Strategy Trade and List management (Add your rumour to the simmering stew that is the post season. Edition.)

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We need an explosive midfielder that can burst out of packs and kick goals. Well, we need a few things. But we're behind the ball when it comes to pace. But when you look at what a guy like Treloar can do for Collingwood, it seems like it'd be a rather good combination to pair a mid like that with some clearance beasts like Macrae/Libba/Bont etc that can win ball>flick out to running mid>goal.

Part of me thinks it'd be interesting to see, while we have not much to lose this season, us chuck JJ in the middle and see if he can play that role to some extent. Ideally I'd just want him back in defence, but it seems Bevo has moved on from that from the way he's using other players now. Maybe instead of putting JJ up forward where him touching the ball depends on other players winning it, kind of negating the advantage he brings, they need to get him more involved with the play, and let him be that driving guy again. What bothers me most though is that JJ was, structurally, perhaps our most important player in 2016. He gets tagged out of a few games in 2017 so we give up on trying and chuck him forward, giving up on what was an extremely important piece of the puzzle.


Richards will be this in 2-3 years. Wait until he gets a bit of size.

Hearing there are a few in this years draft as well.

Ps I will were Sam Power- I would be on the phone to Josh Kelly's agent every week until October next year. He would be so perfect for us.
 
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We need an explosive midfielder that can burst out of packs and kick goals. Well, we need a few things. But we're behind the ball when it comes to pace. But when you look at what a guy like Treloar can do for Collingwood, it seems like it'd be a rather good combination to pair a mid like that with some clearance beasts like Macrae/Libba/Bont etc that can win ball>flick out to running mid>goal.

Part of me thinks it'd be interesting to see, while we have not much to lose this season, us chuck JJ in the middle and see if he can play that role to some extent. Ideally I'd just want him back in defence, but it seems Bevo has moved on from that from the way he's using other players now. Maybe instead of putting JJ up forward where him touching the ball depends on other players winning it, kind of negating the advantage he brings, they need to get him more involved with the play, and let him be that driving guy again. What bothers me most though is that JJ was, structurally, perhaps our most important player in 2016. He gets tagged out of a few games in 2017 so we give up on trying and chuck him forward, giving up on what was an extremely important piece of the puzzle.

I'm loving Gowers development and at least for the moment prefer him in our team over Stringer but this is one aspect Gowers will never be able to match Stringer in.
 
I'm loving Gowers development and at least for the moment prefer him in our team over Stringer but this is one aspect Gowers will never be able to match Stringer in.

Like being able to run away from where the ball his heading or standing back and letting his opponent run away.

Don't get me wrong Stringer is always worth his place on goals kicked alone but he will never be the superstar we thought he was going to be.
 

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We need an explosive midfielder that can burst out of packs and kick goals. Well, we need a few things. But we're behind the ball when it comes to pace. But when you look at what a guy like Treloar can do for Collingwood, it seems like it'd be a rather good combination to pair a mid like that with some clearance beasts like Macrae/Libba/Bont etc that can win ball>flick out to running mid>goal.

Part of me thinks it'd be interesting to see, while we have not much to lose this season, us chuck JJ in the middle and see if he can play that role to some extent. Ideally I'd just want him back in defence, but it seems Bevo has moved on from that from the way he's using other players now. Maybe instead of putting JJ up forward where him touching the ball depends on other players winning it, kind of negating the advantage he brings, they need to get him more involved with the play, and let him be that driving guy again. What bothers me most though is that JJ was, structurally, perhaps our most important player in 2016. He gets tagged out of a few games in 2017 so we give up on trying and chuck him forward, giving up on what was an extremely important piece of the puzzle.
Rhylee West.
 
The middle is our biggest weakness in my opinion despite having three guns. We lack the players to compliment them well, our depth is near non existent, our better players from 2-5 years ago, like Wallis, Libba, Dahlhaus have been found out with the modern game, or haven't been able to get on the field due to form or injuries.
In the last 3 years we have drafted 1 genuine midfielder (Porter last year, with a pick in the 70's that we only had because at the last minute we delisted and re-rookied Roarke Smith). We have not used any rookie selections in that time on a midfielder, and we have not traded in any midfielders in that time. We've also shipped off fringe mids like Hrovat and Stevens. Before anyone pipes up, Dunks and Lipinski are not mids - they are hybrid high half-forwards (and part time rucks in Dunks' case).

So with the most critical area of the ground in the modern game, that demands gut running and significant depth of personnel, we are actually net minus 1 in the last 3 years. Meanwhile other clubs have been loading up on mids via trades and the draft, knowing that running power over the course of 120 minutes is absolutely fundamental to success. What sort of list management is that?

