Club Focus Hawthorn 2020 - Hartigan, Phillips, Grainger-Barras, Mitchell, Downie, Brockman

AFL Club Focus

What does Hawthorn most need this off-season?

  • A key forward

    Votes: 15 26.3%

  • A key defender

    Votes: 10 17.5%

  • An inside mid

    Votes: 7 12.3%

  • An outside mid

    Votes: 23 40.4%

  • Other

    Votes: 2 3.5%
  • Total voters
    57

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Data from footywire. To check the draft order (updated weekly) see the thread here.
 
Since this is the topic right now..

I really like the way Brisbane used the draft as a component to build from a pretty terrible list in 2015.

Over a 5 year period they used 3 top 5 picks, 3 picks in the late teens (+ matched 1 late bid so we could make that 4) and they used 7 second round picks. 3/4/7

Brisbane lions...
2015 draft:
Pick 2, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42,
2016 draft:
Pick 3, 17, 23, 24, 55, 71
2017 draft:
Pick 1, 15, 18, 41, 43, 54
2018 draft:
Pick 21, 26, 40, 42, 55
2019 draft:
Pick 22, 33, 37, 59

Hawthorn so far have used 1 pick in the teens and 1 second round pick.
We could potentially use 1 top 5 pick this year another in the teens and a second round.
That means we will need to use another 2 top 5 picks, 2 picks in the teens and 5 second round picks over the next 3 years to be on par.

Edit: I may have counted wrong regarding the second round. Some rounds really stretch out because of bids and compo.
 
Barlow#14 said:
Since this is the topic right now..

I really like the way Brisbane used the draft as a component to build from a pretty terrible list in 2015.

Over a 5 year period they used 3 top 5 picks, 3 picks in the late teens (+ matched 1 late bid so we could make that 4) and they used 7 second round picks. 3/4/7

Brisbane lions...
2015 draft:
Pick 2, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42,
2016 draft:
Pick 3, 17, 23, 24, 55, 71
2017 draft:
Pick 1, 15, 18, 41, 43, 54
2018 draft:
Pick 21, 26, 40, 42, 55
2019 draft:
Pick 22, 33, 37, 59

Hawthorn so far have used 1 pick in the teens and 1 second round pick.
We could potentially use 1 top 5 pick this year another in the teens and a second round.
That means we will need to use another 2 top 5 picks, 2 picks in the teens and 5 second round picks over the next 3 years to be on par.

Edit: I may have counted wrong regarding the second round. Some rounds really stretch out because of bids and compo.
Click to expand...
On this lions also got Andrews, Lyons and Cameron (priority pick) for free. Plus Neale pretty cheaply for his output. Also hipwood was an academy product. We are going to have to give up a lot. To get those sort of picks. As Brisbane had a couple of legs up.

We should treat it a little like the Stockmarket. Buy low and sell high, as we have done the opposite and now our list holds little value.
 
H00t said:
On this lions also got Andrews, Lyons and Cameron (priority pick) for free. Plus Neale pretty cheaply for his output. Also hipwood was an academy product. We are going to have to give up a lot. To get those sort of picks. As Brisbane had a couple of legs up.

We should treat it a little like the Stockmarket. Buy low and sell high, as we have done the opposite and now our list holds little value.
Click to expand...
We have the benefit of hindsight regarding Brisbane, it's quite possible hawthorn can come close to replicating it by the end of the 5 years. Well that should be the goal at least.
 

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H00t said:
We need to hit the draft. Not this one first and one second business. That means trading out players. Players that I don’t really want to trade out. But it’s for the greater good for our list management like moving out Hodge, Mitchell and Lewis.

Mitchell, JOM, Breust, Gunston should all be on the table if big offer comes. Even during 01-09 we traded out a lot of players for picks. Hay, Thompson, Croad, Lonie and Williams off the top of my head.

despite what some people feel draft is the gold standard and by far the best way to get talent. It’s so much better than any other way it’s not even close.

Ideally we should have hit the draft 2016 onwards. When we had a lot of players worth a lot of currency. Rioli, Gunston, Smith, Shiels, Birchall and Breust could have netted a hefty amount of draft picks over the 16,17 and 18 draft. And looking at the top 20 in those drafts we’d be sitting pretty getting a number of them. Instead our first picks were 76, 45 and 52 in those years.

