2018 trading, drafting and list management: players and personnel

[Blood Fever]

I don't see the point in recruiting more depth players. We already have enough that are walking that fine line between depth player and list clogger. I'm not sure who will be delisted, but we know some of the non-regulars will be going. What is the point of delisting somewhat like Tower or Marsh, only to use the spot to recruit someone like Duryea.

We really need to focus on top end players in trade period. Otherwise, go to the draft, where we have a pretty good hit rate, even for low draft picks.

We are not a great kicking team, probably the reason for our interest in him. If he has a tank and I'm uncertain about this, maybe a matured bodied midfield role as well while Florent etc get stronger ? Just a thought.

[rickmat]

Agree we don't to replace list clogger's with more of the same or just top up's. If there are delistings who are young and were originally recruited for their potential, then I think they are worth a look. We need some more mature bodies with speed and skills to help our young bodies like Florent to mature with confidence. Let Towers, Marsh, Robinson, Foote go to Gold Coast for low picks

[Auntie.Gerald]

I agree Ludwig re seriously increasing talent and most importantly finding the best path to the top4 again

I suspect it’s a serious challenge to do so especially the last 5 yrs with gws and suns absorbing so much talent and then teams like Carlton , Brissie, Melbourne and saints bottoming out and taking so many awesome draft picks

The opposite was the approach by Port going bananas and so too Geelong the last few seasons recruiting $ for draft picks etc and aswe have seen doesn’t always mean success. Hawthorn almost made it work this year.

I thought Port would be very dangerous especially given the injuries to hawthorn, gws and Swans

Yet a team like the pies with equally as many injuries as any team in the Comp is now in the GF a go figure ??

There must be a balance between recruiting top talent and 50/50 opportunities like we did with mummy, Kennedy, sinclair, Mcglynn who had limited games at previous clubs but have level jumped massively at the Swans

Towers, Fox, Newman etc so so in our experiment

For me I want a lethal left footed kick out of the backline to a left footed player like gaff who can give buddy awesome entries to give us best opportunity to apply scoreboard pressure

Rampe and smith are lefties but generally man marking so can’t play the transition role which is imperative to get to the wing with the opportunity to move quickly to a leading bud

I think there isnt many options re this and a stop gap two year contract for a player like TD makes sense as at least he can truly player several roles and has a slicing left foot as good as anyone in the roles he plays

Peanuts for a player will help us in seniors

Ps the comments from an earlier poster re Newman being better then Taylor Duryea seems a little strange ?

I can’t find the 100 games highlights on YouTube of Newman ? Most of us only have seen TD play a handful of games not being hawk supporters and I thought his YouTube showed a player that is quicker, better kick and can genuinely play multiple roles in comparison

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M-c0VRnDTYQ

[chuckie]

Seriously more left footers as I have stated before in 1997 we lost the final to the Bulldogs, after that game Wallace said that due to the Swans having so many left footers we knew which way they were going to turn so we covered that area and because left footers generally can't kick on their right side we just continually turned the ball over. 2012 GF a couple of minutes to go O'Keefe misses target ball turned over Hawthorn all in the clear ball forced out to Birchell on his right side only needs to kick the ball forward no stops can't kick right foot turns back Mattner tackles and forces the ball out. Greg Miller when recruiting manager at North once told me that if there was two players off the same ability and one was a left footer he would always choose the right footer as they could usually dispose of the ball with their opposite sides.

[liz]

I don’t mind Duryea. I think he’s an upgrade on most of our depth players, and while he’s not Nick Smith, I think he’s capable of minding a small forward better than Jones. He might allow Jones to move further up the ground.

We look like losing Hanners, Rohan and Newman, plus the club needs to make decisions on Foote, Rose, Robinson, Towers, Marsh and Fox. I don’t suppose they’ll all be cut but I expect a few will, and we can’t fill nine spots with teenagers and expect to contend next year unless we have a miraculous injury run. We hope the club has some higher profile experienced recruits in their sights but at the moment it is just hope.

[Markwebbos]

We look like losing Hanners, Rohan and Newman, plus the club needs to make decisions on Foote, Rose, Robinson, Towers, Marsh and Fox. I don’t suppose they’ll all be cut but I expect a few will, and we can’t fill nine spots with teenagers and expect to contend next year unless we have a miraculous injury run. We hope the club has some higher profile experienced recruits in their sights but at the moment it is just hope.

I agree Liz. We have a lot of talent on our list but the lack of experience of the new generation was exposed when Hanners, McV, KJ et al were out of the team.

We do need a few experienced players in there. Duryea has a couple of premierships so knows what he’s doing.

I hope we are also going after a couple of A grade midfielders as well as role players though.

