Freo and the never ending rebuild

[Mr Cheese]

Clark has been a win.

Lobb, Matera, Kersten, Colyer, O'Meara all have been poor recruits.

Aish was ok, but I think it was the wrong time based on where our list build was.

We should have supported Hogan a lot better, if we brought him in. We knew he had issues, but offered him no support. GWS had him living with Mumford. He should have been living with Mundy or Fyfe.


We appear to use a scatter gun approach, where we target any player from WA and don't care if they will approve us or not.

Got to disagree.

Clark - superb trade

Lobb - Good trade - provided structure, scored 30+ goals in a season - netted us a decent return for someone his age.

Matera - cheap as shit, worth a punt. Plenty of talent, not much application.

Kersten - Not good. Again talented, but a prick and lazy.

Colyer - superb pickup. Quick, did a role and provided leadership around the club. Big fan.

O'Meara - good pick up, highly versatile, at least B-grade wherever he plays, kicks goals and by all accounts excellent clubman. If you expected pre-knee O'Meara, I'm not sure what to tell you.

Aish - been a great pickup. We paid very little for a very solid and versatile player. Would've been one of the first names on the team sheet up until this year.

Hogan - no amount of support would've helped. Sydney's worked because no one gives a **** about him there, and he also probably realized it's last chance saloon. That's all on him. Again talented as ****.

All of the above have been traded to either:
A) address a need.
B) provide versatility.

Have they all worked out? Of course not. Was anyone else available to us that would've worked out better? I'm guessing not. Given what they're working with, easily a pass mark. Again, we simply do not have the options of Eastern State sides.

We do seem to be getting first dibs on WA guns currently, long may that last.

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[Heave Ho Bro]

The biggest weakness this group has is mental. They capitulate under pressure late in games and that is a horrible trait to have. The only thing I 'trust' about this squad is that they will fold under pressure late in a tight game. Done it in every close game this year apart from the Pies and Swans games. But the Pies game we were down and had to just go for it so the pressure was off. And the Swans game we got lucky. Swans should have got a draw out of that at a minimum but Logan Mac crumbled under the pressure. He would of fit right in had he chose to come here.

 

[Purple Suit]

The Essendon game was lost in the midfield. Even if Treacy didn’t go down early in the 4th, he would’ve gotten **** all service considering Merrett and co were walking it out of the centre bounces.

But it’s not just the last 2 weeks. What about the Carlton and Port games earlier in the year? The first derby against West Coast where we just didn’t show up? The Hawthorn game a month ago? There’s many winnable games from earlier in the season that we can point to, that would have rendered the last 2 disappointing games null.



If one player is the difference between us being 2nd vs us potentially missing finals then we aren’t as close as we think.



This thread is more so in reaction to the last 9 years as opposed to the last 2 weeks.

This thread is an abomination. You complain about everything, including stuff that hasn’t happened yet. You down play everything we have built like it is nothing because it’s not perfect, but life isn’t perfect.

I want you to tell me in all your wisdom who you would swap our team for and I can follow to see many flags they win by 2030. We are in the top few teams in the whole comp setup for the next 5-6 years, you just have to stop being such an entitled sook and be patient.

 

[Heave Ho Bro]

We didn't hit the draft hard enough when Ross was here 2015-2019. Kept trying to top up with B and C graders instead of bottoming out and getting top 3 draft picks in the door. Instead we stayed in no mans land finishing outside the bottom four and missing finals.

 

[kuhni]

Clark has been a win.

Lobb, Matera, Kersten, Colyer, O'Meara all have been poor recruits.

Aish was ok, but I think it was the wrong time based on where our list build was.

We should have supported Hogan a lot better, if we brought him in. We knew he had issues, but offered him no support. GWS had him living with Mumford. He should have been living with Mundy or Fyfe.


We appear to use a scatter gun approach, where we target any player from WA and don't care if they will approve us or not.

