BigMacjnr

Thanks for trying

Not yet but here's hoping. 👍

Hi all, Hoping for a bit of luck here. My 6-year-old son is keen to go to the game today and hopefully sit near/with the cheer squad today against the Eagles. If anyone has a spare ticket or can't make it I'd be incredibly grateful if you could DM. Thanks so much in advance! Go Dees!

How good is Taj Hotton? Is he a talent like what we can get at pick 5 to the point we would consider trading back and pick up an additional first round pick?

Appreciate opinions from our resident youth track watchers as the best but realistic sliders we could pick up if we obtain Brisbane's first round pick?

Plus we would have a leg up to see first hand what umpires are practising to know all rule change updates and get ahead of the “rule of the week”

Clarification, against the cap. Mitch thought there would be a minimal cap hit with most of the contract going outside the cap

Tradies podcast Mitch Cleary stated AFL will pay the majority and the dees will pay very little of his contract.

There is more information filtering through on what the concessions will look like: https://www.foxsports.com.au/afl/department-of-trade/afl-2024-tasmania-devils-to-trade-for-players-using-draft-picks-15-million-salary-cap-bonus-targets-colby-mckercher-latest-news/news-story/7d372c8697ccc249148d9b43a26602d6 Summary they will likely get strong draft picks ie. 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11 but they will be forced to trade in talent with some of those selections. Sounds like they will also have an additional $1-1.5m in sign on bonuses to sign free agents which will be factored into the compensation pick return for the club losing the player. I would imagine they would also have NGA academy rights to Tasmanian players with either pre-listing or bid-matching capabilities. This sounds like a much friendlier structure than what GWS and Gold Coast had and won't overly hurt the clubs who are rebuilding at that time.

https://www.afl.com.au/about-afl/rookie-players

What hasn't had a lot of mention to date is that Shane McAdam averaged 5.3 score involvements, which would rank only behind Kozi and Fritsch from our forwards who each averaged 5.9 score involvements. Having forwards who can not only kick goals but create scoring opportunities seems to be the key here to help with that forward-half connection issue. This would be a similar reason it would be good to pick up Jack Billings on the cheap this year as depth (st kilda paying most of his salary). He is a high score involvement player. Could do much worse and would help

Basically values Petty as Future 2nd and McAdam to us. Every other club says yes because Melbourne loses out so badly in this deal. Thilthorpe, pick 10 and McAdams to be in the conversation for Petty.

The draft talk buzz from Cal Twoomey was that Curtain was slipping down the order and now expected to be available at Melbourne's pick. The draft is also meant to become much weaker from pick 15 onwards (including academy players) so pick 11 is one of the last truely valuable picks for a higher likelihood of a good player in this draft. Given this, it would seem unlikely that North could beat our offer unless they can trade their later picks to move up to pick 7. If WCE can get the same player at 2 as they could get at 6, then this is perceptually not a huge difference in value. The secondary element is that North's later 1sts are all in the speculative picks range of the draft so I don't see them moving the needle if you were WCE. So North would either need to go for picks 2 and 3 or 2/3 with their first next year to be in the conversation. I would say the Dees are in the box seat and that is the reason why we paid so much for pick 11, because we called North's bluff and now they are stuck with a tonne of 1st round picks which are more like second round picks in other drafts due to how far the slide is in this 'weaker' draft.

Which considering what B - grade kpp are being paid in the AFL is a value contract for depth. Dees could just as easily pay out either or both of BBB and/or TMac, so I am sure this is a fluid situation depending on draft-trade period

I know there is significant baggage and NQR about Tarryn Thomas, but North were open a month ago to the possibility of trading him...would pick 13 be enough to get him across? He is the forward/mid that could switch with Tracc. He is a beautiful kick, fast, can apply pressure, good forward craft. He is also a player who with a full pre-season and the right influences around him could be in the true elite in the competition. Hoyne had him as one of the best 6 rated players over the last month of the season. If there are no key forwards on the market and the key backs are overpriced, would be good to buy low on this bloke before he explodes. Would give us a midfield boost and a different type we have been missing, still get another good player with pick 5 to further boost our stocks. Especially is we can't get our hands on the GCS pick, then we should be trying to maximise our premiership window by bringing in skilled players who are upgrades on their incumbents to our 22.