Universal Love Holding Faith in Stephen Wells and Mackie (a.k.a. "In Wells We Trust")

[Son_Of_God29]

Is it just me or are others also losing faith in our list Management team?

This 2016 trade period will go down as an unmitigated disaster.

Lets look at the outs from the club

Retired:
Enright : handled the right way where Boris made the decision to retire himself ( has earned that right)

Bartel : The club has basically forced another champion out the door in a very poor manner, that being said at least we didn't trade him to West Coast for Pick 88.

Traded Out:

Kersten - Fremantle : Why are we just letting him go for what is effectively a pick in the late 70's played 17 games in 2016 & up until finals was best 22 let him go into the draft

Vardy - West Coast : Traded away for around pick 75 for further opportunity at AFL will be a loss to the list Good Luck to him.

Smedts - Carlton :

Good deal for Geelong & Billie, just hasn't been able to get his body right and has had a lot of impact injuries which haven't given him a fair crack at AFL footy at Geelong

Caddy - Richmond : (possible at time of post)
This is the one that really Pi$$es me off, why are we allowing a best 22 Contracted player (2yrs left) walk out the door for a rubbish 2nd round pick (24 or 27) and don't give me sh1t about Geelong needing to trade him for Cap space when Enright and Bartel leaving frees up 700k at least.

How is it possible that a guy who has played 95 games of AFL footy and is best 22 can be traded for these picks, yet 2 GWS players who have played less than 10 games between them can be traded for Pick inside 10 (Marchbank & Pickett )

Had a chance to trade Caddy for Delideo who wanted to come to the club but couldn't or wouldn't find a way to make it happen.In past 5 days List Management team and the Captain of the club have stated that Caddy will be at Geelong in 2017 although now we hear that the club will let him leave.


If the trade does go through we need to be getting from Richmond what ever picks they get from GWS for Deledio or they keep Caddy to his contract.

Traded In :

Zac Touhy - Carlton

A good player coming into the club with what we need....speed off half back but why the hell did we trade a future 1st and Billie Smedts for him? He was out of contract ffs.

Yes we got back a future 2nd round in return but it feels like club has just been bent over again , should have offered pick 38 or got Zac in the draft.

We have now traded out of the 1st round of the past 3 drafts - Any chance we might want to bring some more quality Youth on to the list.



After this period do we still trust Wells and his team to try and regenerate the list while still competing for finals and Premierships and do we need to take a more Hard- Line approach like other clubs towards contracted players wanting to leave the club.

The Geelong Football Club is not a Charity and although we as a club have facilitated many deals to send players where they want to go (see King,SJ, Christensen, Jansen, Walker) and pay fair price for players coming to the club (see Danger, Henderson etc) it feels like when we let players go we get screwed in terms of the draft


Any comments would be much appreciated

 

[OzeSparky]

Ill wait till the end of today to see exactly what happens.

 

[TheWoodenSlug]

Seems the potential Caddy trade is the main catalyst for this thread, but it hasn't even been made yet?

I agree that IF we trade Caddy for pick 24 or 27 then that is a s**t deal in isolation, but hardly enough to warrant a loss of faith in the list management team overall imo.

 

[tenderwarrior]

Touhy and future 1st (pick 14-16?)
for
Smedts and future 2nd (pick 22-24 )?

That seems like a very good deal for mine.

Losing Vardy, Kersten, Read and likely Clark this off-season I think more of an issue with list-management than anything else. Hawkins obviously needs support, and the cupboard is bare. The plan seems to be to hope that Lonergan signs on so that Taylor or Henderson can play forward more in 2017.. this is the real issue for mine.

Re Caddy, it seems strange, but this and the compensation for Kersten and Vardy are not really the primary issue, though losing Caddy now after what has transpired for anything less than what Richmond get for Deleidio will be messy..

 

[Gavin Excell]

We are rifling through the whipping boys though with all of Kersten, Vardy and Smedts moved on.

 

[year of the cat]

Ill wait till the end of today to see exactly what happens.

Like you, waiting until 2pm before potentially launching an assault

 

[bigblackboz]

We are rifling through the whipping boys though with all of Kersten, Vardy and Smedts moved on.

Who's going to replace them? Mackie is my guess.

