2020 trading, drafting and list management: players and personnel

[KTigers]

With Treloar; maybe there is a lot more to what meets the eyes and ears.

Yes, I was going to say that. Based on what has been reported so far this Treloar story is so weird, you start
to think there might be more to it than Collingwood just being tone deaf and insensitive. Where is Bucks?
He is normally an intelligent, vaguely articulate chap.

[barry]

The Treloar situation is quite easy to understand if you take all the bull@@@@ out of it.

The simple explanation is collingwood is in a whole world of pain regarding salary cap. So much so, they could even be staring down a cap breach this year or next unless big things happen.

They have 3 or 4 players on big money, long term contracts, and the only way out of their cap trouble is to offload 1 or 2 of these. Treloar is one of these, along with Grundy.
They also want to keep Moore and DeGoey, and they wont be a serious flag threat until they bring in some extra's.

None of the big money players havent shown any interest in moving. But then a small crack opens up, when one of their partners decides to move to the gold coast. And, as luck would have it, the Gold Coast are always in the market for established players.

Im sure when the Treloar's decided Mrs would go to the gold coast, they planned everything around Adam staying in melbourne, because, you know, he has a long term contract. So regular visits, only for this year, blah, blah.

Collingwood, however, see this as the only out for its cap issue. So in true McChins fashion starts putting it out there that its for his own good, he's not that good anyway, etc
Make Adam believe he should leave. Its the classic case of forcing employee's out in the normal corporate world. Make their life unbearable until they leave.

Horrible, Messy, but the alternative is they loose a lot more players to keep him.

[KTigers]

In an ideal world if you ran a club you would only ever spend 95% (or whatever the minimum spend is) of the cap,
keeping some "really good, and possibly greedy player" money up your sleeve for when you thought you really
needed it. I think the law of diminishing returns applies to player salaries. The $1M a year player isn't really twice
as good as the $500K a year player.
When a player is out on the field it's his skill, drive, fitness & footy smarts that separates him from others rather
than pondering about how that extra $150K a year he is paid will buy him a bigger boat or fancier car.
I think that for a long time there has been this expectation that the salary cap would just keep rising and so players
could be paid ever increasing amounts and the rise in the cap would take care of it down the track.
Covid and a decline in the growth of the game has put paid to that and now some clubs have been caught out.
And so now we have the prospect of many highly paid players moving about.

[The Big Cat]

I'm really excited hearing this, especially in the light of knowing Aliir is staying.

https://player.whooshkaa.com/episode?id=750605

[bloodspirit]

In an ideal world if you ran a club you would only ever spend 95% (or whatever the minimum spend is) of the cap,
keeping some "really good, and possibly greedy player" money up your sleeve for when you thought you really
needed it.

This may not be necessary because IIRC you can spend 5% above the salary cap in a given year, provided you trade off a corresponding amount the following year. Possibly, it only works the other way around though: if you underspend you can spend that amount extra the following year (pretty sure this is true).

I think the law of diminishing returns applies to player salaries. The $1M a year player isn't really twice
as good as the $500K a year player.

This is undoubtedly true, just as the line between being the unluckiest to miss out on being drafted aren't much behind those that are drafted later: as the rookie list has so often proven (maybe I'm conflating two separate issues there). Anyway, the point is that it's still important to use your salary cap because you are trying to get an advantage over the rest of the competition by using your salary cap effectively and it's hard to do that without using it all. At the elite level it's a game of margins and the small differences count a lot. Assume you take the no frills, slightly inferior option and save some money - what can you do with it? The only way you can turn it to good use is by spending it. The key is to try and maximise your return by finding the best value (and then supporting and developing your talent as best as you possibly can).

So, in an ideal world I think the only reason you don't spend your whole cap is so that you can pull off a fancy move with your extra cap space the following season.



******

In other news, 30 Victorian draft prospects will test at the Victorian State Combine this Saturday: https://www.afl.com.au/news/523249/potential-no-1-pick-famous-name-set-to-test-in-vic-metro-draft-combine. At first I thought this was a low number but that's because it's only Vic Metro and Vic Country tested already (except for half a dozen country ones who were stuck in metro Melbourne and who will test this Saturday also). Even still, the numbers seem pretty low.

