On 21/03/2026 at 07:38, Cranky Franky said:

The problem was overall list management from 2020 to 2024.

To let Baker, Jordon, Hunt & Bedford go while recruitining, Dunstan, Schache, Fullerton, Grundy, McAdam, Billings & Hunter is a major reason for our decline.

This comment has a clear lack of understanding about salary cap and recruiting.

Fringe 23 players are always targeted by other clubs willing to pay them well over their current clubs salary.

End of story IMO. All of those guys a good role players at best now days too

3 hours ago, DemonWA said:

This comment has a clear lack of understanding about salary cap and recruiting.

Fringe 23 players are always targeted by other clubs willing to pay them well over their current clubs salary.

End of story IMO. All of those guys a good role players at best now days too

Nonsense. The end of the story is that we totally butchered our list, making it worse instead of improving it by letting go of serviceable players & replacing them with duds

22 minutes ago, Cranky Franky said:

Nonsense. The end of the story is that we totally butchered our list, making it worse instead of improving it by letting go of serviceable players & replacing them with duds

Meh. Hindsight at its best.

Try fitting all of our flag heros into the cap and then tell me we were butchers. If we'd have turned up in the 2022 and 2023 finals it would be a non issue

3 hours ago, DemonWA said:

Meh. Hindsight at its best.

Try fitting all of our flag heros into the cap and then tell me we were butchers. If we'd have turned up in the 2022 and 2023 finals it would be a non issue

Nothing hindsight about it. It was dumb at the time.

List management is about trading players to improve the list not make it worse.

Trading in Hibberd, Melksham & May improves your list but trading in Schache, Hunter, McAdam & Billings does not.

Just now, Cranky Franky said:

Nothing hindsight about it. It was dumb at the time.

List management is about trading players to improve the list not make it worse.

Trading in Hibberd, Melksham & May improves your list but trading in Schache, Hunter, McAdam & Billings does not.

My point is that the names we gave up werent let go by choice for the most part. No employer can keep rising stars happy unless theyre paying them well and promoting them.

Also, Shaq and Billings were speculative picks - high draft picks, potentially worth a gamble given we didnt give up anything for them.

Hunter played a fair bit and was decent enough - what could have been if Gus wasnt KO'd and we hadnt capitulated against Carlton. If he had played in a flag no one would have knocked this move.

McAdam has had a bad run with injury.

18 minutes ago, Cranky Franky said:

Nothing hindsight about it. It was dumb at the time.

List management is about trading players to improve the list not make it worse.

Trading in Hibberd, Melksham & May improves your list but trading in Schache, Hunter, McAdam & Billings does not.

You'd assume there was more cap space to bring in Pig, Melk and May, the latter ones were from shopping in the clearance section.

56 minutes ago, Cranky Franky said:

Nothing hindsight about it. It was dumb at the time.

List management is about trading players to improve the list not make it worse.

Trading in Hibberd, Melksham & May improves your list but trading in Schache, Hunter, McAdam & Billings does not.

may cost the pick that became gc17's king, hibberd and melksham were both traded for great high second round picks

mcadam was the only player with significant 'cost' of that latter group, and that was for a second round pick; the others were freebies, more or less

we didn't have capacity to bring in highly ranked players as had the likes of gawn, viney, brayshaw, oliver, petracca, salem, etc. on high money deals

at the time, in 2021-23, none of them was going out

the significant player we lost was dogga at the end of 2022; we got peak value for him

other than that, we had little to trade

jj is the one that hurts, a bit, but that's because the afl and their stupid rules-on-the-run approach to allow delisted / relisted players to accomodate their stupid you-must-draft-3-players-every-year-but-you-can-prelist-a-delisted-player rule approach and, at the time, he had been very middling for us as a mid

2 hours ago, Cranky Franky said:

Trading in Hibberd, Melksham & May improves your list but trading in Schache, Hunter, McAdam & Billings does not.

Ridiculous, ridiculous comparison. May cost us an arm and a leg, a high first + second rounder, and for both Hibberd and Melksham we gave up a high second round picks. For the others, e.g., Billings was pick 61 and Schache was a future fourth rounder!

There's no comparison. All the players you named were depth players, except for perhaps Hunter who was more than useful in his first season with us and worth the trade to have a decent winger opposite Langdon.

On 23/03/2026 at 16:31, Cranky Franky said:

Nothing hindsight about it. It was dumb at the time.

List management is about trading players to improve the list not make it worse.

Trading in Hibberd, Melksham & May improves your list but trading in Schache, Hunter, McAdam & Billings does not.

Hunter and Billings were brought in as better kicks than the players we lost (Harmes, Hunt etc) at a time when we dominated stoppages and clearances but couldnt effecfively enter inside 50, on paper they were improvements without sinking the age profile of our contending list

If we didnt take Schache to replace Mitch Brown and Majak it would be an 18 yo beanpole who would have been no where near afl ready so multiple injuries to KPP at either end would have left us exposed again, when we were competing for a flag

hindsight sure if we got 2MP or d'ambrossio or whatever maybe it looks better but thats the game u play

On 23/03/2026 at 18:57, bing181 said:

Ridiculous, ridiculous comparison. May cost us an arm and a leg, a high first + second rounder, and for both Hibberd and Melksham we gave up a high second round picks. For the others, e.g., Billings was pick 61 and Schache was a future fourth rounder!

There's no comparison. All the players you named were depth players, except for perhaps Hunter who was more than useful in his first season with us and worth the trade to have a decent winger opposite Langdon.

