We were ripped off in Veale deal

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I think you'll find we now pay the 100%

You cannot be serious.
If that is the case then I want to know who is hogging more then their share. With that many kids !?!?

Money, might not mean winning (Milwall and Crystal Palace for Crying out loud!!!) but it will help you get there a lot more easily.

If 100% is being paid then you might wonder about the management of the salaries.
 

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Originally posted by Borgsta
short term gain though Westy is probably the survival of the club. Without the Rawlings deal we would have been painfully inept up forward again and probably also would not be anywhere near competitive in most of our matches this year.
The survival of the club is how I'm looking at it Borgsta.

With the TV rights deal in mind, the onus should be on being as competitive as possible (and standing on our own two feet) come 2006 and beyond. Up until then the AFL will be backing us, and most sponsorship is tied up for at least a couple of years. If we have these types of seasons after that point, the club's well and truly stuffed.

There's no doubt we would have been less competitive this year, but I think the club should be looking at the bigger picture. The worst case scenario of another shocker of a season would have resulted in another couple top 5 draft picks, another selection at 18 or so, and another #1 pre-season pick. If we had have kept our five top 20 draft picks last year, and got Stevens, that would have made for an influx of 10 quality, 10 year players in the space of two pre-seasons. Add those to Murhpy, Hahn, Harris and Guido to round off a group of 15 or so top tier players, + a fully developed Power, McMahon, Bowden, Birss, Gilbee & Co as your solid/serviceable 'foot soldiers' and you've got the makings of a squad that would be serious contenders year in year out for a bloody long time.

One or two years up there with short-sighted recruiting won't cut it for survival - the only chance the club will have to truly establish its viability in the long term is sustained success over a long period of time, and taking full advantage of the increased exposure, crowds and members associated with that, and in turn becoming a 'blue-chip' investment for sponsors - IMO the best way to have achieved that kind of prolonged success would have been to get as many gun kids on to the list as possible and have built a formidable unit from the ground up.

But instead they went the quick fix (to finish 10th-14th:rolleyes:), got r*ped on the Rawlings trade, handed over two prize top 20 draft picks and $300K+p.a. for a dime a dozen 26 year old half back flanker who averages less than 10 games a season + a ruckman who gets 3 touches in 200 minutes of footy, and blew an extra half million+ (equivalent of 5000 members) on the footy department.

When Rawlings and Koops are long gone (be lucky to have one of them still playing in that time-frame), the club will only have 3 long term players (Cooney, Ray, one top 20 pick this year) to show for two shlthouse seasons, when if they had have just sat back and let the natural system run its course, it could so easily have been 10 players and a serious shot at ultimate success and a chance of propelling the club towards long term financial stability.

Sorry about the thesis, but thinking about how he's butchered the best chance we've had of winning a flag in 50 years gets me pretty worked up.
 
It is hard for the bulldogs to be completely competitive when they are only paying 92.5%. I reckon that all AFL clubs should have to pay 98-100%, those poorer clubs like the bullies get this through taxing other richer clubs a higher rates. I'm sure no one wants to see the Bulldogs drop out but until they can pay the full amount they will struggle to retain all their players as well as attract new players from other clubs. This being said the bulldogs have quite a good list with a solid midfield of top line players such as Johnson, Smith, West. I'd hate to see the bullies be dumped like the roys.
 
Originally posted by localyokel
Westy has infinitely more kudos on this board than Hexwhateverhisnameis.

Not after this reference he doesn't.

" But instead they went the quick fix (to finish 10th-14th), got r*ped on the Rawlings trade, handed over two prize top 20 draft picks and $300K+p.a. for a dime a dozen 26 year old half back flanker who averages less than 10 games a season + a ruckman who gets 3 touches in 200 minutes of footy, and blew an extra half million+ (equivalent of 5000 members) on the footy department."

Absolutely inane!
 

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It's funny how when Rawlings was up for grabs everyone on BF wanted him for their club and kept going on about how they were gonna get him and so on. Now suddenly he isn't worth a piece of crap. I'm very happy with the whole Veal deal, it was perfect for the Bulldogs. Things just need to come together for the dogs thats all.
 
Originally posted by Matty01
It's funny how when Rawlings was up for grabs everyone on BF wanted him for their club and kept going on about how they were gonna get him and so on. Now suddenly he isn't worth a piece of crap. I'm very happy with the whole Veal deal, it was perfect for the Bulldogs. Things just need to come together for the dogs thats all.

