Opinion Canniest trade

[Armitage2Riewoldt]

Yeah I've never ever read that in 5 years of BF. Elaborate, do please.

 

[goodie23]

It's in Emma Quayle's 'The Draft', page 260. I won't type out the whole thing, but the Saints were only considering three players at pick 9. Lachie Henderson had been drafted so it was between Grimes and McEvoy. If we didn't make that deal with Sydney, we probably would have used our first pick on Grimes and second on Simpson.

 

[Armitage2Riewoldt]

It's in Emma Quayle's 'The Draft', page 260. I won't type out the whole thing, but the Saints were only considering three players at pick 9. Lachie Henderson had been drafted so it was between Grimes and McEvoy. If we didn't make that deal with Sydney, we probably would have used our first pick on Grimes and second on Simpson.

Ah ok. They way I read it it seemed like we were certainties to trade for them or something.

 

[SaintsSeptember]

The only thing wrong with that trade, to Ross Lyon it was like someone walking into the Casino for the first time ever, walking up to the blackjack tables and drawing a couple of blackjacks in a row.
"This is easy" thinks Ross, " I can do no wrong".

 

[Baldur]

Milera, Saad, Ross for me. Given that we may have picked up Ross with pick 20 anyway. We got two good players for free.

 

[Squizz]

It's in Emma Quayle's 'The Draft', page 260. I won't type out the whole thing, but the Saints were only considering three players at pick 9. Lachie Henderson had been drafted so it was between Grimes and McEvoy. If we didn't make that deal with Sydney, we probably would have used our first pick on Grimes and second on Simpson.

Matt Burgan's take:

9 – ST KILDA – BEN McEVOY
It will be fascinating to see where McEvoy sits. He could genuinely be drafted from No.6-17, with Essendon (No.6), Sydney (No.11), West Coast (No.13), Melbourne (No.14), Kangaroos (No.15) and Geelong (No.17) all expressing interest. It appears three players are in contention for St Kilda – McEvoy, Lachlan Henderson and Alex Rance – with Scott Selwood, Jack Grimes and Patrick Dangerfield also in the mix. The Saints are eager for an emerging ruckman and McEvoy may prove too tempting.

Burgan seems to have done fairly well in that one (actual draft position in brackets):

(1) 1 – CARLTON – MATTHEW KREUZER
(2) 2 – RICHMOND – TRENT COTCHIN
(3) 3 – WEST COAST – CHRIS MASTEN
(4) 4 – MELBOURNE – CALE MORTON
(5) 5 – WESTERN BULLDOGS – JARRAD GRANT
(7) 6 – ESSENDON – RHYS PALMER
(6) 7 – FREMANTLE – DAVID MYERS
(8) 8 – BRISBANE LIONS – LACHLAN HENDERSON
(9) 9 – ST KILDA – BEN McEVOY
(13) 10 – ADELAIDE – BRAD EBERT
(18) 11 – SYDNEY – ALEX RANCE
(14) 12 – HAWTHORN – JACK GRIMES
(22) 13 – WEST COAST – SCOTT SELWOOD
(10) 14 – MELBOURNE – PATRICK DANGERFIELD
(12) 15 – KANGAROOS – CYRIL RIOLI
(11) 16 – PORT ADELAIDE – PATRICK VESZPREMI
(20) 17 – GEELONG – TONY NOTTE
(25) 18 – RICHMOND – TOM COLLIER
(19) 19 – WESTERN BULLDOGS – CALLAN WARD
(21) 20 – WEST COAST – ADDAM MARIC
(17) 21 – MELBOURNE – HARRY TAYLOR
(34) 22 – WEST COAST – DAWSON SIMPSON
(23) 23 – ESSENDON – TAYTE PEARS
(36) 24 – FREMANTLE – STEVEN BROWNE
(29) 25 – BRISBANE LIONS – BRENDAN WHITECROSS
(27) 26 – SYDNEY – ANDY OTTEN
(32) 27 – ADELAIDE – LEVI GREENWOOD
(28) 28 – PORT ADELAIDE – MARLON MOTLOP
(50) 29 – HAWTHORN – DAN McKENNA
(49) 30 – ADELAIDE – MITCHELL FARMER
(26) 31 – COLLINGWOOD – BRETT MEREDITH
(15) 32 – KANGAROOS – ROBBIE TARRANT
(16) 33 – PORT ADELAIDE – MATTHEW LOBBE
(44) 34 – GEELONG – SCOTT SIMPSON

 

[goodie23]

Burgan did his draft after trade week, according to Quayle Big Ben became our choice because we needed a ruckman and had just traded for midfielders. The way the draft fell it could've happened.

