News Harley Bennell - Ends at Freo in 2019

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Scott Gumbleton, Anthony Morabito, Harley Bennell. All were top 5 picks, all were in freos list at one point. All from Peel. All talented blokes but injury prone.

Yes I am still bitter on how useful all3 blokes could of been if the cards fell the Dockers way

Morabito was a bit different to the other 2. He wasn't injury prone until he did his ACL playing for us. Most people never get over that, he was no exception. It's a big different to Gumby and Harley who just kept repeatedly tearing the same muscle.
 
Plenty of people out there who could have been stars but their bodies couldn't take the loads of elite sport.

God even just in the world in general. My partner used to run 20-30k/week. Her calves go worse and worse and she had to give it away. She rehabbed properly twice (she's an OT by trade and did it with professional support) but every time she starts to get above a certain distance the calves just give out again.

Hurts more when its really special talent like Harley and Mora. Those 2 on the park together would have been incredible. I suspect GC would never have let Harley go though if he wasn't cooked. And certainly not at the price we got him. He was looking Judd like good at his best.
 
Morabito was a bit different to the other 2. He wasn't injury prone until he did his ACL playing for us. Most people never get over that, he was no exception. It's a big different to Gumby and Harley who just kept repeatedly tearing the same muscle.
Mora is also different because he cost a high draft pick, the others only chewed up a bit of salary. And they were still about as likely to have successful careers with us as the other options available at whatever the picks used were.
 

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Mora is also different because he cost a high draft pick, the others only chewed up a bit of salary. And they were still about as likely to have successful careers with us as the other options available at whatever the picks used were.

Didn't we give up a first rounder for Harley?
 
Didn't we give up a first rounder for Harley?

"the Dockers announced they had sent draft picks 16 and 35 to the Suns in exchange for Bennell and pick No.22"

The context being we finished top of the ladder in 2016 before being bundled out in straight sets and the club (and many if not most supporters) believed he was the final piece missing.
 
"the Dockers announced they had sent draft picks 16 and 35 to the Suns in exchange for Bennell and pick No.22"

The context being we finished top of the ladder in 2016 before being bundled out in straight sets and the club (and many if not most supporters) believed he was the final piece missing.

Yeah so we gave up a first round pick in what has since been a bit of a superdraft. #16 was used on Harry Himmelberg.
 
Yeah so we gave up a first round pick in what has since been a bit of a superdraft. #16 was used on Harry Himmelberg.

Did you think it was a bad decision at the time?

I can't in good faith say that. Doubt many can, he has all the talent in the world. The club does that deal every day of the week.

We can all sit here and be hindsight heroes but at the time it was the right decision. If the club knew they were going to fall off a cliff they probably hold 16 and draft a skinny half back flanker.
 
Yeah so we gave up a first round pick in what has since been a bit of a superdraft. #16 was used on Harry Himmelberg.


Wasn't Himmelberg. He is 16 but there were academy picks earlier than that pushing the order down. It was Fiorini, and we got Tucker with the exchange of our first pick.
 
God even just in the world in general. My partner used to run 20-30k/week. Her calves go worse and worse and she had to give it away. She rehabbed properly twice (she's an OT by trade and did it with professional support) but every time she starts to get above a certain distance the calves just give out again.
One of the things I love about swimming, very hard to get injured. Heck it's hard to even pull up sore.
 
Yeah so we gave up a first round pick in what has since been a bit of a superdraft. #16 was used on Harry Himmelberg.
Revisit the 2015 draft - it was decent but Super draft it was not. Schache at number 2.

We effectively swapped Fiorini for Bennell and Tucker in that trade. Hindsight is a b**ch at times. We took a punt on an injury prone and off-field issue player. We couldn’t get over the injury problems and also had plenty of off-field stuff to deal with incl. a bender on the last evening before returning to pre-season training. We shouldn’t have re-signed him at the end of that same season which is a bigger problem than trading for him on his initial 3-year contract.

A player in the third and final year of his contract is a no show for the first day of January pre-season - really should have been no coming back from that. Colin Young performed his basic level voodoo work on Rosich and on he goes.
 
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In general the club has done well with minor downgrades to get access to high potential players. Doesn’t always work out, and any past draft is the domain of retrospect cherry picking.

Logue and McCarthy are going to be a sustained point of discussion for us. In terms of Bennel, Fiorini or Tucker are both decent picks at that stage of the draft.
 
Freo has this messiah syndrome. Its ingrained in the clubs culture to chase that magical mystical single piece of the jigsaw that will take us to the cup. Never does but costs us heaps and gains us nothing.
Does Tim Kelly fit in that boat? Not sure we're the only ones to do this.
 
AFL games are still able to be won by a single player winning their match up so comprehensively that the flow on makes the team dominate too.

