Nasher

Haha. It's been an intense week. Haven't even made it to the official trade period yet. Reminds me of that clip from the Olympics a few years ago, with an Irish commentator with no knowledge of sailing calling a sailing event, with the video ending with him realising that it was just the pre-race setting up and then the actual race begins.

"Early next week" according to Craig Cameron, to give them time to get a fair trade together, but there's no official deadline. The longer he leaves it, the harder it is to get the job done, which hurts everyone involved, including himself. He would have to have reasons for sitting on it, the most easily explained one being that he needs the Hogan domino to fall first.

I've always thought it was exactly that. It seemed to make sense back in the days when some clubs had state of the art training centres and others trained at the Junction Oval (cough), but now? Oh wow, you've got weights in your gym that aren't from the 1970s, and plaster board with no rat holes and... wait, what's this? A rowing machine?! Oh my God, sign me up now!

The epic meltdown in the proceeding few pages based entirely on the events in one poster's imagination has really spiced this thread up.

Depends on what you were doing with the rope, I suppose...

@Wolfturdothinks every list manager in the AFL is an idiot.

He was born and raised in Perth, but he definitely barracked for Adelaide.

Barracking for them as a youth is an especially flimsy reason when he barracked for Adelaide as a youth. I’ve said previously that I thought this move was 50/50 go home/go to Freo, who have been courting him since he came on the scene. I would guess (and it is only a guess) he doesn’t want West Coast because they haven’t spent the last 6 years trying to lure him. Or at least, not to the same extent.

I took it as a question rather than an accusation.

What would we have accomplished in this scenario?

Yes, of course his agent is going to steer him towards the money, that’s how the manager’s living is derived. Gaff is a grown adult though and can make his own choice. I recently took the lower of two offers on a property I sold because I preferred the terms, in spite of the estate agent’s push to take the larger offer.

I would love to believe we could engineer a trade with West Coast that would bring Gaff, but it seems like too many unlikely events occurring: - Hogan wanting to go to West Coast. This is part go home, part the fact that Freo have been in his ear since he was 17. West Coast don’t have a 6 year old relationship with him. - Gaff being party to this. He’s told North that if he leaves, it’s to them. He’s not going to backflip for no good reason. - West Coast being able to come up with enough extras to seal the deal. Gaff is the equivalent of one of those early first rounders Freo have - where’s the other one going to come from? - If not Gaff and instead they try to use their Gaff compo to land some early pics, it would take a monumental trading effort to get in to the early top 10 x2. That’s an even more difficult proposition for them. I like the posturing though. If nothing else it ensures Freo are held accountable.

Only the biggest of optimists haven’t let this dream go now though.

If it’s take pick 75 or Kent goes to the draft; I take 75. Both options amount to nothing, however one tells the footy world we’re big tough chest thumpers at the trade table, the other says we do the right thing by our players. I understand why people want us not to be seen as pushovers, but I think it’s misguided. I think not delivering the trade does us more reputational harm than any good it does. If St Kilda lowball us, they have identified themselves as poor traders and this will harm their future business. The clubs all have rivals they like dealing with and clubs they avoid. I know which club I want to be. It all comes down to Kent’s attitude about it. As @Fifty-5 said, if he gets in cahoots with St Kilda and says he’ll walk, we’re stuffed and he can have fun getting booed every time he play us. If he insists they deal fairly, we regain some power and we negotiate a fair outcome. There’s no point trying to throw our weight around if he throws us under the bus though.

Microcosm of society.

In addition to Lever we got back pick 35 (Harrison Petty) and our fourth round this year is upgraded to a third rounder, that significantly increases the chances of picking up an AFL grade player, or could be on traded this year. We got a bona-fide, known quantity star key defender, and a developing key defender out of those draft picks. It really surprises me that when people are asked which is worth more out of a $1m house or a Tattslotto ticket, people would choose the Tatts.

And achieve what? If he goes to the draft, he gets to St Kilda and we get nothing. We can go all Essendon and thump our chest and make big statements about not being push overs, but all that does is make us look like flogs and wastes time. They hold all the aces. Cut our losses and move on.

No need to resort to such tricks. It’s clearly Collar-da-jash-nidge. Easy.

He names terms if he goes to the draft, and his terms will be 3 years and the Saints $$$ offer. Pretty confident there'd only be one club interested.

Who cares. Was a delisting candidate anyway IMO, I'm still in shock from what they've offered him. Just sign it and move on to the actual business.

Given that we're already moving a squillion players on, I see no harm in one final year to pull the finger out. If he can recapture his prior form it will be worth it, if not, it will come at the expense of about draft pick 150 with our current vacancy list.

Sorry. Someone else said it with an entirely straight face earlier in the week. ?

Injured while doing battle for the MFC. MFC picks up the tab. It’s not a difficult concept. If May or Kolodjashnij are having surgery, should we pick up the tab? (Hint: the answer is no.)

I know plenty don’t rate him, but to me he has AFL attributes; he’s strong, quick and tackles to hurt. That makes his season disappointing for me - got dropped as fallout from our worst team performance of the year besides the prelim after starting the year best 22, and never looked like getting picked again. He’ll really want to put some heat on our mid defenders next year if he wants his stay at the MFC extended. As it is, he is behind Joel Smith who is no lock himself. Big challenge ahead, good luck to him.

Without meaning to be too cynical, this sounds exactly like Paul Johnson’s bio when we picked him up from West Coast. Not saying the result will be the same, just pointing out that annointing him the solution to both our ruck problem *and* third tall forward problem (as belzebub did in reply) is setting the bar very high. If he was that good he’d be in the Norf ones and not getting traded. There is risk involved and the trade, and our expectations, should be weighted accordingly. I’d still be looking at rucks in the draft, even if we get Preuss. (Edit: forgot about Bradtke on the rookie list, so maybe that’s enough project rucks on the list.)