Janus
Advocatus Diaboli
- Sep 9, 2007
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- AFL Club
- Port Adelaide
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- Dallas Cowboys, Chicago Bulls
There's an inherent passivity to the phrase "when they've been available to us". We do not need to wait for established talls to become available to us. It is possible to draft fresh talls. You rightly point out that we haven't been allocated the high picks needed to go fishing for the best talls, but we have carried both established players and other picks that could have been traded directly or packaged for high(er) picks. The thing a counterparty is doing everytime we ship picks for an established player.
We also need to be careful talking about years like 2014. Yes, we drafted three talls, but the highest was Dougal Howard, who we took at the end of the third round, and there was barely a full round's worth of selections made after him. They're picks made way out into speculative territory, and we missed Harris Andrews, Zaine Cordy, and Jeremy Finlayson. Say what you will about the latter two, but they've each carved out better careers than Austin, Palmer, and Frampton combined.
You mean Brisbane academy selection Harris Andrews, Bulldogs F/S Zaine Cordy, and GWS academy selection Jeremy Finlayson?
None of those players were available to us.