[Ludwig]

I agree Ludwig re seriously increasing talent and most importantly finding the best path to the top4 again

I suspect it’s a serious challenge to do so especially the last 5 yrs with gws and suns absorbing so much talent and then teams like Carlton , Brissie, Melbourne and saints bottoming out and taking so many awesome draft picks

The opposite was the approach by Port going bananas and so too Geelong the last few seasons recruiting $ for draft picks etc and aswe have seen doesn’t always mean success. Hawthorn almost made it work this year.

I thought Port would be very dangerous especially given the injuries to hawthorn, gws and Swans

Yet a team like the pies with equally as many injuries as any team in the Comp is now in the GF a go figure ??

There must be a balance between recruiting top talent and 50/50 opportunities like we did with mummy, Kennedy, sinclair, Mcglynn who had limited games at previous clubs but have level jumped massively at the Swans

Towers, Fox, Newman etc so so in our experiment

For me I want a lethal left footed kick out of the backline to a left footed player like gaff who can give buddy awesome entries to give us best opportunity to apply scoreboard pressure

Rampe and smith are lefties but generally man marking so can’t play the transition role which is imperative to get to the wing with the opportunity to move quickly to a leading bud

I think there isnt many options re this and a stop gap two year contract for a player like TD makes sense as at least he can truly player several roles and has a slicing left foot as good as anyone in the roles he plays

Peanuts for a player will help us in seniors

Ps the comments from an earlier poster re Newman being better then Taylor Duryea seems a little strange ?

I can’t find the 100 games highlights on YouTube of Newman ? Most of us only have seen TD play a handful of games not being hawk supporters and I thought his YouTube showed a player that is quicker, better kick and can genuinely play multiple roles in comparison

Taylor Duryea - 100 Games - YouTube

The clubs that bottom out have to put together a number of consecutive strong drafts to become competitive again. If you look at clubs spending a long time at the bottom, they generally can't replace their experienced quality players fast enough, so they never really catch up. About 8 years ago, The Saints had one of the best lists, but the players they've recruited between that period and present haven't produced enough high quality talent. They've been a bit unlucky too.

Port Adelaide looked to be on the brink of success, so they went out and recruited a lot of experienced players. But those players have fallen a bit short of expectations and now there seems to be an exodus of players and they might have to go into a rebuild. They have a core of good players now in the 28+ demographic, so the draftees coming in now will start playing their best football after that group retires. It could be similar with Geelong.

The Pies have had quite a remarkable year. Despite injuries, everything else seems to have come together. The main thing is that they are playing exceptionally well as a team. Their skills seem to have improve markedly from last year, but maybe that's do to better team coordination.

Gaff would be a great recruit for any club. It's important that our 2 left footer recruits from last year, Ling and Stoddart, make a good showing next year. I think we'll be banking on them from the left side for the next decade and are key to the Swans next period of success.

We've been on a good run with the draft over a number of years, coming at a rate of more than 3 best 22 recruits per draft, which is more than sufficient to replace retiring players. The question remains as to whether they will end up being mostly mediocre players, like St Kilda's recruits, or something better. They are also racing the clock to reach a high performance level before Buddy and JPK retire. But even if that race fails, we should still have a strong group of players all coming through together, but in a few years time.

Except for a few odd remarks, I wouldn't have given us much chance on Gaff. I guess we'll know this time next week. Hopefully, when the dust settles, we can add another 3 or 4 quality players to our list to make up for the loss of Hanners and Rohan, as well as foreshadowing Macca, Reg and Jack going next year.

PS: Your comment on Newman's 100 game video was pretty funny.

[Ludwig]

I don’t mind Duryea. I think he’s an upgrade on most of our depth players, and while he’s not Nick Smith, I think he’s capable of minding a small forward better than Jones. He might allow Jones to move further up the ground.

We look like losing Hanners, Rohan and Newman, plus the club needs to make decisions on Foote, Rose, Robinson, Towers, Marsh and Fox. I don’t suppose they’ll all be cut but I expect a few will, and we can’t fill nine spots with teenagers and expect to contend next year unless we have a miraculous injury run. We hope the club has some higher profile experienced recruits in their sights but at the moment it is just hope.

Duryea is probably an upgrade on the 6 potential delistings, as you say, but I would still prefer to play Ling and Stoddart in the side. I suppose it depends on just how many of those 6 will be cut. Duryea would be make sense if he came along with a couple of other experienced recruits that included at least 1 top line player, which would mean that we're making a serious go at the premiership next year.

[Sandridge]

Seriously more left footers as I have stated before in 1997 we lost the final to the Bulldogs, after that game Wallace said that due to the Swans having so many left footers we knew which way they were going to turn so we covered that area and because left footers generally can't kick on their right side we just continually turned the ball over. 2012 GF a couple of minutes to go O'Keefe misses target ball turned over Hawthorn all in the clear ball forced out to Birchell on his right side only needs to kick the ball forward no stops can't kick right foot turns back Mattner tackles and forces the ball out. Greg Miller when recruiting manager at North once told me that if there was two players off the same ability and one was a left footer he would always choose the right footer as they could usually dispose of the ball with their opposite sides.

