DeeSpencer

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.

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.

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

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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.

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.

No panic. Freo know we want to deal, they've made a smart low ball offer, we've rejected it. Until they even get pick 5 for Neale they can't offer it. We just have to wait it out a bit. The good news is they offered pick 11 to us now rather than dealing it for Lobb.

So instead of getting a gun full back the plan is to just throw Tom McDonald back, even though he's our best key forward, and just hope his lack of agility and horrendous kicking from the backline have just fixed themselves? What kind of plan is that? Trading from pick 14 back to 20, then adding a pick 3, it accounts to Hogan being worth pick 1. Then he won the Rising Star, he was probably still worth pick 1 if not more. But it's been 3 years since and apart from injuries and personal issues he just hasn't looked like a true superstar. He doesn't kick huge bags of goals, he doesn't take over games regularly, he doesn't do the freakish. Plenty of players have won the Rising Star and become good players without ever being of the same value. Don't act like Hogan is similar to someone like Buddy or Nick Riewoldt, it just isn't true. The Dogs gave Boyd the 2nd biggest contract in the history of the game. A mistake but a mistake they were always going to trade for. He was a pick 1 who they thought would play like a pick 1 - ignoring the more recent history of pick 1's and the evolving nature of the game. Griffen was 28 and banged up that year, no team apart from the pick rich Giants would've offered more than 1 first round pick, but it doesn't really matter. Boyd was still a rare overpay, there's no point comparing. Pretty much it comes down to the fact the Dees are happy to trade Hogan for a reasonable deal, not just the massive mega deal. If they weren't it wouldn't have got this far.

North drafted a youngster - Xerri - who they have high hopes for as the future after Goldstein in 2-3 years. They aren't in the premiership window and are trying to accumulate players who will help them win games whilst still keeping their salary cap open for big name recruits. Tyson makes sense because he'll help them win games and they can front load him in 2019 and have a very cheap depth player in 2020/21. We are closing in on a premiership window - if all goes to plan - and need a back up ruck. A must have when in the window. We haven't been able to draft one so we'll pay for one. He's not perfect - not really a forward and needs to work on his fitness, but he has enough size, strength and competitiveness to fill in for Max if needed and wouldn't be the worst up forward either.

I'd say only partially related. Certainly it pushed Tyson another spot lower on the depth chart and surely increases the desire to get away from his salary. I expect we would've done it anyway.

My read on this draft from some trusted types is there's somewhere between 7-12 really super players, where most drafts have maybe 3 top liners and another 4 or so highly rated. After that it's back to normal business (and a bit shallow in the later rounds). So if the plan is to trade Hogan for May and a draft pick that Jason Taylor can use then I don't really care if it's Freo's pick next year, or this years pick 15 or pick 25. I certainly wouldn't cave but if there's pressure on to do a deal then I'd do the deal. I'm more in favour of getting in some viable assets with a lot of late swaps - especially now that live draft trading can occur. So if the second part of the Hogan deal is a later pick but it comes with some 3rd round and future pick upgrades then I'd do that. Hogan for May is what our team needs. Getting the extra value that we deserve can come in a lot of ways, the idea that a straight up top 10 pick is also needed is too ambitious.

That sounds about right to me. Still think it waits until the May deal, both clubs will want to work the little trade around the big trade.

Better news from Clark and Warner. 5 and 16 would do me. 5 and 21 would as well really. I'll even give Brisbane a 3rd rounder to send to Freo to move the Neale deal along!

Struggled in most of his early games but his game against the Giants was fantastic and he did some things against us as well. Has a bit of grunt in him as well as the Long/Rioli genes for pressure and tackling. He'd be a very good pick up but clearly the Saints know his quality. Express some interest now and try to get him to remain uncontracted until next years trade period.

Well he doesn’t ruck, he doesn’t tackle, he doesn’t crash packs and bring the ball forward to crumbers and he doesn’t set goals up with inside 50 kicks. Not saying he’s goals or nothing but in the role he was playing he needed to crash packs or kick goals He’ll be 28 and age is a huge factor. GC have just been given 3 priority picks with mature age players. I can see them getting a mid first round pick, but another pick 3 or 4 would be too much. They AFL would rather give them more mature age guys again, which this time the Suns probably trade and get some extra mid round picks. If he’s restricted GC can match and force a trade especially if they’ve sorted out their salary cap. That might be more of a concern than the compo.

Almost every team we played sent their best defender to T Mc from the week he came back. And often sent their 2nd best defender to Petracca or Melksham. Maybe Hogan can adapt, maybe he was injured, but T Mc looked the better CHF of the 2 and Hogan became an incredible inefficient inside 50 target apart from against bad teams where he got repeated easy chances