List Mgmt. Trade & Free Agency talk Pt 8

[_RT_]

 

[Coach_Required]

We wouldn't be looking at a wooden spoon with peak Dusty let's be honest

Peak Dusty .... those were the days

 

[_RT_]

Think his body language and mannerisms at times lead people to overlook his impact and instead just remember the bad moments more vividly. Hard to fathom Bolton is the one copping the most flack for the performances given his contributions though

I've been critical of Bolton this week in particular and while I'd like to say it's just body language and mannerisms that are causing it, there are things you see when watching him both around the ball and around the contest.

I've seen Bolton openly question forward line structures, when he has wanted to be the deepest forward and gets told to head up the half forward instead, I've also seen him play 30-40m behind his opponent when the ball is up in our D50 looking for the easy ball out the back, which invariably doesn't come off and I've seen him pretty much stop chasing in loose ball situations where the opposition has ended up with the footy, which allows them to have an easy rebound.

Granted he isn't the only one that does that, but he is one of our higher profile & experienced players and when we nit pick over the likes of Cumberland and Dow for failing to play to a high level, then we shouldn't look the other way when our better players aren't doing the basics at the required level.

 

[SunshineBoy]

CFL already working at diluting our picks

 

[Coach_Required]

CFL already working at diluting our picks

View attachment 2038300

Sam Landsberger is cooked.

There is no way Battle is getting a contract from the Hawks that will put him in the top 5% of salary earners in the league.

If the Hawks are offering him $900k per season to play (taking into account the 30% pay increase), then there needs to be an investigation.

 

[Rocco sifreddi]

Yeah, but what the club will be trying to do is get some elite talent in the draft who can make fairly immediate impact (ala Scheezel, Reid, Wardlaw), and from 2026-2030, when these kids are beginning to be stars of the comp we still have Balta, Bolton et al still in their prime at 27-32yo.

Sydney had back to back bottom 4 finishes in 2019-20….. they are now rising not just because of young stars hitting their peak (21-24yo) Gulden, Warner, McDonald, Blakey, Rowbottom, Amartey etc… it’s because they retained most of their mid-20’s players during their mini rebuild who remain at the peak of their powers :

Rampe : 34yo
Parker: 31yo
Lloyd: 30yo
Cunningham: 30yo
Heeney: 28yo
Papley : 27yo
Mills: 27yo

They also brought in Grundy, Adams who are both 30yo.

If you focus on kids alone then you end up as North, who have nobody of any quality 27yo+. I believe North will eventually climb the ladder (7 x top-5 picks and AFL handouts galore says you simply have to).

But I’d prefer to keep any quality under 27yo so we can be competitive from 2026 onwards… if we trade out Bolton, lose Baker, lose Dusty, maybe trade Rioli, lost a few to retirement etc… we won’t be competitive again until 2029 onwards at best.

We can do both - get elite talent and keep most of our elite players.



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We might not have a choice , they might want to jump ship

 

[THE_GUN]

If i am Baker Perth is nice to go home but I would be having a coffee with Dimma. Make way more sense and we would get a better pick for him. Pick 10

Mega trade
Shai, Baker and pick 22

For picks 8 10 and Ethan Read ... hardwick owes us one

Thats actually not a great trade

 

[Frustrated Tiger]

1 bad year from Bolton and we're ready to lynch him.... whole team is having a crap year.

 

[_RT_]

1 bad year from Bolton and we're ready to lynch him.... whole team is having a crap year.

Let me just say I'm not looking to send Bolton on his way and I agree the whole team has struggled, however when you hear/read the reports that he has met with the WA teams and then see his form drop away in the aftermath, questions start getting asked as to whether Bolton is actually happy here under Yzes coaching and vision for the future.

 

[Bojangles17]

What us fans think and what the club thinks are 2 very different things so I wouldn't be too concerned with what is said on here.

The way i see it the club is not looking to trade anyone and would keep them all even Dusty if they got to choose. The cub just wants to go to the draft with what we have and the hope of improving our draft hand whatever that looks like depends on where those teams we are hoping to swap with finish on the ladder.

Maybe maybe not , trading out a reasonably valuable commodity would dramatically improve our hand , only Blair could answer that we have slid along way tho and being more active than less may be a good plan

 

[beema limapep]

So for arguments sake you would trade Dusty this year if he was only 25 this year?

Bolton ain't Dusty.

 

[Tigerbob]

Building a list is an art form. No doubt. Yes it requires balance of draft, trade and free agency.

But when a draft comes along like this, where the top 25-30 picks are in one recruiters words “As good as I’ve ever seen” you need to pull the trigger and say, this is where we can capatalise and get in A grade talent to develop together. Next phase is add to that through draft, trade and FA.

I’m all for trading our older talent to get into the first round this year and next years draft.

