People would've said similar about the 2004 list and yet 3 years later we were playing finals. And this was when the only way you could gain players was via trade or draft.
Free Agency and Academies, of which hawthorn have a few decent looking prospects change the landscape.
All this "Hawthorn have no picks and won't play finals for 6+ years!" is wishful hyperbole.
Well who is the current equivalent of Crawford, hodge, Mitchell, Croad, Sewell, Brown, Bateman, Osborne, Williams, Ladson and Campbell, who were the 2008 premiership players on the list prior to the 2004 draft.
Now not all of those mentioned were superstars, and only the first 4-5 were front liners.
Granted one thought a premiership was happening anytime soon in 2004, I would argue the current list is in even worse shape than that. But just say, for instance it isn't and it's on par with 2004, this is what happened next in 2004:
Got roughy, franklin and Lewis in the first 7 picks, 3 club legends in the 2004 draft. Not bad for 'speculative' draft picks.
Then further high picks in burchill and rioli made the side even stronger.
From that basis some canny recruiting from other clubs (Gilham and Dew), great coaching and a bit of luck landed a flag way ahead of what anyone thought possible in 2008.
So the differences to then and now are very obvious, you don't have any picks available anywhere early in this years draft, so chances of finding 3 future or current a graders at the end of the season are slim to none.
Now I know there is free agency now and there wasn't then, but to find 3 a grade free agents would cost a crap load of money and they would all be at least in their mid 20s and on fairly decent money.
The other option is to bundle up players to get early picks, but that may translate to a first and second rounder at best, and further gut what current talent is there.
I've seen it time and time again with clubs thinking their infallible just because of who they are and what has happened in the past.
It never works like that, otherwise Fitzroy would of remained a super power, we would of never gone down the ladder and Essendon wouldn't of tried a dodgy supplements scheme to keep up.
2008 was the footballing equivalent of catching lightning in a bottle, you will realize how great an achievement it was as time goes on. Landing 3 club legends in one draft is probably a 1 in 50 year occurrence, at best.