2018 trading, drafting and list management: players and personnel

[Markwebbos]

I wonder if Saints would give us their pick 4 and next year’s second rounder in return for our 1st and 2nd rounders this year? Then they get more picks this year and provided we can get the points for Blakey we get another pick next year.

[Cosmic Wizard]

I am not to sure a bid will come early for Blakey.

There are so many next generation and fathers sons that if someone start biding their own people might get targeted immediately.

List managers have long memories.

Also why bother? The bid will be match, might as well bid on the King Twins.

Also it time to play hard with St Kilda who have stupidly show their hand.

They want Hannas to sell hope, they can have him with one of our second round in return for their first.

[Matty10]

Also it time to play hard with St Kilda who have stupidly show their hand.

They want Hannas to sell hope, they can have him with one of our second round in return for their first.

If, as a club, the Swans are happy to let Hannebery go (in terms of cap relief or form / injury), then I don’t think we would be looking to play hard - just fair.

St Kilda could just as easily turn walk away from the deal. It doesn’t serve their administration well to pay out more than they should in any case - so why would they?

[Markwebbos]

I am not to sure a bid will come early for Blakey.

There are so many next generation and fathers sons that if someone start biding their own people might get targeted immediately.

List managers have long memories.

Also why bother? The bid will be match, might as well bid on the King Twins.

Also it time to play hard with St Kilda who have stupidly show their hand.

They want Hannas to sell hope, they can have him with one of our second round in return for their first.

If we play hardball like that we’d be forcing Saints to go all in on Hanners. It’s going to be a delicate negotiation. Knowing the Swans we’ll try and get a quick deal rather than the best deal possible.

[Ludwig]

Sorry, but that is flat out wrong (both factually, and IMO, ethically).

Unless we have a pick before Blakey is bid upon (possibly but not probable, IMO), our earliest picks will go towards Blakey. We can't say that we'll keep our first pick (wherever that lands) to use on another party, and package up a load of 4th round picks to get Blakey. I know you know that.

So for the scenario you suggest to eventuate, our available pick would have to be a 4th round pick. Let's say we enter the draft with the first four 4th round draft picks. They are worth 753 points in total. Suppose Blakey is bid on at 10 (I suspect it will be closer to 6 or 7 but lets work with 10). We would need 1,116 points. So we are short. The balance would be taken off our first round pick next year.

Even if we somehow traded for the next three picks in the 4th round (which, on paper, provide sufficient points) we can't put them all towards Blakey unless we strip our list back so far that we have 7 vacant spots on the list to fill. You can't use more picks than you have spots. Even allowing for the fact that the Swans will probably aim at a senior list of 38, giving them two apparent list spots that they'll have no intention of filling, that still means we have to pick 4 more players in additional to Blakey, and these would all be taken in the late 4th or 5th rounds (or beyond). That seems to be an extraordinary conniption in an attempt to game the system and pay for Blakey with loose change.

And if a bid comes for Blakey at 7, say, rather than 10, that's the best part of another 200 points that need to be found.

If the Swans choose to trade their first and two second round picks this year for players who will genuinely strengthen the list, that's one thing. But there's no point trading those picks just for the sake of it, and losing the chance to draft another decent young player in the second or third round (once picks have been pushed back after Blakey is paid for).

Ethically, I have an issue with clubs (or more fans or clubs - I don't think we've seen as much of this happen as fans talk about it) deliberately trading out higher picks just because they have the concession of an academy or FS player. We all know that the shape of the curve they've used to assign pick values is wrong. Even a large handful of late picks don't come close to the value of the first round pick, not in real terms.

I'll defend the importance of the academies in the Northern States until the cows come home but I also recognise that the drafting benefit is non-trivial. Gaming it even further seems just plain wrong to me. Indeed, I love it if the AFL brought in a modification that said a club has to use a pick within 10 spots, say, (and I've kinda plucked that out of nowhere - it could be 8 or 12 and still make little difference to my thought process) of where a player is bid upon. That would prevent clubs abusing the distorted values of picks.

