DeeSpencer

Don't love the trade. KK was pretty much free so it's pick 6 for May. Would've preferred to swap pick 23 up to a higher pick in that deal as well. Anyway. Love the player though. Big. Angry. Physical. Skilled. Proper key defender.

Hogan: 8 goals in 6 games against top 8 opponents Weid: 8 goals in 5 games against top 8 opponents from round 22 onwards We'll need to find a back up. I think Preuss or Tim Smith can do it short term. Add another scrap heap or VFL option but draft for long term.

Hibbo and Lever should go up a level. Oscar down a level to Casey

Read the Naill article. It's about 8 teams involved and no team wants to be the first to accept a deal when there's so many moving parts. The only currency teams have are draft picks (including restricted future picks), players and occasionally paying a percentage of contracts for other teams. A huge business deal would rarely feature so many independent and competing companies and they'd be able to offer different forms of compensation as well as bonuses, penalties etc. At the moment it looks like Brisbane won't move until they're happy with the Beams deal. Freo won't move until they've got the Neale deal sorted, after which they deal with Port so that they can work out deals with GWS and Melbourne. Port are involved with Gold Coast, Hawthorn and Freo and then Melbourne can deal with GC. The bones of the deals might be lined up but then Port might feel they are being slightly undervalued so might ask Freo for a little more, who then might get that little more from Gold coast who then might pass it on to us. Suddenly a team asks for pick 25 instead of pick 20 and then all of a sudden that pick 20 which was going to be used in the next 3 deals doesn't exist any more and it's back to the drawing board.

Where's the evidence of that? One comment from Craig Cameron with no real backing from anyone to do with May. Meanwhile the Jake Niall article lays out the deal that will have him as a Demon.

Whilst at his best he would've helped us there's clearly 2 issues that lowered his value: 1. He clean snapped his leg in half and that's not the kind of injury you want for a guy who's entire game is reliant on his running. He's not a great contested ball winner and he's not a good ball user. If he's not out running his opponent he's not helping you win. 2. In late 2016 he signed on for a further 5 year contract that incorporated the last year of 6 year 6 million dollar deal with a new 4 year 500k per year deal according to reports. Maybe he had 500k left on the old deal, maybe it was 1 mil left on the old deal. If the Giants wanted much needed cap relief for 17/18 included in his deal then there's a lot of that money left over in 19/20/21. It could easily be as much as 800k a year for those 3 years. I haven't seen it clearly stated one way or another how much he was owed but my guess is somewhere between 600-800 per year. My guess is we would've struggled to afford him and a lot of other Victorian clubs would struggle as well.

May's age means he has to get paid a heap of money to be in the top 5% of players and therefore draw first round compensation. That would mean he has to get through the year without injury and in decent enough form to draw the big offers. I rate him very highly, but I want him now and not after another year of battling around in a crap team. The longer you do that the less likely it is you get back to your best. Also pick 5 in this draft is worth far more than only a potential chance of a pick 2. The idea of knocking back pick 5 is all silly talk because May's true value is more like a couple of mid to late firsts with pick swaps, similar to Lever, rather than handing over a prestigious pick like pick 5. Gold Coast are just spreading some doubt to keep the price high.

The biggest stitch up was that he was contracted for 2 more years at 400k and the Suns were keen to get out of the contract. First year was pretty solid. Looks like a guy who checked out last year

He’s 23, it’s not completely crazy to sign him until he’s 31. And that was reported as the managers first offer. A 5 or 6 year deal at 1M is about what I’d expect Hogan to sign with Freo for. We gave Lever 4 years 800 and that’s before he’s in his prime. Plus key forwards get more. With the cap rising 20% in the next 4 years the 1M seems correct. Really I think this is Freo looking for deflection. Blaming the manager is an easy way out

Not sure about that. I think the Saints did a deal with Essendon and Sydney before we did our deal with GWS. They got pick 14 from Sydney for the price of a couple of picks in the 20's that netted the Swans a lot of points. Moving from pick 10 to pick 7 might've been a late move based on seeing other clubs do it. Still glad we did it and credit to the club for being in the right position and nimble but I'm not sure we invented it. Hawthorn, West Coast and Collingwood all did pick for pick trades towards the end of the trade period with GWS or Sydney to achieve the same thing. The bolder move was trading the future first and getting up to pick 3.