 

[SunshineBoy]

Building a list is an art form. No doubt. Yes it requires balance of draft, trade and free agency.

But when a draft comes along like this, where the top 25-30 picks are in one recruiters words “As good as I’ve ever seen” you need to pull the trigger and say, this is where we can capatalise and get in A grade talent to develop together. Next phase is add to that through draft, trade and FA.

I’m all for trading our older talent to get into the first round this year and next years draft.

Don’t recruiter's say this every year?

 

[Serenitylater]

CFL already working at diluting our picks

View attachment 2038300

If that happens,they need to tear down AFL house.

 

[THE_GUN]

If done strategically its easier to rebuild a list these days that when we got lids

• Free agency
• Soon to come in trading out cap space for picks

 

[Muddiemoose]

Bolton ain't Dusty.

He’s the closest thing we have to him on our list and potentially just as damaging as a player in that mid fwd role and he hasn’t even hit his prime yet

It’s not like he’s 29 and got a handful of good years yet
Bolton is only 25

Unless you think we are going to be in the wilderness for over 6 years no way would you even consider moving him on

Like I said earlier it’s not like we won’t already have a decent amount of picks this year

 

[THE_GUN]

He’s the closest thing we have to him on our list

What about

 

[beema limapep]

He’s the closest thing we have to him on our list and potentially just as damaging as a player in that mid fwd role and he hasn’t even hit his prime yet

It’s not like he’s 29 and got a handful of good years yet
Bolton is only 25

Unless you think we are going to be in the wilderness for over 6 years no way would you even consider moving him on

Like I said earlier it’s not like we won’t already have a decent amount of picks this year

I think we will be in the wilderness for 4 to 6 years, and Bolton is the type of player who will be wasted in our side, yet also overrated.

He will only thrive in a good team.

 

[YeOldTiger]

If i am Baker Perth is nice to go home but I would be having a coffee with Dimma. Make way more sense and we would get a better pick for him. Pick 10

Mega trade
Shai, Baker and pick 22

For picks 8 10 and Ethan Read ... hardwick owes us one

Damien Hardwick owes Richmond nothing. Zero. Zilch. Richmond fans owe Hardwick a beer, every single one of us.

Anyone who thinks he owes us anything is either deluded, suffering short term memory loss or was on the dark side of the moon for 37 years since 1982.

 

[YeOldTiger]

Think his body language and mannerisms at times lead people to overlook his impact and instead just remember the bad moments more vividly. Hard to fathom Bolton is the one copping the most flack for the performances given his contributions though

About a year ago Shai was being talked about as the best player in the comp. He's 25. Unless he asks for it he ain't going anywhere. Too many people here are playing fantasy football or NBA dot com or whatever with the club and aren't basing their "moves" on what's actually real lol

 

[Frustrated Tiger]

Going to be a magnificent off season...

 

[Meteoric Rise]

If done strategically its easier to rebuild a list these days that when we got lids

• Free agency
• Soon to come in trading out cap space for picks

We seemed to get our drafting and trading closer to industry standard(or better) when Francis Jackson started full time in 2006.

From there lower finishes 2006-2012 inclusive, where we finished from the bottom of the ladder 8th 1st 8th 2nd 2nd 6th 7th produced:

Trades - Polak, McMahon, A Thomson, M Farmer, S Morris, I Maric, A Edwards

Draft - Riewoldt(13), Edwards(26), J King(rookie), Cotchin(2), Rance(18), Vickery(8)....recruiting department expanded for 2009.....Martin(3), Griffiths(19), Astbury(35), Grimes(PSD), Conca(6), Batchelor(30), Houli(PSD), B Ellis(15), Vlastuin(9), McIntosh(31)

So in uncompromised drafts we'd have got picks 1 2 2 6 7 8 8

What we actually got was picks 2 3 6 8 8(traded for Polak + pick 13) 9 15

To balance that slightly we got 1 priority pick at pick 18.

From that across 7 consecutive drafts when we finished bottom 8 on the ladder, we produced the following players with very significant careers:

Rd 1 picks - Riewoldt, Cotchin, Rance, B Ellis, Vlastuin

Rd 2 picks - Edwards, Astbury, McIntosh

later, rookie or PSD picks - Grimes, Houli

Trades, Ivan Maric and Steve Morris have proven the 2 most valuable of those, partly for deeds off field & post career.

We actually did very well with our high picks over that 7 year period, but we dropped away sharply with lower picks producing relatively little. But since 2014 the recruiting department has been fully stocked to industry standard and we seem to do much better with later picks.

