But, you see, this is a confused list management approach. Reading this board, when everyone here thought we were getting Ablett, Stringer, Watts, Smith and more, we were "all in", "have to go hard whilst we have Selwood, Hawk etc next few seasons" etc. And I agree with that. Facts are we have gone down a certain path and it makes no sense to walk away now.
But, now that it looks like we're missing our targets, many of those same posters are now walking that back and saying they're happy to hit the draft. It makes absolutely no sense to hit the draft now for our list. None. Not unless you are going to start trading out valuable commodities who couldn't be involved in a flag in, say, 5 years. Clearly we aren't doing that.
Now, on Wells comments yesterday. He clearly said our valuation of Watts doesn't converge with Melbourne's. So a deal is unlikely at this stage. So if 20 is too much, then so is 19. That is a simple equation given Wells own comments. Further, many are floating this idea Wells has a specific kid in mind for 20. This raises a few issues of its own. Firstly, there are at least 19 clubs selecting ahead of us at this stage. If our "target" is in the first 20-25-odd ranked kids, there can be no guarantee we get him at our selection. Alternatively, if we really rate the first 20-25 kids in this draft generally, then surely its even more attractive to Wells to take TWO of those very good kids, rather than use 19 or 20 on Watts? And thirdly, if Wells is really confident that his selection will be available at 20, then we can likely presume he's reaching again, and that raises its own issues.
This is the inherent risk of going down the path we have the last few years. If you go all in, then you really need to see out the job fully. You need to embrace the risks associated with your chosen path. These risks include leaving yourself exposed only to the available elite talent in any given trade period. This year that is particularly relevant given all the available "big fish" have relevant baggage issues (Ablett, Rockliff, Stringer, Watts). You need to embrace the risk that effectively requires you to lure players to "nominate" your club. You need to embrace the risk that you might have to overpay for your targets at the trade table because other clubs are neither blind, nor generous, when it comes to the list management path you have chosen. And finally, if the "available" targets are not desirable, you need to have the boldness and balls to try and pull contracted players away. To go to the draft with picks inside 30 this year will be nothing but a FAIL, given the path we have chosen. Pure and simple. Anything else is spin.
I posted before the trade period started that we continue to fall short (not only this reason fwiw) because we haven't fully embraced a clear list management path. Thats why our list is shallow. We've had a bit each way and continue to do so. This isn't just about Caddy/Parfitt for instance, its about the path we clearly should've taken post 2013, when it was obvious a great core of players had given the dice one last roll. From then, we needed to decide draft or aggressive rebuild. Neither option is a guarantee, but whatever you choose, you need to do fully. Whatever the chosen path, it was then incumbent on us to move decisively on those who wouldn't realistically be a part of the next tilt, and extract best value for them. In our instance, we seemingly chose the aggressive rebuild path. Thats fine. In that instance, its reasonable to forecast a 5-odd year range. So, 2017-18 the targeted premiership years. We then needed to get ruthless, and trade out aggressively to generate currency. This is where we've failed, quite frankly. We held onto veterans for too long given our "plan", and have lost valuable role players like Varcoe, Caddy etc for less than market value, or a return that doesn't fit the "plan". Too scared to dangle those who have currency but have flaws (Blicavs, Guthrie). The time to hit the draft hard (if at all) was in '13, '14, so that your draftees could get about 2-3 seasons (50 odd games) before contention time in '17,'18.
Instead, what we have done is a disjointed list management path. Draft a little here, trade in there,, lose someone wanted that is contracted, trade out R1's for peanuts, pick up an FA, top up with an unwanted hack here (Black, Lloyd?), pick up the obligatory VFL Banker or three etc.