List Mgmt. 2025 List Management Discussion - Part 3

[Hubnester]

2025 List Management Discussion - Part 3

Now that our season is over, and news is starting to break - it's time for a fresh thread.

This thread is to discuss all things list management - trades, draft, free agency, delistings and more.
As we are now officially in our off-season, we'll be wanting to keep this thread more strictly on-topic than the previous iterations.
Be respectful. You are allowed to disagree with someone - but play the ball, not the man. Repeat offenders will have their posting rights revoked.

Thanks to Lore once again for this incredibly useful spreadsheet.

2025 KEY DATES
Free Agency Period: Friday, October 3rd - Friday, October 10th
Trade Period: Monday, October 6th - Wednesday, October 15th
AFL Draft: Wednesday, November 19th - Thursday, November 20th

See Also:
2025 Year in Review Rumours & Confirmed Movements 2025 Draft Discussion
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[tony74]

Windy?

Staying

 

[Coconut_twirl]

Cal is going nowhere

He is back!

 

[Joffaboy]

Is it correct that with respect to Battle, the club "failed to offer him enough to stay as a free agent"?

No totally incorrect. Our last offer was more than Hawthorns

 

[SaintWWodonga]

Staying

Excellent news!

 

[Train12]

Staying

Let’s push my luck..Marshall ?

 

[Gavinmitchell11]

Staying

How many years? Chosen one.

 

[SainterinSydney]

Staying

Thanks, Big Tony!

 

[Joffaboy]

How many years? Chosen one.

Last offer was 4.

 

[Mat Mann]

Richmond finished bottom 2, 3 times in 4 years. 2007-2010. Culminated in 3 flags.

Brisbane finished bottom 4 for 5 straight years 2014-2018. Top 4 ever since. 1 flag, 1 very close runner up.

Add Melbourne on the bottom for nearly a decade

then North for almost as long, no success yet

West Coast isn't rushing back up despite being down for 5 years already

What happened 5 years ago is almost irrelevant simply due to the influx of F/S NGA and Academy kids lately, this will be the 2nd draft in 3 yrs that hits 30 picks inside round 1

and use Hawthorn as a guide, drafted well, traded well, F/A well, not sure they are there yet, but have rocketed past those clubs wedded to the draft-focused approach.

Now, if we stick to the draft approach, we probably lose Nas, maybe not this year, but in '27, simply because our older brigade time out. can't draft enough high talent to replace them, so we keep drafting and drafting and drafting......

I can't say I think all our moves will work. It's almost guaranteed they won't,
SOS injuries, Aleer Skill. TDK and Flanders can't see us losing out; it's only money.
How do we change the view and narrative about us?

This action now does, if it works, if we can be top 4 in say 2027 ( 2026 is to soon imo, kids still a bit raw) then we get recognition, we get plaudits, more importantly, we get more players open to the idea of coming.

If it fails, it's just the same old St Kilda. ppl laugh, we move on.

What we need to do post this off-season is to keep drafting, keep adding to the best 22, We have some big shoes to fill with the senior guys, and it'll be tough to do it. Being considered a top 8 team helps that no end

 

[Joffaboy]

Who is this Tony74 and does he have a track record?

 

[austinnn]

Just appears to be them shooting their shot.

They wouldn’t be needing a godfather offer if he was keen. Yes he may be disgruntled and they are trying to tug on that element.

But no different to us and Merrett last year I suppose.

Either way, they can agree whatever they want. That’s the easy part.

It’s the sos Gubby Ross part where they ask for the world and they won’t part with it

Like we did with De Koning. The difference is that Carlton was a clear dumpster fire with a stagnating list and no future except blowing it up and starting again. De Koning was shown a shedload of money as Wilkie is being but also was shown the future path at St Kilda and (you can choose to believe I'm naive if you like) that is what a serious player cares about.

Wilkie can see Bulldogs potential for a flag before he retires, but if I were any player I'd be looking at the coaching and the results this year. Are they really just a Wilkie away from beating the teams above them that they got smashed by this year? What would he be turning his back on at St Kilda?