Now we don’t have players with anywhere near the currency. Which will set back us being proper contenders for a long time. The club can’t seem to switch to rebuild mode. Our current rebuild attempt is woeful. We are miles off it and going to get worse. Hoping to hit with one first a year and develop players better is fanciful and will never work.
Click to expand...
Exactly, this is where our list management and recruiting teams failed us, its time to right those wrongs.

This post also points out how we had a chance to trade out players who were a little too satisfied with themselves after we gave them the opportunity to be a part of history, instead we put up with their attitudes until they left us for retirement packages at other clubs.

Also 1 1st a year is better than we've had the last 6 or 7 years, our list management team are a joke atm, I hate the direction we've taken with so many nothing pickups(Brooksby, Vickery, Scully, Patton, Hartigan/all past their prime, all just role players at best, why not goto the draft and try and pluck some real talent instead or spot good talent at the 2nd tier Comps instead of re hashing players who have proven they are just bleh), even the so called good players are a disappointment, I mean our midfield has struggled to have an influence for 4 years and we head hunted half of them, Mitchell is good and disappointing every game, good in that he racks up the numbers, disappointing in that he only sometimes has an influence over whether we're successful or not, as for JOM and Wingard, they are wildcards, Wingard might not turn up and JOM will go missing after half time... Worpel theres something to work with, but Mitchell is playing his best role, so that limits him, Shiels, well let's say his game is limited.

As far as our list currency stands, there's very few players at Hawthorn right now that any club would want, we hada lot of currency from 2016-2018 and we wasted those opportunities to trade or do something to bring us back to the top.
 
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H00t said:
On this lions also got Andrews, Lyons and Cameron (priority pick) for free. Plus Neale pretty cheaply for his output. Also hipwood was an academy product. We are going to have to give up a lot. To get those sort of picks. As Brisbane had a couple of legs up.

We should treat it a little like the Stockmarket. Buy low and sell high, as we have done the opposite and now our list holds little value.
Click to expand...

The pick we used on Cameron was predominantly acquired by trading out Hanley (acquiring Port's future first in the deal). The priority pick we got was involved in the deal, but was only moved down from 19 to 22 (and used on Witherden). So Cameron was not exactly free (Witherden was).

Andrews I'll give you, but it's not like he was highly rated given he was bid on with pick 34 (and subsequently only cost us pick 61). It wasn't a Heeney situation or anything like that. Hipwood was rated highly (bid on with pick 14), but we essentially used our pick 17 we got for Redden on him (which was traded down for points to match the bid).

To acquire Neale, we had to trade out two first round picks (pick 6 and our future first round pick, getting back pick 19 and GC's future second round pick). We benefitted from backing ourselves to improve from our bottom four finish, but it could've easily gone very wrong.

Lyons I admit was a nice freebie (thanks GC), and smart thinking by our list managers.

So in short, I think what we did is quite achievable with smart recruiting and trading, and with a lot of luck. We also benefitted from trading out players who still had some value (Hanley, Redden, Rockliff via FA, Schache) which we then used on Cameron, Hipwood, Starcevich and helped acquire Bailey.
 
JasRulz63 said:
The pick we used on Cameron was predominantly acquired by trading out Hanley (acquiring Port's future first in the deal). The priority pick we got was involved in the deal, but was only moved down from 19 to 22 (and used on Witherden). So Cameron was not exactly free (Witherden was).

Andrews I'll give you, but it's not like he was highly rated given he was bid on with pick 34 (and subsequently only cost us pick 61). It wasn't a Heeney situation or anything like that. Hipwood was rated highly (bid on with pick 14), but we essentially used our pick 17 we got for Redden on him (which was traded down for points to match the bid).

To acquire Neale, we had to trade out two first round picks (pick 6 and our future first round pick, getting back pick 19 and GC's future second round pick). We benefitted from backing ourselves to improve from our bottom four finish, but it could've easily gone very wrong.

Lyons I admit was a nice freebie (thanks GC), and smart thinking by our list managers.

So in short, I think what we did is quite achievable with smart recruiting and trading, and with a lot of luck. We also benefitted from trading out players who still had some value (Hanley, Redden, Rockliff via FA, Schache) which we then used on Cameron, Hipwood, Starcevich and helped acquire Bailey.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't be surprised if Fagan was the brains behind Clarko for all these years, when it comes to list management anyway.
 
