2019 trading, drafting and list management: players and personnel

[bloodspirit]

Dad was a Maggie barracked and saw Polly v them. A couple of weeks later, Geelong played Carlton atPrinces park. He made me go with him to see Poll v Nicholls. Said you’ll never see something like this again. And I never have. He missed a Maggie game and I missed a Roy’s game. Worth it. Awesome.

Wow! Thanks for sharing, royboy.

That is such a window to an era of the VFL in Melbourne that is almost exotic to me as a more or less lifelong Sydney resident. Love the idea of the suburban grounds and never missing your team play and being so in love with the game that you had to see an exciting player. It's not like that now. Feels more commercial and it's all on TV .

Now I'm curious how you have wound up a Swans supporter? Probably you've shared the story before but if you feel like sharing again I'd love to hear it.

[S.S. Bleeder]

I think we need an inside midfielder more urgently than any other position in the coming years. With that in mind, I would have a good go at Charlie Constable from Geelong who can’t break into their star-studded midfield despite playing well earlier in the year as well as consistently positing good numbers in the VFL

Agreed. Maybe a three way trade; Jones to Saints, Stevens to Cats and Constable to us?
I can't work Geelong out. They've thrown everything at a premiership in the next couple of years by bringing in mature players and forsaking youth. Now they're going after Stevens and prepared to lose Constable. They're going to be cellar dwellers in a few years.

[Ralph Dawg]

I'm surprised there is so much support for trading this pick. We have waited years to get a pick like this. Why not use it
and build our own Josh Kelly or Patrick Cripps out of it, and get 200 plus games out of them.

I think history shows that we seem to find the diamond in the rough rather then get full value for a high draft pick.
Names like Goodes, Parker, Smith, Grundy and Papley spring to mind.
However, if you look at when we won our most recent flags, there were significant contributions from established players. 2005 - Williams, Davis, Ball, Jolly, Hall, C Bolton. 2012- Shaw, Mattner, JPK, McGlynn (didn't play GF though), Richards, Mumford
I think this demonstrates that to win a flag, we must look outside the team and try and recruit to cover areas of weakness. We can't just sit back and assume guys like Stoddart, Ling, McInerney, Foote, Rowbottom etc and whoever we draft are going to develop into top liners. Getting an Oliver or Cripps is a more likely pathway to an influential player than a pick 1-5 ( I use to see Travis Johnstone down at my local cafe in Brisbane after he was delisted and wonder why it didn't work out for him).
Thats why I am not averse to giving up trades for the right player - working towards a premiership team is a balance between recruiting experience and developing draftees.

[111431]

Ludwig, Lloyd is fantastic for a Supercoach perspective as his efficiency is high and he racks up plenty of uncontested kicks. But the reality is that it's pretty obvious most opposition coaches don't rate Lloyd as a damaging player as they don't even bother to put anyone next to him to try and slow him down.

Lloyd almost always takes the slow and easy option, hence why his efficiency his so high! He looks for a short kick to a player on his own mostly sideways.

I would much rather a player who has a bit lower efficiency percentage due to trying to take the game on with quick and attacking play, trying to kick in board to a player that can play on... but hey, just my opinion.

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i fully agree with this - short sideways kicks just allow space forward of play to be blocked and kiss our ball movement

[Ludwig]

Ludwig, Lloyd is fantastic for a Supercoach perspective as his efficiency is high and he racks up plenty of uncontested kicks. But the reality is that it's pretty obvious most opposition coaches don't rate Lloyd as a damaging player as they don't even bother to put anyone next to him to try and slow him down.

Lloyd almost always takes the slow and easy option, hence why his efficiency his so high! He looks for a short kick to a player on his own mostly sideways.

I would much rather a player who has a bit lower efficiency percentage due to trying to take the game on with quick and attacking play, trying to kick in board to a player that can play on... but hey, just my opinion.

Lloyd plays a role that needs to be played, i.e. the player that drops behind the play to bail out an under pressure defence by getting into the right position to gain possession and space so the next kick is a rebound out of defence. It makes sense that this player is Lloyd, since he's the poorest 1 on 1 defender in our defence, so is most effective getting in position to retain possession.

I've often said that I prefer Lloyd playing through the midfield, on the wing, where his role would be different. His disposal count would likely be lower, but I think he would play a link up player very well (it was a role he played before Jetta was traded).