 

[SaintsSeptember]

My recollection at the time was that Ross was desperate to recruit a ruck.
We'd just had a year with Matthew Clarke, ( who looked every bit the geriatric at the time ), Michael Gardiner ( who would never play again for all we knew ), and Michael Rix.
King approaching 30 was only ever going to be a stopgap measure.
McEvoy was supposed to have clearly the second best ruck in the draft behind Kreuzer. IMO one of the best drafting decisions the club have made.
Other Rucks in that draft are still clearly behind McEvoy in ability. ( Kreuzer, Lobbe, Simpson ).
In fact he even beats some of the rucks in the preceeding years, even early ruck picks ( Hampson / Lleuenberger / Bailey ) have not always had high ability, or durability. Rucks are hit and miss at that age, and I'm thinking we may look back at the Hickey deal may be better than we're all thinking right now.

 

[Rors]

Anyway you look at it, losing Goddard for Pick 13 puts you so far behind its not even funny!

I can see your point with Goddard, but the reality is that he has not had the same effect on games in 2011-12 that he did in 2009-10... There were times last year where i was so frustrated with him just cruising around the ground racking up stats but not really influencing the game one iota compared to previous seasons... I truly think that BJ was burnt out & needed the change of club to bring a bit of the fire back. To me, he seemed like the only one where the GF losses of '09 & '10 have truly scarred him enough to completely affect his game in the following years

I joked to my mate, an Essendon supporter, that 'he looked good in a Bombers jumper... Looked good & fitted in well with all the other seagulls'

 

[Smoke_Me_AKipper]

Definitely loving our trades from the past two years so far. Looks like we're making up for lost time in a big way. Whoever has been ultimately responsible for them ought to get a pay rise and contract extension.

Tony 'Trout' Elshaugh - take a bow son!

 

[stkildathunda]

Ha! Brett Meredith who Swans got in that Schneider/Dempster trade is now playing at Werribee!!

 

[Defacto]

the terry milera/saad/ross trade meant we passed on the following players (which needs to be taken into account):
20: Crozier
21: N/A (FS)
22: Bootsma
23: Newman (already in trouble with the law)
24: Schade

GWS also has an end of first round concession pick from trading pick 20 to freo, which i cant find out if and where it was used.

this trade is already a win!!! but how much depends on milera/ross and crozier.

whilst milera and saad are experiencing 2nd year blues, ross seems to be developing nicely and looks like he can become a player if he can get a bigger tank and run out games

crozier looks like a find for freo

guess time will tell

 

[Defacto]

the trades are already starting to draw criticism:
http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/threads/st-kildas-2012-trading.1010257/

 

[CHBench]

TDL was a bad one. Sydney got us back for the Walsh/Markworth trade i think. That rumour was posted here that we were interested in TDL early in trade week, but we all passed it off as a joke. Not sure why we felt we needed another small, one dimensional forward. Good on him for tearing up VFL, but he's another Raph Clarke "inbetweener".

No question we needed a back up for McEvoy, i think people forgot how dire our ruck situation was at times last year. But, at this point in time, the way it's looking, Tom and Ben are both limited, both number 1's and not gelling. Which is hurting each others game. McEvoy plays best as the lone ranger, for whatever reason. And same for Hickey, his best games for GC were when Zac Smith was out.

 

[Manimal_Dunstan]

TDL was a bad one. Sydney got us back for the Walsh/Markworth trade i think. That rumour was posted here that we were interested in TDL early in trade week, but we all passed it off as a joke. Not sure why we felt we needed another small, one dimensional forward. Good on him for tearing up VFL, but he's another Raph Clarke "inbetweener".

No question we needed a back up for McEvoy, i think people forgot how dire our ruck situation was at times last year. But, at this point in time, the way it's looking, Tom and Ben are both limited, both number 1's and not gelling. Which is hurting each others game. McEvoy plays best as the lone ranger, for whatever reason. And same for Hickey, his best games for GC were when Zac Smith was out.

They got Tim Membery (Spelling) out of it i think.

 

[Defacto]

They got Tim Membery (Spelling) out of it i think.

was he the one with that god awfull tatt

 

[saintsrfreak]

was he the one with that god awfull tatt

That's the one

 

[Manimal_Dunstan]

Looks like he has added to it now.

 

[Ducky Tie]

Bloke seriously needs to learn how to smile.

