I totally disagree. Even with his current output he’s a very good player. He’s surprisingly a really tough player that wins his own footy & tackles really hard. He’s more like a better version of Ben Long than the players you mentioned. Savage, really?
Yes he's a better version of ben long on a good day.
Just like how kosi was a better version of even nick riewoldt on a good day.
My point is he would be an instant inclusion into the whipping boy hall of fame due to the infrequency of said good days.
Btw, he's been a pro footballer for twice as long as benny long- not sure you're making a great case for martin comparing him favourably against a kid.
If martin had shown ANY ability to play as a mid then that would be a different story... we are still desperately lacking A grade midfield depth.
but he hasn't.
(Don't give me that- oh but he COULD be a mid fairytale... remember when everyone was upset we missed out on stringer because he was going to be a bombers midfielder?? Yeah that lasted about half a preseason game didn't it?)
We're much better off pursuing young potential future A grade mids (like we did with steele, pies did with treloar etc) than taking consolation prizes like martin.
Take a look at north, port, essendon - everyone on here was bangin on about how they killed it because they traded for guys like hall, rockliff, saad polec etc and we missed out big time.
Newsflash- those types are a dime a dozen- you dont need to spend up big to get inconsistent wingers who can't play midfield.
Sure he wouldn't hurt the team, but he would only move us 1% closer to a flag when we're still 40% off being a realistic shot.
We'd get much better bang for our buck (trade and cap wise) pursuing targets which address our midfield class problems.
We need to be trying to shake the next jack steele loose from somewhere- which will use all the trade currency we can muster.
We could just wait a year for ben long or parker to continue to improve and we have our own jack martin for free.