I've had the feeling the whole time there might be a 2nd big name alongside May if the Hogan deal got what we wanted, but it's only gut feel. The reality might well be that the pick 60's in the Kent and Preuss trades are set for some late swaps once we get our salary cap situation under control with the big name deals. If not there's been a recent history of players being delisted who would've been traded for next to nothing when the clubs couldn't get the deals done before deadline.

Tampa Bay Rams Colts

All those flags were initially built around the players they drafted - with priority picks helping - prior to 2018. Roughy, Franklin, Lewis, Hodge, Mitchell, Rioli, Birchall etc. Then they started trading out of weak drafts to get Burgoyne, Gibson, Gunston etc to fill the gaps. But they still needed Isaac Smith and Brad Hill, so you have to keep some decent picks. There's not a lot of evidence the Hawks trading post 2015 will work. They won't go down the ladder but will need to find some great players with later picks to stay up. They've found a couple of good ones - Sicily and Hardwick with later picks. Time will tell if they can do it again. Dealing pick 10 for Mitchell and a late pick for Scully is wise. Selling the farm for O'Meara and Shiel maybe not. We have a young core a bit like the Hawks in 2008, maybe not as good which isn't a knock on us but just a statement of how good those young Hawks were. So I definitely think we are in trade in mode. But we need some good draft picks too! The other thing the Hawks did really well between 09-13 was trade out the right type of players - they said goodbye to Gilham, Campbell Brown, Tom Murphy, Clinton Young, Mark Williams - all guys who were overrated and injury prone and got value for them. Are Watts, Tyson and Hogan the right guys to trade out? I think they are.

Preuss is the next man picked if Max goes down. So in many ways he's = 23rd. Tyson is 8th in line for the 4/5 inside mid spots in his preferred position clearly behind Oliver, Viney, Brayshaw and Harmes and most likely behind Vanders, Jones and Petracca. Even Maynard isn't far off. He's probably closer than that for a wing spot but it's time to develop long term answers there. With the way things were going in a years time Preuss is still next man picked if Gawn goes down. Tyson is drifting further behind.

Was contracted for 2019. I imagine we might've paid a bit of his salary, only because I think North would've paid him huge money in 2019 followed by peanuts in 2020/2021. No real issue with us paying a bit of money if it gets the deal done.

Good player. Although the KingDinga has a point about the ACL, we should've mentioned that when trading for him. It was after all the reason we didn't just pick him at number 3 in the draft. Freo are spreading all sorts of stuff about Hogan right now. It wouldn't have killed us to at least bring up Lever's history. Lever's best 3 games came against Jacob Townsend, Pat Kerr and Darcy Fogarty. Hopefully we get him healthy and he can start playing CHB against some real footballers and doing the same thing he was doing against no names. If he develops well he'll help a gun full back by stopping the ball every getting down there, but if we have a gun full back he'll help Lever by covering up deep in defence. Who's more valuable? Maybe Lever because he's younger and could be a long term leader. Who's better? Well we need both of them and we desperately need a big time stopper in May.

Agree with most of that. From any time he's been interviewed he's clearly not stupid. In fact I'm guessing one of his problems is he's a bit too smart for his own good. Seems a player for which footy is a job more than a huge passion. I just wish we rested him when his form was slipping in the latter half of the year. Might've prevented an injury or got on top of one early. If anything it would've been a mental reset. Apart from beating up a few bad sides he was all out of sorts and that can mess with relationships at the club and confidence. Who knows? Pure hypotheticals but maybe Freo offered him a truckload of cash mid year and he's spent the last 11 weeks worried he's about to leave.

History books don't care about which clubs look silly. They care about the wins and losses and if the opportunity still exists before Wednesday to turn Hogan in to May and something then we have to do it.

We need to say nothing, don't inflame the situation and hope Freo or Brisbane do the Neale deal. Then straight on the phone with a promise that all will be forgiven if they give us pick 5 and the future 2nd rounder. As long as that all happens with more than an hour left we'll get May and come up happy. Freo are using their leverage. Good luck to them. Not sure I'd be going this hard but I'd be doing similar.

