*Warning – long post*
Okay at first I hated this idea. It seemed like we are allowing Essendon to play their typical belligerent negotiating game where they say “Carlisle is worth 5 but we will accept a pick in the mid-teens. However, we won’t help you negotiate to get that pick and organising a trade is your problem”.
I hate that self-entitled attitude and was very glad that it backfired on them with Crameri and to a lesser extent Ryder. It makes us do all the heavy lifting, even though their result hinges on our ability to negotiate. It is just a bad way to do business and pisses everyone off (including their supporters whose expectations are set unreasonably high).
However, I have taken some time to think this through and under the right circumstances it
might work out exceptionally well for us. To me it seems the consensus around here is that at 5 we would pick Matho (unless Parish or Francis are available but that seems unlikely).
Also, best case scenario would be that we get the Carlisle trade done for our second this year and Ross (Hickey more valuable IMO so Ross so be the starting point for negotiations).
So in our ideal scenario we get Matho and Carlisle for a net loss of 5, 25 & Ross.
In the downgrade scenario, if Essendon accept the pick in the teens (+Ross), and Matho is still there at 10,
we actually end up with our ideal result (we just add a step in the middle). And we get to keep our second next year which would be the next reasonable step in negotiations.
So trading down is high risk but potentially very high reward as we get exactly what we want for minimum cost.
However, in doing this we risk 2 pretty big things.
- Matho is gone by our pick and we end up with a mid such as Tucker or Gresham. For those who know more about this (Rahul, Brian) how much of a loss is this?
- More problematic to my mind, is that Dildo decides that he wants 10 instead of the teens pick, leaving us stuck in almost exactly the same drawn out negotiations we have now in refusing to give up 5 (except this time it is 10, a weaker pick which might seem even more achievable to Dildo’s simplistic brain)
So essentially when we weaken our draft hand, it is in the hope that Essendon are more reasonable in their negations. Unfortunately, recent history tells us this is not likely.
Hence, I really really don’t think it is a good idea to weaken our draft hand
unless we have some kind of
in principle agreement from Essendon that they will take the late teens pick (+ Ross) for Carlisle.
Without that agreement I say we stare down the ridiculous ultimatums they give us, and wait for them to fold in the last 2 days of the draft period (as they have 2 years in a row) accepting a second rounder and Ross, or 2 second rounders. We hold the better hand after all, and worst case we still have 5 (noting Ghost's point that PSD is out).
However,
with that agreement, we do the downgrade and get to sit back and smile while all the ignorant bombers supporters claim they won the trade. Then we all pray to whatever God we all choose that Matho gets to us.
In the above scenarios, we
at a minimum get one of Carlisle / Matho. Best case
we got both and at minimum cost.
However, I would be very very hesitant to do the downgrade
without that agreement, as
we could end up missing both.
Just my strategy FWIW