Well said Matty01. Last year we couldn't take a contested mark inside 50 to save ourselves, this year we have a target who can mark. He can't kick, but hey you can't have everything. As I have said elsewhere, play him at CHF where he can use his marking ability, and play Darcy at FF.

As for Veale, if he works out, he works out. If not, the aim of the deal was to get Rawlings, which was achieved. The side has improved, we have a second ruckman who can release Darcy for other roles, and when things come together hopefully we string a few wins together and get some confidence and momentum.
 
Originally posted by Westy_Boy
The survival of the club is how I'm looking at it Borgsta.

With the TV rights deal in mind, the onus should be on being as competitive as possible (and standing on our own two feet) come 2006 and beyond. Up until then the AFL will be backing us, and most sponsorship is tied up for at least a couple of years. If we have these types of seasons after that point, the club's well and truly stuffed.

There's no doubt we would have been less competitive this year, but I think the club should be looking at the bigger picture. The worst case scenario of another shocker of a season would have resulted in another couple top 5 draft picks, another selection at 18 or so, and another #1 pre-season pick. If we had have kept our five top 20 draft picks last year, and got Stevens, that would have made for an influx of 10 quality, 10 year players in the space of two pre-seasons. Add those to Murhpy, Hahn, Harris and Guido to round off a group of 15 or so top tier players, + a fully developed Power, McMahon, Bowden, Birss, Gilbee & Co as your solid/serviceable 'foot soldiers' and you've got the makings of a squad that would be serious contenders year in year out for a bloody long time.

One or two years up there with short-sighted recruiting won't cut it for survival - the only chance the club will have to truly establish its viability in the long term is sustained success over a long period of time, and taking full advantage of the increased exposure, crowds and members associated with that, and in turn becoming a 'blue-chip' investment for sponsors - IMO the best way to have achieved that kind of prolonged success would have been to get as many gun kids on to the list as possible and have built a formidable unit from the ground up.

But instead they went the quick fix (to finish 10th-14th:rolleyes:), got r*ped on the Rawlings trade, handed over two prize top 20 draft picks and $300K+p.a. for a dime a dozen 26 year old half back flanker who averages less than 10 games a season + a ruckman who gets 3 touches in 200 minutes of footy, and blew an extra half million+ (equivalent of 5000 members) on the footy department.

When Rawlings and Koops are long gone (be lucky to have one of them still playing in that time-frame), the club will only have 3 long term players (Cooney, Ray, one top 20 pick this year) to show for two shlthouse seasons, when if they had have just sat back and let the natural system run its course, it could so easily have been 10 players and a serious shot at ultimate success and a chance of propelling the club towards long term financial stability.

Sorry about the thesis, but thinking about how he's butchered the best chance we've had of winning a flag in 50 years gets me pretty worked up.
Agree with most of that.Its very hard to look at it subjectively and with a thought to the future when your salivating at the thought of having an athletic pack marking forward in your side.I think we really need to take stock of where our list is at.In 2000 we all agreed that our next time for a shot at a flag would be around 2005-2006 while our current stars were still influencing games and our young guys are coming through.Our inability to develop those guys quick enough and the fact we have really only the last two seasons had genuinely low first round picks mean we have a heap of guys who will be good league footballers but few who can actually win a game off there own boot.We really need to keep building our list up with youth and not throw everything at having success during the West,Johnson,Grant,Smith era.

I think we need to slightly adjust our projections for our next shot at a flag.It has to be done properly because we dont want to get up there and then find we just dont have the quality and fall back down for another 2 or 3 year slump.Hopefully we hold onto our draft picks this season and we can add another 2 or 3 high quality kids to our list.I havent written off being realistic flag contenders by 2006 but we need to get someone in to develop the 20-22 year olds we have on our list.Also if you look at the structure of most succesful teams we probably need another two top notch kpp coming through.I was also thinking the other day that given our clubs fantastic injury management record since Wallace came to the club that Johnson,Smith,West and Rawlings may well play alot longer than we think.As we have seen with the likes of Hamill and Gehrig there is merit in trading for quality KPP and perhaps in 4 years time we will be singing the praises of this trade.
 
Originally posted by John Gent
Absolutely inane!
Which part didn't you quite understand or agree with?

Koops wouldn't be among the top 10 medium-sized defenders in the league, so he's among the 20 or so second-tier half back flankers a class below - hence dime a dozen. Has he not averaged less than 10 games a season in the last 9 years he's been on an AFL list? Is he not on a highish wage? Isn't a top 20 pick over the odds considering his age and position he's filling?