 

[aussierulesrules]

Was always going to happen, We won't know until a few years if these a wins or not, Hickey + Lee are still developing they are tall prospects which take longer. If we have of recruited better in 07-10 wouldn't have had to do these trades but sadly we did have to so we can get our list back together. I don't take notice of what others say Wright, Murdoch, Saunders have looked the goods, TDL i question, White looks a solid prospect in the VFL at the moment he'll develop into a nice player i think the same for Lee and Hickey, Piercey also looks to be developing really good in the VFL at the moment.

Yep, agree pretty much completely with all that.

What others think of it all means diddly squat. They may be right, they may be wrong. I see little point in trying to convince anyone otherwise, as the proof will be in the pudding, one way or the other, but it is far too early to make any calls on it at this stage, as a few with wise heads are pointing out in that thread on the main board.

At this point I'm still relatively happy with it all except for TDL, which I was never happy with and didn't see the point in. Having said that, I can see why we probably did it now, given that there are these strong rumours that Milera wanted out/wants out and with Milne possibly in his last year. If Terry and Milne are both not there next year that would just leave Saad and Minchington, had we not gotten TDL.

So we probably just saw it as a good opportunity to grab him while he was available and the pick we used on him was one we weren't even going to use in the draft. The only reason we ended up using that next, later pick (75), as a "live" pick, was because Gram got unexpectedly sacked after the trade period was over. Had that not happened, the only pick after the one we got Saunders with was going to be used to upgrade Dunell.

The Hickey one is a bit of question mark, as it doesn't look like he and Mac are both going to work out playing in the same team, but there is also the chance that Mac will simply never be good enough in the ruck (hitouts wise) and that Hickey will end up passing him in that role, making it a good choice for us to have grabbed him. But that probably won't happen for at least a couple of years, if it is to at all, so again, it is very early to be making a call on it. Time will tell.

Hickey may also prove good enough to play mostly forward down the track, in the sort of role Mike Pyke played last year, but again, that will take time if he is to learn to play that role well. He has a lot of talent and good physical attributes, but it's also still only his 4th or 5th year of playing the game, so he's still learning and is only 22 and has been thrown in the deep end.

As for the whole Lee trade, I'm still happy with that one from what I've seen of Tom so far and based on what he did last year (despite being still well off his physical peak and maturity at the time and having only recently stopped growing) and I find it laughable the amount that he is being basically written off so far, especially on the main board and the D&T board.

He's played very few consecutive games so far this year (just 4 full games since R1 of the NAB Cup, over 3 months ago and no more than two in a row at any time) and has apparently had some pretty significant issues with his legs, which eventually led to him being given a couple of weeks off, about a month ago. Yet, in spite of all that, he was still picked to play twice in the first 5 rounds, so the club obviously rates him pretty highly and they are the ones who get to see him train every day (and of course McPhee coached him previously and Beau played with him at Claremont) and know far better than any of us what he is capable of (when fully fit, match-fit and in form).

So I'm still very confident that we will look back at that trade and be very happy to have effectively gotten all of Lee, Wright and Saunders with that pick, as long as we develop them all well and play them in the roles that they are best suited to. The fact that they have all played within the first 5 rounds of their first season with us is a great sign, especially for the two younger ones, but also Lee, who has had a lot of interruptions and also has a lot of developing still to do, being taller and thinner and a "later-developer".

If he was capable of kicking 68 goals in 17 games at senior WAFL and Foxtel Cup level last year (including 6 goals in the Foxtel Cup GF against a strong Weribbee side and 6 more goals in Claremont's first WAFL final) despite being very underdeveloped for his age, just think of what he ought to be capable of when he's say 24yo, with hopefully a couple more AFL preseasons under his belt. I see the role that Aaron Black played so well for North yesterday being ideally suited to Tom going forward, as they look to have a lot of very similar attributes and skills.

The bottom line is that we knew that it was going to take about 4 years to rebuild the list to a point that we were happy with it and last year was the 2nd of that 4, maybe 5 year period. We filled the gaps that we felt we needed to first (another ruck option to provide immediate and much-needed back-up to Mac at the very least, with hopes that he would also be able to play in tandem with Mac long-term and also hopefully the long term replacements for Roo, Milne, Gram/Hayes (depending on where Wright ends up playing) and Kosi) and now we will look to fill the rest of the gaps, mainly key defence spots and midfield (which we also tried to fill last year, going hard at Caddy and very hard at Mitch Brown).

