Max and Jake are our future. Rebuild 2.0 should begin now.

[CrowToon]

Max and Jake should be announced Captain and Vice. Don't care which is which but they are the only two who come anywhere near deserving it.

They are both future AA selections. One will win the gold jacket this year and share it between them for the next 5. I can't say the same about anyone else at this stage.

Sholl, McHenry, Berry are garbage. Jones, Worrell are serviceable but average. Rachele and Rankine are cream on top players and we don't have a cake yet. Pedlar would've made this duo a trio but this year he has been a shadow of himself, I live in hope but maybe he is a player in the same vein as Rankine and Rachele where you see their best when others are playing well enough.

Fog isn't kicking on, Thilthorpe hasn't broken out, is now injured and we never saw any consistency.

Our defence is an absolute shambles so I fail to see how we make finals from here.

If we want to make finals by 2030 we need to sack Nicks and start again.

 

[Rotayjay]

It's a tremendous shame, because last year when we were doing things like smashing Carlton, almost beating the premiers and beating the runners up, it looked like we were getting somewhere. It looked like Tex might hang on just long enough for another premiership tilt.

Now we look to be stuck in that no man's land where you've been rebuilding for years, but still can't quite make the eight or win a final. I highly doubt whether our current crop of players can take us anywhere.

 

[Billy_01]

Jake is good will end up a Sidebottom type player but if he’s our future after all the first round picks we’ve had then **** me we’re worse off than I thought.

 

[SellarStardom]

No players can shine in the Nick's game plan, it's horrendous what he has done to the side making them a chipping slow, down the line team

 

[Bob Neil]

I think Rebuild 1.0 is very likely to fail for reasons well articulated elsewhere.

The choice our administration now faces is to either 'ride it out' with the current coach and the bulk of this list which might at best deliver an appearance in the bottom half of the finals in the next 2-3 years but not ever seriously threatening for premiership contention or at worst will see our progress of recent years stall this year with last year's 10th place (11-12) record ultimately being the high watermark in this cycle. This would inevitably lead to Rebuild 2.0 in a few years' time the intervening years of which are basically wasted.

Alternatively, they could see the writing on the call and do a 'mid-rebuild reset' now (call it Rebuild 1.1) in which we (i) replace the coach ("thanks Nicksy but you've taken us as far as you can") with a proven 'finisher' (Goodwin, Simpson, Scott, Longmire) (ii) re-tool the list by farewelling players who either won't be part of our next flag (Walker, Sloane, Laird, Smith) or simply aren't up to the necessary standard (Murphy, McHenry, Sholl, Himmelberg) to generate the maximum possible draft capital and salary cap space to acquire the next round of draftees and free agents that we need to make the next (and hardest) leg of the rebuilding journey into the top 8 and finally premiership contention.

Our current predicament doesn't need to be terminal but it would require hard decisions now (in the next 8-12 weeks if our trajectory doesn't change) and we've got no precedent or reason to believe our club has the culture, leadership or stomach to do so.