I've been a critic of some of the trades. In the past I think he's been a bit too keen to be liked by the media and to get deals done early often with the justification of having time to do other deals - when at least from the outside there hasn't been other deals for us to do. But my concern hasn't been the direction of the deals simply the value of the little wins along the way. That said, I'm certainly a fan of the way he has grown in the role and dedicated himself to it. I reckon the GM of footy role has been massively undervalued by clubs. You can see the impact to a club where one of the good guys in this role - Neale Balme, Geoff Walsh etc comes in to a club. The coaches get on with coaching, the recruiters get on with recruiting and the team improves by making shrewd decisions. To have a smart and reliable person in charge of managing the football department makes the coaches job so much easier. In that aspect I think Josh has been a huge asset. He clearly has a good relationship with the media (along with his media relations team) and they've been quick to quash any drama. The players sign on for contracts. The coaching group have been well managed. As far as I can tell a lot of his responsibilities have been managed very well: - equip Goodwin with coaching talent - handle the list management with a defined plan - evaluate the talent of the playing group - work with the media to ward away scandals and drama My trading concerns are mainly based around the idea that we had leverage in certain deals where we had players signed on and the opposition had incentive to deal with us. The Lever deal, the Salem/Tyson deal, the Melksham deal even the Frost deal. All moments where I think we gave up a lot and probably could've just got a little bit here or there back. Maybe at the end of the day it doesn't matter and certainly the good of bringing in the right players to improve the team outweighs my concerns. Anyway, this year we're selling Hogan, attempting to buy May and it requires a firm stand to keep our value and hopefully Josh can achieve that. Already I think we're seeing a stronger approach from Mahoney in the media and that's important. AFL trades are some of the most bizarre negotiations you'll ever see. No other sport is like this and it's really unlike any open market business dealing. It's a bit of a game of chicken with the media heavily involved and a lot of emotions.

Swans betting that the Saints 2nd rounder next year is of more value than pick 28 this year, therefore giving them a couple of pieces to work with. The reality is though Hanners was never going to be that expensive. 3 years at 800k on the Swans books for a guy who can't play in the guts anymore and isn't all that effective on the wing if he's not breaking the lines. The Swans can easily fill his spot in the team and put that 800k to much better use.

North have a father son (30+) and an academy (5-15). But if they were going to give us the better pick they probably would've done it by now. Collingwood have an academy (10-30), a father son (20-40) and even another later academy. Could be an option but they might not have many list spaces. This draft is very shallow, teams won't want to give up good picks for trash unless it's a huge point win. I think our best option is to wait until draft night and do some live trades. Use picks in the 60's to move up a few marginal spots with the better 3 picks we already have to get 3 players we want. Then fill the list with extra rookie spots or delisted players. Guys like McKenna, Flippers, Max King and DJ never really gave us anything. We aren't losing ground if we replace them with similar gambles. Sure it would be nice to replace them with quality but give me the best 40 players we can find and worry about the last 4 spots.

Thanks for the post Tom. Welcome to Demonland. We should be having a good look through the state and local leagues/delisted players for a young 198cm+ forward with ruck stop gap potential or a ruck with upside. 21-24 year old range. Someone like when the Bombers added Shaun McKernan. Or really just a younger, taller, more agile Cam Pedersen. Adding a player of Campbell's age would just clog up the list and Casey.

Hard worker, good cultural guy, helped dig us out of the hole but at least at Melbourne his body couldn't find any burst speed around the packs so other mids who had it went passed him and that's clearly an issue on the outside as well. North are pretty well stocked for mids as well so I'm expecting they plan on maybe getting a number of games out of him next year then using him as depth on a cheap contract for 2020/2021. They'll be times where I miss his clean and at times creative hands around the ball, plus his willingness to run for the outside ball, but there's other things I'm sure we all won't miss.

Max Gawn's busted toenails on his Instagram are a good enough reason to trade for a big ruck. Liking this. Not convinced he and Gawn will play together, especially against the best sides. But the ability to not over do Max through the season is vital. Got to keep your best players fit and healthy through the season, they are the ones that matter come crunch time.