Very interesting theory about left footers. I reckon one of the most beautiful sights in football is a left footer on the run. I just loved watching Mark Bayes and Mark Browning in full flight, running off the half back line and delivering long bombs into the forward line. Admittedly, I don't recall seeing either of them kick with their right foot very often so there may be something in Miller's theory!

Btw, 4 players have won 3 Brownlows. Dick Reynolds, Haydn Bunton Snr, Bobby Skilton and Ian Stewart. Don't know about Reynolds and Bunton but Stewart and Skilton were both left footers. (Bobby very good with his right too though!)

[S.S. Bleeder]

The clubs that bottom out have to put together a number of consecutive strong drafts to become competitive again. If you look at clubs spending a long time at the bottom, they generally can't replace their experienced quality players fast enough, so they never really catch up. About 8 years ago, The Saints had one of the best lists, but the players they've recruited between that period and present haven't produced enough high quality talent. They've been a bit unlucky too.

Port Adelaide looked to be on the brink of success, so they went out and recruited a lot of experienced players. But those players have fallen a bit short of expectations and now there seems to be an exodus of players and they might have to go into a rebuild. They have a core of good players now in the 28+ demographic, so the draftees coming in now will start playing their best football after that group retires. It could be similar with Geelong.

The Pies have had quite a remarkable year. Despite injuries, everything else seems to have come together. The main thing is that they are playing exceptionally well as a team. Their skills seem to have improve markedly from last year, but maybe that's do to better team coordination.

Gaff would be a great recruit for any club. It's important that our 2 left footer recruits from last year, Ling and Stoddart, make a good showing next year. I think we'll be banking on them from the left side for the next decade and are key to the Swans next period of success.

We've been on a good run with the draft over a number of years, coming at a rate of more than 3 best 22 recruits per draft, which is more than sufficient to replace retiring players. The question remains as to whether they will end up being mostly mediocre players, like St Kilda's recruits, or something better. They are also racing the clock to reach a high performance level before Buddy and JPK retire. But even if that race fails, we should still have a strong group of players all coming through together, but in a few years time.

Except for a few odd remarks, I wouldn't have given us much chance on Gaff. I guess we'll know this time next week. Hopefully, when the dust settles, we can add another 3 or 4 quality players to our list to make up for the loss of Hanners and Rohan, as well as foreshadowing Macca, Reg and Jack going next year.

PS: Your comment on Newman's 100 game video was pretty funny.

More than 3 best 22 recruits per draft? Can you elaborate Ludwig?

[Auntie.Gerald]

It’s more about players that can give the best kick to ur key forwards
Buddy likes kicking from the left

That will mean that a left footer transition player either HBF or wing will have a superior advantage if left footed hence Duryea and or gaff

[Ludwig]

More than 3 best 22 recruits per draft? Can you elaborate Ludwig?

Including free agents, net of losses. I've rated the year in approximate total net gain in equivalent best 22 players, so there will be some disagreement on my ratings, but it should be much.

2012 ---- Cunningham, Tippett, Lloyd, Rampe, Naismith (Robinson, Towers, Marsh, Membrey [nil value]) -- Rating 5 out of 8 total players
2013 ---- Jones, Hewett, Aliir, +FA Franklin -- Rating 4
2014 ---- Heeney, Melican (Newman, Foote, Rose) --- Rating 3- out of 5
2015 ---- Mills, Papley, Dawson, O.Riordan (2018 2nd round pick for Murray) -- Rating 4
2016 ---- Florent, Hayward, Ronke, Cameron, Maibaum, minus loss of Mitchell -- Rating 3 out of 4
2017 ---- Ling, Stoddart, McCartin, Amartey (Brown, Bell) -- Rating 4 out of 6

The total comes to 23 players in 6 years, which averages 1 player short of 4 players per year. A rating of 4 out of 6, as for 2017, means that I expect we will get 4 best 22 quality players out of the 6 listed, and excludes players like Styles who I expect to be delisted and having no value for this calculation.

[S.S. Bleeder]

Apparently Jack Stevens has been sighted in Sydney. I don't know anything more at this stage.

[Ludwig]

Apparently Jack Stevens has been sighted in Sydney. I don't know anything more at this stage.

Steven is a year older than Hanners. Could see the possibility of a swap here. But, if true, more likely to be in town regarding a potential Shiel trade.

[S.S. Bleeder]

Steven is a year older than Hanners. Could see the possibility of a swap here. But, if true, more likely to be in town regarding a potential Shiel trade.

Apparently he met with "Sydney Management". Only a rumour via Twitter at the moment though.