The state of our list at the start of our rebuild was diabolical (in terms of gun young players) due to us blowing the past 7 years of drafting (and blowing pretty much every player selected at the draft over that period barring Cripps).
We aint gonna fix it with a 66 game rebuild. That 'reset' just gets us back to square one. We basically drew a line through the sand starting with the 2015 draft (+ Cripps and Docherty).
Its going to take more than 3-4 drafts/ years to both assemble and develop a list around those two.
You're off the mark. Murphy, Gibbs, Kruzer, Simpson etc are all superflous to our needs. They wont see finals with this club, let alone top 4. They had their time, played a few finals, and now for them, it's done. At present they serve as loyal placeholders, experienced heads, and mature bodies to shield the kids and stop us getting totally smashed each week. Thats it. Its sad, but its the truth.
They're all free agents when their contracts expire and are free to go elsewhere if they are unhappy with the way it is.
In case you didnt notice, we played something like 12 players under 22, and 8 teenagers on the weekend. Those players are going to need 3-4 seasons/ 50-100 games to develop. In addition to the development of the teenagers we do have, we still have serious holes in the list that need filling, such as the worst forward line in the competion (still) which needs some quality forward firepower, plus we need to replace a ton of seniority and class in the midfield (Gibbs, Simpson, Murphy, Curnow, Thomas, Kruezer). That is going to take several drafts (plus free agency) to fix. Then we are going to need 3 or so years of development for those players to get mature AFL bodies.
We wont be playing finals footy again till around 2020+. There will be no 'mini rise' off the backs of Gibbs and Murphy and the kids. You and
FlowersByIrene are optimists, and I applaud you for that, but this is a time for realism and 'green shoots' and 'road map' and 'stay the course' and all that Bolton jazz.
We are looking to get the most talented side of under 25 year olds we can muster ready for 2020 onwards, which we can then supplement with free agents at this time.
Everything between now and then is simply drafting and developing those kids.