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I'm curious to find out whether it was Swans & Hannebery who initiated testing the market place first or whether clubs made the first approach. Melbourne was first rumoured to be interested before pulling out & the Saints then appeared to have come onto the scene. I'm suspicious of the former, because why would clubs would even attempt to sniff out a player who has 3 years left on his contract?
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Suppose the father of the player in question just happens to be close friends with the general manager of the club in question.
Mr. H: Hi Simon. Fancy meeting you here in this little puddle out in the middle of nowhere.
Mr. L: I was just out picking berries. They're very expensive in the shops now, ya know.
Mr. H: Talk about berries, my son Dan is shot to hell and is only on a mere $800,000 contract for the next 3 years. Can hardly afford a punnet of blueberries on that sort of dough in Sydney.
Mr. L: Sounds awful. His financial woes are even worse than Saint Kilda's.
Mr. H: It would certainly be nice if he could come back to the family here in Melbourne, on say, $5,000,000 over the next 5 years. That would set up the family for a long time. He won't get a job in media, because he mumbles too much and nobody can understand a word he's saying.
Mr. L: That hasn't stopped Mark Robinson.
Mr. H: Didn't you hear that the Herald Sun hired an internet scam artist to get Robbo to give away all his online passwords then wiped out his bank account, and then split the proceeds 50-50. Then Robbo blamed the Nigerians, and then the Libyans for his misfortune. That caused Peter Dutton to say Malcolm Turnbull was soft on immigration and soft on Africans and we needed a new PM so alcoholics, the biggest demographic in the Australian voting population, could go about their business of making fools of themselves without being totally wiped out. And you know what happened next.
Mr. L: Oh dear! I didn't connect all those dots.
Mr. H: Don't worry, Simon. There are no dots to connect at Saint Kilda. You just got to get Dan to the Saints next year.
Mr. L: It's going to be hard to convince the board to give that kind of money to a washed up player like Dan.
Mr. H: Nathan Freeman, Sam Gilbert, Mav Weller, Billy Longer, David Armitage, Luke Dunstan, Nathan Wright. The Saints are losing all their washed up players. You desperately need a high quality washed up player to come into the team for next year or you might miss out on the wooden spoon, and there goes your priority picks. You've got to think ahead in this game.
Mr. L: I suppose you're right. But the fans won't like it.
Mr. H: Screw the fans, Simon. You'll be out of a job, again, next year, and it'll be a lot more important to have cashed up friends. Do we have a deal?
Mr. L: We do! We do indeed!Comment
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Tom Rehn, the Adelaide reporter for SEN is reporting that Sydney is heavily into Tom Jonas from Port. On thin money at the moment ($300K+) but still has a year to run on his contract. Rehn thinks Port will keep him, but the dogs (or Swans) are barking!Those who have the greatest power to hurt us are those we love.Comment
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Gerard Whateley believes Swans hope to swap Hannebery and pick 13 for St Kilda's pick 4 so they can get a draft pick in before they need to match a bid for Blakey, thus using their crumbs to get Blakey. Problem is that if Blakey's name is called out at #1 - 3 then we have given up Hanners for a few lowly picks. (But unlikely Carlton would take him at #1 and I suspect Dewy wouldn't do "a Roos" on us with an academy kid.)Those who have the greatest power to hurt us are those we love.Comment
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That is so creative & funny Ludwig with the Father Dan and Simon Lethlean story board! Had a good larf!
Thanks for those trade rumour updates Big Cat. Everyone in media are now increasingly convinced Hanners will be at St.Kilda next year. I'm not 100% certain of that. However interesting to hear Andy Mahr with Ashley Browne from AFL.com on SEN this arvo, suggesting the Swans could struggle next year if we lost both Hanners & Lloyd.Comment
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This is the scenario that has been canvassed since the story first broke. That swap of first rounders rates the trade for Hanners at around a pick 24, which sounds very reasonable from the Saints perspective and shouldn't be a terribly hard sell if it's supported from the top, which it seems to be.