Davo-27 said:
I wouldn't be surprised if Fagan was the brains behind Clarko for all these years, when it comes to list management anyway.
Click to expand...

Wright is just a lackey eh?

Did Fagan tell us to go for Will Day? And Worpel before him ?
 
Red Bull said:
So in a nutshell,
Hawthorn are just hoping to draft better than everyone else with no extra picks.
Good luck ...
Click to expand...

With all due respect I think you're looking too much through the lens that your club has looked through for the last 20 years. Most posters on here are disagreeing with you because the biggest difference Hawthorn has had is our development post drafting compared to other clubs. This in itself will not create a great list overnight, but is what differentiates us from teams like Carlton, Melbourne, Suns, etc. The greatest clubs in the last 20 years (Geelong, Hawthorn, Sydney, what Richmond and Port are becoming) are built on the back of development and to a lesser extent value trading. None of these clubs go in with 3x 1st round picks year after year, because in order to do that you have to trade off your leaders, who are the people that train your next list in the first place (along with Coaches, obviously). The club has been so strongly against trading Gunston and Breust because we need leaders to protect younger players and pass on the game plan through demonstration.

We lack currency, plain and simple. The list was squeezed too far for too long, and now we need to accept that the best way to begin rebuilding for the next run is to lay a groundwork for the next 5-8 years starting now with what we can. The worst thing we could do right now is to throw out the only good talent we have for crumbs, throw a bunch of cash at people who don't deserve it and go to the draft with no way to develop our youth prospects. We need to - year by year - begin to value-add onto the list and do exactly what we are doing this year, move on players once a replacement (or at least a temporary replacement) has been identified.

This is why losing Smith hurts us so much, we just don't have anyone to replace him because we have no players that are established in the role he provided, bar maybe Impey. Gunston is our only decent key forward option and Bruest is still one of our best players, easily our best small forward. Burgoyne is a role-filler that can basically play anywhere, and we have plenty of holes that still need filling. On the other hand, Frawley has been replaced for now with Frost, who isn't going to set the world on fire, but he can plug the gap over the time that we are rebuilding and allow us to concentraite on other key areas first. Stratton can be replaced by Scrimshaw (somewhat), Poppy was not in the 22 and hasn't been for some time. Sure, we get a mid-pick for Smith, but now we have another hole we need to fill, and we have to put in a kid that will have no one to learn the role from directly and who has to face the prospect of being smashed up at AFL-level before they are ready. Even the best kids (eg. Murphy, Gibbs) take heavy developmental tolls from playing in those kinds of conditions.

The kids we got this year have had no football to play with the VFL down, which has hurt us a lot. The VFL not only helps to teach the game plan Clarkson drills into the new players, but also allows them to build up their bodies to a higher level before being thrown into the AFL level.

Now, I know what you're thinking, "So what makes you different from any of the other sides down the bottom looking to come up?". Basically these points:

1| We have little to no currency to bring in new players this year outside of our high pick and hopefully another later 1st rounder. This means we understand that at the least next year we will likely see more of the same. This is OK, because unlike the majority of clubs down with us we aren't there because we either imploded culturally (Crows, North, Suns) or have been languishing down here for years with no growth (North, Suns, and to a much lesser extent Essendon, Carlton and Melbourne).

2| We have good control over our cap, and plenty of space to move. Granted, most others do, too, but it has meant that losses on Patton, Vickery, Scully and the like have not hurt us long-term, they were basically free rolls of the dice that didn't pay off. However, the other rolls made at the same time like O'Meira, Scrimshaw and Mitchell have. Wingard is debatably the worst deal we have done in a long time, because that really did hurt our youth prospects without adding anything long-term.

3| We have good facilities and an attractive culture/stable off-field element. Yeah, I know, I can see the eye-rolls, but when you remember we are competing with North and the Suns who lack both of those basic things, the Hawks and Crows (facilities at least) start with a leg up.

What we need to do is calmly begin the process of properly rebuilding the basis of a new generation of talent, and most importantly do it as appropriately as possible, not just throw the baby out with the bathwater, dump our whole team and put out a bunch of kids that get smashed for the next 10 years. Doing this likely means that we are behind the Suns, who have already brought in amazing talent in the last two years and reformed their club, and the Crows, who have had an extra year to dump players and are getting better picks from the ones they are losing. North I'm not so sure about, I personally think they are in for a world of hurt for a long time to come. I am under no delusion and expect us to be fighting them to avoid the spoon next year.