Living with someone from the club when you are in a new state without family and having just flipped your car on a sunday morning seems a reasonable proposal. In our case he was moving home to friends and family after a big trade.

 

[Mr Cheese]

The biggest weakness this group has is mental. They capitulate under pressure late in games and that is a horrible trait to have. The only thing I 'trust' about this squad is that they will fold under pressure late in a tight game. Done it in every close game this year apart from the Pies and Swans games. But the Pies game we were down and had to just go for it so the pressure was off. And the Swans game we got lucky. Swans should have got a draw out of that at a minimum but Logan Mac crumbled under the pressure. He would of fit right in had he chose to come here.

Main reason for this is physical. Serong and Brayshaw have often spent their tickets getting us back in or ahead, or just scrapping hard. Young is a weapon, but still developing his tank so tires badly, same with Johnson. Darcy is knackered as no pre-season, Jackson's ****ed from having to ruck too much. Still got a shot, but the team's tired - travelling plays a huge part in that too. Need Johnson to become that Cripps-like bull and we'll be set.

Result is we're prone to being run over, and skills deteriorate late it games. There's still a mental element to it, bit that'll improve as they take another step and close out games, maybe pull one out over the next two weeks.


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[chaosball32]

This thread is an abomination. You complain about everything, including stuff that hasn’t happened yet. You down play everything we have built like it is nothing because it’s not perfect, but life isn’t perfect.

I want you to tell me in all your wisdom who you would swap our team for and I can follow to see many flags they win by 2030. We are in the top few teams in the whole comp setup for the next 5-6 years, you just have to stop being such an entitled sook and be patient.

You disagree so you resort to insults rather then a civil discourse. I think that is the true abomination. We are all Freo fans at the end of the day and I’ve found the insults over a disagreement in opinion disappointing.

You can’t keep selling the future on the basis of hope and patience. Our fans have been more then hopeful and patient. We have the talent to be right up there for the foreseeable future, but you need more then talent alone. You say I talk about stuff that hasn’t happened but you are doing the same thing by projecting what our next 5-6 years will look like. Until this transpires there will be skepticism.

I think anything bar finals this year would be considered a failure. Even if that means finishing 8th and getting soundly beat in an away elimination final. We need all the finals experience we can get. We have guys like Cox, Ryan, Darcy, Brayshaw, Switta etc who are coming into their 8th and 9th seasons and have only played finals once. The pressure and atmosphere of a high stakes final is irreplicable, which might be why we’ve struggled in games similar due to a lack of experience.

It depends on whether you see 2022 or 2023 as the outlier season on whether or not we are tracking well in our development.

 

[Purple Suit]

We didn't hit the draft hard enough when Ross was here 2015-2019. Kept trying to top up with B and C graders instead of bottoming out and getting top 3 draft picks in the door. Instead we stayed in no mans land finishing outside the bottom four and missing finals.

Yes we did.

2015 we just lost a prelim so why would we?

2016 - Traded pick 3 (Taranto/Mcluggage) for McCarthy, Logue, Darcy & Ryan. Got Cox too. Awesome draft for us.

2017 - Brayshaw & Cerra & Switta, Meek

2018 - Traded for Hogan, Lobb and picked up picked Collingwood’s F1, I mean Shultz.

2019 - Young, Serong, Henry

This period set us up. Besides the Hogan trade which we have turned around now with the Shultz trade, not sure we could have achieved much more.

 

[doppo]

Me opening this thread

 

[Purple Suit]

You disagree so you resort to insults rather then a civil discourse. I think that is the true abomination. We are all Freo fans at the end of the day and I’ve found the insults over a disagreement in opinion disappointing.

You can’t keep selling the future on the basis of hope and patience. Our fans have been more then hopeful and patient. We have the talent to be right up there for the foreseeable future, but you need more then talent alone. You say I talk about stuff that hasn’t happened but you are doing the same thing by projecting what our next 5-6 years will look like. Until this transpires there will be skepticism.

