Nasher

I wondered the same thing, so figured it had to be something logistical given the talent available in this draft. It differs from Hogan in that there doesn't seem to be an equivalent player to Hogan in the draft this year.

No, before that, it's the club's job to decide whether or not it's worth the effort to work it out, and before that determine whether it's even possible to work it out.

In addition to Bock and Davis? They've been caned in the last three years and I never really begrudged them for taking Thompson anyway. Any karma they they were due I think they've paid and then some.

2001 super draft first round - 19 players total: 4 stars (Hodge, Ball, Judd, Bartel) 7 okay-to-good players (Polak, Hale, Reilly, Dal Santo, Ladson, Kelly, Gram) [And I've been generous in some of these cases] 8 duds (X.Clarke, Sampi, Molan, S.Power, Cole, A.Watson, Brooks, S.Harvey) Pro-rate that against GWS's 25 first rounders and you get 5 stars, 9 ok players and 11 duds. Also a club with too many star players on its list is going to end up under a massive salary cap squeeze; though we've seen clubs like Brisbane Lions and Geelong manage this in the past. Sure 5 stars is scary on that scale, but that's the very very worst case. With the numbers of absolute lemons that have been picked in the first round even in strong drafts, I don't think the GWS list will be as terrifying as some seem to think.

Watch the highlights, please. I thought it would be patently obvious to anyone who knows anything about him at all as to why most of us don't give a rats about having to wait a year.

No way. Far, far too much readable, logical, sensible stuff in cfe's post to be that guy.

Indeed. Wines sounds like the perfect complement to Viney. I'm hopelessly unqualified to talk about juniors, but Wines sounds to me like he'll be a perfect fit on the assumption that Toumpas is one of GWS's three. I'm convinced.

Apparently in WA they start and finish school a year earlier than the rest of the country, meaning Hogan is in year 12 this year. He'll be in Melbourne, as a full time footballer next year just like everyone else on the list. The only thing out of the ordinary is that he'll be ineligible to be picked in the senior side. I stand to be corrected...?

I worry that his poor kicking is terminal, and he gives away a lot of free kicks, though statistically he wasn't the worst this year (McKenzie won that dubious prize by a street). However Neeld's treatment of him post concussion - i.e. straight back in to the side even after missing three weeks, was instructive I thought. The coach is obviously a massive fan.

HG is well connected, there's not much more you need to know. There aren't many on this forum I'd believe almost unconditionally, but he is one.

How many midfielders can you play at once? Our midfield might've been poor, but I think adding two first class players changes the dynamic of it more than you think. It's not as if every single player in our midfield is a spud - I think swapping, say, Moloney for Viney and Magner for Pick 4 (assuming he is ready made), it's already a very different look and I'm not sure how many more 18 year olds you'll squeeze in there. I'm not suggesting we don't need any more midfielders at all, just saying that adding class is more important than flooding the list with young midfielders. Quality over quantity and all that.

Pick 13 was also a Scully "consolation" pick as well and we traded that.

I was trying pretty hard to forget them, actually.

I think with the addition of Viney and hopefully another gun mid with pick 4, it's less critical to pick another mid with pick 20 now.

Indeed - Hogan only needs to be okay for us to have achieved parity. If Hogan becomes the gun we're hoping for and 20 and Barry amount to anything at all, we're a long way ahead.

Or it displays 50 posts per page where this one displays 25. That said I reckon thread length is just proportional to the number of active posters. As you'd have noticed, it's not 15 pages of to-ing and fro-ing usually, it's 15 pages of individual posts from people splatting the contents of their brains on to virtual paper.

I have a lot of sympathy for both views actually. The selections of players like Watts, Scully and even Morton were more or less universally agreed on by every expert and qualified amateur in the industry, so it's rich for supporters to jump on here and slam the picks. At the same time, our list in the last few years has looked and played like complete dung and we've missed a lot of opportunities to draft gun players that our opposition have lapped up, and we've fallen a long way behind as a result. Both the "it's an inexact science!" and the "these guys are paid the big bucks to get it right!" crowds have equally valid points. There's no benefit in hindcasting anyway. We've got a whole new regime this year that is heavier resourced than the last few mobs, so the slate is clean. Let's just forget past effups and just get it bloody right this time. After the turn of events in the last week I believe we're already half way there, and for no real reason at all I'm feeling confident we'll nail our off season list changes this year. Edit: hmm, not really the thread for this tbh. Sorry to hijack your thread, OP. However it took me about seven valuable minutes of my life to write it, so I'm not removing it. ;p

Do we need both? I think in terms of role it probably is a choice between the two. My answer to the question: a player who has (say) 60%* probably of a being a star, vs a player who you know will never be one? I'd have thought that the downside risk with Hogan is that he turns out to be a similar player to Dawes, and the upside is that he becomes so much better. If choosing between the two it's a no-brainer for me. II say all this without ever having seen Hogan play, not that I think that matters. * Just an arbitrary number. I make no claim that this is the actual probability of Hogan becoming a star. I'm using an arbitrary number to make a point. I don't know the actual real probability of Hogan becoming a star.

Having pick 20 in our hand makes Dawes look a lot more attractive a proposition to me.

I'm hoping to post a 10.15am Thank God The Server Stayed Up thread.

This kind of logic gives me the sheets. Star players come from high picks. Yes there's exceptions, but the talent is at the pointy end of the draft, it's that simple. Yes, we've shanked our early picks before, but that doesn't mean we will forever. Spending your early picks on players who are "okay" is consigning yourself to be in the middle of the ladder forever.

No. They don't want Tippett badly enough to turf out Lewis Jetta, to trade Parker the deal would have to be very sweet and still they'd um and arr, and Morton adds negatively to the trade, not positively. Jetta kicked more goals this year from the midfield than Tippett did as a key forward!

I agree BD. I have a few friends who have been down the medical degree and the workload is insane. Someone made the comparison with Martin et al doing Law degrees, but Law is in a different league for workload. As far as juggling medicine with full time football goes, the odd person in the professional era may have pulled it off - Ben Holland was a podiatrist IIRC and someone above mentioned Liptak - but I sure as hell wouldn't want to be juggling both. Good luck to the guy.

West Coast stuffing their pick doesn't mean we got ours right, it just means they stuffed theirs. (I'm also not saying we did stuff our pick, just saying that the two things are independent.)

Swans delegate stands up from table and walks off without answering.