Pretty spot on, improvement has to come from young player improvement and there is a heap of scope there for improvement and we are witnessing that this year with the footy the 2015 drafted players are playing. I think with some good recruiting we can really jump because we should get more out of the young players next season.
I have ruck as low priority, the ruck we recruit will be recruited as backup. Kreuzer is still going to be playing for another season or two at least and we already have a young ruck who's nearly developed enough to play AFL and play that role really well and Phillips is good enough and young enough to go around again and for a few years to come as that 3rd in line ruckman so it's not urgent. Not with DeKoning being ahead of schedule and looking really promising as a ruckman.
Small forward is an obvious one but I wouldn't expect a massive improvement from a small forward or two as our scoring has been really good the last month under Teague without any small forwards of note but it can always be better. I think it's the other way round, small forwards need to learn to play with our big boys, not the other way round. I can see how a good small forward or two will be really good offensively and defensively though.
Our midfield has been ok recently but we've had an easy run, it's going to be tested when we play a handful of really good sides soon and there are a couple of 30 year olds (give or take) in there who are doing a lot. That's not sustainable. Cripps, Ed and Murphy are doing most of the center stuff which is good but they aren't rotating much and that's not ideal. This hasn't been exposed much but the good sides will. We need another mature gun in amongst these three.
Quick running defender is fairly solid on my list. No guarantee Docherty and/or Williamson are going get going. Thomas is in his 30s and Simpson in his late 30s. Newman was a good get but I feel we need another for security. In reserve there is only Schumacher and he hasn't really pushed for selection yet. It's not super high priority as SPS and Stocker might be pushing for a spot in defence.
It's really not a lot when you think about it, we're in a good position here and the next few seasons like every season are going to be massive.
It's also really important our older guys can hang on.
If we got to a point where we have added a gun mid and a couple of good small forwards then we go from rebuilding to list management where we focus on replacing outgoing players. One more year out of Simpson would be huge. Murphy, Curnow, Kreuzer playing three more really good seasons would be massive for us. Just gives us time to replace these guys one at a time, not all at once.
I thinks another two draft/trade/free agent periods will definitely get the job done and coincide with most of our players being mature and between 22-30 and if our old boys hang on until then then even better. We could really explode in a big way. We recruit well we might just do what Brisbane have done.
Make no mistake people in the media like Nick Riewoldt keep talking us up and pumping up our list, we are playing decent footy and if we keep playing good footy and really take it to a few top sides potential recruits are going to take notice. Make no mistake, someone like Nick Newman will be talking to Papley and pumping up the idea of coming to us. Things will happen fast and we're doing the right things at the moment to make that happen.