I think anything bar finals this year would be considered a failure. Even if that means finishing 8th and getting soundly beat in an away elimination final. We need all the finals experience we can get. We have guys like Cox, Ryan, Darcy, Brayshaw, Switta etc who are coming into their 8th and 9th seasons and have only played finals once. The pressure and atmosphere of a high stakes final is irreplicable, which might be why we’ve struggled in games similar due to a lack of experience.

It depends on whether you see 2022 or 2023 as the outlier season on whether or not we are tracking well in our development.

I insulted you once because it was deserved. I am usually very controlled but the way you talk about a prediction like it has happened when it is our team losing, is frankly insane and sad. Are you even a fan or just another hate monger who only comes here to sink the boots in?

Look at our age profile, that is why we are not top of the ladder. We are close and might do well in the next two weeks to get it back but we are still too young. Logic says that, just like a 1st year player isn’t expected to win the Brownlow or the B&F.

Complaining about the past and predicting the future isn’t going to change the present.

 

[Heave Ho Bro]

Yes we did.

2015 we just lost a prelim so why would we?

2016 - Traded pick 3 (Taranto/Mcluggage) for McCarthy, Logue, Darcy & Ryan. Got Cox too. Awesome draft for us.

2017 - Brayshaw & Cerra & Switta, Meek

2018 - Traded for Hogan, Lobb and picked up picked Collingwood’s F1, I mean Shultz.

2019 - Young, Serong, Henry

This period set us up. Besides the Hogan trade which we have turned around now with the Shultz trade, not sure we could have achieved much more.

We did really well with what he had to work with nailing later picks but for where the list was at we only used two top 5 picks in that period and the highest pick we used we got from trading Weller. The club did great to find the value they did with 2nd 3rd and 4rd round picks but we never got that out and out potential superstar with a top 3 pick ala Dusty Judd or the like.

 

[chaosball32]

I insulted you once because it was deserved. I am usually very controlled but the way you talk about a prediction like it has happened when it is our team losing, is frankly insane and sad. Are you even a fan or just another hate monger who only comes here to sink the boots in?

Look at our age profile, that is why we are not top of the ladder. We are close and might do well in the next two weeks to get it back but we are still too young. Logic says that, just like a 1st year player isn’t expected to win the Brownlow or the B&F.

Complaining about the past and predicting the future isn’t going to change the present.

Insults simply because you don’t agree with me are never deserved. It’s not that insane or sad to predict that we will probably lose to the 2 most in form teams in the comp, given our last 2 games.

I never said we should be top of the ladder, you realise you can finish as low as 8th and still make finals. To finish in the top 44.44% of teams in any given year isn’t that unrealistic of an expectation. We are 1/8, potentially soon to be 1/9 in that regard in the past decade.

You mention age profile, Hawthorn aren’t that much older than us. In fact I would say we have a better list on paper than they do. So why are they playing a consistent and exciting brand of footy that we’ve only shown periodically? Why is there a strong likelihood they’ll leapfrog us into the 8? People don’t like the Hawthorn comparison but that’s the closest comparison there currently is.

This is a discussion board. All we can really do is discuss the past, present and future. The latter is yet to be decided so it’s just a matter of opinion.

 

[Purple Suit]

We did really well with what he had to work with nailing later picks but for where the list was at we only used two top 5 picks in that period and the highest pick we used we got from trading Weller. The club did great to find the value they did with 2nd 3rd and 4rd round picks but we never got that out and out potential superstar with a top 3 pick ala Dusty Judd or the like.

There was no Judd or Dusty to get but we got 3 direct superstars from the 2015-19 drafts and flipped one to 2021 for another score. That is a great strike rate and nothing to lament missing.

Remember, Dusty didn’t become Dusty till 2017. Young has only been playing as a mid for a single year.

