ChaserJ

I think the presumption was that Dees were taking Windsor, so was never looking likely to get to 8. I do think pace was on the agenda for them, which is why they were very keen on Fonti later on. He might have been their Windsor-lite.

I may have phrased incorrectly, I think we’re saying the same thing. By end of season I was meaning post finals and season in entirety, not h&a season.

That’s correct @binman, draft order is set at the end of the season and final placings are confirmed. Premier should notionally hold the final pick of the first round. Also, would happily give our double chance back to erase the memory of at least one of those finals losses!

If not too late to put forward q’s for JT: - Did the Eagles genuinely engage in talks re: pick 1 trade, or was it just due diligence? - When did we round in on Tholstrup as a player for selection 13? What sort of player (positionally) do you project he’ll develop into over time (e.g. mid/fwd or predominately a fwd)? - Was WC future 1st on the table for pick 7, and if so, how tempting was the trade?

Bombers swooped for Robert’s a good opportunistic strike from them. Always figured that Cats might take him and they’ve just pounced. Other recruiters don’t seem too high on him (running, athleticism prob hurt him) Schoenmaker a bit of a surprise. I’m stoked to see Charleson get to Port, I know a couple of the family, bit of sporting ability there. Brown looks all but certain to get to us as a rookie.

Waterworth from Foxsports has a similar view too: https://www.foxsports.com.au/afl/draft/afl-draft-2023-live-updates-night-two-picks-blog-round-2-and-beyond-draft-order-selections-start-time-how-to-watch-news/news-story/266df471b9b8ee1a37f1df2e5605c213

When you factor in where the bids came, 14, 27 & 35 became 17, 34 & 40 (40 got swallowed up by bid matches). Depending on when you do the math we gave up the equivalent of either pick 17 to land move up to 10 pre draft or pick 25 to get up 4 spots to 13 as it stands.

Yes, have a reasonable degree of satisfaction about this as well. Eagles backed themselves in on Reid, but wonder how much was driven by hubris and how convinced they were that they'd be able to do deals for additional first rounders whilst taking Reid as well. They've staked a good part of their rebuild on Reid now. Whether they rightfully stuck to their convictions or were just plain stubborn/arrogant in not maximising the return for pick one, time will tell. I do heavily suspect the latter will be borne out.

Petty came to mind for me as well. Welsh is a beauty, they may be hoping to have have WC’s pick land ahead of a bid for Welsh and have 2 high draft pick-worthy kids to look forward to.

Crows eying off WC future 1st with Sid Draper in mind: https://houseoffooty.com.au/2023-afl-draft-draft-day-whispers-part-2/

There’s a lot of projection involved with Windsor. I have a huge amount of trust in our recruitment team to get it right. If I was picking, I’d still have Windsor in the 10-15 bracket, and would pick Curtin first. Windsor had a good year and he grew as the year went on, but didn’t see the signature game or performance that really turned a game in his sides favour, which stuck in my head. Can pick out games from the Reid, Curtin, Watson and the others inside top 5 range, even Caddy had some truly standout games. That projection is really where the recruiters earn their dollars I guess, because the risks can be quite high.

That's now both the Age & HS that are thinking we'll take Windsor at 6.

I figured you’d be torn on that one! Thanks @dazzledavey36

In a straight pick between Tholstrup & Wilson, who would you take @dazzledavey36 ?

Might just be my Melbourne glasses, but parts of Tholstrup’s game remind me Colin Sylvia.

There’s enough speculative mail out there where you could connect the dots well enough at this point, but the writer apparently has talent/recruitment roles at Calder Cannons & Coburg VFL programs. Mail could be aggregated spec, but the profiling and matching to club needs probably has some good insight behind the content.

There’s a pretty good draft preview for each club here: https://houseoffooty.com.au/2023-afl-draft-club-by-club-previews/

This is a pretty good phantom. The rationale for selections is very sound: https://houseoffooty.com.au/2023-afl-draft-phantom-draft/

Final power rankings from ESPN’s Jasper Chellappah. Has deviated a little from the broad view of some players (eg Caddy higher, Watson lower than other rankings), which I like: https://www.espn.com.au/afl/story/_/id/38843195/afl-draft-power-rankings-2023-jasper-chellappah-harley-reid-number-one-top-50-prospects

It was interesting that other clubs are the ones that contacted Jason Dover re:Dees consideration of trading p6 for WCE future 1st. Melb would wargame all poss scenarios, so wouldn't be surprised if we’d talked about potential swap for WCE’s ‘24 1st rounder & then canvassed the clubs with picks 7-10 to see if they would potentially do a deal for 11 & a further pick we would get from WC. They possibly then would have fed that on to Dover, hence the convo & line from Melb. Working to get pick 1 would still be the higher ranked objective, so Dees have to say they’d take Curtin (I’d very much hope he’d be in the frame for us regardless), otherwise you lose all leverage in trade talks. Curtin’s camp probably prefer he stay out West, so serves them well to put that out there one way or another.

Hey, remember the last time we had a number 1 pick, Brock?

Re-read your question @Damo and updated my reply.

Yep, providing all of that happens before the earliest current selection being utilised has been utilised.

Would hope we’d wait until after pick 1 was taken to execute a trade for p3 or 4.

Might well have been. Curnow had been hovering around the best 4 or 5 rated players for a chunk of the season and in the mix for our selection before dropping late. A few thought he was the most talented player in it at the time.