I do think you are right, you get a lot more decent players in more quickly these days if you had a series of lower finishes on the ladder. We seem to consistently produce a decent player per year with our later picks or SSP/MSD. The likes of Bauer, Blight, Mansell, Baker, Short, Graham, Lefau, Young, Miller, Ross, Ryan, Coulthard, Ralphsmith, Campbell, Trezise, Gray, Smith, perhaps Green - the best 9-10 of these taken pick 40 or later over the last 10 years are likely to form almost half of our 2027 team. We were shocking with these lower value picks 2006-14. So there is almost 1 best 22 footballer per year we are finding now surplus to that period. Then as you say, free agents. We have been sparing but Lynch is obviously the big one we landed. You couldn't do that through most of the period we were building our Premiership teams.

We drafted 10 players who went on to have finals level significant careers between 2006-12 in those 7 drafts. There is every chance you could do that in around 3-4 drafts now, and we basically already commenced in 2021. We will get sufficient opportunity, it will just come down to whether the guys we pick turn out to be good, very good or like Cotchin, Dusty, Riewoldt, Rance etc, absolutely outstanding.

 

[Morro]

Is there anything reported of any substance that Bolton has met with in WA side? I call BS

 

[prodigy]

Is there anything reported of any substance that Bolton has met with in WA side? I call BS

He probably has. I think we all need to open our eyes to this new reality. Players will meet with clubs and assess what's best for their future. Yes he is in contract and it's a bit strange but it is what it is.

 

[Mr Magic]

should we entertain the idea of getting Tim English?

I know we have Nank, and Nank still plays obviously but Tim is a different player. Could he fit in our mix and deliver down the track in terms of premierships?

We could not give the world to him money wise, but I have the feeling the bulldogs under cap pressure, could be looking to offload, Lobb is interesting for them and Darcy will be at the Bulldogs where the sky is the limit

To me trading for English is not a option but what about via free agency? not that much older than Bolton, Balta. Maric and Nank might be able to help him a bit to.

Unlike Gawn and Grundy I think Nank and English could work because English is more around the ground, and forward, Nank in and under doing the tough stuff and as a combatant could compliment each other. We are not expecting to win in 2025 anyway so it in that regard would not kill a campaign. Tim could grow with us as we build towards our next premiership tilt

Usually I am not big chasing rucks, and I am not jumping at this either but is this an opportunity that suits us and Tim where the stars are aligned? It would require our mix to adapt but does this suit us? Balta could play ruck rover at times as one option in moments. I reckon we could use our talls in ways others probably cannot because they do not have the versatility

We have guys like Balta, Gray, Gibcus, even Miller that can play a few different ways. That means we can play talls in different ways to really cause problems to opposition mixes. It might might mean Balta gets limited time in the ruck and can be exploited elsewhere, likewise others depending on matchups. We could really try different combinations, including Kosi and Bauer. It takes the pressure of the likes of Lefau as he does not have to be a dominate key but he is starting anyway. It might allow Lefau pinch hit ruck for something different down the track as one of a few options. Our talls are not really the same which is the beauty of being able to use them in different ways in combination to create a real combined weapon for us

I was doing some investigation, apparently he has concussion history, so his value has dropped again, maybe not and maybe this might be the problem

 

[YeOldTiger]

I've been critical of Bolton this week in particular and while I'd like to say it's just body language and mannerisms that are causing it, there are things you see when watching him both around the ball and around the contest.

I've seen Bolton openly question forward line structures, when he has wanted to be the deepest forward and gets told to head up the half forward instead, I've also seen him play 30-40m behind his opponent when the ball is up in our D50 looking for the easy ball out the back, which invariably doesn't come off and I've seen him pretty much stop chasing in loose ball situations where the opposition has ended up with the footy, which allows them to have an easy rebound.

Granted he isn't the only one that does that, but he is one of our higher profile & experienced players and when we nit pick over the likes of Cumberland and Dow for failing to play to a high level, then we shouldn't look the other way when our better players aren't doing the basics at the required level.

Dude if we played in a grand final in 4/5 years there one bloke on our list that I would have as favourite for the Norm Smith Medal and that's Shai Bolton.

At 25 Dusty wasn't perfect and didn't do all the defensive stuff required every time but Dimma came up with a game plan to use players strengths to cover various parts of the ground. It worked great because he famously said that he'd utilise their strengths and cover their weaknesses.

I don't want to see Shai Bolton winning the Normie in purple or blue and gold. That would kill ! Knowing he was out guy and we traded him out because he wasn't perfect.

Unless Shai Bolton asks to leave we would be crazy to part with him just when he's going to peak for the next few years.

I think people are forgetting what this guy can do when he's switched on, motivated, and we are heading for finals. He's your cherry on the top that wins you the flag. There's maybe half a dozen in the comp.

He signed on for five years. Let's look at what he can do, not what he can't and build the team around the bloke.

Geez, it ain't rocket surgery.