Past #22: Todd Goldstein - has advised NMFC he will seek opportunity at Essendon in '24 - 316 NM games/156 goals/'15 SBM/'15 AA/most hitouts in lge history

mouncey2franklin

Norm Smith Medallist
Jun 16, 2018
8,644
15,438
AFL Club
North Melbourne
If somebody is offering this bloke three years on good coin then I don't blame him for taking it.

And if his manager is making that up to try to spook North into such a deal then I don't blame him, its his job.

And if our list managers tell Goldstein's manager to pack his bags then I say good, three years is outrageous.

Players like Hodge couldn't even get an extra year at the club where they won flags ffs.

Hate Hodge and Hawthorn all you like, they are professional in an era which is meant to be professional.
 

DuckYeah

Brownlow Medallist
Jul 5, 2010
13,301
22,330
Moist island
AFL Club
North Melbourne
If somebody is offering this bloke three years on good coin then I don't blame him for taking it.

And if his manager is making that up to try to spook North into such a deal then I don't blame him, its his job.

And if our list managers tell Goldstein's manager to pack his bags then I say good, three years is outrageous.

Players like Hodge couldn't even get an extra year at the club where they won flags ffs.

Hate Hodge and Hawthorn all you like, they are professional in an era which is meant to be professional.
And by giving Hodge his marching orders they set themselves back, they may have won another flag with him there
 
Jan 23, 2019
11,904
43,659
AFL Club
North Melbourne
If somebody is offering this bloke three years on good coin then I don't blame him for taking it.

And if his manager is making that up to try to spook North into such a deal then I don't blame him, its his job.

And if our list managers tell Goldstein's manager to pack his bags then I say good, three years is outrageous.

Players like Hodge couldn't even get an extra year at the club where they won flags ffs.

Hate Hodge and Hawthorn all you like, they are professional in an era which is meant to be professional.


The issue is though.... I and while being loath to speak for the masses am over us not challenging! it has been too long, on that I am sure we will all agree. yes we back doored a couple of prelims and lost to the sides that came runners up.

Walker, Daw, Jacobs, Hall, Scott some fitness for Zurhaar, Ahern and Garner, a trade for Wood, not pick(s) and we change our dynamic quite dramatically. cannot afford to lose Goldy unfortunately.
 
We literally just picked up two players who could both be top 5 in the BnF.

Not sure what those two have to do with Blakey. Thomas didn't have much choice, either us or go into the draft and he could have ended up somewhere a lot further away. Scott chose us because he wanted to study engineering at Melbourne Uni.

If we were in a stronger position I feel it would have been a harder decision for Blakey to choose the Swans. I mean he isn't stupid, it is highly probable that the Swans will sack his old man during his career at the Swans. All successful clubs turnover their coaching staff. Swans have had a long legacy of being finalists and contenders, we do not. We made it easier for him to make the decision he made imo and I don't think that is contentious. If you had the choice of going to Richmond or Gold Coast and you lived in Queensland who would you pick? It would be an easy decision to make.

Blakey was a Academy player, born and bred at the Swans. You conveniently glossed over us getting Bailey Scott.

I didn't gloss over Scott, he was quite candid about not caring where he played and it was expected he was going to remain on the GC. Them being spectacularly s**t and him wanting to study engineering at Melbourne Uni was just a huge amount of luck for us. It is not like Gold Coast or Geelong had a comparable Uni. Us being a significantly worse club than the Swans for too long worked in the Swans favour. My point remains that it is harder to attract talent when you are s**t.

Martin, Kelly, Gaff - all literally at the peak of their powers stayed at their incumbents - 16 other clubs missed them too.

Yeah, but we offered ridiculous sums of money and were pretty much only in the conversation because of the amount of money we offered, not because anyone wanted to come to our club. We don't want to be a club that has to pay a massive premium to attract elite talent. Nobody is choosing Hawthorn or Geelong and asking record amounts of money to go there. Richmond only paid $900k for Lynch as a free agent. We offered $1.5m for Kelly and he re-signed for half that much, he valued possibility of success higher than money. We want players to want to come to us because we have a good culture and because we are a successful club. We aren't a successful club at present.

