Swans the new Richmond

[Melbournehammer]

Mmmm. Our drafting/trading under Roos 2003 till 07 really missed the mark imo. We had very little success with the national draft, gave away (relatively) good picks for Richards, Chambers, Everitt and Playfair who are all a bust. the key position players we did draft in that time we're all "project players" drafted late and didn't work out. If Grundy hadn't come on the way he has (and plenty thought he wouldn't) can you imagine how @@@@@@ we'd be this year with Boltons injury. And Hall and O'Loughlin we're always going to go, there was no succession plan for them at all (Past White, whom only last year was playing as a Ruck and has a long way to go still).

I also think Roos has failed in his trading for Mattner and Shaw. whilst we got them relatively cheap and they've been basically a success in terms of they're contributing players, the game doesn't revolve around 'Rebounding defenders' and it has unbalanced the team. We have plenty of on-ballers waiting in the wings, Meredith, Vez, MOD, Thornton, Smith, Heath hell even Jack could handle a back flank and they have many more years ahead of them. You could even throw McGlynn back there and TDL could take his spot up forward.

I like mattner and shaw. They aren't world beaters but they are comfortably best 22 players and do a good job.

Chambers at the end of the day was the only pick which really sucked, and everitt a year too late - just as the afl was changing the rules around stoppages.

but it was the actually drafting of willoughby, dok etc that were the problems. those busts hollowed out the list in terms of youngsters coming through.

[sWAns63]

I agree, our problems stem from our recruiting, or lack there of, in particular 06, 07and 08. We recruited the minimum numbers requiired from the draft and topped up with some ordinary players. And when we did decide to move on some players it was Schnieds and Dempster(both in their early 20s) for pick 26.
IMO we missed the boat by drafting so few between 06-08. The last thng we want to do now is bottom out while there is little on offer given all the best 17 year olds, as well as draft picks, are gone). It adds up to a lack of forward thinking/planning that was required 3-4 years ago.

The only thing that will happen if we don't have some sort of cleanout is that a bottoming out will happen anyway it will just take long time then we'll have to rebuild. With so many teams be able to beat us easily and other younger teams passing us in years to come we will bottom out anyway it will take longer maybe 5-10 years before we have a team that can win a flag, if we don't have at least a partial cleanout of a lot of the older, slower or mediocre types.
You never know a partial cleanout could have us knocking on the door for a flag in another 2-5 years