There's almost no chance at all that Blakey goes before pick 5. The recruiter fraternity don't do malicious bidding. It could come back to haunt them, especially with the Swans, who have been fair and generous traders over the years.Comment
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Most draft pundits have Blakey at #7 just behind the King brothers. As it pertains to a possible Hannebery trade to the Saints, pick 4 should be safe. Walsh, Lukosius and either Smith or Rankine are certain top 3. He might be rated higher by some than either King brother, but I don't think Blakey will be bid for earlier knowing the Swans will match the bid anyway and the bidding club will then take a King brother anyway. It would be viewed as a malicious bid that doesn't do anything but cost the Swans more points, so why would a list manager from another club hurt his own club in possible future dealings. Any bid from 6 on would seem fair to me.Comment
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Can I repeat again that giving up pick 4 and getting pick 13 back is NOT the same as giving up pick 24. And definitely not in this draft.
For the sake of argument, if we were to get pick 4, and Blakey was called out in the top 3 (I agree, quite unlikely, but I do wonder if someone would do it just to mess us up), then we'd not get another first round pick other than Blakey.
The other plan doing the rounds is Saints do a pick swap with ADL and turn pick 4 into two first rounders 7 and 14 (or similar). I guess then they'd potentially offer us pick 14 outright for Hanners - the same as we got for Tom-not-that-good-oh-actually-he-is-Mitchell. Then we'd have picks 13 and 14 and would be guaranteed Blakey plus another first rounder, albeit a more lowly one.Comment
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I see Saints have offered $800k a year to Polec over 4-5 years. I wonder if they can afford both Polec and Hanners?Comment
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For whatever it's worth, and I have plenty of criticism about it, but the value points associated with picks has become the currency standard within the industry for value-rating trades. It just came to pass that way because it's a convenient system that every club is familiar with. To say the swap of picks 4 and 13 is equivalent to pick 24 is just a convenient way of putting a number on the value of swapping those picks. Otherwise, we (and recruiters) would be arguing all day about such things.
In this year I would certainly value the swap of picks 4 and 13 to be worth more than a pick 24 because of the top end value of this particular draft. It would be a particularly good outcome for us. For the Saints, it's a very complicated issue because they're in the market for a lot of players and have a need for everything, mature players and high draft picks as well.
If GC bid their pick 3 on Blakey, I would let him go and take either Smith or Rankine. Blakey would be a big flight risk after 2 years and Gold Coast knows it, and would deserve to lose Blakey if they made such a malicious bid. It's not going to happen.
Adelaide are not going to trade picks 8 and 15 for pick 4, because Lukosius will already be gone by then and maybe Rankine as well. And I can't see Gold Coast wanting to lose either picks 2 or 3 for more picks down the draft when they already have loads in the 2nd and early 3rd rounds.
The latest news is that the Saints have offered Polec $4 mil over 5 years, which looks a better deal for them. It will also probably cost less in compensation since Polec is out of contract. Let's see what transpires.
Every chance Hanners may still be with the Swans next year, despite all the chatter.Comment
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How about the one doing the rounds last night and this morning - that we are heavily chasing Tom Jonas from Port . This one’s a head scratcher for me , with Allir playing well ( other than last week ) and Melican to come back not sure why we would need another medium -KP defender. Unless the swans want to give Rampe his chance in the midfield , and are looking for a ready made replacement. Would be one way to instantly bolster our midfield , I have no doubt Rampe would Star in there , just like ROK did when he finally give his chance on the ball.
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I think they may be worried about the reliability of our key defender stocks. While we have good players, there are a lot of 'ifs':
- if Melican can play out successive seasons injury free
- if Aliir can maintain his form over entire seasons
- if Grundy can play out another season without hitting the wall
- if AJ gets back
- if Maibaum comes on.
There's reason to doubt. I understand wanting to strengthen that area.Comment
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