It would also make it harder for clubs who finish in the top four to get their hands on a top five rated player, if he happens to fall their way under one of the various priority schemes. It doesn't make it impossible - it just means that the club has to trade up their first round pick to something within 10 spots of where they think that player will fall. In the process, they'll have to part with something of value, probably "overs" because other clubs will know why they want to trade up. Yet there will be sufficient other clubs to potentially trade with that they shouldn't get screwed too badly.

Of course you're right about the limitation of picks we can take into the draft. I do know better, but for some reason that one slips my mind from time to time. I must have a mental block on that. Thanks for correcting me. I'll have to be sure not to forget that when working through potential trades. In this regard, a Thurlow for Rohan player swap makes more sense than going for picks.

The best usage of our picks would be to have at least 1200 points with our last 3 picks to use on Blakey, to guard against cutting too deeply into next year's 1st round pick, although I'm not against dropping a few spots if it can facilitate a good deal this year.

I really don't see there being ethical issues of using the rules as they stand. A lot has been taken away from the academy program by the AFL, so don't see it as an exploitation of the rules.

As things stand now for this year we will have to use our 1st and most of our second round pick to get Blakey, so our next pick would be the Collingwood pick (perhaps adjusted upwards with leftover points), which is likely to be around pick 40 by the time compo and priority picks are handed out. I see that as our worst outcome. Hanners is going and we should try to use the circumstances to secure a top player, whether from a trade (like for Shiel) or a draft pick before a Blakey bid.

[Ludwig]

All those activities he's been responsible for will no long fall under his gamut of responsibilities once he is CEO, so I am not sure how much value there is grading him on those as a guide to how good a CEO he might be.

Harley has just about been acting CEO. Head of Football is probably the best stepping stone for the CEO job and as CEO he will have to sign off on every deal anyway. Bringing Charlie Gardiner in takes a huge burden of having to deal with the details of every contract and frees up time to look at the bigger picture. I think what transpires this year will be mostly Harley's call, with the heavy lifting done by Beatson.

[Aprilbr]

Being CEO is about much more than overseeing player movement and salary cap. Managing the finances, implementing strategy as determined by the Board and oversight of activities like sponsorship, marketing etc are all critical functions for the CEO.


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[Aprilbr]

2018 trading, drafting and list management: players and personnel

The Swans have a history of being fair and quick in closing trade deals so I think this will happen with Hanners, Rohan etc. then they will move onto potential trade-ins like Moore. Their approach is the opposite of what we have seen from Clubs like Essendon who stonewall and try to screw the other Club over on deals. It rarely works. We traded Mitchell for pick 14 two years ago. At the time, most pundits thought that was fair. Upon reflection, that was unders but we cannot predict the future with certainty. He continued to improve once at Hawthorn. You can’t get them all right.


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[waswan]

Doesnt live pick trading help us to maximise what we nee for blakey?

If a bid comes in and a pick 18 for instance will suffice we can trafe pock 13 for 18 plus 30 and actually bein credit points due to finding a team trying to climb the order

[707]

Swans are fair traders, Hanners will get done early and maybe we take unders to clear cap space.

Point of order - in using later picks for Blakey, if we had to use our first and some of our second, the residual points don't get added to our third to raise it higher, the residual points create a pick at the point in the table where they fit. So if for instance our second pick was 32 (584 pts) and we had to use 200 of those to complete the Blakey bid, we would have 384 remaining. Residual 384 becomes pick 43. The 384 don't get added to our third pick.

I'm also against gaming the system to offload high picks for two or three later picks with more value as it's only an option available to teams who have a near certain high draft player tied to them. I'm surprised the AFL haven't closed this loophole already, complicated to do but should be legislated.

[liz]

Doesnt live pick trading help us to maximise what we nee for blakey?

If a bid comes in and a pick 18 for instance will suffice we can trafe pock 13 for 18 plus 30 and actually bein credit points due to finding a team trying to climb the order

Only to limited extent. Once a player has been bid on, the club with the right to match can't start trading picks that are needed to match him.