Especially midfielders. If we had a player who always took a mark when you kicked it to them and then always found a team mate by foot 40+ meters towards goal then we shouldn't ever lose a game.

Fyfe is one, Bennell is one, Ablett etc
 

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Is anyone concerned with a huge claim from Bennell for mismanagement of his injuries?

I think it originated at GC but he was at Freo for a number of years.
 
I’d say plugger was the best FF, had Richo played in a better team he would been nipping at his heals, Rance was also Great, and don’t forget Roach, Bartlett too 😂😂😂😂😂😂
could not resist.
Didn't we give up a first rounder for Harley?
"the Dockers announced they had sent draft picks 16 and 35 to the Suns in exchange for Bennell and pick No.22"

The context being we finished top of the ladder in 2016 before being bundled out in straight sets and the club (and many if not most supporters) believed he was the final piece missing.
Yeah so we gave up a first round pick in what has since been a bit of a superdraft. #16 was used on Harry Himmelberg.
Did you think it was a bad decision at the time?

I can't in good faith say that. Doubt many can, he has all the talent in the world. The club does that deal every day of the week.

We can all sit here and be hindsight heroes but at the time it was the right decision. If the club knew they were going to fall off a cliff they probably hold 16 and draft a skinny half back flanker.
Wasn't Himmelberg. He is 16 but there were academy picks earlier than that pushing the order down. It was Fiorini, and we got Tucker with the exchange of our first pick.
Is anyone concerned with a huge claim from Bennell for mismanagement of his injuries?

I think it originated at GC but he was at Freo for a number of years.
I have always called it the Harley Bennell trade(s)

Yeah we gave up pics 16 and 35 for him and pick 22.

We then wanted that pic 35 back. That 2nd trade was gold coast trade pick 35 and 55 Freo traded that 2016 2nd rounder which ended up as 21 due to our drop and pick 61.

I don't care what the suns got. That pick 22 being Darcy Tucker. That pick 35 was Harley Balic. That pick 55 ended up ironically as Sam Collins. So yeah mostly a bad trade.
 
Is anyone concerned with a huge claim from Bennell for mismanagement of his injuries?

I think it originated at GC but he was at Freo for a number of years.
Not really, we didn’t do anything wrong except sending him to Germany for quack medicine but that was last resort after all options had been exhausted

Really the only chance he had was early on before it was too recurrent was to send him overseas and put him on illegal substances and stem cells then bring him back a season later clean
 
I have always called it the Harley Bennell trade(s)

Yeah we gave up pics 16 and 35 for him and pick 22.

We then wanted that pic 35 back. That 2nd trade was gold coast trade pick 35 and 55 Freo traded that 2016 2nd rounder which ended up as 21 due to our drop and pick 61.

I don't care what the suns got. That pick 22 being Darcy Tucker. That pick 35 was Harley Balic. That pick 55 ended up ironically as Sam Collins. So yeah mostly a bad trade.
I don't think you can simply equate draft outcomes with trade success/failure, unless it is pretty certain what player will be available (Logue). Balic didn't work out but probably wasn't targeted either.
 
Is anyone concerned with a huge claim from Bennell for mismanagement of his injuries?

I think it originated at GC but he was at Freo for a number of years.
That would open up such a massive legal can of worms that there's no way it would happen. Unless somehow it could be shown we were deliberately careless there is no way he could ever win. It would be a complete waste of his or Colin Young's money to even try. Not to say they won't try.
 
That would open up such a massive legal can of worms that there's no way it would happen. Unless somehow it could be shown we were deliberately careless there is no way he could ever win. It would be a complete waste of his or Colin Young's money to even try. Not to say they won't try.
It would be difficult to argue that a player with a significant history of injuries and an occasionally casual attitude to his rehab can place responsibility on the club wouldn’t it?
 
Is anyone concerned with a huge claim from Bennell for mismanagement of his injuries?

I think it originated at GC but he was at Freo for a number of years.
Any half decent lawyer would argue that drinking (multiple times) while in injury rehab significantly contributed to the injury issues. Case closed...

I suspect that Harley was paid a bit extra for "Physio / ongoing rehab" when he retired last year.
 
I don't think you can simply equate draft outcomes with trade success/failure, unless it is pretty certain what player will be available (Logue). Balic didn't work out but probably wasn't targeted either.
depends how you see it. You look at trade, I think we were harsh on Collins. There were rumours Balic was a top 10 pick but was pushed back due to injury.

Saying that, trading pick 3 for cam, Logue, Darcy and Ryan was an excellent outcome
 
I don't see Balic as a bad pick. He could play, just not mentally equipped for elite sport but that's hard to pick at that age. Probably said all the right things and had been able to stay on the elite sport pathway as a teen. Plus some of the immature ones who can't handle it at first become the strongest when they finally get their act together (see Walters).
 

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