Leuy LongerCombo
Club Legend
I've stated this all before, but I'll cover it again.
On the Thursday night, I stated that I thought we'd gone early on Smith. My logic for this is that if no other club invited him into the draft (known as he was a late call up by us), that'd imply that roughly the 5 clubs before and 1 club after didn't have him as even a slight option at their picks. Not certain, but highly likely correct. That said, our pick was unfortunately positioned - it was just after that 2nd tier of player, and none of them slid through. Fair enough. But this year we have live trading.
Reported we tried to trade up and failed. Fair enough - not going to criticise us for not overpaying. But if it's likely that Ely would've slid a bit (based on the logic in my first point), we could've tried to trade down, and still get him, and possibly get more. Reports from Thursday function attendees was that we were also looking at moving up the order with later picks in order to get in 2 before McFadyen was bid on. On Friday morning (pre-round 2), I suggested this as a trade:
Now, it's possible that we tried that and got rebuffed. Possible, but unlikely. The reason I say unlikely is that just two picks later, Gold Coast traded those two picks for pick 23 and a 5th rounder. So my theory of pick 21 + 32 (which is roughly where our picks would've been at that time) would likely have been snapped up by GC. Quite likely (given original logic above) that Smith would've been there at GC's pick. And then we'd have Smith+29 instead of Smith+35, which (when it's been reported we were concerned about a McFadyen bid before our 35) would've been good breathing room. May have still got the same players, may have not.
We do seem like we go into drafts with set ideas of the players we want. I've heard reporters like Twomey state that quite often, a player will slide longer than they should because clubs are set on who they like, and just take the guy they thought would be available at their pick, instead of taking the one that slid, and they didn't really consider being available at their pick. I don't know how much that's true, but I'd say off the back of the last few years, we're probably the type of club who'd do that. Not being critical of the club there - they have finite resources, and they can't do a head-to-head of every single player in the draft ahead of time. I just find it interesting.
Also - I didn't criticise the club for taking Berry. I actually stated that we likely did more research on Berry than anyone else (given family connections) and had a good idea what he was worth, and while he reportedly wasn't great this year, he was also reportedly played out of position and sore. If just one other club knew that (and it was public information), and factored it in, it's quite likely Berry wouldn't have slid, regardless of what reporters said.
Worth noting that both Melbourne and Sydney didn’t have a first round pick, so therefore wouldn’t have nominate anyone to attend.
They both had a pick in between our first and the potential Gold Coast picks you’ve mentioned. They selected Sparrow and Rowbottom, a few draft profiles have them as contested beast with decent strength/pace. Not inconceivable one may have selected Ely instead.