KozzyCan

Apart from the fact that Geelong have clearly been planning this for a year. The club has no poker face. Anyone could call their bluff. But I think this discussion has run it's course. Have a good one.

I said it in another post. You take the Paul Roos position: "every player is tradable for the right price." If Oliver's manager was coming to us midyear to discuss a possible trade we should not have shut it down but said "make us an offer". Keep the ball in Geelong's court and see what they were willing to pony up. Furthermore if Oliver wanted to explore his options, let him. If we're in the position where we have a contracted player who wants to leave and a club that wants to get him we have the most leverage. As soon as we became the ones shopping him that leverage was gone and Geelong knew it. No big statement at the BnF was going to change that.

I never blamed the club for the behaviour of our players. I don't know how you got that impression at all? Oliver's issues have been discussed to death, if the club believes it's best to move him on I am completely fine with that. What I'm not happy with is how the club has handled the potential trade. They have made our position weaker on numerous occasions, by flip-flopping rather than maintaining any semblance of a poker face. You can call that playing the game if you like but I think it makes us look stupid.

Petty namecalling. Truly the domain of a winner.

Yes, the game we're playing is [censored]. We have made so many grand declarative statements that have been complete bs that it's obvious to everyone and their dog that we're bluffing. A little subtlety goes a long way. I don't know why you keep bringing up Oliver's issues. They are irrelevant to my point. We can choose to trade anyone for any reason but the way we are handling this has not helped us.

So were publicly declaring Oliver won't be traded under any circumstances for the benefit of who exactly? Geelong know we're happy to trade him, the media are saying we're happy to trade him. We've only served to make ourselves look dishonest.

You're barking up the wrong tree mate, I'm not saying we can't trade Oliver I'm saying the club could have handled all this far better than they have. If he has to go then so be it. But you can't tell a potential buyer that there's no way you'll sell only to turn around five minutes later and ask what they're offering. It just makes it obvious that the club is all talk and we'll fold easily.

As soon as Pert was shopping Oliver around our trade position tanked. Geelong were reportedly shaking trees mid-season and we shut them down, we should have told them that anyone is tradable for the right price and let them come up with an offer that worked for us. If Oliver was one misstep away from being booted then I don't get why we did that, or why we didn't see the writing on the wall last year and traded him while he still had value. We have clearly flip-flopped on whether we want him at the club and that more than anything has made our trade position weak. I don't think the club will come out of this looking good at all.

Yep if after all this we trade Oliver for unders it's going to be difficult to trust anything the club says.

TPP has gone up substantially.

What does the term matter? What do you call it when the players we actively pursue choose others clubs over us? Do you disagree with the notion that we're currently struggling to attract talent that can improve our list?

I think trading all our best players for unders just to get a few extra picks might not work out for us. I'm all for going to the draft this year but don't think we need to blow the list up completely to do it. When kids don't have leaders at the club to develop behind you end up like us between 08-13 or North since 2018, or Gold Coasts entire existence.

Our club generally hasn't had a great success rate with youth policies.

All that matters is how Freo see us. Future pick trading is a bet. Freo are betting against us.

We'd likely be getting unders for all three this year so not sure why we'd regret it.

The key word being most.

If we can manage pick 10 from Freo and ~20 from Brisbane it will be a good result for us. There's always fierce competition for these pick swaps though.

Most ruckmen are pretty useless until their body fills out. Gotta give them 4-5 years before they're really ready.

You sound like Mario from Doncaster.

Lake and Frawley at Hawthorn, Neale at Brisbane come to mind. Jury still out on JHF at Port and Jackson at Freo. Wouldn't consider Brown a big fish at all. Was being pushed out by North and we paid cents on the dollar for him, he did enough in 2021 but his best footy was clearly behind him. May and Lever were our big fish.

Was a pretty ordinary answer to a question that should be a layup. Lamb is supposed to be the guy selling the club to players so they come here and looked like a deer in the headlights when asked why a player should do exactly that.

This whole thing could have been handled way better if we just carried the Paul Roos mantra of 'anyone is tradable for the right price'. Would take all the pressure off the club for 'shopping players around' and players would never feel like the club is dealing behind their back. If a player gets chased while they're in contract you just tell them its fine and they can explore it but the deal has to work for us. All the secret dealing behind the scenes, leaks to the media followed by emphatic statements just make the club look silly and rudderless as soon as circumstances change.

Lamb didn't sound too convincing re Derksen and GWS been firm. Not great signs.

He's a very awkward media performer.

I don't really get why a Carlton supporter would choose to spend their days hanging around a Melbourne forum. Very odd behaviour tbh.