 

[Purple Suit]

Insults simply because you don’t agree with me are never deserved. It’s not that insane or sad to predict that we will probably lose to the 2 most in form teams in the comp, given our last 2 games.

I never said we should be top of the ladder, you realise you can finish as low as 8th and still make finals. To finish in the top 44.44% of teams in any given year isn’t that unrealistic of an expectation. We are 1/8, potentially soon to be 1/9 in that regard in the past decade.

You mention age profile, Hawthorn aren’t that much older than us. In fact I would say we have a better list on paper than they do. So why are they playing a consistent and exciting brand of footy that we’ve only shown periodically? Why is there a strong likelihood they’ll leapfrog us into the 8? People don’t like me bringing up the Hawthorn comparison but that’s the closest comparison there currently is.

This is a discussion board. All we can really do is discuss the past, present and future. The latter is yet to be decided so it’s just a matter of opinion.

Your stats are out.

We have made finals 3/10 times for the past decade. This includes 2 wins. This isn’t that bad considering we have gone thru a full rebuild and if equalisation was perfect, you would be playing finals 4/9.

 

[Heave Ho Bro]

There was no Judd or Dusty to get but we got 3 direct superstars from the 2015-19 drafts and flipped one to 2021 for another score. That is a great strike rate and nothing to lament missing.

Remember, Dusty didn’t become Dusty till 2017. Young has only been playing as a mid for a single year.

Young has done some things this year that have me excited. He could be anything once he hits his prime.

 

[UYD 4 Life]

Hawthorn's last finals win was in 2015. They shipped out Mitchell and Lewis end of 2016, hodge the year after.

They've been "rebuilding" for practically the same amount of time as us and I'd say they made similar mistakes as us as well by allowing revered senior coaches to trade out valuable draft assets in an attempt to top up and shorten the rebuild.

 

[Randomizor]

It makes sense that if you can keep super experienced players fit then they are going to be better, on average, than players that have played less football.

It's why we'd be a totally different prospect if Fyfe and Sonny were even 90% of their peak selves rather than the 60% versions we have. For whatever reason we can't keep our 30+ players anywhere near their best, especially since Mundy.

I think flying around the country every second week is a pretty big part of that reason. I’m sure our older players would have lasted longer if we played 90% of our games in our home state like some teams.

(In saying that for long stretches of Fyfe and Walters careers our strength, conditioning and injury management ranged from average at best to abysmal at worst)

 

[blue shark]

I think flying around the country every second week is a pretty big part of that reason. I’m sure our older players would have lasted longer if we played 90% of our games in our home state like some teams.

(In saying that for long stretches of Fyfe and Walters careers our strength, conditioning and injury management ranged from average at best to abysmal at worst)

It’s why you need to rest or rotate players that are showing signs of fatigue, injury, or close to 30.
Pearce coming back early, same with Darcy has derailed our season at the wrong end.
Teams outside Victoria need good depth and plenty of players that can come in and
play a roll.
Then there are the coaches who can manufacture wins by fixing holes in the list
with what they have to work with, or genius moves.
It’s not like we haven’t found something with Young as a mid and Draper an
exciting kpd.
Sure we can play the youth card, or you could also point the finger at off field
management and the inexperience in the coaching box too.
An experienced head of coaching role would offer tremendous advice instead we
are still learning on the job.

 

[go_the_dockers]

Got to disagree.

Clark - superb trade

Lobb - Good trade - provided structure, scored 30+ goals in a season - netted us a decent return for someone his age.

Matera - cheap as shit, worth a punt. Plenty of talent, not much application.

Kersten - Not good. Again talented, but a prick and lazy.

Colyer - superb pickup. Quick, did a role and provided leadership around the club. Big fan.

O'Meara - good pick up, highly versatile, at least B-grade wherever he plays, kicks goals and by all accounts excellent clubman. If you expected pre-knee O'Meara, I'm not sure what to tell you.