As for Street, he played the whole match against Essendon (according to Triple M) for two touches, and got one touch last week in over a half of game time. Got nothing against the bloke, and his rucking has been very good at times, but when considering:

a) he was out of contract and wanted to leave Geelong for more opportunities
b) had played 17 (mostly poor) games in 6 years and was in-line to be delisted mid-season
c) he has a lot of key weaknesses which are unlikely to be ironed out
d) we had next to no competition for his services from other clubs, and most importantly;
e) we had the #1 pick in the Pre-Season draft to bargain with

Do you honestly believes swapping a top 20 pick in a cracker of a draft for him was a good value trade?

As for the footy department comment, an extra assistant coach, chairman of selectors, fitness advisor, a recycled player or two instead of opting for kids on minimum contracts ... it all adds up, and being 4000 members down on last year, we certainly haven't recouped any of it back.
 
Originally posted by footscray1973
Well said Matty01. Last year we couldn't take a contested mark inside 50 to save ourselves, this year we have a target who can mark. He can't kick, but hey you can't have everything. As I have said elsewhere, play him at CHF where he can use his marking ability, and play Darcy at FF.

As for Veale, if he works out, he works out. If not, the aim of the deal was to get Rawlings, which was achieved. The side has improved, we have a second ruckman who can release Darcy for other roles, and when things come together hopefully we string a few wins together and get some confidence and momentum.
I agree. For Brown (25yo midfielder/goalsneak), we got the equivalent of Rawlings (26yo KPP) and Street (23yo tap ruckman who the jury is still out on - he has certainly improved Darcy's output just by being there). Structure has improved out of sight. The equivalent of Veale for Alvey is no great loss either. Some of you guys are very, very tough on Jade. He will be nothing but a great asset for us for the next 4 years at least (the guys has played nearly 100 games straight, so he is as robust as they come). At least we made a serious attempt to improve deficiencies in our list this year, unlike in previous years.
 
Originally posted by Sedat!
Some of you guys are very, very tough on Jade.
No-one is arguing his quality or value to the team. There's also absolutely no feeling of resentment towards Jade or the other players involved in these trades - they don't dictate what clubs should trade for them; the disappointment is aimed squarely at the footy department, and the thinking that the team would be in a better position with 3-5 years of footy from a key forward instead of 20 years of footy (combined) from two equally talented midfielders.
Originally posted by Sedat!
For Brown (25yo midfielder/goalsneak), we got the equivalent of Rawlings (26yo KPP) and Street
If it was just Brown, or just the draft pick, it would ok. But the aspect that's being forgotten is losing the opportunity to get an elite midfielder in Stevens for nothing.

The put it into perspective, an equivalent of what we've lost would be to have swapped an 18 year old Brad Johnson AND a 21 year old Scott West for someone like, say, Gary Lyon in 1994. Gun forward with a few years left in him, and worth more to the structure of the team than either player, but the shortsighted nature of the trade would have cost the team dearly long past his retirement.
 
Originally posted by Westy_Boy

The put it into perspective, an equivalent of what we've lost would be to have swapped an 18 year old Brad Johnson AND a 21 year old Scott West for someone like, say, Gary Lyon in 1994.



Would have stopped Lyon smashing us in that final though. Was it 10 goals?
 
Originally posted by Westy_Boy


If it was just Brown, or just the draft pick, it would ok. But the aspect that's being forgotten is losing the opportunity to get an elite midfielder in Stevens for nothing.




At the time the deal was put together though we there was no way of knowing that Stevens, Port and Collingwood wouldnt come to an agreement. For all we knew the best payer in the PS draft would be Ray Hall. You have to do deals in the here and now surely, not hold of on on the off chance that something better will come along.


At the time of doing we got the best deal we could.
 
Originally posted by localyokel
At the time the deal was put together though we there was no way of knowing that Stevens, Port and Collingwood wouldnt come to an agreement. For all we knew the best payer in the PS draft would be Ray Hall. You have to do deals in the here and now surely, not hold of on on the off chance that something better will come along.


At the time of doing we got the best deal we could.

Precisely!

And for the first time in memory we stole a march on the rest of the compeition by being smarter!

The point is also being lost that draft picks (beyond No. 3) are at best, calculated guesswork. Look at the number of failures - even within the top 10.

As for the comment that investing additional money in the football department is wasteful, this defies belief. Simply take a look at the successful clubs and note the correlation of the football department investment.
 