May cost us Hogan the pick 6 was the same pick freo gave us that we gave them and won us a flag and played 150 games at FB for us, more than a fair trade

Baker wouldn't make much difference to our current list anyway (if at all) He's no better or worse than Sharp

Where we are lacking are proper A Graders (and lots of them) Difference makers

In terms of putting together a list that can contend, we are on a genuine rebuild

We might win 10 games this season but any more than that will be a real surprise

Edited 9 hours ago9 hr by Macca

Baker has turned into a good role player for the dogs but not really sure why people are slitting their wrists over losing him. He's a pretty pure winger and we've got plenty of those on our list already. He's also playing in a top 4 team which tends to make players like him look better. Put him in Essendon's current side and he'd struggle to get a touch.

2 hours ago, KozzyCan said:

Baker has turned into a good role player for the dogs but not really sure why people are slitting their wrists over losing him. He's a pretty pure winger and we've got plenty of those on our list already. He's also playing in a top 4 team which tends to make players like him look better. Put him in Essendon's current side and he'd struggle to get a touch.

Nobody's slitting wrists.

Simply pointing out that our player trading as part of List Managent in the Goodwin years was poor.

You trade players to improve the list not make it worse.

Baker, Hunt, Jordon & Bedford are all players we could have kept instead of Schache, Dunstan, Hunter, Billings & McAdam.

3 minutes ago, Cranky Franky said:

Nobody's slitting wrists.

Simply pointing out that our player trading as part of List Managent in the Goodwin years was poor.

You trade players to improve the list not make it worse.

Baker, Hunt, Jordon & Bedford are all players we could have kept instead of Schache, Dunstan, Hunter, Billings & McAdam.

Delisted Baker was not s poor decision.

I can guarantee you right now if it was Harry Sharp in Bakers position at the doggies he would be making similar impact.

Baker is 28 years of age and just hit 50 games after 8 seasons.

Go figure.

9 minutes ago, Cranky Franky said:

Nobody's slitting wrists.

Simply pointing out that our player trading as part of List Managent in the Goodwin years was poor.

You trade players to improve the list not make it worse.

Baker, Hunt, Jordon & Bedford are all players we could have kept instead of Schache, Dunstan, Hunter, Billings & McAdam.

I don't disagree that our list management was ordinary in Goodwin's later years but don't really think Baker is a very good example of that. Bedford, Jordon and Hunt all left because they weren't getting games. Baker has been a fringe player his entire career and is having a purple patch right now in a very good side.

On 23/03/2026 at 12:31, Cranky Franky said:

Nothing hindsight about it. It was dumb at the time.

List management is about trading players to improve the list not make it worse.

Trading in Hibberd, Melksham & May improves your list but trading in Schache, Hunter, McAdam & Billings does not.

Absolutely 100%

On 23/03/2026 at 14:57, bing181 said:

All the players you named were depth players, except for perhaps Hunter who was more than useful in his first season with us and worth the trade to have a decent winger opposite Langdon.

Hunter and Schache were shocking recruits, for off field issues moreso. There's a reason they were thrown out of the Dogs..

46 minutes ago, Cranky Franky said:

Schache, Dunstan, Hunter, Billings & McAdam.

How many Senior Games did we get out of that lot?

8 minutes ago, 3KZ is Football said:

Hunter and Schache were shocking recruits, for off field issues moreso. There's a reason they were thrown out of the Dogs..

Not sure Schache was a cultural issue, just a poor footballer. Hunter was servicable on field but a bad cultural recruit. Unfortunately the club was in massive denial about the culture when we brought him in.

4 minutes ago, KozzyCan said:

Not sure Schache was a cultural issue, just a poor footballer. Hunter was servicable on field but a bad cultural recruit. Unfortunately the club was in massive denial about the culture when we brought him in.

Agreed KC. Hunter = Premiership player but obviously a real DH.

Schache was Gus' step ladder in the GF

18 minutes ago, KozzyCan said:

Not sure Schache was a cultural issue, just a poor footballer. Hunter was servicable on field but a bad cultural recruit. Unfortunately the club was in massive denial about the culture when we brought him in.

Schache was also a "Cultural Issue" as well as being a poor footballer...

1 hour ago, KozzyCan said:

Bedford, Jordon and Hunt all left because they weren't getting games.

Hunt is the odd one out there. He was traded very much against his will and was reported to be in tears at the club's decision. @Ghostwriter can confirm?

As for Jordon, in his three years at MFC he played 25, 22 and 18 games so he was getting picked, albeit probably more often than he liked as the injury sub.

I don't think we could match Sydney's offer for JJ could we? He was also determined to leave they had promised him more game time in midfield etc

1 hour ago, Demonstone said:

Hunt is the odd one out there. He was traded very much against his will and was reported to be in tears at the club's decision. @Ghostwriter can confirm?

As for Jordon, in his three years at MFC he played 25, 22 and 18 games so he was getting picked, albeit probably more often than he liked as the injury sub.

Can definitely confirm. It was at the end of the 2022 season, he was crying and saying “I want to stay here, at this club. I don’t want to leave.” It was heartbreaking to see him so upset.

We gave him more than enough opportunity to stake his claim, but we had too many better players ahead of him at the time.

Good luck to him, he has certainly mastered the retro look.

On 23/03/2026 at 05:31, Cranky Franky said:

Nothing hindsight about it. It was dumb at the time.

List management is about trading players to improve the list not make it worse.

Trading in Hibberd, Melksham & May improves your list but trading in Schache, Hunter, McAdam & Billings does not.

It wasn't just the money, it was the game time. Those players you listed that left more than a few of them left because they weren't getting opportunities to crack into the seniors despite putting in regular good games at Casey.

Our list management following the premiership was an absolute blunder.