Might get banned for this but whatever
For 20 years now, Geelong have had a unmatched ability to recruit and keep players. They are quite simply untouchable in this respect. Gary Ablett and his 2 mill aside, no one has ever been squeezed out of this club for salary cap reasons despite simply having the best list over this time period. All the while this has happened they have been able to still poach players at the same time, time and time again. Im pretty confident that if I market valued the current Geelong list, they should be about 30% over the cap
The question is. Do they have the greatest list management team in the country? or do we need to dig a bit more deeper below the surface?
Some considerations:
- Yes the list management team is very good, the club is very well run.
- We don't pay high salaries, we do play lesser lights more than you think. The players know this and understand this, so therefore we don't have well you pay that hack 600K why not me problems. This is also means we don't get many players leaving for more money, it is usually for more opportunity to play seniors.
- We also delist players pretty fast if the club thinks they are not up to it.
- When players do leave we usually try hard to get them to where they want to go. This is a positive factor if you are a professional footballer.
- A lot of footballers are from country areas and this is a club where they can live regionally but still easy to get to training.
- Houses are cheaper. Things are cheaper in general.
- You can live in Victoria and go surfing every morning.
- The club consistently plays in multiple finals a year - players value that.
- We win more than we lose.
- Even with all that, the big city is only an hour up the road unless you go in peak hour.
- We also get linked with every single potentially available player every year whether true or not.