threenewpadlocks
Brownlow Medallist
At the end of the day our big salary investments over the last 6-7 years for that we didn't draft and develop ourselves have almost exclusively been talls (Schache, Trengove, Bruce, Keath, O'Brien, Lobb, Jones).Yeah don’t get me wrong I’d like us to invest there now, but I can see why we’ve prioritised other areas first and there hasn’t exactly been much on offer recently, we had a crack at Henry but I think the price was too high. Anyway it seems like we’re targeting the area now that we’ve locked up most other positions, I just don’t think it’s going to make or break our year, even with how dire our wing stocks are
Arguably Treloar and maybe Crozier and Duryea were the only players in this window that this didn't apply to that we paid any amount to, until Harmes. But still that's far more "talls" than "smalls" we recruited from other clubs paying more than a minimum amount on a multi-year salary in the post-2016 flag era.
I don't think it's coincidence - clearly this is a deliberate strategy by the club in how they assess how best to spend the currency of list management resources building a balanced list into the medium/long term.
So given that there's a direct cause an effect of lack of list management capitcal invesmtent into certain positions and those positions being weak, and such a weakness being obvious last year and it not being corrected tihsyear, discussing whether that was the right strategy is an entirely fair one.