On the other hand, if the Swans are sitting on pick 13 going into the draft (where our pick currently sits, assuming a compensation pick to the Suns and no pre-or mid first round concession picks), and the draft has got to pick 11 with no bid made on Blakey, the Swans could conceivably start trying to trade down their pick 13 so as to maximise the quantum of the discount when he finally does get bid upon. But there's only any point in doing so for something decent in return, not just for the sake of appearing clever.

On the other hand, they might hold their nerve and hope that he's not bid upon at all by pick 13 and they get to take another player, and then use later picks to pay for Blakey.

I don't think either of the above instances is likely to occur this year in respect of Blakey. Pick 13 less the 20% discount is equivalent to somewhere in between picks 8 and 9, and I'll be surprised if he's not bid on around (or slightly before) then.

[liz]

The Swans have a history of being fair and quick in closing trade deals so I think this will happen with Hanners, Rohan etc. then they will move onto potential trade-ins like Moore. Their approach is the opposite of what we have seen from Clubs like Essendon who stonewall and try to screw the other Club over on deals. It rarely works. We traded Mitchell for pick 14 two years ago. At the time, most pundits thought that was fair. Upon reflection, that was unders but we cannot predict the future with certainty. He continued to improve once at Hawthorn. You can’t get them all right.


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And by getting this done quickly, KB had time to go to Port and negotiate the pick swap that moved the first pick up a few spots. We will never know whether that had any value (ie would Florent have still been available at the original pick, or if not, would a player of similar talent have been available), but clearly Beatson perceived it to be of value.

Fair and quick also should gain a club a reputation that means others are prepared to also be fair and quick, and understand that sometimes you'll get slight overs and sometimes slight unders but that it all evens out in the end. I wonder if anyone at the Saints remembered how they came to recruit Tim Membrey...

[Ludwig]

And by getting this done quickly, KB had time to go to Port and negotiate the pick swap that moved the first pick up a few spots. We will never know whether that had any value (ie would Florent have still been available at the original pick, or if not, would a player of similar talent have been available), but clearly Beatson perceived it to be of value.

Fair and quick also should gain a club a reputation that means others are prepared to also be fair and quick, and understand that sometimes you'll get slight overs and sometimes slight unders but that it all evens out in the end. I wonder if anyone at the Saints remembered how they came to recruit Tim Membrey...

My feeling is that we wanted either Florent and or Simpkin, who went pick 12 to NM. Our original pick that went to PA got to pick 16 and I doubt Florent would have been available by then. We might have gone for Hayward at that pick then who knows after that. As you say, we'll never know.

It was very clever work from Beatson plus a bit of luck, which is why we ended up doing so well dispite being under-compensated in both the Mitchell and Nankervis trades. We ended up with 4 good players from that ND and I think all 4 will be best 22, if not next year, then by 2020.

It seems that we are out in front again with our post season planning. I think we already know how the Hanners trade will go and maybe Rohan and Newman as well. Chris Pelchin was on SEN this morning and said that planning for player movements start in December, so once a draft is finished, the player and list managers are already onto the following post season.


PS: I hate it that I can't remember the bidding and draft rules from one year to the next. I think I can do it, but when the time comes, I always seem to have to re-read the examples every new post-season. I can't wait to get one of those bionic memory chip implants, then I'll download all the AFL rules directly to the chip.

[Meg]

I can't wait to get one of those bionic memory chip implants, then I'll download all the AFL rules directly to the chip.

You’ll find it easier to source the bionic memory chip than an up-to-date, comprehensive edition of all the AFL rules and policies.

[S.S. Bleeder]

And by getting this done quickly, KB had time to go to Port and negotiate the pick swap that moved the first pick up a few spots. We will never know whether that had any value (ie would Florent have still been available at the original pick, or if not, would a player of similar talent have been available), but clearly Beatson perceived it to be of value.

Fair and quick also should gain a club a reputation that means others are prepared to also be fair and quick, and understand that sometimes you'll get slight overs and sometimes slight unders but that it all evens out in the end. I wonder if anyone at the Saints remembered how they came to recruit Tim Membrey...

I can't recall the last time we get the better bargain (in or out) in a trade. We always seem to be overly generous.