Aish - been a great pickup. We paid very little for a very solid and versatile player. Would've been one of the first names on the team sheet up until this year.

Hogan - no amount of support would've helped. Sydney's worked because no one gives a ** about him there, and he also probably realized it's last chance saloon. That's all on him. Again talented as **.

All of the above have been traded to either:
A) address a need.
B) provide versatility.

Have they all worked out? Of course not. Was anyone else available to us that would've worked out better? I'm guessing not. Given what they're working with, easily a pass mark. Again, we simply do not have the options of Eastern State sides.

We do seem to be getting first dibs on WA guns currently, long may that last.

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Lobb was the worst trade we have ever done.

We split pick 6 in the super draft to get him.

An absolute disaster.

You obviously don't value list space as I do, as a lot of the rest were just a waste of list space that stopped us recruiting other players.


You don't improve the club by trading out picks during the rebuild, especially when you target old c grade spuds.

I am not sure about Hogan, but we were negligent in not putting more support around him. We knew he had issues, but let him live with anyone.

 

[pK75]

This entire thread shows that hope is the killer, hope leads to despair.
People are despairing because we got so close to top 4 but failed at the final hurdle.
While I our injuries haven’t been too bad in terms of the number, the fact is we haven’t had our 1st, 2nd or even 3rd best key defender available at the same time all year. Cox and McDonald going down in the 1st game of the year was a massive blow to our defence. We got 1 game against Gold Coast with both Cox and Pearce in the team in which Pearce broke his arm. Cox is still no where near full fitness and the combination of him and Draper is not nearly as good as Pearce and Draper.
Darcy has been hampered all year and in and out of the team, this has caused significant issues to our forward line structure with Jackson spending over half the season as #1 ruck.
Sturt, Chapman, NOD and Stanley all missed large chunks of the season and forced positional switches (JOM and Banfield on the wing) which took time to bed down.
The fact we are still 6th and up until 2 weeks ago were top 4 is quite frankly a massive achievement given our availability.
Now our best KPF is unavailable and it seems like a critical mass of key players being unavailable may mean we miss finals.
This should take nothing away from the strides we’ve made this year. Treacy has announced himself. Sturt has shown his value in a functional forward line, Draper has won a rising star nomination. Hopefully we are about to unveil Reidy as a viable option in the ruck. Even if we do miss finals, we have been afforded a glimpse of what our future will look like and it’s very bright.
As for the next rebuild, no way, our time is now, we can’t wait for 18yo kids to develop at peel, we are 1-2 A graders away from mounting a serious challenge and should do whatever it takes to bring those players into the club.

 

[Mr Cheese]

Lobb was the worst trade we have ever done.

We split pick 6 in the super draft to get him.

An absolute disaster.

You obviously don't value list space as I do, as a lot of the rest were just a waste of list space that stopped us recruiting other players.


You don't improve the club by trading out picks during the rebuild, especially when you target old c grade spuds.

I am not sure about Hogan, but we were negligent in not putting more support around him. We knew he had issues, but let him live with anyone.

You clearly underestimate the value of development. Arguably, we've been one of the best development sides in the comp; that doesn't happen without players like Colyer, O'Meara on the list (look at NM). We cut hard in 2016 and needed some mature strength to right the ship. Also, we need to consider how well we were tracking in 2019 before everyone got injured.

As for Lobb, worst trade ever? Not even close (Jack Anthony says hi!), and from that draft we now have Clarke, Sturt (finally coming good), Hughes (great depth and solid contributor - again has aided development of others) and Schulz (now looking like a top 10 pick). Turned him into Hugh Davies and whatever we got for trading out Bulldog's 2nd in the '23 trade period.

As I said, I reckon we've got one of the best crews in the AFL doing this at the moment , especially given the cards we have dealt.