My point with Lloyd is that he's been assigned a role by the club and he plays that role to a very high and consistent level. He didn't win the B&A for nothing.

[Ludwig]

I think history shows that we seem to find the diamond in the rough rather then get full value for a high draft pick.
Names like Goodes, Parker, Smith, Grundy and Papley spring to mind.
However, if you look at when we won our most recent flags, there were significant contributions from established players. 2005 - Williams, Davis, Ball, Jolly, Hall, C Bolton. 2012- Shaw, Mattner, JPK, McGlynn (didn't play GF though), Richards, Mumford
I think this demonstrates that to win a flag, we must look outside the team and try and recruit to cover areas of weakness. We can't just sit back and assume guys like Stoddart, Ling, McInerney, Foote, Rowbottom etc and whoever we draft are going to develop into top liners. Getting an Oliver or Cripps is a more likely pathway to an influential player than a pick 1-5 ( I use to see Travis Johnstone down at my local cafe in Brisbane after he was delisted and wonder why it didn't work out for him).
Thats why I am not averse to giving up trades for the right player - working towards a premiership team is a balance between recruiting experience and developing draftees.

I agree that we should try to get a quality player or 2 through trades if possible, but the club is already deeply committed to backing it's draft picks to develop into good quality players. And I think we are well on track revitalizing out list.

Recruiting an elite midfielder from another club is not easy. There's plenty of competition out there going after the same players, and most often they stay at their current club anyway. Everyone would trade a pick 4 for Oliver or Cripps, but I don't think that kind of trade is realistic.

I agree with Ugg in that another quality midfielder is our our greatest need, but I don't think we are desperate for one. We should see a number of our younger midfielders play more on ball in the coming years, like Florent did with some success last week. I don't think an inside midfielder needs to be a 'bull'. I don't think anyone would call Lachie Neale a bull, but he knows how to win the ball.

I think we should take a look at Charley Constable, as has been suggested, but I don't see how trading Jones for him would be a winner. We need to retain good midfielders entering the prime of their careers.

We've been adding more than 3 quality players a year through the draft in the past half dozen years. At that rate things should come together to propel us up the ladder starting next year. It just requires some patience on our part, as supporters. There's no quick fix, mainly because there's not much wrong. We are not in the right demographic zone for a premiership just yet. When we get in that zone, then it's time to go after a top line player that could push us over the top.

PS: I do agree that Foote is unlikely to develop into a top liner.

[Nico]

The Age reports that Daisy Thomas' retirement is likely to be in part due to potential salary squeeze next season. They reckon Carlton are after Coniglio, Brandon Ellis and - Tom Papley.

Hope it ain't so and if it is, he won't go.

Daisy to retire from Carlton, and most likely football

Why would they want Brandon Ellis. Watching him this year he seems to not want body contact. Cant see how he keeps his spot.

[bloodspirit]

Reflecting on the worth of a top 5 pick, I remembered the famous busts there have been over the years and thought I would go and check out the past 5 drafts to see how reliable getting an early pick was. And I have to say I was impressed to see that the the past 4 drafts have seen fairly good returns from the top 10 draft selections (albeit in some cases it is still too soon to say). However, 2014 a bit less so. Even still, my overall impression is that recruiting has improved and recruiters have become better at making good choices and recognising who has what it takes to become a good AFL player. The chances of getting a really decent, 200 game player with a top 5 pick these days seem pretty good. So maybe less of a gamble than I thought (but still a gamble, although so is taking a proven player who could still break down with injury or mental health issues or whatever).

[bloodspirit]

I'm really looking forward to this trade and draft season. Draft is always exciting, dreaming big about what the new recruits may one day achieve. But this year I expect that we are going to be much more active in trade season than we have the past couple of years and so that should be exciting too. Plus they have brought them together with pick trading continuing all the way through to live pick trading. I

While I agree with Ludwig that we have invested in the draft for several years now (a policy I have strongly endorsed) and that will pay dividends, and I particularly take the point that we may wish to wait until we're properly in contention before 'topping up', I also think our list has become a bit uneven and we can't afford to be uncompetitive in the AFL for too long. Accordingly I conclude that we will need to be active in the trade period. Our age profile is too skewed, we lack depth (thanks to an exodus of experience) and there are various positions where we are need to fill gaps - inside mids and KPD being the most obvious. Not sure if I agree about ruck being a high priority. While I think rucks are important, I believe that we have decent ruck stocks it's just that our 3 best rucks have all been injured at the same time and the ones underneath are not yet ready to be really competitive at AFL level.

