List Mgmt. 2025 List Management 📃

[Bletch]

Current draft picks: 3, 38, 63, 68, 69, 72, 89 (total points: 2938)

List changes:
Out: 10 - Domanic Akuei (Delisted), David Cuningham (Delisted), Caleb Marchbank (Delisted), Jack Martin (Delisted), Alex Mirkov (Delisted), Matt Owies (Trade - WCE), Matt Kennedy (Trade - WB), Jack Carroll (Delisted), Matt Carroll (Delisted), Sam Durdin (Delisted)
In: 1 - Nick Haynes (GWS - UFA)
Uncontracted: 0
Retained SSP/MSD Players: 1 - Cooper Lord
Upgraded Rookie: 0

List status:
Primary - 31 (36-38)
Rookie - 4 (0-6)
Cat-B Rookie - 1 (0-2)
Total - 36 (44)

Free spots - 5 primary, 2 rookie, plus one Cat-B rookie

Note - Matt Duffy (Ireland) likely to take the free Cat-B rookie
Note 2 - Jordan Boyd (Rookie) needs to be upgraded, and will likely take one senior spot

Effective free spots - 4 primary, 3 rookie

As it stands, we can take 4 picks to the draft - 3, 38, 63, 68.

If we make 2 further cuts, we can take all 6 - 3, 38, 63, 68, 69, 72.

With the three delistings on 22-Oct, we now have 7 picks available at the draft. All remaining players are contracted. There is potential for adding a DFA in the upcoming DFA period (starting 1-Nov), as pick 89 is essentially useless in the draft (doesn't carry any points).

Those two delistings must come from Jack Carroll, Sam Durdin, and Matt Carroll, all who remain uncontracted. It can be any of these three, as it is limited by both (i) the maximum of 38 on the primary list; AND (ii) the maximum of 42 on primary+rookie (not counting Cat-B).

How we approach this will depend on what we intend to do with pick 38. "Pick Swap" trading opens tomorrow, so potentially, we could swap it out during that period (maybe for a future). Swapping it for an earlier pick will be difficult, as we don't have a lot of leverage to do so - unless we're prepared to move pick 3 down, which I think is highly unlikely.

There's a further opportunity to do a "live trade" of pick 38 on draft night. Including the option to trade it out when a bid comes in, and trade it back in afterwards (would likely lose some value, but not as much as option (i) below.

Or, we can just leave it. In which case:
(i) a bid comes in for Ben Camporeale before our pick 38 (it may not be 38 by then, but wherever it is). In this case, pick 38 will be used for matching Ben, and we'll get a bit left over, probably enough for another pick in the 60s, but that will be a bit of a waste.
(ii) we just use pick 38 on Ben anyway - unlikely!!
(iii) we get lucky, and no bid comes in. We use pick 38 on another player available at that pick, and match bids on Ben and Lucas with the remaining picks.

It's a bit of a lottery as to whether a bid will come in or not. It's around the mark for where Ben should go. So you'd think we'd have some sort of plan to offload that pick. But who knows. It was a strange trade for us to make.

Let's look at where pick 38 is likely to end up. I posted this earlier:

More detail...

Here are the relevant picks:
Brisbane: 27, 34, 42, 43, 49, 60, 66
Essendon: 28, 31, 40, 46, 54, 65
Gold Coast: 6, 23, 39, 41, 78

Brisbane will almost certainly do a draft-night trade of 27 for lower picks.
Essendon may well keep spend 28 and 31 on Kako, but could look to do similar to Brisbane.
Gold Coast will trade out 6 and 23 for Rioli, and prob look for some late picks back.

So matching bids for Ashcroft, Kako, Marshall and Lombard will push our 32 back to 36. Essendon using 28 and 31 will bring it back to 34. And that's about it. If we're lucky it might stay at 32, but could be as bad as 36.

In any case, that 32-36 range is right in the middle of expectations for a bid on Ben Camporeale, so it makes absolutely no sense for us to trade for a pick in that range, UNLESS, we were then looking to combine it with the Kennedy pick to move up the order.

Situation now:
Brisbane: 27, 34, 42, 43, 49, 60, 66
Essendon: 28, 31, 40, 46, 53, 54, 65
Gold Coast: 39, 41, 51, 61, 70, 76, 78

I'm still of the opinion Brisbane will down-trade 27, but let's say there's still two of their picks that come in before our 38, and both of those get consumed by the Ashcroft bid. Similarly, let's assume Essendon's first two picks go the same way (again, they could potentially downtrade). But that makes 4 picks that are consumed before ours. However, there are also picks inserted for Ashcroft, Lombard, Marshall and Kako. So 4 - 4 = 0. 38 stays at 38! It will not come in higher than that. It may come in a pick or two lower (39 or 40).

At pick 38, it's very much in the danger zone for a bid. It will then get consumed for matching Ben. We'll then have a 3rd pick at 63 (which will come in by quite a bit - maybe around 55). If a bid comes in for Lucas, we also grab that, otherwise, we'll rookie him, and potentially take a 4th selection in the draft.

Effectively though, unless we offload 38, we've probably traded Kennedy for pick 63 (~55), which is a bit sad imo.

Anyway, we'll know soon enough what further changes we make to the list. I expect 1-2 more delistings, probably Sam Durdin, then Matt Carroll. I think we keep Jack. (Edit: I was wrong about Jack!!)

Edit/Addition:
Matching Bid after 38
Ok, say we get to use our pick 38 on another player, no bid came in for Ben. Yay! But he gets a bid at pick 39. Do we have enough to pay with our remaining picks?

Pick 39 is 446 points. With the F/S discount, that comes down to 257 points to match.

Our next pick is 63. But as discussed in the previous section above, by the time that bid comes in, it will have come in to around pick 55. Maybe even a little lower. Pick 55 nets us 207 points, leaving 50 points still owing. We then go to the following pick, currently 68. That will have come in to maybe 58 or 59. Pick 59 is 158 points, so we'll easily cover Ben with those two picks, and have a couple of picks spare (in fact the extra points will earn us another late pick ~65).

Those remaining picks will be enough to cover a bid on Lucas at about pick 42. It's not likely he gets a bid that high, and if he does, we take a small deficit on our 2025 round 3 selection.

Does that mean we can use one or more of those late picks to bundle with 38 to move 38 higher?
Possibly. If we move 38 higher, we'd have to recalculate the whole kaboodle based on a following bid. e.g. we get 34 from Brisbane. What if a bid on Ben comes at 35? Without going through the whole steps above, in that case, the same two picks 63, 68 (~55/59) would be sufficient to match. We'd have enough left over to match a bid on Lucas at about 46 or so.

If instead, we took away say pick 69, and used it to combine with 38 to move up the order, we'd still be fine matching Ben with 63 and 68. But if a bid came in on Lucas before 57, we'd have to take a small deficit into 2025. Any bid after 57 we can match for free.

Edit/Addition 2 (following further delistings):
We made a total of three extra delistings on 22-Oct, this post has been updated to reflect those changes. Potentially will be updated again before the draft, if, for instance, we pick up a delisted free agent (which I think is likely). Parts of the original posted have been striked out rather than just deleted.