If you think about it a team that finishes last gets pick 1, 19, 37, 55 etc

A team that finishes 1st gets pick 18, 36, 54 etc

So the last placed team really only gets a single chance to recruit 1 good player more than the top team. If this is a bust like, say Cale Morton, or you draft a Tom Boyd or McCartin that is a longer term prospect, you havent improved your list relatively.

So you have to trade and you have to do it over multiple seasons. You can't as some on his thread seem to think go out and recruit Fyffe, Hannebery and Sheil in a season to turn your team around. It simply can't happen. You have to be operating at every level above the pack - drafting, trading, development etc etc

What Roos and PJ have done in a short space of time is quite remarkable. But they still need a number of seasons before you can call it successful.

And when you consider the GC and GWS concessions it has been ridiculously hard - made harder by the fact we haven't chosen well or developed then etc. Its why we needed a priority pick, why its a good idea and why we should have got one.

A very good analysis Jr it makes sense. So really the relative draft position really only counts for pick 1 where you are 17 ahead of the pack and the law of diminishing value starts to work in subsequent rounds

The top 3 teams have midfields that are like a machine. The different parts (players) all combine for a steamroller effect.

Other teams might have a good group of midfielders, but they don't work at the "machine" level.

Machine midfields don't just beat lesser teams, they smash them. Getting smashed means that your midfield is renderned helpless - no matter how hard you try, there's little you can do (unless you're lucky enough to catch the machine midfield having an off-day and you try a different unexpected "Plan B" that actually works - Dogs vs Hawks).

What's actually changed this year is that we're now competitive against teams with "good" midfields. Tiges, Dogs, Suns, Crows. And maybe Port, Pies, North (who think they're better, but they got smashed by Freo), Cats. GWS are probably transforming into a machine midfield this year. If you're down against a "good" midfield, you can get back on top by tackling harder, by successfully tagging the opposition's key mid, by handballing & running the ball more & combining better, by a great individual effort, by swinging in someone who makes a difference etc.

These tactics rarely work against a machine midfield that's on song. And a machine midfield can lose one or two key components (Hodge & Lewis) and still function just as effectively.

We will still get smashed by machine midfields, until we ourselves develop a midfield that works like a machine. We don't have a Plan B yet, so if we're getting swamped, we're powerless to stop the avalanche.

So how we go against Freo, Hawks & Swans will tell us very little about our improvement this year, unless we happen to go close to any of them (which would actually be a huge surprise). A far better measure of whether we've improved this year is how consistently competitive we are against the "good midfielders" teams. Which, so far, is not bad at all. But the team I really want to beat is North, probably the best of these teams. Or maybe Pies.

Dont get too far ahead of yourself CBDees

It was one win against the Dogs who are in a similar boat to ourselves.

Lets check again at the break after Games against the Power, Pies and Cats.

Why check then ? To what end ?

Why not end of the season when you have completed playing and have a full picture.

I keep using Neville Jetta as the example - if we critiqued him mid 2013 he was gone with no rookie spot. His last few games of that season saved him.

What if Toumpas takes 3 steps backwards and blitzes the last 4 games ? still delist him ?

Up until Sunday he had shown little - but on Sunday he made mistakes as did everyone but looked like he belonged.

Happy to read all the speculation but don't indulge in the "sport" as it is unnecessary and more importantly very fluid - last weeks "dud" is this weeks hero. Contrary to what WYL posted about a month ago - no ones cards are marked yet and no cull has begun because simply - there is absolutely no need to do that at this stage of the season.