IvanBartul13

The main issue is that the AFL hasnt put in a true free agency in the sense that it is restricting the players that become free agents. The only time when it has become close to proper free agency is when Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney came in and they could negotiate with all out of contract players with enormous cap space and we saw players like Davis, Scully, Ablett, Ward move for the reason that should drive free agency, money. The AFL is only allowing players of a certain tenure to become free agents and these players by virtue of their age are (a) not necessarily going to be desirable to rebuilding clubs and (b) are possibly going to be motivated by team success rather than money. A genuine free agency, as an example, would see next year Dylan Shiel and Adam Treloar, two wantaway Giants, be on the market as restricted free agents. That is what would be happening in the NFL. In this scenario, the likelihood is that, for example, St Kilda could offer a 4 year $4 million deal to Treloar and Melbourne could offer something similar for Shiel. GWS probably could only afford one and they are forced into a decision. That is how it should work. The other issue is that is there really enough money to warrant free agency. In the NFL, routinely a good player from a Super Bowl winning team may be on $4 million in his free agent year, have a good season and then be offered a 5 year $40 million contract to sign with a lowly team. The Super Bowl winning team, under cap pressure, can't compete, can theoretically only offer $6 million a year, and the player moves for $10 million more over the life of the contract. Is an extra $600,000 over 4 years or 5 years really enough to drive a player to make a money-driven move in AFL.

http://www.saints.com.au/video/2014-10-03/recruiters-meeting-exclusive-access

We should ask for Darcy Lang!

Nah, he is right Redleg. Pick 4 was the Scully compensation pick after our first round draft pick that year. Our organic pick was Pick 3 which was essentially traded for Hogan.

I personally have a problem and a slight paranoia with Paul Roos dictating our recruiting agenda. I don't see how a coach who has stated he isn't going to be there in two year's time should be directing traffic in this area and I would be hoping Todd Viney and or Josh Mahoney are providing checks and balances to ensure that we aren't too focused on performance in the next two years. Rumours of Gwilt and Clint Jones send shivers down my spine. The most precious materials on our list are Jesse Hogan and Dom Tyson. If Hogan lives up to his billing he will be hitting his straps in 2017 and Dom Tyson will be 24 and he has the potential to be an A-grade midfielder by then. I think all the decisions should be made to be building to something good then. If we get multiple 27-28 year old players this year that. to me. will be ridiculous. Why would you put a 28 year old on the list when you could recruit a kid who might be able to help you when Hogan and Tyson start to peak. I think Melbourne fans can cop anything be it a rebuild, be it trading established players, what they can't cop is bad decision making and all these rumours of scattergun Blease for Hunt trades and the St Kilda rejects is all scarily pointless for me.

Very good athlete, long-limbed. Ball use and decision making are definitely work-in-progress at best and he needs to put on size to grapple with the bigger forwards, was manhandled at times this year.

You can't have watched him play this year. Absolutely awful and a retrograde step. Also, Pedersen has returned to his normal output this year. Neeld had as much to do with Pedersen's drop in form as Roos has in his renaissance.

Very good VFL player and he was on our radar the year he was drafted by Collingwood but AFL football has found his kicking and cleanliness under pressure out. If he is delisted he would be one of the better options amongst the delisted players, but you would hope we are setting our stall higher than other club's excrement.

Polkinghorne doesnt get enough of it as a midfielder and lacks the athleticism or X-factor to be a forward of any great value. He tries hard and is OK but If he had any currency, Brisbane would attempt to trade him. We're in trouble if the people in charge of the club have him on the radar. Lisle was atrocious this year for Brisbane and not good enough to be listed anywhere. One of his games this year was one of the worst I have seen from an AFL player.

He seemingly did it when he knocked back the tap that led to Lynden Dunn's goal. Extremely innocuous incident and didn't seem to be much hyperextension. I was positioned behind the benches last night and I have not seen as dejected a figure leave a ground before though which had me fearing the worst.

6. Bernard Vince 5. Nathan Jones 4. Daniel Cross 3. Rohan Bail 2. Dom Tyson 1. Jeremy Howe

Maybe a case but our usage of him has been as disingenuous as his performances have been

Absolute amateur hour from Peter Jackson and the club, you really have to wonder who provides the media and strategic advice at the club, it really is a shambles and as whole the club is like a gaffe-prone politician. Absolutely ridiculous that a club with a perceived tanking history would, after serving up one of the worst and most inexplicable performances in its history (a loss which has strengthened its end-of-year draft and trading possibilities immensely) ask for a priority pick 24 hours later and before the end of the season. Pure comedy, embarrassing and Jackson's performance here is awful in my opinion.

Maybe he could play Frawley in his best position as a good defender and not as a mediocre Brad Miller-clone forward.

