Cost of following the Sydney path

essendon gave pick 39 for prismall to geelong

surely we would/should have offered pick 35 for him

how nice would have this been

1

17

19

Prismall (35)

51

67

83

99

115

PSD 1

Prismall has to agree; I am sure that Melbournefc offered 35, but if the player will not come...

Really, what evidence is there that Melbournefc will improve over the next few years? Melbournefc have a young and undeveloped list. This year they regularly got thrashed. I can't see Essendon improving; but they were more competitive this year and have forwards like Lloyd & Lucas who must be more appealing to Prismall than Miller, Newton and Robertson (returning from serious injury).

But football is strange, Nathan Brown left Footscray for Richmond because he saw no more prospects of playing finals there; yet Richmond finished bottom with Hawthorn and Footscray in 2002 and they are the only ones not to see finals since. Judd discounted Hawthorn & St Kilda early last year because he could see any prospects of success there.

name one player, apart from carroll or meesen, who is worse

Jamar, Bell, C. Johnson, Newton, Frawley

I am not unhappy with the way trade week turned out for us. It was only ever going to be a "look see" on our part.

It will be interesting over the next couple of years to see how Prismall, $300k/3yr, for Essendon, and Warnock $400k/4yr for Carlton, perform. Y'know, see if those clubs get their money's worth.

I also hope the AFL are monitoring the salary cap situation at Carlton.

Cost of following the Sydney path

What relevance does this article have with Sydney?

I can accept that we didn't get Prismall and Warnock due to their asking price, and it was prudent of us not to waver on our offer.

If we were financially stable, I'm all for accumulating early draft picks and building a list from the bottom up. But we are not, and the debt demolition was a one-off short term fix. Another year like this year, and we are back in the same boat.

Retaining members, corporate sponsors and merchandising, let alone attracting new ones, is all about generating excitement about the club during the off-season. Compare the end of 1997 to now. We had a new coach, and were able to attract Jeff White to club, and had the no.1 pick. There was massive excitement, and the confidence flowed thru to the team in 1998.

As ickey_11 pointed out, "what evidence is there that Melbournefc will improve over the next few years." Not only were our results disgraceful this year, we were appalling to watch. And we don't know whether Bailey can actually coach.

What relevance does this article have with Sydney?

I can accept that we didn't get Prismall and Warnock due to their asking price, and it was prudent of us not to waver on our offer.

If we were financially stable, I'm all for accumulating early draft picks and building a list from the bottom up. But we are not, and the debt demolition was a one-off short term fix. Another year like this year, and we are back in the same boat.

Retaining members, corporate sponsors and merchandising, let alone attracting new ones, is all about generating excitement about the club during the off-season. Compare the end of 1997 to now. We had a new coach, and were able to attract Jeff White to club, and had the no.1 pick. There was massive excitement, and the confidence flowed thru to the team in 1998.

As ickey_11 pointed out, "what evidence is there that Melbournefc will improve over the next few years." Not only were our results disgraceful this year, we were appalling to watch. And we don't know whether Bailey can actually coach.

You dont get much at all.

You have comprehensively misread and overestimated our list.

We are nothing like Sydney. Sydney have a back bone of real stars like Hall, O'Loughlin, Kirk and Goodes. Roos has been trading to make the most of this group before they retire. Once they retire what do they have coming through to replace them. They have continually traded away there future to maintain the position. It will come home to roost with them as that talented backbone ages and their performance wanes.

And given the relatively minor trades that went through this year the ability to reasonably contemplate topping up your list is now gone.

And the parallel with 1997/98 is deeply flawed as well.

You seem to overlook that after missing much of 1996/97, MFC were able to regain the fully fit services of Lyon, Schwartz and Tingay. Easily in MFC's top 5 at that time when fit. We have no one of that calibre on our list to return nor do any of the current players come close to the iconic status that Lyon and the Ox were. Their return had a huge morale and emotional boost to the Club in 1997/98. We certainly dont have that

You keep tripping up on the belief that we are round the bottom through choice. Its so wrong its laughable.

We need to improve our list and cover the yawning gaps that exist. You have yet to put forward any plausible or sensible alternative as to how that could be achieved.

I love GoodVibes

Happy with trade week.

I am not sure that some of my fellow Demon fans understand that a trade involves 3 parties. The player's current club, the club interested in the player and yes the player himself. It s not a simple as a poster at Demonland coming up with a potential trade and hey presto the trade is done.

Many supporters act like drunks waiting for a pub to opened during trade week. You do not trade for the sake of trading. And as outlined above its not as simple as just suggesting a trade and it happens. Particularly this year it was virtually impossible to trade a player for a high pick given the compromised draft approaching, the Hawthorn 'high picks' model, the limited list sizes and

In the case of Green there was some interest from the Swans but Green did not want to go there and the deal involving Pick 16 coming from Hawthorn via Sydney was dependent on the O'Keefe to Hawthorn deal which it now appears was always unlikely. Then Collingwood had an interest but by all accounts were offering list cloggers. So to trade him we would have being giving him away pretty much. He is a good, but by no means great player. He seems to prepare professionally. So we have retained him for $1.1 million over 3 years which is a fair contract given that the elite are earning $700,000 plus a year.

In the cases of Robbie Warnock and Brent Prismall the contracts they were offered by Carlton and Essendon respectively were out of all kilter with what could be responsibly offered. All reports re Warnock point to a 4 year $400,000 deal for a 21 year old player with 21 games experience. In the case of Prismall - a 22 year old with 25 games to his credit and coming back from a knee reconstruction - reports indicate that he was offered a 3 year $900,000 contract by the Bombers. In both cases one would have to question, as Chris Connolly has, whether those contracts are financially prudent. It'd be interesting to see how many Cats and Hawks earn more than Warnock's $400,000 a season.

Lets keep our draft picks and lets not repeat our past errors ond overpay our players.