Similar clubs in the ladder area are; Sydney, who have a great list of kids already and shouldn't be down for too long; Essendon, who will be struggling this coming year after an exodus but have a good amount of young talent (they could go either way and bottom out or rebound depending on how they approach the next couple of years); Freo, see Sydney; and Carlton, who clearly believe this is their time and are pumping money into getting the list ready to fight for finals - their main problem being no one in the top 8 looks like they will come out any time soon unless they run into bad luck, with the most likely club they could push out being the dogs. The only club above us in real strife is likely GWS, so I don't see us shooting back up the ladder. therefor the more responsible thing to do would be to begun building for a longer term plan.

The good news for the club is I'm happy to be patient, as we are here as a result of 4 flags and honestly that will have bought the club time and understanding as to why they may have gone about the current top-up strategy for too long.

Anyway I have more to say but will do later because this is already becoming too long. I just think that it is fine for you not to agree, but I really think you are thinking about what we need to do in the wrong way. We simply can not compete with other teams and bring in amazing amounts of talent at the moment, so your repeated questions about how are we going to be zooming back up the ladder any day now seem to be missing the point to me.

/rant.
 
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HairyO said:
Wright is just a lackey eh?

Did Fagan tell us to go for Will Day? And Worpel before him ?
Click to expand...
Worpel was a free hit because other recruiters put a line through him based on the cant kick rumour, we benefitted from their stupidity, not a special case and Mark McKenzie is our head recruiter not Wright ok buddy? Has been for near on 3 years, catch up
 
Mister_A said:
With all due respect I think you're looking too much through the lens that your club has looked through for the last 20 years. Most posters on here are disagreeing with you because the biggest difference Hawthorn has had is our development post drafting compared to other clubs. This in itself will not create a great list overnight, but is what differentiates us from teams like Carlton, Melbourne, Suns, etc. The greatest clubs in the last 20 years (Geelong, Hawthorn, Sydney, what Richmond and Port are becoming) are built on the back of development and to a lesser extent value trading. None of these clubs go in with 3x 1st round picks year after year, because in order to do that you have to trade off your leaders, who are the people that train your next list in the first place (along with Coaches, obviously). The club has been so strongly against trading Gunston and Breust because we need leaders to protect younger players and pass on the game plan through demonstration.

We lack currency, plain and simple. The list was squeezed too far for too long, and now we need to accept that the best way to begin rebuilding for the next run is to lay a groundwork for the next 5-8 years starting now with what we can. The worst thing we could do right now is to throw out the only good talent we have for crumbs, throw a bunch of cash at people who don't deserve it and go to the draft with no way to develop our youth prospects. We need to - year by year - begin to value-add onto the list and do exactly what we are doing this year, move on players once a replacement (or at least a temporary replacement) has been identified.

This is why losing Smith hurts us so much, we just don't have anyone to replace him because we have no players that are established in the role he provided, bar maybe Impey. Gunston is our only decent key forward option and Bruest is still one of our best players, easily our best small forward. Burgoyne is a role-filler that can basically play anywhere, and we have plenty of holes that still need filling. On the other hand, Frawley has been replaced for now with Frost, who isn't going to set the world on fire, but he can plug the gap over the time that we are rebuilding and allow us to concentraite on other key areas first. Stratton can be replaced by Scrimshaw (somewhat), Poppy was not in the 22 and hasn't been for some time. Sure, we get a mid-pick for Smith, but now we have another hole we need to fill, and we have to put in a kid that will have no one to learn the role from directly and who has to face the prospect of being smashed up at AFL-level before they are ready. Even the best kids (eg. Murphy, Gibbs) take heavy developmental tolls from playing in those kinds of conditions.

The kids we got this year have had no football to play with the VFL down, which has hurt us a lot. The VFL not only helps to teach the game plan Clarkson drills into the new players, but also allows them to build up their bodies to a higher level before being thrown into the AFL level.

Now, I know what you're thinking, "So what makes you different from any of the other sides down the bottom looking to come up?". Basically these points:

1| We have little to no currency to bring in new players this year outside of our high pick and hopefully another later 1st rounder. This means we understand that at the least next year we will likely see more of the same. This is OK, because unlike the majority of clubs down with us we aren't there because we either imploded culturally (Crows, North, Suns) or have been languishing down here for years with no growth (North, Suns, and to a much lesser extent Essendon, Carlton and Melbourne).

