they all walk out as a collective and it has impacted on our depth.

I just struggle to see the strategy.

OK, we have improved our top 22 marginally with some stop-gap type players. I don't think that takes us into a top 8 position though.

On the flip-side, we have done nothing to improve our future as we didn't upgrade our picks. The only real player who can offer us long term service is WHE so I was happy with that get (even though we paid overs again)

So to me it leaves us caught in the middle a bit.

If we make top 8 next year, it will largely be due to a good run with injuries, and getting players like Elliott, Keeffe, Scharenberg, Ramsey and Fasolo back.

I'm relatively comfortable with bringing in Mayne, Dunn and Wells. I just didn't want it to be at the expense of Williams, Brown and Cloke.

It will be interesting to see how we go next year. I'm worried about our Key Posts, but relatively confident that our best 22 is good enough if we can keep it on the park long enough.

I wouldn't call this an overly successful trade period though.

Couldn't agree Moore