[Markwebbos]

I'm really excited hearing this, especially in the light of knowing Aliir is staying.

https://player.whooshkaa.com/episode?id=750605

He was very positive about our list and our more attacking game plan

[barry]

In an ideal world if you ran a club you would only ever spend 95% (or whatever the minimum spend is) of the cap,
keeping some "really good, and possibly greedy player" money up your sleeve for when you thought you really
needed it. I think the law of diminishing returns applies to player salaries. The $1M a year player isn't really twice
as good as the $500K a year player.
When a player is out on the field it's his skill, drive, fitness & footy smarts that separates him from others rather
than pondering about how that extra $150K a year he is paid will buy him a bigger boat or fancier car.
I think that for a long time there has been this expectation that the salary cap would just keep rising and so players
could be paid ever increasing amounts and the rise in the cap would take care of it down the track.
Covid and a decline in the growth of the game has put paid to that and now some clubs have been caught out.
And so now we have the prospect of many highly paid players moving about.

A large part of the reasons club face cap trouble is because the cap is changed underneath them, doesnt rise as much as they expect, or they just cant convince good players to play for under their real value.

[Jimitron5000]

Isn't the cap an average over a few years? I heard somewhere that St Kilda had been paying below the cap for a little while, thus they have a bit of a warchest to attract new players.
As much as we talk about the salary cap, there is a salary floor too. Not sure what the number is, possibly 95%. In this instance I feel sorry for underperforming clubs that have to pay high wages for poor results.

[Thunder Shaker]

I suspect most of us would like pick 3, Campbell, Gulden, and a ruck. It's hard to see how all of that happens, and we bring someone like Constable in, without giving up real assets. Even if we are inclined to do that as general principle, I doubt we have much to trade. I would have thought our main trade action relates to the ruckman and then it's to the draft.

I'm one of those that think this.

The problem is, we're about 600 draft points short of achieving this goal even before we recruit a ruckman from somewhere. Something has to give.

[707]

I'm one of those that think this.

The problem is, we're about 600 draft points short of achieving this goal even before we recruit a ruckman from somewhere. Something has to give.

We take a deficit into next year or we buy some unwanted picks with points for a late 2021 pick, probably done on draft night

[stevoswan]

Ring ring - "Is Aliir available"? "Yes, for Lycett or Ladhams" click ........

Always thought this was one of those far fetched space fillers, now confirmed as such.

But it elicited this bizarre headline in the Herald-Scum....."Port survives Swans ruck raid". WTF?

[707]

But it elicited this bizarre headline in the Herald-Scum....."Port survives Swans ruck raid". WTF?

Just shows how desperate the press is for a story, make anything up to get a headline and clicks. Very sad

[Mel_C]

May not really answer my question but great post! You have spelled out what makes this situation more unsavoury than most. Why is it all in the public domain? Is it their way of pushing him out the door?

What are Collingwood people saying about it? Haven't heard much. Doesn't reflect well on their leadership. I wonder what it says about Buckley, who I normally feel quite positive about.

This week when I was listening to SEN a number of Collingwood supporters rang up saying they were disappointed in the club for how Treloar was being treated. One caller was savage against McGuire saying that he spoke out in support of the Australia Post CEO who bought those expensive watches but he hasn't shown support to his own player.

I stay away from watching/listening to any programs with McGuire so I don't know if he has made any comment.

[Ralph Dawg]

Doggies need a small forward, we need a tall forward. How does a straight swap of Ronke for Schache sound?

[i'm-uninformed2]

The Treloar thing is a truly awful situation. He has been open about his mental health issues for a couple of years and clearly the club has been supportive of him till now and fine with him.

For the club to then background, he’s difficult to coach, he won’t cope, etc etc, is truly a ???? act - when it’s clearly a salary cap squeeze.

Fancy exploiting and compounding a bloke’s mental health issues like that.

I remember during the Goodes stuff, Quadruple Chins always invoked all his other ‘social good’ work as a defence. What utter hollow @@@@e.