2| We have good control over our cap, and plenty of space to move. Granted, most others do, too, but it has meant that losses on Patton, Vickery, Scully and the like have not hurt us long-term, they were basically free rolls of the dice that didn't pay off. However, the other rolls made at the same time like O'Meira, Scrimshaw and Mitchell have. Wingard is debatably the worst deal we have done in a long time, because that really did hurt our youth prospects without adding anything long-term.

3| We have good facilities and an attractive culture/stable off-field element. Yeah, I know, I can see the eye-rolls, but when you remember we are competing with North and the Suns who lack both of those basic things, the Hawks and Crows (facilities at least) start with a leg up.

What we need to do is calmly begin the process of properly rebuilding the basis of a new generation of talent, and most importantly do it as appropriately as possible, not just throw the baby out with the bathwater, dump our whole team and put out a bunch of kids that get smashed for the next 10 years. Doing this likely means that we are behind the Suns, who have already brought in amazing talent in the last two years and reformed their club, and the Crows, who have had an extra year to dump players and are getting better picks from the ones they are losing. North I'm not so sure about, I personally think they are in for a world of hurt for a long time to come. I am under no delusion and expect us to be fighting them to avoid the spoon next year.

Similar clubs in the ladder area are; Sydney, who have a great list of kids already and shouldn't be down for too long; Essendon, who will be struggling this coming year after an exodus but have a good amount of young talent (they could go either way and bottom out or rebound depending on how they approach the next couple of years); Freo, see Sydney; and Carlton, who clearly believe this is their time and are pumping money into getting the list ready to fight for finals - their main problem being no one in the top 8 looks like they will come out any time soon unless they run into bad luck, with the most likely club they could push out being the dogs. The only club above us in real strife is likely GWS, so I don't see us shooting back up the ladder. therefor the more responsible thing to do would be to begun building for a longer term plan.

The good news for the club is I'm happy to be patient, as we are here as a result of 4 flags and honestly that will have bought the club time and understanding as to why they may have gone about the current top-up strategy for too long.

Anyway I have more to say but will do later because this is already becoming too long. I just think that it is fine for you not to agree, but I really think you are thinking about what we need to do in the wrong way. We simply can not compete with other teams and bring in amazing amounts of talent at the moment, so your repeated questions about how are we going to be zooming back up the ladder any day now seem to be missing the point to me.

/rant.
Click to expand...
This Hawthorn drafts and develops talent better than anyone thing is a lie. It’s just not true. We’ve had more than our fair share of misses over the last 20 years.

Our success was built of two drafts. 2001 which came about by trading croad which caused nearly every Hawthorn supporter alive to want to burn down Waverley. And 2004 with a priority pick. 2005 should have been another draft that set us up but we swung and missed badly. The other 17 years our drafting or talent development hasn’t been anything crazy good.

What we did better than anyone was target players from other clubs who would fill roles for us to compliment the superstars we had drafted. We got more value back than what we payed in picks. Unlike drafting you can’t afford to miss when trading.

Problem is 2014 we stopped always hitting. We got O’Rourke for a first rounder. Then in 2015 we went to the draft and got Burton and Lovell (🤮). Even Burton we valued as a packet of chips in the Wingard trade.

The JOM and Wingard trade we look to have massively overpayed. Which we can’t afford to do anymore. So we either continue down this middling path that gets us nowhere or start looking to trade out good players for picks and start actually rebuilding.
 
Davo-27 said:
Worpel was a free hit because other recruiters put a line through him based on the cant kick rumour, we benefitted from their stupidity, not a special case and Mark McKenzie is our head recruiter not Wright ok buddy? Has been for near on 3 years, catch up
Click to expand...

Yeah Im sure Wright being the boss of football and the former list manager is not having a big say.

As for Worpel being a free hit that is just dumb. Everyone before us had the chance to get him and didnt. Our team got him... I assume without any input from Fagan.

You also ignored Will Day. Fagan influence there ?
 

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H00t said:
This Hawthorn drafts and develops talent better than anyone thing is a lie. It’s just not true. We’ve had more than our fair share of misses over the last 20 years.

Our success was built of two drafts. 2001 which came about by trading croad which caused nearly every Hawthorn supporter alive to want to burn down Waverley. And 2004 with a priority pick. 2005 should have been another draft that set us up but we swung and missed badly. The other 17 years our drafting or talent development hasn’t been anything crazy good.

