I know where you are coming from but your comment is based on the premise that we would actually be getting talent to our club.
Look at the six players we have picked up from GWS thus far (Kristian Jaksch, Lachie Plowman, Jethro Lamb, Liam Sumner, Andrew Phillips & Mark Whiley) and if we are being totally honest, only Plowman looks like being a long-term player for us right now.
We all hold strong hopes that some of the others will make it too but you have to ask why it was those exact players that GWS were happy to part company with instead of some of the other guys they have on the list ?? I would of been beside myself if they had of said "in addition to Plowman, we'll throw in Hoskin-Elliott, Buntine & Smith" but that was never going to happen.
Methinks the deal last year was "we will give you Plowman because that's who you want but you have to take the other three as steak knives or its no deal". We did them a favour taking those players as they had to reduce their list size, it was a win for us based on the standard & age of our list but they were never going to give us four A-Graders in one hit.
What do you expect? Them to give us all their guns for nothing.
As you said pick 28 was a discount for plowman if we took the other contracts off their hands, and we were in a position to do that. Plowman looked great in his debut and even if the others are off our list in 2 years it's still a massive win if plowman becomes a gun defender for 10 years which I'm confident he will.
The other trade was interesting and we may well lose it if marchbank becomes a gun, but still hope for boekhurst and Jaksch to come on strong, I don't hold much hope for Whiley.
There's just a lot of talent in their twos that I reckon we can pillage it cheaply. Remember they have Pickett, Adhern, hopper who haven't even played and were top 10 picks plus they have 3 first round picks next year (theirs, collingwoods lol and geelongs), if we can swing another plowman deal, let's use sos and his connection to get it done.
Now please explain to me why pick 12 was massive overs for Tomlinson but was turned down?