There has been a few commentary on bringing a mid season draft for the exact reason that we are in. Personally i am all for it and always have been due to the opportunity for players who simply cannot get a crack in the seniors. Its als a chance to reignite their careers perhaps.

With our situation in the rucks right at this minute these are the kinds of players i would seriously look at right now if we had the opportunity to trade in a Ruck.

Adelaide 

Rielly O'Brien

Collingwood

Mason Cox

Gold Coast

Tom Nicholls

Gws

Tom Downie 

Matthew Flynn (We bidded on him in the draft)

Dawson Simpson

North Melbourne 

Brayden Pruess

Port Adelaide

Matthew Lobbe

St Kilda

Billy Longer

Jason Holmes

Sydney

Sam Naismith 

Callum Sinclair 

Some handy names there that could do the job. Preuess and Tom Nicholls would be two ruckman that i would push hard for. Matthew Flynn is a big 201cm and 101kg ruckman who is dominating the NEAFL. We put a bid on him and they matched it. That pick then was used on Mitch King. Might be someone we will be still looking at come end of year.

 

 

 

 

 

Mid season draft. So about round eleven, when do we expect Gawn back. 

12 minutes ago, Mr Steve said:

Mid season draft. So about round eleven, when do we expect Gawn back. 

They saying maybe around round 15 mark.

How would this work? Players just walk from their clubs? Why would any team release a ruckman to us? And what's stopping our opposition from targeting M. King in an effort to undermine our chances further?

It is hard due to the AFL having a hard salary cap. Most sides have little wiggle room to take on an extra player payment.  The penalties for exceeding are severe. The AFL would need to come up with some exceptions for mid season additions.

The AFL should consider its options, but we all know that they won't likely budge for years.

We could use legitimate free agency right now (similar to NBA)  so we can bring in some help.

It's a moot point for us, dazzle.  We're in Round 5 and we would still need to wait until the middle of the year to get another ruckman in, by which time Spencer will probably be back and Gawn won't be far away either.

I'm not much of a fan of it as you'll have players coming in to system, mid-season, who have no idea about our structures and expectations.  It will take a while for them to get used to it all and, to me, it's not worth it.

Nice idea. But won't work that well

Do you "borrow" a player until your injured player returns?

We've been caught out with poor list management plain and simple.

Around trade time last year I along with many others on this site were calling for us to recruit another ruck option. From memory Nathan Vardy & Tom Downie were popular nominees along with Will Minson as a stop gap given after Gawn the only other ready to go ruck was Spencer who'd just put in a shocker VFL Grand Final.

With Gawn & Spencer now injured we find ourselves with a choice of two specialist rucks who are 18 & 19 (Filipovic & King) and nowhere near ready, or picking undersized part time rucks who are about 193/194cm each (Pedersen & Keilty).

So we've been caught with our pants down and looks like we now need to wear it.

This is perhaps where a team's VFL side could come into play.

One could have playing rookies who are nominated for the senior list for the first half of a season and then either renewed or replaced from the whole of the VFL list.

It could also be extended to allow you to "deactivate" a player at senior level while keeping them on the VFL list and then return them the next season.

Sure there are some problems (salary cap, contracts etc) but it would enliven the VFL and certainly provide for some enjoyable speculation for fans around mid season.