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[go_the_dockers]

You clearly underestimate the value of development. Arguably, we've been one of the best development sides in the comp; that doesn't happen without players like Colyer, O'Meara on the list (look at NM). We cut hard in 2016 and needed some mature strength to right the ship. Also, we need to consider how well we were tracking in 2019 before everyone got injured.

As for Lobb, worst trade ever? Not even close (Jack Anthony says hi!), and from that draft we now have Clarke, Sturt (finally coming good), Hughes (great depth and solid contributor - again has aided development of others) and Schulz (now looking like a top 10 pick). Turned him into Hugh Davies and whatever we got for trading out Bulldog's 2nd in the '23 trade period.

As I said, I reckon we've got one of the best crews in the AFL doing this at the moment , especially given the cards we have dealt.

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We didn't give up pick 6 for Anthony.

 

[Mr Cheese]

We didn't give up pick 6 for Anthony.

We didn't give up pick 6 for Lobb. Split for trade, sure, but don't dress it up like we got nothing back.

Also that top ten is chocker with go home factor. Word is we were heavy on Clark and thought he'd drop. He didn't so we took a flyer on Sturt.

It's simplistic to look at the trade in isolation without considering list needs at the time or where the club was at. Ross thought we were coming back to compete, and shy of a horror injury run, we may have been up and about.

New regime comes in and haven't put a foot wrong really. We've got the best squad we've had (possibly ever), with room to grow and people wanting to come here. We're a midfield bull (IMO Johnson developing) away from being a top-4 side. Add Bolton/Warner? Lookout.

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[Demons09]

We didn't give up pick 6 for Anthony.

And if we didn’t give up pick 6 for Lobb which is stretching the truth a bit where would we be now nostradamus .

 

[blue shark]

This entire thread shows that hope is the killer, hope leads to despair.
People are despairing because we got so close to top 4 but failed at the final hurdle.
While I our injuries haven’t been too bad in terms of the number, the fact is we haven’t had our 1st, 2nd or even 3rd best key defender available at the same time all year. Cox and McDonald going down in the 1st game of the year was a massive blow to our defence. We got 1 game against Gold Coast with both Cox and Pearce in the team in which Pearce broke his arm. Cox is still no where near full fitness and the combination of him and Draper is not nearly as good as Pearce and Draper.
Darcy has been hampered all year and in and out of the team, this has caused significant issues to our forward line structure with Jackson spending over half the season as #1 ruck.
Sturt, Chapman, NOD and Stanley all missed large chunks of the season and forced positional switches (JOM and Banfield on the wing) which took time to bed down.
The fact we are still 6th and up until 2 weeks ago were top 4 is quite frankly a massive achievement given our availability.
Now our best KPF is unavailable and it seems like a critical mass of key players being unavailable may mean we miss finals.
This should take nothing away from the strides we’ve made this year. Treacy has announced himself. Sturt has shown his value in a functional forward line, Draper has won a rising star nomination. Hopefully we are about to unveil Reidy as a viable option in the ruck. Even if we do miss finals, we have been afforded a glimpse of what our future will look like and it’s very bright.
As for the next rebuild, no way, our time is now, we can’t wait for 18yo kids to develop at peel, we are 1-2 A graders away from mounting a serious challenge and should do whatever it takes to bring those players into the club.

It’s so frustrating that when our arm is twisted we give players a go.
Appears to me it is an off field problem or inexperience.
AFL is a brutal sport for teams outside of Victoria, Eagles were talented but had
no idea how to play VFL footy, or umps that were biased to a degree.
Malthouse fixed the soft underbelly, standards were set and they started to physically bully teams, that lifted the whole competition to a new level of professionalism.
We have only seen this type of transformation under Ross Lyon, and it’s in the
preseason that we have to lift the standard because ATM it’s not good enough.
Probably our most talented squad we have ever assembled, and the depth at Peel
shows many players are too good for second tier footy.
No accountability or playing favourites isn’t helping anyone.