Nobody is picking us because they want to be here, the excessive amount of money we offered was tempting though. We don't want to be a club that has to rely on overpaying people to get them to consider joining us, that is depressing.

The trading free agency apocalypse talk is rubbish. We attracted 4 players in the last off season - two of them could be top 5 in our BnF. The other two could well be very solid citizens next year. Because we missed the best players in the comp doesn't make us struggle to attract talent. If hawthorn want castaways like scully and Patton, they can have him. Melbourne look to be heavy hitters for some talent this year, likewise Saints. So much for top 4 clubs stealing the talent

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Polec is a solid but isn't elite, never won a B&F, never been an AA player. He was after more money and we were prepared to pay him. He isn't someone we acquired at market value rates. I can accept overpaying for a free agent, not for a trade.
Hall is a below average player, cost us a nothing pick and he only played a handful of games with us. It was meh all around.
Tyson is an average player.
Pittard, the steak knives in the Polec trade, has been the pick of the lot. He is a good defender, much better at spoiling than our legion of flankers.

All-in-all, these are meat and potato type acquisitions, if they make our top 5 in the Syd Barker then it highlights how underwhelming our established players have been, especially those in their prime. We shouldn't need to acquire these type of players, you should just naturally develop average players. We have aspirations that everyone we draft will be a star, but the reality is that most will not and some of those that bomb out as stars can be salvaged as solid players filling in various roles. You can't have an entire team of stodge, it doesn't get you anywhere. We aren't producing enough stars.

Free agency is bad because it has undermined the draft as a mechanism for the allocation of talent, who gets drafted is almost meaningless if players can go to wherever they want in the prime of their career and top clubs do not have an opportunity cost like there is for trading. If you are a weak club then players will constantly be leaving you for better clubs.

I have high expectations for the near future, but we are completely powerless, we just have to hope the people at the club are able to execute in the roles they are paid to get results, anything short of that is a failure. We can't be a boys club that is too afraid of making hard calls because everyone around the joint is a mate, the club is more than a social club, they are being paid to achieve results.
 
We should be in the top 8 this year. Even with the horrendous start we were bad luck and bad umpiring away from sneaking in. If we played remotely competent football in the first 9 weeks, we’d well and truly in.

If we can get something resembling the best out of Jacobs and Daw, couple that with improvement from Simpkin, LDU, Larkey, Zurhaar, Thomas etc then we can improve again.

Losing Higgins and Goldstein would be taking a step backwards.


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Yes.

Beat the Swans and win the first game against Hawthorn would have been enough to see us in. On reflection our loss to Geelong in the early part of the season was actually a game we let get away as well.
 

the flying ham

Cancelled
Dec 12, 2006
7,403
16,059
AFL Club
North Melbourne
Not sure what those two have to do with Blakey. Thomas didn't have much choice, either us or go into the draft and he could have ended up somewhere a lot further away. Scott chose us because he wanted to study engineering at Melbourne Uni.

If we were in a stronger position I feel it would have been a harder decision for Blakey to choose the Swans. I mean he isn't stupid, it is highly probable that the Swans will sack his old man during his career at the Swans. All successful clubs turnover their coaching staff. Swans have had a long legacy of being finalists and contenders, we do not. We made it easier for him to make the decision he made imo and I don't think that is contentious. If you had the choice of going to Richmond or Gold Coast and you lived in Queensland who would you pick? It would be an easy decision to make.



I didn't gloss over Scott, he was quite candid about not caring where he played and it was expected he was going to remain on the GC. Them being spectacularly s**t and him wanting to study engineering at Melbourne Uni was just a huge amount of luck for us. It is not like Gold Coast or Geelong had a comparable Uni. Us being a significantly worse club than the Swans for too long worked in the Swans favour. My point remains that it is harder to attract talent when you are s**t.



