2018 trading, drafting and list management: players and personnel

[rickmat]

I hope you are right, Ludwig, we need to give our potential A graders a chance, like COR, Dawson, Stoddart, Cameron as well as Long, Blakey and our drafted players. Find that missing spark, enthusiasm. I agree with your summation about Towers, Robinson and Marsh- list cloggers - and even Foote to my mind doesn't have that skill set ( plenty of pace and heart but that doesn't translate in the main game. Its two way game nowadays , just watch the current Melb - Has game, Melb turn defence into attack and run run run to get into position to take the handball, mark and goal. That's what Swannies need to get back to top 4 where we belong.

[Markwebbos]

I have little faith in journo's esp. Barrett and I have lots of faith in our club and it's culture.....bias, maybe.....romantic, definitely!

Seriously though, I think it's becoming clear the Swans are planning something big.

I’m praying that’s the case. Seriously we have to be doing this deliberately. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.

[707]

Does Damien Barrett even understand what the term "Sliding Door" means?? He doesn't seem to use it in the right context.

No he doesn't, his column is crap.

I'll give you a Sliding Door moment - Paul Roos wanted Stewie Dew to be his understudy at the Dees, Stewie chose to stay with us and later take on the Gold Coast Quagmire. Now that's a Sliding Door moment!

[ugg]

I have heard we are showing interest in Sam Wright of North Melbourne. He is currently a free agent having reached an impasse with the Kangarood with his contract negotiations, therefore he wouldn’t cost us anything besides his salary and a list spot.

He has played forward and on the wing earlier in his career but looks to have settled as a defender in the last few years. Missed most of 2016 and all of 2017 with persistent ankle and foot injuries. He has good kicking skills, adept at kicking on either foot, but has a distinct lack of pace.

Perhaps we are looking for an experienced defender to fill in if Lloyd and Newman leave, whilst waiting for Stoddart, O’Riordan and Ling to develop.

[lwjoyner]

Why do the posters here suggest we will not get a ist rounder for san. If he was a free agent with his current salary and purported same + another year sts, it would be a sho in for a first rounder. While I don't want him to go we should play hard ball. The sts have done a lot of swaps for picks over the last few years, please don't give him away. Rohan and his family is a different matter. Its been mentioned that Thurlow can anyone suggest want he would bring to us.

[MattW]

I have heard we are showing interest in Sam Wright of North Melbourne. He is currently a free agent having reached an impasse with the Kangarood with his contract negotiations, therefore he wouldn’t cost us anything besides his salary and a list spot.

He has played forward and on the wing earlier in his career but looks to have settled as a defender in the last few years. Missed most of 2016 and all of 2017 with persistent ankle and foot injuries. He has good kicking skills, adept at kicking on either foot, but has a distinct lack of pace.

Perhaps we are looking for an experienced defender to fill in if Lloyd and Newman leave, whilst waiting for Stoddart, O’Riordan and Ling to develop.

Sam Wright's Goal of the Year contender (Round 11, 2018) - YouTube
Sam Wright's Mark of the Year contender (Round 12, 2018) - YouTube

[stellation]

I have heard we are showing interest in Sam Wright of North Melbourne. He is currently a free agent having reached an impasse with the Kangarood with his contract negotiations, therefore he wouldn’t cost us anything besides his salary and a list spot.

He has played forward and on the wing earlier in his career but looks to have settled as a defender in the last few years. Missed most of 2016 and all of 2017 with persistent ankle and foot injuries. He has good kicking skills, adept at kicking on either foot, but has a distinct lack of pace.

Perhaps we are looking for an experienced defender to fill in if Lloyd and Newman leave, whilst waiting for Stoddart, O’Riordan and Ling to develop.

I'd be more than happy to pick up Wright, assuming he's injury free. He's not speedy but he's always struck me as a fairly clever player and is at a Lachie Whitfield level of dual side skills by foot.

[Melbourne_Blood]

Why do the posters here suggest we will not get a ist rounder for san. If he was a free agent with his current salary and purported same + another year sts, it would be a sho in for a first rounder. While I don't want him to go we should play hard ball. The sts have done a lot of swaps for picks over the last few years, please don't give him away. Rohan and his family is a different matter. Its been mentioned that Thurlow can anyone suggest want he would bring to us.

Because it seems obvious to most that we want this deal to happen , to free up salary cap space to try and pick up some players to fill some holes in our list. If that means taking unders so be it.


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[Ludwig]

• Sam Wright has been injured a lot, but is a good player. He would be a better option than retaining one of our list cloggers like Marsh or Towers. He definitely can play at AFL level.
• A Rohan for Thurlow trade is a hard one to rate. Geelong have 4 late picks that could be useful for points to use getting Blakey, assuming we trade away our 1st and one of our 2nd round picks, something I think we should try to do.
• I'm not saying it's the case, but perhaps Hanners wasn't happy about the way we handled his rehab. I don't take Hanners leaving as indicating any endemic problem at the club. There was another incident in the GWS game that caught my eye. Hanners was up against Callan Ward at a stoppage in the midfield; Ward got the ball and scooted toward the sideline with Hanners on his tail; near the sideline Ward right turns toward goal, a natural move given where he was. Hanners just stopped and let him go. Normally Hanners would be at least as quick as Ward and would never flat out stop chasing, especially in a situation where he could have easily pushed Ward out of bounds, but it seemed to me that Hanners just couldn't turn, which is an indication that he is still carrying an adductor injury or a bit of OP. He's done that many times this season.
• There's no way the Saints are going to offer 4+ years at 800k to a player they think can't get back to close to his best. The reason for Hanners' poor form and recovery prospects next year would certainly be something well investigated before they made such an offer to Hannebery. Under these circumstances it's fair to assume that we are talking about trading a healthy Hannebery, in the sense that whatever ails him can be fixed, not the one that played this past season. Daisy Thomas is a good example of a player that looked cooked for sure, but has come back and playing some good football, not that I'm saying he was worth the deal offered by Malthouse at Carlton. Looking at it with this in mind, Hanners is worth more than just a swap of 1st round picks and the Saints 2019 2nd round pick is way under and only worth trade value for us. I posted some value point calculations earlier valuing Hanners at a pick 20. That seems more than fair to me.

