old55

26, 29 and 30 could be too late if Dodson is any good

Smith himself said on Gettable that he models his game on Butters. He also said that in the second half of the season he concentrated on metres gained after his coach Rob Harding pointed out he was not impacting with his possessions. He can win the ball at will, that's an under-rated skill, and as he said it's very difficult to teach.

So we should be drafting for need at 5 and 9?

Very good results for Chandler Sparrow and especially Tholstrup in his first year. Expected for Lingers and the Adelaide player.

Cal Twomey has Armstrong at 10 in his October form guide and Ashcroft at one which places Armstrong as 9th best available player.

Interesting that Armstrong wasn't in Cal's 13 top 10 possibles.

Might have improved his draft analysis from a low base.

I think there's a couple of possible pick trade scenarios I can imagine for us. We might rate 9 though the mid teens on a par and trade 9 for say 15 and 16 with GWS if they really rated someone at 9. That would give us 5, 15 and 16 in the draft. We might really fancy someone who won't make it to 5 and trade up to 2 with North who would likely be happy to do so. To do that we probably need to make the above trade with GWS and then 5 and 16 to North for 2. That would give us 2 and 15 in the draft. But I'm hoping we're happy with who is going to be available at 5 and 9 and sit there. It's a sweet spot to be. And we can take a "smokey" late as suggested by Tim Lamb during the trade period.

Good point well made!

The only incentive for Richmond to make that trade is because they want the same player we want at 5 and the same player we want at 9 (they also have 10). Maybe they do, but if so, we'd never make that trade and give up the players we want just to get pick 24. Richmond are picking straight after us, we're not trading with them.

He's asking you who is "best available" from Gawn, Petracca and Hogan. Put them in order. We'll see if everyone agrees.

and Melksham.

Not after we traded with them for 9, no way we bid on him.

https://www.draftguru.com.au/analysis/pick-value-comparison Average games for picks 1-20 is well in excess of 100 games. Next 50 picks average above 50+ games.

Option C which has been posted is to trade up 5 to get access to the very top end. 9 to GWS for 15 and 16 5 and 16 to North for 2 (better than Richmond are likely to offer) 2 and 15 in the draft.