Adam The God

I wonder if that cliff we've all been predicting Geelong is going to fall off for 5 years may just come soon as a result of their poor finals record. All well and good to be playing finals each year (we could be so lucky!) but if you get bundled out of them easily every year is there much point? Will be interesting to see if they get Steven signed up and another player or two. Their best (aside from Kelly) are all +29 (as is Steven).

I like you Ron, but this is a shocker.

So what happens to our recruiting zone then? Does that mean we give up our NT recruiting zone? I wouldn't say Dandenong has been particularly fruitful thus far. Oakleigh would be better.

And Fyfe goes by the nickname of Basil too doesn't he, mate?

The implication being there are others? Others outside of those so far reported?

Is this an ET TradeBreaker thing or is this actually an ETHearingSomething thing?

Burns is a South Australian too so this isn't surprising.

Carlton have had just as many misses, if not more, than us over the years.

Why would we pay a multi-million dollar, multi-year contract for someone like Martin, who would throw our cap out, and make it difficult to keep the likes of Oliver and Brayshaw? Whereas, the Kelly approach would make sense, since his ball use and pace is exactly what our midfield needs. Sometimes to fill a specific need that compliments the rest of the list, you need to pay overs. That all sounds like smart list management and strategy to me. The offers from North to Martin and co has desperation written all over them. I'm glad you're not in charge of list management. You'd have us sunk in 3 years.

Let's speculate then. If Niall and the Pies are close, it might work for them to put pressure on Elliott to sign for below market value if they put it out there early, that we're chasing him.

Fair enough mate. You know the kids a lot better than I do, so if you think Ash/Young/Stephens are where it's at, it's certainly worth thinking about.

Haha. Who says we haven't had a go at those players? We just keep it in house when we go after players, until we're relatively sure we'll get them or they're over the line already.

I'm confused. Are you insinuating Niall is playing at something here?

North also haven't landed anyone. We've landed Lever and then May in successive off seasons. The very best players on the market both off seasons. By all means have a whinge, but your post above is a strawman argument.

What if we were able to land Caldwell with those two first rounders from GWS? Would that change your view?

I wonder what Roos thinks now. I reckon he'd be mightily [censored] off. Make no mistake. If things don't turn quickly next year, Goodwin will be gone.

We aren't a rabble but we're rightly not a destination club either. It seems we've targeted Langdon for a while, so I'm inclined to agree with Steve, just not his hyperbole on 'rabble'. Things could go south drastically next year if we struggle early on. Goodwin could be fired by the bye and our top players will be voicing their concerns, leading to murmurs of trade talk. Given how poorly we started this year and how we continued it, despite my inclinations to agree with much of your post, from an outsiders POV, Elliot will likely stay at Collingwood and Tomlinson+Langdon will come home to Melbourne (and the MFC) simply because we are a better prospect than North or St Kilda / can offer better money than Richmond or Collingwood, but that really isn't saying much.

I haven't said anywhere that the club knows best. But I have said that sometimes you have to overpay to get what you want. We need wingers. Tomlinson will be better than any current wingers we have and more durable. It's a no brainer.

I guess so. I wouldn't know. All I know is that we've allegedly had money in the cap to chase a 'big fish' the last two or so years, so that would make me agree with you on "we've been very good at how we manage the cap".

Without knowing the strategy behind all the decision making though, it's near pointless speculating. I know it's a forum and that's 99% of what a forum is about, but there are greater things to worry about than contracts that we have no real inside information on.

You're wrong. Have a lie down.

Also, it's ridiculous having a whinge about contracts, because unless you've seen the contract and are across multiple player contracts competition-wide, you wouldn't have a clue what you're talking about.

Gee, you'd be disappointed if you were a Lions fan. What a choke. Out in straight sets. We may not have made the top 4 last year, let alone the top 2, but we won two finals. Hope it means they're mentally scarred and tumble back down the ladder next year. One less competitor for us.

We won't properly challenge without outside run and a far greater ability to spread from the stoppages (something we've rarely demonstrated except for the very back end of 2018). Richmond, Collingwood and the Lions all have pace and spread from the stoppages. We won't be competing with them unless we sort out our list shortages. If we do, our ball-winning ability will go along way to surpassing the aforementioned teams.

As we well know, when you've been down the bottom for a while, you do have to overpay in order to lure good players. You'd think it'd be heavily front-ended.