2018 trading, drafting and list management: players and personnel

[Mark26]

Outstanding news! I am thinking he will be a gun forward!


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Agreed! It bodes well for the club to have a quality prospect nominate us when he had options.

[Nico]

Interesting comment about the talent laden draft coming up. If you look at the TAC Cup results so far you will see some terribly lopsided results. A lot of the guns may very well be out of other states.

[Auntie.Gerald]

Nick B

Great news on afl site today that nick Blakey has chosen the bloods

Has a really long way to go to develop into a snr player but will no doubt feature in years to come on that forward line similar to a sam Reid same age but nick is even lighter as at last year

He may well hit 80kg plus by draft

I think Reid joined us at 84kg from memory?

Nick Blakey | 2017 NAB U18 Championships | South Australia v Allies - YouTube

- - - Updated - - -

Sorry forgot other thread re drafting

Plse move when convenient

[Aprilbr]

Great news on Blakey. On a day of very disturbing and sad news in football with the Bomber Thompson arrest it was so
nice to hear this young star wants to be a Swan. We will have to give up a lot to get him but hopefully it will be worth it. I see he is 196 cm tall yet sees himself in the midfield. That would be one tall midfielder!


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[Bloody Hell]

Surely worth it's own thread!

Will challenge Tippett! surely?!?

[707]

Good that we have an early declaration from Nick and that it's in our favour. We have obviously committed to selecting him regardless of the bid position. Lukosious is seen as the clear number one, a prodigious talent apparently, but if Nick continues on his current trajectory we'll get a bid early, could even be from North!

Now the commitment is in place from both sides, I assume that the Swans will have much greater say in what Nick does footy wise this year so we get a seamless transition to the list like Heeney & Mills did.

Downside is the likely academy bashing from the likes of McGuire for 6+ months leading up to the draft.

North supporters are having a melt on their BF board, a lot of infantile comments which is what you get of course on boards. Worth popping over for a laugh.

[mattybloods]

Time to put Blakey on ice for the year so as not to improve his draft position!

[Boddo]

Good that we have an early declaration from Nick and that it's in our favour. We have obviously committed to selecting him regardless of the bid position. Lukosious is seen as the clear number one, a prodigious talent apparently, but if Nick continues on his current trajectory we'll get a bid early, could even be from North!

Now the commitment is in place from both sides, I assume that the Swans will have much greater say in what Nick does footy wise this year so we get a seamless transition to the list like Heeney & Mills did.

Downside is the likely academy bashing from the likes of McGuire for 6+ months leading up to the draft.

North supporters are having a melt on their BF board, a lot of infantile comments which is what you get of course on boards. Worth popping over for a laugh.

Wait till Longmires kids come through n nominate Sydney. The Norf board will break the internet bwahaha

[707]

Wait till Longmires kids come through n nominate Sydney. The Norf board will break the internet bwahaha

Won't happen. VFL will have "fixed" this inequity by then. Serious, watch it happen!

[Boddo]

Won't happen. VFL will have "fixed" this inequity by then. Serious, watch it happen!

Disagree. They?ll reduce the discount for F/S that are in Academies to 10% or 0. They save way to much money having academies in the northern states to tear them down.

Don?t be surprised if every club has a full academy in the future. AFL clubs running the majority of junior development saves the AFL a lot of money.

Rich clubs like Hawthorn n Collingwood will push hard for this.

[dejavoodoo44]

Time to put Blakey on ice for the year so as not to improve his draft position!

Yes, I was wondering about what we now do with him? Do we play him in the NEAFL, to give him experience of our structures and of playing against men? Which risks bumping him up the draft order. Or do we send him on a gap year, while spreading Internet rumours about a dodgy knee and an experimental attitude towards illicit drug use?

[liz]

Yes, I was wondering about what we now do with him? Do we play him in the NEAFL, to give him experience of our structures and of playing against men? Which risks bumping him up the draft order. Or do we send him on a gap year, while spreading Internet rumours about a dodgy knee and an experimental attitude towards illicit drug use?

I suggest we just let him develop in the same way any other U18 player is allowed to develop.

Callum Mills barely played any football in his U18 year (through legitimate injuries - not because he was being "hidden" - or so I assume) yet still received a bid at number 3 in the draft.

Clubs will have been watching Blakey for several years now and will know what he's capable of. Where he goes in the draft will be mostly influenced by relative assessments of the other great talent in this year's pool more than anything Blakey does for the rest of this year.

[barry]

The sooner we get to state based drafts the better. Eg. First 2 rounds, can only select from your own state. Then what is left over is a national draft.

[liz]

The sooner we get to state based drafts the better. Eg. First 2 rounds, can only select from your own state. Then what is left over is a national draft.

That would be disastrous for the Swans. For all the bleating from south of the border about the academies, the Swans' academy has thus far produced two players worthy of first round draft picks (with Blakey a probable third this year) and three other players deemed worthy of being taken anywhere in the National Draft (including Ben Davis, drafted by the Crows).

Even if we date the viable drafting start (ie the time when the kids had been in the system long enough) to be 2014 (when Heeney was drafted), that's a relatively modest return. If the Swans had been barred from access to Florent, Hayward et al, our list would be in a very sorry state.

GWS would possibly have been OK, so long as their original zone remained in tact. Brisbane would have been "so-so", while Gold Coast would have been even worse off than the Swans.

If you wait for another 20 years, when the academies are hopefully producing their fair share of top quality draftees, this idea might work.

Interestingly, way back in 2005 or so, the Swans lobbied the AFL for a statewide academy (and pre-Giants, this would have included the southern parts of the state) which they could use to stock their list and they offered to withdraw from the draft in return. The AFL declined this idea as they believed the Swans couldn't remain viable. They were almost certainly right back then, and it will take many more years before the academies are producing enough.

[bloodspirit]

The sooner we get to state based drafts the better. Eg. First 2 rounds, can only select from your own state. Then what is left over is a national draft.

First, why?

Second, don't like the idea - seems against equalisation measures like the draft and salary cap.

Third, while it wouldn't work for us very well currently, it is a policy that could be a major advantage for us in years to come as more and more youngsters turn to footy instead of league and soccer - we have the biggest population and only one rival club in NSW (GWS)! If only for this reason, it will never happen.