Another reason I expect us to be active is that we (surely) have a big amount of cap space available which gives us the opportunity to recruit players that might otherwise be out of reach. With Tippett, Macca, Kizza, Smooch and Reg all off the books this year and one the comp's youngest lists, we must have room to hunt almost whoever we want. Which is not to say we want to pay overs or recruit imprudently just because we can. If we do splash cash we want to do it either on players coming into their prime or possibly older players with excellent leadership rather than a 27-28 year old superstar who will make an immediate impact but not be in sync with the our list and our premiership 'window'.

[barry]

Our trade/drafting strategy is simple:
-work the academy system
-trade for young players not getting game time at current club.
-trade for player who don't like AFL spotlight.
- churn the rookie and late draft selections looking for gold.

So, we shouldn't be trying to extract established players by offers of more money.

[Ludwig]

I also think our list has become a bit uneven and we can't afford to be uncompetitive in the AFL for too long. Accordingly I conclude that we will need to be active in the trade period. Our age profile is too skewed, we lack depth (thanks to an exodus of experience) and there are various positions where we are need to fill gaps - inside mids and KPD being the most obvious. Not sure if I agree about ruck being a high priority.

You are conflating lack of depth and loss of experience. We actually have good depth, but the depth players are young and lack experience. I don't think it's possible to effectively fill the gaps, We only have 6 regular senior players older than Jake Lloyd at 25. WCE, by contrast, have 13, which is about right for a premiership side. That's more like a void than a gap. We've been unloading older players just to get us into this position of having Lloyd and younger players to move into the void. It will take about 3 years for us to transition to a WCE age demographic, which is a realistic time frame for us to be targeting our next flag.

I see our goal as having a large group of players in a relatively small age demographic all coming through together. We seem to be on track for that.

Just to use the example of KPDs. We definitely have Aliir as one. We need at least 1 and preferably 2 more quality KPDs. The non-senior side players we have available on our list who can play KPD are: Melican, Maibaum, McCartin, McLean, Pink plus O'Connor. So we actually have 6 reasonable candidates to fill 2 spots. Without predicting which ones will make the grade, I feel confident that at least 2 will. If you go through our list, you will find a similar situation for the midfield, but with less depth in numbers.

[Markwebbos]

Our trade/drafting strategy is simple:
-work the academy system
-trade for young players not getting game time at current club.
-trade for player who don't like AFL spotlight.
- churn the rookie and late draft selections looking for gold.

So, we shouldn't be trying to extract established players by offers of more money.

Reckon thats a pretty good summary. Think you might need to add

- trade for bad boy / glamour forward

[mcs]

I see our goal as having a large group of players in a relatively small age demographic all coming through together. We seem to be on track for that.

Yeh, that is where I think our focus of the list 'rebuild' has been on. Trying to keep enough experienced players around to still remain relevant and competitive, while trying to build a 'golden generation' from below. A few of our older guys have arguably dropped off much quicker then expected, so the transition is tougher than would have been hope. But come 2021-22, if we can keep the core that we are building now, and fill some gaps - there is going to be a very good football team potentially to be watched.

Brisbane is a perfect example of how some patience (and in their case the end of a long period of poaching and bleeding of quality players) can reap dividends when a group of players develop together and hit the 'peak period' together. I hope we will see much the same in around 2021 or 2022.

[Jeynez]

Brisbane is a perfect example of how some patience (and in their case the end of a long period of poaching and bleeding of quality players) can reap dividends when a group of players develop together and hit the 'peak period' together. I hope we will see much the same in around 2021 or 2022.

While I see the point you're trying to make. The Lions also benefited massively this year by recruiting mature aged players in Neale (26), McCarthy (25) & Lyons (27), who all slotted straight into their best 22.

[Ludwig]

Brisbane is a perfect example of how some patience (and in their case the end of a long period of poaching and bleeding of quality players) can reap dividends when a group of players develop together and hit the 'peak period' together. I hope we will see much the same in around 2021 or 2022.

That's an excellent example of how we can become a serious competitor for the flag. We could see last year that they had a lot good young players. Then they land Neale and Charlie Cameron, 2 players that can rocket a team up the ladder in short order. That could be us next year.