Originally posted by localyokel
At the time the deal was put together though we there was no way of knowing that Stevens, Port and Collingwood wouldnt come to an agreement.
It was always a genuine possibility. Talk had started on Thursday that a deal was looking unlikely, especially after Stevens rejected going to Carlton/Melbourne and therefore destroying Port's best chance of being compensated fairly. Even on the AFL site there were articles more than an hour before the deadline saying talks with Collingwood were off and he was almost definitely pre-season draft bound - I'm sure news would have filtered through the inner circles of the clubs a lot earlier.

Chances are that they knew, and chances are that even an hour after the deadline of knowing Stevens had fallen through to the PSD, they wouldn't have cared and have still been happy with the 'Veale deal', such was the desperation of getting a key forward.

Look at their explanation on the official site:

http://westernbulldogs.com.au/default.asp?pg=news&spg=display&articleid=125608

"Why didn’t we keep pick six and get Rawlings or even Stevens in the Pre Season Draft? Rawlings would not have made it to the pre season draft if the Bulldogs kept pick six. "

Just disregarded Stevens altogether.
 
Originally posted by Westy_Boy
It was always a genuine possibility. Talk had started on Thursday that a deal was looking unlikely, especially after Stevens rejected going to Carlton/Melbourne and therefore destroying Port's best chance of being compensated fairly. Even on the AFL site there were articles more than an hour before the deadline saying talks with Collingwood were off and he was almost definitely pre-season draft bound - I'm sure news would have filtered through the inner circles of the clubs a lot earlier.

Chances are that they knew, and chances are that even an hour after the deadline of knowing Stevens had fallen through to the PSD, they wouldn't have cared and have still been happy with the 'Veale deal', such was the desperation of getting a key forward.

Look at their explanation on the official site:

http://westernbulldogs.com.au/default.asp?pg=news&spg=display&articleid=125608

"Why didn’t we keep pick six and get Rawlings or even Stevens in the Pre Season Draft? Rawlings would not have made it to the pre season draft if the Bulldogs kept pick six. "

Just disregarded Stevens altogether.
Stevens was not in the frame because he commanded such a large salary (over 500K a season). That is ludicrous money for a midfielder, albeit a very talented one. Can half agree with you that we could have kept pick 6 and 20 and gotten maybe a Kane Tenace and a Billy Morrison, but these are "what ifs" and certainly would not have helped our cause in the next 3 years. If we have another 3 years like 2003, we may go out of business.

The key point missing is we were so bereft of mid-age players at the club, due to the appalling recruiting efforts of Mark Kleiman, that we had to import some experience in this area. Rawlings, Koops and Street all have the capacity to play over 100 games each for us, which is a more than palatable scenario.
 
Originally posted by Sedat!
Stevens was not in the frame because he commanded such a large salary.
The club invited Stevens and him manager to the Whitten Oval for discussions about crossing over during trade week - would they have done that if there was no chance of being able to afford his salary?
Originally posted by Sedat!
The key point missing is we were so bereft of mid-age players at the club, due to the appalling recruiting efforts of Mark Kleiman, that we had to import some experience in this area.
Agree fully with the void in the 23-27 year olds - disagree with the way of going about fixing it. Personally I reckon we should have let nature take its course, and waited for Murph, Hahn, Harris and Co to develop into that age group, and built a massive base of talent to take their place in the 20-23 group.

Taking the option of trading for that age group, when you're so far off the mark finals wise, only helps make you more competitive, but doesn't bring you any closer to a premiership, and in the blink of an eye they're pushing 30. 25/26 is the absolute worst age you can trade for somebody - they're right at the peak of their powers, and it's mostly going to be downhill from there. If we were top 4 and a key forward away from a flag, fine, but we had just finished 16th with an average losing margin in the second half of last year of 10 goals!

In terms of value, you look back at the draft in which Rawlings was originally taken, in hindsight he would have been worth about pick 8-10 - as a 16 year old. Logically, if the quality/depth of drafts have remained relatively similar, how on Earth can a player be worth more ten years on with most of their best football behind them, and their value and form can only head in one direction (downhill)? That's just in terms of pick 6 and totally disregards the opportunity to get Stevens for free.

This is the biggest reason as to why it's so disappointing: IMO the recruiting last year will improve us a fair bit, but not to a point where we can have a realistic shot at a flag in the next two years. With the imminent retirements of Grant, West, Smith and Darcy, and not enough young talent to compete with the St Kilda and Fremantle super lists after that point (which could have different if we picked up Tenace, Stevens, kept picks 19 and 20, and received an extra two top 20 picks this year), we're just in line for more middle of the road rubbish, leaving the club in no-man's land under the current system and doing nothing to ensure our long term survival.
 

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