Give it rest they have a lot of experience on their list coming off tilt
Waite , Goldstein , Tarrant , Ziebell, Cunnington , Thompson , Higgins they have not bottomed out .
Stkilda have , really happy with the types we have all about development and playing them in right spots
Even bloody Carlton have not ..with Simpson , Thomas , Kreuzer , Rowe , Casboult , Murphy.
As for Mason Wood & Billy Hartung good luck backing them to be superstars in my opinion.
Our clubs have the same number of 26+ players on the list, I think the major difference is we are getting a lot more out of our older group atm which has positives and negatives. On the positive side, we are playing better because of it. On the negative side it makes them harder to replace and a shorter window to replace them.
Waite was told before coming to our club that he would be given another year for as long as he played good footy and met KPIs, it was something Carlton refused to do and they would have put him out to pasture well before now had he remained at Carlton. Waite is very underrated in terms of his defensive work rate, I think it was the main reason we retired Harvey off, because defensively he was a liability, as was Dal Santo. Waite is different in that not only does he impact the scoreboard, he sets a high benchmark for defensive workrate and while Wood has had a lot of injury problems the last few years, he has also had a lot of work to do defensively.
I think clubs need good experienced players, a good strong core unit that sets a high benchmark of what you need to achieve, in that regard retaining Waite created a good role model for our young forwards. Wood has a very good tank and his ability to get back and take strong marks around half back was critical in our win against the Swans. I don't know if he will become a good consistent player or not, but he hasn't been just gifted games because there is a vacancy, he wasn't going to just get games because he has some good attacking traits, he was forced to go to the VFL and work on the defensive side of his game. You can't do that when you side is bereft of experienced senior players. Carlton is putting a lot of footballers out on the park who have a lot of flaws and there are too few role models and leaders so they are just going to produce too many players with too many flaws due to the lack of a strong core experienced group.
Hartung isn't a star, will never be a star, we obviously would have preferred to have picked up Kelly last year but we still need players with his kind of traits and it provides our team with a better balance. We were too slow last year, with the retirement of Swallow and moving on of Gibson and moving Ziebell forward it has given us a better structure, fewer inside types, a bit more leg speed which has helped both offensively and defensively.