This thing that Armoo posted a few days ago about him having lost his love for the club seems incredibly dubious (was it established if he was kidding or not? I skipped about 80 pages here and there) but if true is a worry.

Still, wanting a trade and getting a trade when your contract has 2 years left are two different things, and we've seen Ross and SOS won't be pushed around by unhappy players or agitating managers.

I'm very confident that Wilkie will be playing for us next year and would hope that he'd be very happy to, but I will accept him biding his time.

Having said all that, it's obvious other clubs are trying to do to us what we've done for a while now, sniff around our bins, agitate our players, inflate their salaries, wait for our cap to burst. Hopefully SOS is a step ahead of them, but every club loses favourite sons sometimes, that's just how it goes. I hate it but I understand it.

 

[Mat Mann]

May is the type to be toxic for club culture though. Avoid at all costs.

They should be looking at Hawthorn who have a plethora of defenders but need running mids.

Trouble is the Bulldogs don’t want to give in order to get. And that is why their defence won’t get fixed in the near term.

Bloody funny that the dogs couldn't buy a key forward for years and now it's a defender

 

[stfan]

Who is this Tony74 and does he have a track record?

Evidently does the 100m in 9.57 sec.

 

[Remboy]

Evidently does the 100m in 9.57 sec.

No good in the wet though

 

[austinnn]

The media love to jump on the great young talent at Stkilda. Really. Our talent are 3rd talls,flankers and outsiders.
Being an older supporter I have been through a few rebuilds.The ones that have been successful have always involved gun key position players.I am thinking Hawthorn with Roughead and Buddy,Stkilda Riewoldt,Koschizke.This rebuild does not have a gun Key coming through under 22.Keeler speculative?
Just on Owens, don’t see the hype either.Hard at it,see ball get ball ,all nice but you have to do it against the best and not sure he has delivered.A less skilled Dipper.
Negative maybe, or realistic, yes Iike a lot of Gringo comments.

I remember a few noses on this board being out of joint earlier in the year when some North supporter jumped on with claims that Owens was the St Kilda version of Paul Curtis. I think Mitch has a much higher ceiling than Paul but I'd say that claim was fairly astute.

We absolutely rave about Mitch and Marcus here, like we did with JB and Gresh once upon a time, but while they are exciting and their best wins games for us, they are some way short of the true guns of the comp and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I'd be very sorry to see them leave but in the eye of a cold rat-brained list manager or the withering view of an oppo fan, they might not be rated very highly.

 

[SainterinSydney]

Who is this Tony74 and does he have a track record?

Went by the name of Tony. Seven feet tall he was, with arms like tree trunks. His eyes were like steel: cold, hard. And...

 

[Minga]

Staying

**** yeah

 

[austinnn]

Hope Wilkie strings them along and ruins their chances to land someone else lol

I hope that he flat out rejects the idea of leaving right off the bat, that bloke could be our next premiership captain with a fair wind.

 

[_Maximus_12]

Cal is going nowhere

Sandra Sully

 

[stavro#4]

Cal is going nowhere

Man of Steele?

 

[saxond74]

Staying

Ro?

 

[Flandersss]

 

[austinnn]

Trade talks gather pace as 13 clubs meet in Melbourne

The 2025 Continental Tyres AFL Trade Period is weeks away but the action is gearing up as the majority of the league's clubs meeting near the MCG

www.afl.com.au

Love that the saints didn’t go

Imagine how awkward that would be with the other 13 dudes all bitching about him, still I would have liked him to enter the arena about 30 mins later like this:

 

[BrutThough]

Cal is going nowhere

Tony has spoken. Anyone suggesting Wilkie is gone gets a ban.

 

[bergholt]

If it fails, it's just the same old St Kilda. ppl laugh, we move on.

This is actually the most important point in the whole strategy.

We have literally nothing to lose. We’re already irrelevant. If we make big calls and they fail, we can’t get MORE irrelevant.

We fail this swing, we hit the bottom, take some medicine, start again.

Nothing to lose really!