What we did better than anyone was target players from other clubs who would fill roles for us to compliment the superstars we had drafted. We got more value back than what we payed in picks. Unlike drafting you can’t afford to miss when trading.

Problem is 2014 we stopped always hitting. We got O’Rourke for a first rounder. Then in 2015 we went to the draft and got Burton and Lovell (🤮). Even Burton we valued as a packet of chips in the Wingard trade.

The JOM and Wingard trade we look to have massively overpayed. Which we can’t afford to do anymore. So we either continue down this middling path that gets us nowhere or start looking to trade out good players for picks and start actually rebuilding.
Click to expand...

I remember when Pelican was recruiter and people had the same reverence for him that they currently have for Wright, I can't stand how so many hawks supporters deify the recruiters and assume we only draft the best talent, it means when they do poorly they are never held accountable by anyone, because if you dare bring up an argument, you get dogpiled by ridiculous and usually uneducated comments about how once or twice or even 3 or 4 times in 10 years how they finally got it right, so how dare you.........
 
HairyO said:
Yeah Im sure Wright being the boss of football and the former list manager is not having a big say.

As for Worpel being a free hit that is just dumb. Everyone before us had the chance to get him and didnt. Our team got him... I assume without any input from Fagan.

You also ignored Will Day. Fagan influence there ?
Click to expand...
You do realise your argument is 2 players in 4 years, one a player most recruiters let slide and we were clever enough to take advantage of that, then a player who was predicted to go late first round being picked at 13? The highest pick we've taken in years, also Fagans influence would be on the squad meaning many players, if he were still at Hawthorn, you could triple the good talent from those 4 years if he was as affective as I think he could have been.
 
Davo-27 said:
I remember when Pelican was recruiter and people had the same reverence for him that they currently have for Wright, I can't stand how so many hawks supporters deify the recruiters and assume we only draft the best talent, it means when they do poorly they are never held accountable by anyone, because if you dare bring up an argument, you get dogpiled by ridiculous and usually uneducated comments about how once or twice or even 3 or 4 times in 10 years how they finally got it right, so how dare you.........
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I think part of the problem at least lately is we haven’t had any first round picks. So we’ve forgotten how badly we used to squander them.

It’s like that player that is a solid B-grader but is always injured so he’s talked about as the best player in the comp who if only he wasn’t injured would dominate the league.

What also annoys me is we still avoid the draft when it’s never been easier to tell who will make it and who won’t. As the u/18 level becomes more professional. There won’t be as many misses in the first round. It’s been really only Adelaide that’s struggled with 1st round picks the last 5 years.
 
JasRulz63 said:
The pick we used on Cameron was predominantly acquired by trading out Hanley (acquiring Port's future first in the deal). The priority pick we got was involved in the deal, but was only moved down from 19 to 22 (and used on Witherden). So Cameron was not exactly free (Witherden was).

Andrews I'll give you, but it's not like he was highly rated given he was bid on with pick 34 (and subsequently only cost us pick 61). It wasn't a Heeney situation or anything like that. Hipwood was rated highly (bid on with pick 14), but we essentially used our pick 17 we got for Redden on him (which was traded down for points to match the bid).

To acquire Neale, we had to trade out two first round picks (pick 6 and our future first round pick, getting back pick 19 and GC's future second round pick). We benefitted from backing ourselves to improve from our bottom four finish, but it could've easily gone very wrong.

Lyons I admit was a nice freebie (thanks GC), and smart thinking by our list managers.

So in short, I think what we did is quite achievable with smart recruiting and trading, and with a lot of luck. We also benefitted from trading out players who still had some value (Hanley, Redden, Rockliff via FA, Schache) which we then used on Cameron, Hipwood, Starcevich and helped acquire Bailey.
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You guys have build your list wonderfully. Honestly I’m jealous. I want hawthorn to trade for picks like you guys did. Only reason I mention the freebies was that we will have to go harder at trading players out than you guys did. Wasn’t meant to disparage your achievements.

Polar opposite is going on at hawthorn though, we won’t trade Gunston. Even McEvoy whose body is shot we won’t trade. But there’s now talk of offering our next years first in 2021 in the treloar trade.

Mitchell for gc 5 and 2021 second would be what we should be looking for if we get treloar and shipping that second rounder off instead of our first.

