BL v StK · WB v FRE · RIC v HAW · ADE v SYD · NM v COL · GWS v PA ·
And post your "Liked, Learned, Hated" right here.
Yeah I'm saying if we were able to get two first rounders for Marshall, even if that's a late top 10 pick and a mid teens pick, package that up with pick 4 or 5 or whatever we finish with and trade up for pick 2
Yeah true. Most likely. I just feel like clubs pay way overs these days for players to the point that its getting crazy. If he got an AA blazer this year would help. But yeah all hypothetical, will never happen
I know this will be a very unpopular opinion and I understand why. But what would people think about trading Rowan Marshall if we were to get 2 top 10 picks for him? As much as I have love him and would hate to see him play for another team, I think the ruck position can be filled by a younger ruck not getting a game on another list e.g. Nick Bryan and Ned Moyle or someone along those lines. The last few premiers have had Darcy Cameron (got for nothing), Rhys Stanley (not overly good), Max Gawn (an exception to my point), Toby Nankervis (got for nothing) and Jordan Roughead (pick 33, nothing amazing). My point is by getting 2 top 10 picks for him, we could finally combine all 3 top 10 picks to draft some A-grade talent as our midfield is what is killing us the most. Getting his big contract off our books, in combination with our already huge war chest, means we can pay a Nick Bryan or Moyle slightly more than other clubs whilst still having a massive amount to spend on someone like LDU next year. Again, I love Row and he's one of the only ones that tries every single week, but he's turning 29 this year and realistically won't be apart of a saints premiership and he may as well try and enjoy some success. Pls don't rip me apart
Can’t we just merge with them. Give us their midfield and we’d be top 4 for the next 10 years. So much easier.
Shhhhh don't give the rest of the league any ideas, they'd do this to us in a flash if they thought we'd accept.
Campbell could also be hired purely as a Sandy player. Or as a Sandy player and coach.
The Age
Why some AFL clubs’ recruiting ‘war chest’ won’t deliver guns
By Jake Niall
May 26, 2024 — 5.00am
“I played with Josh Kelly who got some of the most ridiculous offers from North ... his dad played for North, and he was still able to say no.”
Former GWS captain Phil Davis, on SEN’s Whateley on Thursday.
In 2017, North Melbourne simultaneously made staggering long-term offers to Dustin Martin and Josh Kelly that would have made either the game’s best paid footballer at the time.
The immediate impact of those offers was that they enabled Martin to be close to first on the rich list for AFL players even at Richmond and for Kelly to secure a 10-year commitment from the Giants worth around $1 million a season in 2019.
That the Kangaroos could pay both players an aggregate approaching $3 million per season – without ruining their salary cap – is a measure of the “war chest” that they possessed at Arden St.
Today, as Dusty reaches the end of the seven-year deal he extracted after delivering incredible value to Richmond, North Melbourne’s war chest remains as intact as Trent Cotchin’s hair. The space they had then was spent, in parts, on journeymen – Jared Polec one fortunate beneficiary – or it simply went unspent and disappeared.
Consider the contract that Harley Reid would have commanded had North not beaten the Suns in the final round last season, or that Zak Butters would be given if he were willing to leave Port Adelaide in 2026 as a free agent and chose North. Reid can virtually name his price at West Coast.
f North have the capacity to pay the most inside the salary cap, any club would back up the truck for Reid and Butters.
St Kilda are another club who have the proverbial “war chest” of untold millions in salary-cap room and have let player agents know they’re willing to spend big.
But the notion that excessive salary cap room will deliver gun players to those clubs is misguided. There is no meaningful “war chest” for St Kilda or North when several other clubs with more pulling power also have millions to spend on either free agents or high-value recruits from rivals.
Richmond, Essendon, Geelong, Collingwood, Hawthorn, Adelaide, West Coast and Fremantle either have plenty of space or will open it up soon as veterans shuffle off. Of the Melbourne clubs, Carlton seem the most restricted in salary cap.
The AFL’s new pay deal has created space everywhere.
Collingwood are said to have the capacity for an imminent $4 million in cap space, as the oldies exit. Richmond will be similar post-Dusty, Cotchin and Jack Riewoldt, and the Cats, incredibly, had sufficient salary cap room to buy pick seven from the Suns in the groundbreaking Jack Bowes trade of 2022, despite winning the flag.
A weapon is less potent when the enemy has the same artillery – and even less useful if they have strategic/natural advantages that you don’t.
In assessing the Saints and North, Phil Davis observed that these clubs faced the hardest ask in persuading A-graders to join them. His solution was for those clubs to “pay overs and recruit B-graders” as mature players while getting A-graders in the draft, as the Saints did in the 2000s.
Most elite players are acquired via the draft and a comfortable majority stick with their first club for the most productive period of their careers. Jason Horne-Francis aside, North have a proud record of retention.
The rules of attraction for AFL players favour Geelong and the big four Melbourne clubs, the regional Cats having a unique country-and-coast appeal while Collingwood, Carlton, Essendon and Richmond can pitch a packed MCG and the chance to play on Broadway. Davis said the big four are the “first port of call” for players outside Victoria who want to play in the heartland (or head home).
As historic clubs who play at the MCG, successful iterations of Hawthorn and Melbourne can compete with the Broadway clubs in the marketplace. The Demons’ list management since 2014 has been outstanding, considering they drafted guns when near the bottom, then paid a premium – which turned out to be a bargain – for Steven May and Jake Lever.
The Melbourne model – draft for quality first, trade for need later and keep drafting – is one that the Saints and North can aspire to follow, albeit it will be harder to land the equivalent of May and Lever.
St Kilda’s wish to play home games at the MCG is entirely justified when one considers that they a) have more latent support than the Dees, and b) that the Demons have two significant event games, the King’s Birthday (Collingwood) and Anzac eve (Richmond) at the ground that gave birth to the club.
The Saints are persisting with their southern strategy of prioritising players from other clubs who hail from their territory in the bayside suburbs or the deep south of the Mornington Peninsula. If all goes well, they would have a region much like Geelong’s surf coast/western district/Geelong unofficial zone (though the geographic appeal is less pronounced).
North, meanwhile, have to be innovative and to shoot the lights out at the draft, where they have had more early picks. Rather than using the war chest largely to overpay non-exceptional players, they should be allowed to purchase picks, as Geelong did with Bowes, by selling cap space, as if it were blocks of land, to the Suns, Giants, Swans and any other club that needs the room as a matter of urgency.
Finally, the death of the great Barry Davis, a champion of Essendon and North’s first premiership captain in the VFL, is a reminder of how romance can play a role in recruiting club-changing players.
Davis, Doug Wade and John Rantall all left their clubs, via free agency’s precursor of the 10-year rule (1973), enticed by a combination of cash and the possibility of becoming North’s first (VFL) premiership players under Ron Barassi.
If St Kilda’s lack of success has been a burden for generations of great players, why can’t the prospect of breaking footy’s most persistent drought – 58 years and counting – be part of their pitch?
Whatever North and the Saints sell, they have to offer more than money.
Not sure who told you that but they were well off.
You can't have a war chest if you can't attract players.
If delisted free agents can’t take you where you want to go then what will? Am I right?
They took Will Philips over Logan McDonald. Not a great decision.