Yeah, but we offered ridiculous sums of money and were pretty much only in the conversation because of the amount of money we offered, not because anyone wanted to come to our club. We don't want to be a club that has to pay a massive premium to attract elite talent. Nobody is choosing Hawthorn or Geelong and asking record amounts of money to go there. Richmond only paid $900k for Lynch as a free agent. We offered $1.5m for Kelly and he re-signed for half that much, he valued possibility of success higher than money. We want players to want to come to us because we have a good culture and because we are a successful club. We aren't a successful club at present.

Nobody is picking us because they want to be here, the excessive amount of money we offered was tempting though. We don't want to be a club that has to rely on overpaying people to get them to consider joining us, that is depressing.



Polec is a solid but isn't elite, never won a B&F, never been an AA player. He was after more money and we were prepared to pay him. He isn't someone we acquired at market value rates. I can accept overpaying for a free agent, not for a trade.
Hall is a below average player, cost us a nothing pick and he only played a handful of games with us. It was meh all around.
Tyson is an average player.
Pittard, the steak knives in the Polec trade, has been the pick of the lot. He is a good defender, much better at spoiling than our legion of flankers.

All-in-all, these are meat and potato type acquisitions, if they make our top 5 in the Syd Barker then it highlights how underwhelming our established players have been, especially those in their prime. We shouldn't need to acquire these type of players, you should just naturally develop average players. We have aspirations that everyone we draft will be a star, but the reality is that most will not and some of those that bomb out as stars can be salvaged as solid players filling in various roles. You can't have an entire team of stodge, it doesn't get you anywhere. We aren't producing enough stars.

Free agency is bad because it has undermined the draft as a mechanism for the allocation of talent, who gets drafted is almost meaningless if players can go to wherever they want in the prime of their career and top clubs do not have an opportunity cost like there is for trading. If you are a weak club then players will constantly be leaving you for better clubs.

I have high expectations for the near future, but we are completely powerless, we just have to hope the people at the club are able to execute in the roles they are paid to get results, anything short of that is a failure. We can't be a boys club that is too afraid of making hard calls because everyone around the joint is a mate, the club is more than a social club, they are being paid to achieve results.
Tas, I feel we are on the same page with development 8and that increasing our competitiveness may make us more attractive. However, the impacts of free agency to player movement are exaggerated. More players have and will traditionally move via trade. Free agency has been good to our club, and we weren't contenders as you alluded to.

On top of that, the AFL have just had the most competitive season ever. We rolled two of the four prelim sides comfortably, and with some better umpiring decisions and bounces of the footy we would have played on the weekend. The sky isn't falling, player movement is a good thing and makes clubs accountable to their development.

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Tas, I feel we are on the same page with development 8and that increasing our competitiveness may make us more attractive. However, the impacts of free agency to player movement are exaggerated. More players have and will traditionally move via trade. Free agency has been good to our club, and we weren't contenders as you alluded to.

On top of that, the AFL have just had the most competitive season ever. We rolled two of the four prelim sides comfortably, and with some better umpiring decisions and bounces of the footy we would have played on the weekend. The sky isn't falling, player movement is a good thing and makes clubs accountable to their development.

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Yeah, that was my point, free agency will be great IF we can get back to a position where there is public optimism of where we are heading. You need that perception from outside the club that we are a good destination, then you wont have to pay as much to attract players and you will get more interest from players in general.

We don't have that perception either inside the club or outside the club at present, the only interest we have got is from players who want more money than they are worth or players who have failed at their current club. It is why we sacked the coach and are making significant football department changes. If we remain a weak club then free agency can work against us, if we are a strong club it can work for us. We need to address that, we are making moves but those moves need to be successful.

Until we do, we are going to have issues like Goldy and Higgins type of players considering their options.
 

benbanjo

Norm Smith Medallist
Aug 16, 2009
9,359
10,977
AFL Club
North Melbourne
Whichever way you look at it it will be nice to get that crazy salary off the books, even if we cant find anyone to spend it on!
 
I must say that in my opinion it is somewhat unusual for Geelong to be going so hard for Goldstein while they remain alive in the finals.

Surely from a psychological point of view, it is sending a strange message to their players that maybe they aren't good enough to win it at the present.

They probably are not good enough and the players may already think it, but why reinforce that message?
 
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