One thing we did obviously make a mistake on though was where we thought we were going to finish this year. As I've said previously, it is pretty clear that we were aiming high again (there's no way we would have offered as much as we did for Mitch Brown had we thought we'd be anywhere near as bad as we are now, plus the likes of Lenny and Joey were still talking premierships in the preseason and we very much picked teams to win in the first couple of weeks, before we realised we were off the pace) and we probably figured that we would be a very strong chance to get a "gun mid" through free agency this year, because we would still be around the mark and would have a lot of cap space free. But now that we are stinking it up so badly, it has pretty much skuttled any chance of that, as no-one like Daisy Thomas will want to come here now unless we pay them massive overs, which I don't think we will do.

So that will have made a mess of our plans in that regard, but it just means that we will most likely have to target "mids" in the draft and hope that we get a gun or two that way, or through a trade, with a team like GWS, preferably at least one who can make a pretty immediate impact, as Wines has for Port this year, for instance.

We are simply two years into a 4 year (minimum) rebuild of our list, since Pelchen, Elshaugh and Watters came on board and I still think we have a very good nucleus of our future team (Hickey, Siposs, Steven, Mac, Ross, Lee, Markworth, Geary, Newnes, Roberton, White, Armo, Saad, Stanley, Webster, Murdoch, Simpkin, Wright, Saunders, Minchington, Pierce- that's 21 who are 25 and under for starters, who look a good chance to make it), but it is probably just going to involve going down a lot more than we were hoping to, in the meantime- but that just means higher draft picks- like really high- in relatively uncompromised drafts.

Just for a bit of a refresher, here is the article with Pelchen talking about why we did what we did last trade/draft period. He knows what he is doing and has been through all this sort of stuff before and I reckon Elshaugh has been doing a great job: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/saints-this-is-the-future/story-e6frf9n6-1226623717340

We're not going to get a 100% success rate with our all picks and trades, but I reckon we've done a really good job with the picks we've had in the last two draft/trade periods, in what were relatively heavily compromised drafts.

Unfortunately, we're just playing so badly at the moment that it is very hard for the young ones to shine, as they probably would if they were playing for a Geelong or Hawthorn, but I'm confident that with a few more seasons under their belts, plenty of them will go on to be our next Fisher's, Dempster's and Joey's and so on. Whether any of them (or those we get in the next couple of draft/free agency/trade periods, where we're going to have some very high picks to play with) go on to be our next Riewoldt's and Lenny's will be the big question, but hopefully they will, especially with our greatly improved/resourced development programs.

It is likely to take a lot of time and patience now, though. There is no quick fix from the predicament we now find ourselves in, so we're going to have to suck it up for a while. We were hoping that we could rebuild without bottoming right out, somewhat like Sydney and Geelong have done to varying degrees, but there is now little doubt that we are going to suck in a pretty major way for at least the next 12 months, possibly more, so we need to deal with that and not let those outside get to us and lead us to eat our own and/or implode and throw the baby out with the bathwater. They can talk as much shit as they want to about our drafting and trading, but the proof will be in the pudding and not much that we or they say in the meantime is going to change that. Time will tell and whatever happens we'll deal with it as best we know how, when the time comes.

 

[goodie23]

Is that thread trying to say we traded for developing players who haven't starred for us in the first six months? Hi-yi-yi...

Taking Hickey and Lee is not dissimilar to drafting a youngster, they're both still raw and underdeveloped. Way too early to call on both of them, not to mention those trades got us pick upgrades that helped us land Wright and White. As for Hyphen, we may have got done, he may turn it around, but trading a third round pick for someone just outside the best 22 of the premiership side is not the worst trade ever.

 

[Axcellence]

As for Hyphen, we may have got done, he may turn it around, but trading a third round pick for someone just outside the best 22 of the premiership side is not the worst trade ever.

Walsh was emergency for last year's grand final.

 

[Squizz]

Didn't "the Luke Ball pick" kick 5 goals against us yesterday? I'm not Lyon! (pun intended)

 

[CHBench]

Didn't "the Luke Ball pick" kick 5 goals against us yesterday? I'm not Lyon! (pun intended)

I don't think anyone's picked up on that yet.

Andrejs frickin Everett. Bloody hell.

 

[aussierulesrules]

I don't think anyone's picked up on that yet.

Andrejs frickin Everett. Bloody hell.

That was about all I thought of every time Black got a kick yesterday. I liked the sound of him at the time and he would have been the exact sort that we probably would have drafted, I reckon, had we had that pick. He was that tall, quick, athletic "3rd tall forward" that we had been craving for so long.

This one is looking like it could hurt for a while, at least until Lee hopefully starts to play that role well.