Maybe Clarkos gone sentimental? Doesn’t want to trade players that anyone without a direct connection would do to improve the club. Hawthorn needs to come first. Not sure it does in our list making decisions.
 
Davo-27 said:
You do realise your argument is 2 players in 4 years, one a player most recruiters let slide and we were clever enough to take advantage of that, then a player who was predicted to go late first round being picked at 13? The highest pick we've taken in years, also Fagans influence would be on the squad meaning many players, if he were still at Hawthorn, you could triple the good talent from those 4 years if he was as affective as I think he could have been.
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We also got Scrimshaw for nothing. Greaves for little. And I could go on if you really want.

Is our pick 4 this year thanks to Fagan? I guess in a way its his fault we arent getting pick 3... had we not beaten Brisbame in Round 1.
 
H00t said:
You guys have build your list wonderfully. Honestly I’m jealous. I want hawthorn to trade for picks like you guys did. Only reason I mention the freebies was that we will have to go harder at trading players out than you guys did. Wasn’t meant to disparage your achievements.

Polar opposite is going on at hawthorn though, we won’t trade Gunston. Even McEvoy whose body is shot we won’t trade. But there’s now talk of offering our next years first in 2021 in the treloar trade.

Mitchell for gc 5 and 2021 second would be what we should be looking for if we get treloar and shipping that second rounder off instead of our first.

Maybe Clarkos gone sentimental? Doesn’t want to trade players that anyone without a direct connection would do to improve the club. Hawthorn needs to come first. Not sure it does in our list making decisions.
Click to expand...
at one point i was against trading Gunston, but im coming around to your thinking, we need to make drastic decisions to improve this list and sacrifice next years success for premierships, but no one is looking out for Hawthorns best interest, they only care about what players want to do and keeping players no matter if they lack the motivation for premierships any more or at least thats how it seems from the outside looking in.
 
Davo-27 said:
at one point i was against trading Gunston, but im coming around to your thinking, we need to make drastic decisions to improve this list and sacrifice next years success for premierships, but no one is looking out for Hawthorns best interest, they only care about what players want to do and keeping players no matter if they lack the motivation for premierships any more or at least thats how it seems from the outside looking in.
Click to expand...
Agree from outside looking in it doesn’t look great, what would be more concerning though if the club thought this was the best move. Either way we desperately need some fresh thinking in the club.

Trading Gunston definitely would hurt. We wouldn’t kick a goal next year. Only way I see it happening is Gunston 2 seconds for treloar and 2 1sts with maybe Phillips as well. We should have a lot of money sitting around, so we pay most of the contracts. Will be easier when Scully and Patton finish up next year.

We’ve backed ourself into such a corner though that it’s hard for us to even get value out of Gunston. Although it’s all hypothetical because hawthorn won’t even consider it.
 
as it stands our list isnt too bad, but its not moving towards winning finals and premierships, if we continue bringing in replacements like Hartigan or the rumoured Treloar, we will be a team floating between 8-14 and i would rather us transition to building a core that will challenge for premierships(no matter the short term pain because at least we can see the improvement and development from a youth side of things and look at the saints, brisbane and port, as well as the tigers and bulldogs who did it before them, this policy works nearly everytime if you have good peopl running the club and we generally have that. i just dont want us to float in no mans land for the next few years.

thats my PoV and thats why im so harsh on the recruiting team, because it seems they just want to plug gaps instead of build premiership capable teams.
 
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Davo-27 said:
Their short sightedness created the gaps in the list, and now they are scurrying to plug those gaps, its frustrating to see.
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Agreed wholeheartedly. We seem to be rushing to make decisions at the end of the year. Despite having all year to plan our moves.

Someone in the club has to be pushing this “skip the draft, we can steal a flag and trade all our draft picks out” strategy. Just not sure who.

I remember a couple of years ago someone posting about Clarko and Wright had very different ideas on how the club should proceed forward. Not sure who was pushing for what or who won out? Just that hawthorn lost.
 
H00t said:
Agreed wholeheartedly. We seem to be rushing to make decisions at the end of the year. Despite having all year to plan our moves.

Someone in the club has to be pushing this “skip the draft, we can steal a flag and trade all our draft picks out” strategy. Just not sure who.
Click to expand...
What a load.
 
