I'm going to town on you as the OP and for your erroneous comments.
Unless they show significant improvement, good players are going to bypass them and they'll stay a mediocre team.
I can only assume you're speaking from experience and concerned we'll follow the Blues path, in relation to years of mediocrity and failing to improve? Thanks, but we actually have experience in doing rebuilds, despite GC and GWS picking the eyes out of drafts, and even if we didn't quite make it to the top.
They've still got a lot of players to cycle out of their current team, which will mean some big gaps in their list in years to come.
Which ones? Are you aware of those who are likely to replace them, or don't believe there are any?
Thompson? (one more year?) Ed Vickers-Willis and Nielson Hibberd also.
Hansen? (gone) Durdin
Tarrant? (a few years yet). Nielson, Watson or McKay if not KPF.
Swallow? (one more year or traded) Dumont or 2017 pick 4.
Waite? (one more year or delisted). Freak player when fit. Irreplaceable in 'like for like' terms. Wood or McKay.
Gibson? (one more year) Josh Williams and/or Atley/Macmillan move from HB to wing.
Goldstein? (keep or trade). Preuss, with Daw as back up.
Higgins? (4 more years) Irrelevant for now.
Thomas? (one more year or trade). Turner and Garner already offer what LT did, with more pressure and flexibility.
It makes sense to lure some big names, but they are offering some huge contracts and still being rejected.
Which never happens to other teams. We went for two players who ended up having stellar seasons, even by their standards.
It makes sense in the current situation, but it'll be troubling in a few years when they should be making a push up the ladder.
So, it
did make sense for us to do it, but now that two high profile (two of the best three players in the competition this year) rejected our offer, you anticipate we'll never be successful again at luring players? The smart posters are suggesting that, if anything, we may have gone a bit early with this, and will be better placed to lure players when we're on the rise, with more accompanying talent on our books, courtesy of rare high draft picks over the next year or so.
Even when they were a decent mid-table team they struggled to attract talent and mostly went after older players looking for a big final contract.
Who did we try, and fail to attract, when we were a 'decent mid-table' team? Are you conflating 'decent mid-table team' (2009-2013) with those that made PFs (2014-15 and first half of 2016)? Dal and Waite helped us to PFs, and hardly untalented. Higgins was 26 and just won our B&F.
Still haven't shown they can produce elite talent, apart from a few guns, but to be fair they haven't had the luxury of early selections.
Re-read the last half of that sentence. At the same time, consider that Goldstein and Brown, to name two off the top of my head, weren't early selections and are or have been elite talent. Cunnington, or doesn't he count because he was an early selection?
North are a bottom 4 team, currently the least attractive Victorian club and only just beginning a rebuild.
Attractiveness is an assessment, not fact. I'd put Saints, GC, Freo as less attractive personally and on par with Carlton who have little to show for supposedly being ahead in a rebuild.
Okay, after saturating this page with my posts, I'll bugger off and leave pages of crap, no doubt, unread.