[Markwebbos]

• There's no way the Saints are going to offer 4+ years at 800k to a player they think can't get back to close to his best. The reason for Hanners' poor form and recovery prospects next year would certainly be something well investigated before they made such an offer to Hannebery. Under these circumstances it's fair to assume that we are talking about trading a healthy Hannebery, in the sense that whatever ails him can be fixed, not the one that played this past season. Daisy Thomas is a good example of a player that looked cooked for sure, but has come back and playing some good football, not that I'm saying he was worth the deal offered by Malthouse at Carlton. Looking at it with this in mind, Hanners is worth more than just a swap of 1st round picks and the Saints 2019 2nd round pick is way under and only worth trade value for us. I posted some value point calculations earlier valuing Hanners at a pick 20. That seems more than fair to me.

Ludwig, amazing insights as always. This last point is very valid. Although you could argue the reverse, if Hanners is going to return to 2016 form, why would we trade him?

I think they’d do the first round pick swap if they had more draft picks. But will be reluctant because they don’t. So I could see a player or future picks being involved.

[KSAS]

Caught a bit of David King on SEN little while ago talking about a potential Hannebery trade. King is of the opinion St.Kilda have shown their hand too early by offering Hannebery 5yr X $800k deal, which gives the Swans every right to demand a 1st round pick for him. Saints will most likely offer a 2nd round pick which King thinks the Swans will most likely refuse, ensuring a stand off scenario.

This also has been my thinking all along in that St.Kilda's offer alone warrants a (late) 1st round pick. Swapping of each club's 1st round picks (13 for 4) would be fair imo.

[Ludwig]

Ludwig, amazing insights as always. This last point is very valid. Although you could argue the reverse, if Hanners is going to return to 2016 form, why would we trade him?
I think they’d do the first round pick swap if they had more draft picks. But will be reluctant because they don’t. So I could see a player or future picks being involved.

Hanners wants to go to the Saints for whatever reason, and we usually would try to accommodate a trade if possible. That's the starting point. I think we do keep Hanners if we can't find a suitable trade.

The things we would be looking for are:

1. An opportunity to trade out our pick 13 so we can get more value from the pick, rather than waste it on Blakey, who can be drafted for a bunch of 4th round picks if we had enough of them.
2. The opportunity to get pick 4 and a young midfield gun with speed, like Bailey Smith or Izak Rankine. We pick up 10 years of playing life swapping Hanners in such a case and it fits with our game transition plans.
3. I would also swap for Billings or Acres, but this doesn't make sense from St Kilda's viewpoint, as these are a couple of 23 yo former 1st round picks that are just entering the peak years of their careers. The Saints can't afford to let them go. They would probably thrive at the Swans.

In a swap of 1st round picks, the Saints don't lose a draft pick; in fact, they still have a 1st round pick, just a lower one. In some sense it takes the pressure off the list managers from the possibility of being ridiculed for making another draft blunder, like taking McCartin with pick 1 instead of Petracca or Angus Brayshaw, or taking Luke Dunstan in the first round of 2013 as well as Billings at pick 3 instead of Bontempelli. So at least they come out of the year with Hannebery and less is expected from their choice for their 1st round pick.

If the price is right, this trade can make sense for all parties.

[Ludwig]

I think we will discover how good an operator Tom Harley is after this post season. He's open to criticism in that he must have played an important part of the Tom Mitchell trade and many would call that a mistake (although I would not).

There looks to be quite a bit of player movement this year and the club certainly needs to makes some changes and get it right. Tom will really want to get to get off to a good start as he's now effectively the guy in charge of things at the Swans. He will want to start his stint as CEO looking clever and a winner.

We should find out just how well, or poorly, he's handled our salary cap. And how good he is as a deal maker. We didn't get 'good value' from either the Mitchell or Nankervis trades, although it didn't work out badly for us, getting Florent, Hayward and Cameron, but credit needs to go to KB on those selections. (Let's not have this post start yet another discussion of the Mitchell and Nanka trades).

So far, I think he's doing fine, and he should be one of the best CEOs in the game. We can revisit this in a month or so and give him a grade.

[liz]

[*]An opportunity to trade out our pick 13 so we can get more value from the pick, rather than waste it on Blakey, who can be drafted for a bunch of 4th round picks if we had enough of them.

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.

[liz]

I think we will discover how good an operator Tom Harley is after this post season. He's open to criticism in that he must have played an important part of the Tom Mitchell trade and many would call that a mistake (although I would not).

There looks to be quite a bit of player movement this year and the club certainly needs to makes some changes and get it right. Tom will really want to get to get off to a good start as he's now effectively the guy in charge of things at the Swans. He will want to start his stint as CEO looking clever and a winner.

We should find out just how well, or poorly, he's handled our salary cap. And how good he is as a deal maker. We didn't get 'good value' from either the Mitchell or Nankervis trades, although it didn't work out badly for us, getting Florent, Hayward and Cameron, but credit needs to go to KB on those selections. (Let's not have this post start yet another discussion of the Mitchell and Nanka trades).

So far, I think he's doing fine, and he should be one of the best CEOs in the game. We can revisit this in a month or so and give him a grade.

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.