My conclusion is that when Watters was appointed, the club tried to quickly inject some talent purely because we still had BJ, Dal etc.
Rather than just go directly to a rebuild, we thought that adding 3 or 4 players ready to go would make us competitive again.
Reality is that we erred after 2010 if not 2009 when 3 new players per year should have been blooded.
So apart from the list wash up, there are obvious areas that needed / need addressing. Firstly, why players did not develop and the majority failed. was it bad selection? Poor development structures or both?
The second area is of course salary cap, which was also a ticking time bomb. It's no coincidence that during the Lyon era, we could not trade for any elite players, and had to make do with scraps.
We are rebuilding the club from the ground up, hence all the changes. You cannot look at this in a single dimension only.
From what I have seen, the club has been pro-active in modelling successful clubs... which should see us improve on a sustainable level.
Whilst we came of a long period of relative success, it seems that at any one stage we had essential ingredients missing, be it a proper coach, fitness, admin.
Hopefully those hit and miss days are behind us. Summers appears to be on the ball, and Finnis is pretty much AFL approved product.
We are putting a proper development system in place with a long term view to a stand alone VFL team. Salary cap restructure has also been completed.
We are now in a position to vigorously chase talent via draft and trades... with the cap space to do so.
Rather than just go directly to a rebuild, we thought that adding 3 or 4 players ready to go would make us competitive again.
Reality is that we erred after 2010 if not 2009 when 3 new players per year should have been blooded.
So apart from the list wash up, there are obvious areas that needed / need addressing. Firstly, why players did not develop and the majority failed. was it bad selection? Poor development structures or both?
The second area is of course salary cap, which was also a ticking time bomb. It's no coincidence that during the Lyon era, we could not trade for any elite players, and had to make do with scraps.
We are rebuilding the club from the ground up, hence all the changes. You cannot look at this in a single dimension only.
From what I have seen, the club has been pro-active in modelling successful clubs... which should see us improve on a sustainable level.
Whilst we came of a long period of relative success, it seems that at any one stage we had essential ingredients missing, be it a proper coach, fitness, admin.
Hopefully those hit and miss days are behind us. Summers appears to be on the ball, and Finnis is pretty much AFL approved product.
We are putting a proper development system in place with a long term view to a stand alone VFL team. Salary cap restructure has also been completed.
We are now in a position to vigorously chase talent via draft and trades... with the cap space to do so.
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