On the weekend we had no less than 6 key position defenders not playing seniors - Morris, Adams, Roberts, Young, Collins, Naughton. Our list is lopsided and the midfield is the one area that has been completely neglected. We are killing Macrae, Bont, McLean and Hunter.

I hope we urgently address this in the off-season.
 
In the last 3 years we have drafted 1 genuine midfielder (Porter last year, with a pick in the 70's that we only had because at the last minute we delisted and re-rookied Roarke Smith). We have not used any rookie selections in that time on a midfielder, and we have not traded in any midfielders in that time. We've also shipped off fringe mids like Hrovat and Stevens. Before anyone pipes up, Dunks and Lipinski are not mids - they are hybrid high half-forwards (and part time rucks in Dunks' case).

So with the most critical area of the ground in the modern game, that demands gut running and significant depth of personnel, we are actually net minus 1 in the last 3 years. Meanwhile other clubs have been loading up on mids via trades and the draft, knowing that running power over the course of 120 minutes is absolutely fundamental to success. What sort of list management is that?

On the weekend we had no less than 6 key position defenders not playing seniors - Morris, Adams, Roberts, Young, Collins, Naughton. Our list is lopsided and the midfield is the one area that has been completely neglected. We are killing Macrae, Bont, McLean and Hunter.

I hope we urgently address this in the off-season.
If Hrovat and Stevens are midfielders, but Dunkley is a hybrid high half-forward instead of a midfielder, you're misrepresenting facts to fit your argument.

The premise that we needed to increase/maintain the number of midfielders on our list is completely flawed, because it doesn't take into account that we had too many midfielders a couple of years ago, which forced competent footballers like hrovat and Stevens to seek more opportunity elsewhere.

While we had six key position defenders not playing seniors, we also had a lot of midfielders not playing seniors: Wallis, Dunkley, Jong, Webb, honeychurch, porter, libba, clay and Picken (if you're going to include an injured Naughton and count hrovat as a midfielder, then all these guys should be counted as midfielders not playing seniors).

If you want to see the real gap in our list, look at medium/small forwards.

As we're bringing libba and West into the mix next year, the club doesn't really need to do much more to shore up the midfield- otherwise we may overcompensate like we have with talls.
 

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While we had six key position defenders not playing seniors, we also had a lot of midfielders not playing seniors: Wallis, Dunkley, Jong, Webb, honeychurch, porter, libba, clay and Picken (if you're going to include an injured Naughton and count hrovat as a midfielder, then all these guys should be counted as midfielders not playing seniors).
If rotations are even further reduced as expected, we are going to need more gut-running mids, not less. I reckon we've neglected this area in the last 3 years, which is a shame because in the couple of years prior to that we smashed just about every midfield draft selection out of the ball park (Bont, Macrae, McLean, Daniel to a lesser extent).

Also with regard to your comparison between key defenders vs mids not currently playing seniors, we only need 2 key defenders in our senior team but we need at least 6-8 mids. So of course there should be some mids not playing seniors. I just think 6 key defenders as depth is overkill. Why did we give Roberts a multi-year contract for example? List spots should be precious commodities, not simply given away for 1-2 senior games a year.
 
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If Hrovat and Stevens are midfielders, but Dunkley is a hybrid high half-forward instead of a midfielder, you're misrepresenting facts to fit your argument.

The premise that we needed to increase/maintain the number of midfielders on our list is completely flawed, because it doesn't take into account that we had too many midfielders a couple of years ago, which forced competent footballers like hrovat and Stevens to seek more opportunity elsewhere.

While we had six key position defenders not playing seniors, we also had a lot of midfielders not playing seniors: Wallis, Dunkley, Jong, Webb, honeychurch, porter, libba, clay and Picken (if you're going to include an injured Naughton and count hrovat as a midfielder, then all these guys should be counted as midfielders not playing seniors).

If you want to see the real gap in our list, look at medium/small forwards.

As we're bringing libba and West into the mix next year, the club doesn't really need to do much more to shore up the midfield- otherwise we may overcompensate like we have with talls.

I think we are talking about quality not quantity. Those players you mentioned as our next tier mid's don't exactly scare anyone. Its not about how many mids we have, but the quality of them. All the good teams have a few good mid's and depth. We have 3-4. Small forwards is an issue. But midfield needs as much work
 
I think we are talking about quality not quantity. Those players you mentioned as our next tier mid's don't exactly scare anyone. Its not about how many mids we have, but the quality of them. All the good teams have a few good mid's and depth. We have 3-4. Small forwards is an issue. But midfield needs as much work
How did this happen? We had the deepest midfield in the league 2 years ago.
 