Great opportunity for those not familiar with Steven Stretch's football to watch him in full flight

I don't disagree with much of what you've said, but we are clearly unlucky to have been a team at the bottom when the new franchises have come in. We would have been picking at pick 5 both the times we were down to pick 12 and we would have picked at one instead of four the year after. In the first two instances GWS and Gold Coast wouldn't have had first dibs on the best dozen players the year before. Had those clubs not been established, I'm comfortable to assume we would have drafted Dion Prestia the first year. The second year we'd be at pick 5 with a talent pool of Treloar, Shiel, Patton, Whifield, Coniglio, Tyson as the best six players. The year after, pretty confident we end up with Brad Crouch and, if not, Jaeger O'Meara. For what it's worth, I think Brad Crouch is the best young pure inside midfielder I've ever seen and if he doesn't get hurt he is going to be incredible, pretty much already is. I don't think you can argue against the fact that we were unable to get access to the talent our ladder position deserved and as such the momentum of the rebuild was hampered and the equalisation measures designed to help us were compromised. We very realistically could have a midfield of Prestia, Crouch and Tyson (without having to have traded for him). The argument against what I've said is obviously that other clubs at the bottom would have got great players as well, but what's happened is the divide between the top clubs and the bottom clubs has been harder to bridge as the talent has been vacuumed by the new clubs. Its part of the reason why the top four this year is identical to last year. Free agency hasn't helped either because the model which generally creates older free agents is weighted towards players moving to top clubs to get success. The bottom clubs don't really want to invest in these types of players who aren't going to be around in their theoretical period of ascendancy. A more free free agency where all players at the end of the second contract (as per NFL) would result in lower clubs being able to throw serious coin at 22-23 year old players. The current system doesn't allow that to happen. It's essentially a mechanism for the Hawthorns and Geelongs of this world to have an extra kick in the last 100metres and to give the bottom clubs some draft material to assist in a rebuild. I just think we've been genuinely unlucky as well as error prone. You mention Priority Pick years as well. The Scully/Trengove year we are also fairly unlucky it was a very weak draft. If you put a line through Dustin Martin on character concerns at that draft and there would be many that now would defend that call, there is not a player we could have realistically taken at 1 and 2, bar Ben Cunnington, who would have proven to be a better pick than Trengove - and even Cunnington is no certainty to end up a better player than Trengove - and we got a King's ransom for Scully via a mechanism that will end up helping us but also retarded the speed of our rebuild. It was an unlucky time to finish bottom and in truth the only way in that draft we could have fixed our midfied was if we had have recruited out of Western Australia better because Lewis Jetta, Nathan Fyfe and Mitch Duncan are the only midfielders in that draft that would have made any difference. Maybe because of financial constraints we couldn't scout WA as fastidiously as other clubs, who knows? Our recruiting has been pretty poor no doubt but I do think people look at pick numbers and players and say thats a crap player for a pick a lot of the time without looking at what happened after and what was available at the actual time of the pick. For example no one mentions Ben Holland's trade much but if you look at it close, it was a genius move. The real crimes have been Pick 4 Cale Morton when Dangerfield, Rioli et cetera were available and Pick 17/19 Blease/Strauss when Shuey, Zaharakis, Beams were available. I followed the draft that year very very close and would have bet my left eye on Ashley Smith at 17 and been badly wrong there with that pick. I would have done better with the other one but its a tough science and the club has obviously made numerous poor decisions but I don't think you can hide the fact that whether by design or not the AFL has done a lot of things with its mechanisms and the bringing in of the new clubs to hinder us.

Simon Eishold's 1987 Prelim Final miss is the worst ive seen

No way Sydney gives up Mitchell for pick 20. He would be a top 10 maybe top 5 pick in this draft. We'd have to consider him at pick 4.

Grimes basically won a game for us versus WCE early on.

Is he going to nominate?

Severe hamstring injury - hasn't played since NAB Cup. Been resigned.

Jack Lonie is a nigh on certainty to get drafted - and probably a lot higher than many think, the performances of Lewis Taylor and JKH and others will have done him no harm. There will be clubs that will put a red line through Lamb for intangible reasons and for the fact that he is so wildly inconsistent. There will also be clubs like North Melbourne, as an example and I have no inside info on this, that may take him early if they feel he could add some instant potency to their forward half whilst they see themselves to be in the 'window'.

Meant to write Jimmy Bartel. Josh Bartel was a prospect at one point who is a punter in the Canadian Football League. Either way, Geelong's dynasty heavily affected by them getting access to these players on the cheap and brilliant usage of there first rounders which they didn't have to exhaust. Hawkins 100% would have had first round bids. Ablett was highly rated at the time, was a bottom-ager and would have gone top 5-8, whether another club bid who knows, but Johnson serves the point equally well. Interestingly, Bartel obviously taken one pick before Molan and Johnson one pick immediately before Armstrong and Rogers. Suspect we probably would have taken Molan anyway but Bartel in his bottom year played one of the best junior games I've seen in a helmet for the Falcons at Kardinia Park in a curtain raiser before a GeelongvDees match so who knows but maybe another argument for a Priority Pick. How the old father/son rules robbed us

Under the current father-son rules, Geelong would never have been able to draft Josh Bartel or Joel Selwood.

Unfortunately for Grundy he monstered a very weak draft class at the national championships and competed against a very weak SANFL ruck division, of whom James Meiklejohn was probably the best that year, which is saying something.. He has no football smarts, can barely take a contested mark, which is an inherent talent and isn't particularly effective as a forward. Most of these facts are the reason he slipped to pick 19 or wherever he went. He is an imposing physical specimen and a good athlete with terrific ground-level effort which has allowed him to compete and do some good things but at the moment his 43 clangers per 122 possessions is the worst ratio in the AFL and he leads the clangers per effective hitout stat amongst ruckman with daylight to the second worst. Im not saying he won't mould into a good player, but he is certainly not an incredible draft steal. Witts is a far more rounded and skilled player and it's why he is playing and why long-term he will most likely be a terrific player. He was an incredible steal.