H00t said:
This Hawthorn drafts and develops talent better than anyone thing is a lie. It’s just not true. We’ve had more than our fair share of misses over the last 20 years.
Click to expand...

To be fair, when did I say we draft better talent? What I said is that the two key areas successful clubs excel at is post drafting/trading development and value trades. I am under no illusion that the recruiters are going to go out and smash it out of the part time and time again

H00t said:
Our success was built of two drafts. 2001 which came about by trading croad which caused nearly every Hawthorn supporter alive to want to burn down Waverley. And 2004 with a priority pick. 2005 should have been another draft that set us up but we swung and missed badly. The other 17 years our drafting or talent development hasn’t been anything crazy good.
Click to expand...

This is where I really disagree. Our early 2000 drafts were clearly where we started the list, but that is off the back of Freo doing the widely recognised worst trade of all time, so bad no one ever trades No: 1 picks ever again. How are we going to achieve that kind of hand ever again without being on the bottom of that ladder for half a decade? What is Gunston worth? Maybe an early second at best, same with Bruest? What other player on our list can we trade? Mitchell or O’Meria? Siciliy? Are we really going to fully gut the club of the tiny amount of tallent we have left for a highish pick on the 15-30 range that nets us a player we take 6 years to develop all to come spooners for the next 3 years and kill the desire for any player to come to the club ala Carlton and Melbourne 10 years back?

You also look over what we have done in picking up players since 2008 like Sicily (56), Hill (33), Smith (19), Poppy (66), Bruest (77), Worpel (45), Magginneus (29), Cousins (Rookie), Hardwick (44), Howe (31), Langford (79), Stratton (46), Duryea (69), Shiels (34).

Honestly, this narrative that we have somehow squandered the picks we do take to the draft is just utter nonsense. know how many times in the last 12 years we have had a pick in the top 20? Schoenmakers (2008, 16), Smith (2010, 19), Burton (19, 2015), Day (13, 2019). That’s it. To say that because we only hit half our picks in an era where for over 12 years we have had a total of 4 picks in the top 20 and most have been between 35-70 is insane to me, considering what other clubs have been doing with all the picks in the world.

H00t said:
What we did better than anyone was target players from other clubs who would fill roles for us to compliment the superstars we had drafted. We got more value back than what we payed in picks. Unlike drafting you can’t afford to miss when trading.
Click to expand...

Yes this is true, on top of using the ultra limited picks we did have very effectively. Our value trading was key to our success, as I originally stated. I agree our trades since then have been lacking.

H00t said:
Problem is 2014 we stopped always hitting. We got O’Rourke for a first rounder. Then in 2015 we went to the draft and got Burton and Lovell (🤮). Even Burton we valued as a packet of chips in the Wingard trade.
Click to expand...

Burton was not valued as a packet of chips, he WAS the trade. Port wanted him most of all, the rest was the fluff. I am still pissed off that we made that trade. See above for the picks we did hit.

Post 2014 our hit ratio has gone down, but let me list off the picks we have had in that time;

2014:
31: Daniel Howe
49: Teia Miles
50: Marc Pittonett

2015:
19: Ryan Burton
22: Kerian Lovell
44: Blake Hardwick

2016:
74: Mitch Lewis
76: Harry Morrison

2017:
45: James Worpel
67: Dylan Moore
71: Jackson Ross

2018:
52: Jacob Koschitzke
63: Mathew Walker

2019:
13: Will Day
29: Finn Maginness
57: Josh Morris

That is literally it. The problem is not who we pick, the problem is we literally have nothing to pick with. Our stratergy of trading out picks has screwed us, but we have used our picks relatively well when we do have them. Look how many of those players are playing regular roles, only a few of those names never even started.

H00t said:
The JOM and Wingard trade we look to have massively overpayed. Which we can’t afford to do anymore. So we either continue down this middling path that gets us nowhere or start looking to trade out good players for picks and start actually rebuilding.
Click to expand...

I agree that we have overpaid for trades in the last few years at the expense of our future. It is why we are here now. What I disagree with is that in order to correct that we need to throw out any talent we have left (which is not much and holds no real value) for average picks. What we need to do is take the time to actually replenish the list, because we don’t have much choice at this point. I would argue we should be looking to package up lower picks and trade them off for higher picks worth less overall points and get as many high draft picks as we can without gutting the club for no reason.

TL/DR: We agree more than you think, just diverge on a couple of key issues like who is to blame and what to do now.
 
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