If rotations are even further reduced as expected, we are going to need more gut-running mids, not less. I reckon we've neglected this area in the last 3 years, which is a shame because in the couple of years prior to that we smashed just about every midfield draft selection out of the ball park (Bont, Macrae, McLean, Daniel to a lesser extent).

Also with regard to your comparison between key defenders vs mids not currently playing seniors, we only need 2 key defenders in our senior team but we need at least 6-8 mids. So of course there should be some mids not playing seniors. I just think 6 key defenders as depth is overkill. Why did we give Roberts a multi-year contract for example? List spots should be precious commodities, not simply given away for 1-2 senior games a year.
We may only need two key defenders, but we'd usually play three. If you think all of those six you've listed are depth, rather than injured (Naughton) and returning from long term injury (Morris and Adams), you're kidding yourself.

When Roberts was resigned, he was top 10 in our 2017 BnF count and had recently played a great role in prelim and grand finals. At the time, we also didn't have trengove and naughton while young was yet to play a game.

You can say what you want about having too many key defenders, but the reality is if we'd decided to have fewer, naughton would be the one we missed out on. List imbalances can be fixed by delisting/trading a couple of them down the track, but you don't get the opportunity to recruit a player like naughton very often.
 
How did this happen? We had the deepest midfield in the league 2 years ago.
Or we didn't. And that was us overrating our list. Which success brings about. I think that Beveridge was able to take a list not premiership quality, to a premiership. A list a lot worse and younger than Richmond's last year.
So what we are seeing now is a revert to the mean.
 
Or we didn't. And that was us overrating our list. Which success brings about. I think that Beveridge was able to take a list not premiership quality, to a premiership. A list a lot worse and younger than Richmond's last year.
So what we are seeing now is a revert to the mean.

Outside of Riewoldt, Martin, Cotchin and Rance Richmond's list isn't that good. They just don't get injuries
 
We may only need two key defenders, but we'd usually play three. If you think all of those six you've listed are depth, rather than injured (Naughton) and returning from long term injury (Morris and Adams), you're kidding yourself.

When Roberts was resigned, he was top 10 in our 2017 BnF count and had recently played a great role in prelim and grand finals. At the time, we also didn't have trengove and naughton while young was yet to play a game.

You can say what you want about having too many key defenders, but the reality is if we'd decided to have fewer, naughton would be the one we missed out on. List imbalances can be fixed by delisting/trading a couple of them down the track, but you don't get the opportunity to recruit a player like naughton very often.
If we knew we were into trengove and Naughton (and likely we would have) when we re-signed Roberts, why re-sign him? And why for two years? Why not wait to re-sign fringe players that other clubs arent going to be chasing anyway? Ditto Campbell, while leaving Wallis and Dahl unsigned.

Dumb list management on multiple fronts.
 
In the last 3 years we have drafted 1 genuine midfielder (Porter last year, with a pick in the 70's that we only had because at the last minute we delisted and re-rookied Roarke Smith). We have not used any rookie selections in that time on a midfielder, and we have not traded in any midfielders in that time. We've also shipped off fringe mids like Hrovat and Stevens. Before anyone pipes up, Dunks and Lipinski are not mids - they are hybrid high half-forwards (and part time rucks in Dunks' case).

So with the most critical area of the ground in the modern game, that demands gut running and significant depth of personnel, we are actually net minus 1 in the last 3 years. Meanwhile other clubs have been loading up on mids via trades and the draft, knowing that running power over the course of 120 minutes is absolutely fundamental to success. What sort of list management is that?

On the weekend we had no less than 6 key position defenders not playing seniors - Morris, Adams, Roberts, Young, Collins, Naughton. Our list is lopsided and the midfield is the one area that has been completely neglected. We are killing Macrae, Bont, McLean and Hunter.

I hope we urgently address this in the off-season.
Great to see you back on here Sedat!
 
Or we didn't. And that was us overrating our list. Which success brings about. I think that Beveridge was able to take a list not premiership quality, to a premiership. A list a lot worse and younger than Richmond's last year.
So what we are seeing now is a revert to the mean.
Don't buy that for a second.
We made finals two years in a row with a game based on heavy midfield rotations precisely because we had the depth. Both years we were barely a game off top spot and experienced heavy injuries.
We should stop making excuses for underperformance.
 
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