 

[Ikan Bodoh]

No problem with anything Cats have done, including Caddy for pick 24 if that happens. Massively overrated on this board.

Vardy is shot. Kersten couldn't get a spot ahead of a lame Henderson forward. All of these players are mid 20's now. Less scope for improvement than say Marchbank, who is a 20 y.o key defender (ie look at what Caddy was worth three years back, more than now because he is basically the same player who hasn't improved and is 3 years older)

That said, out of all the list changes the one I'd change is to keep Kersten, but if he's out of contract and doesn't want to be there then so be it.

 

[geelong_crazy26]

Is it just me or are others also losing faith in our list Management team?

This 2016 trade period will go down as an unmitigated disaster.

Lets look at the outs from the club

Retired:
Enright : handled the right way where Boris made the decision to retire himself ( has earned that right)

Bartel : The club has basically forced another champion out the door in a very poor manner, that being said at least we didn't trade him to West Coast for Pick 88.

Traded Out:

Kersten - Fremantle : Why are we just letting him go for what is effectively a pick in the late 70's played 17 games in 2016 & up until finals was best 22 let him go into the draft

Vardy - West Coast : Traded away for around pick 75 for further opportunity at AFL will be a loss to the list Good Luck to him.

Smedts - Carlton :

Good deal for Geelong & Billie, just hasn't been able to get his body right and has had a lot of impact injuries which haven't given him a fair crack at AFL footy at Geelong

Caddy - Richmond : (possible at time of post)
This is the one that really Pi$$es me off, why are we allowing a best 22 Contracted player (2yrs left) walk out the door for a rubbish 2nd round pick (24 or 27) and don't give me sh1t about Geelong needing to trade him for Cap space when Enright and Bartel leaving frees up 700k at least.

How is it possible that a guy who has played 95 games of AFL footy and is best 22 can be traded for these picks, yet 2 GWS players who have played less than 10 games between them can be traded for Pick inside 10 (Marchbank & Pickett )

Had a chance to trade Caddy for Delideo who wanted to come to the club but couldn't or wouldn't find a way to make it happen.In past 5 days List Management team and the Captain of the club have stated that Caddy will be at Geelong in 2017 although now we hear that the club will let him leave.


If the trade does go through we need to be getting from Richmond what ever picks they get from GWS for Deledio or they keep Caddy to his contract.

Traded In :

Zac Touhy - Carlton

A good player coming into the club with what we need....speed off half back but why the hell did we trade a future 1st and Billie Smedts for him? He was out of contract ffs.

Yes we got back a future 2nd round in return but it feels like club has just been bent over again , should have offered pick 38 or got Zac in the draft.

We have now traded out of the 1st round of the past 3 drafts - Any chance we might want to bring some more quality Youth on to the list.



After this period do we still trust Wells and his team to try and regenerate the list while still competing for finals and Premierships and do we need to take a more Hard- Line approach like other clubs towards contracted players wanting to leave the club.

The Geelong Football Club is not a Charity and although we as a club have facilitated many deals to send players where they want to go (see King,SJ, Christensen, Jansen, Walker) and pay fair price for players coming to the club (see Danger, Henderson etc) it feels like when we let players go we get screwed in terms of the draft


Any comments would be much appreciated

No I don't agree one bit that we have forced out stars or treated them wrongly. After seeing what hawthorn has just done to Mitchell and Lewis. I think we absolutely have been more than diligent and respectful about it and just open and honest with them. We could have easily done a hawthorn and tossed them out like garbage. Instead we gave them the sit down and talk about allowing them to continue on, although possibly reserves. This is more than reasonable given form to say and would be unreasonable to not be open about so the player can make a appropriate decision. Would you rather we did what hawthorn did with Mitchell and Lewis? I think not. We are champions with handling compared to them.

You will see it with the hawthorn ageing list now, that loyalty is hardly existent in professional football.

On the trades, on the surface I am not happy at the idea of handing over a first rounder downgrading to a second rounder for tuoey. This does not sit well with my gut... But then again I will hold breathe and reserve judgement till I see his impact and what we can get from that second round pick. But right now on face value I am walking away feeling like I got haggled a tad bit higher than I should have allowed.

If tuoey becomes a top ten player and had a big impact, I will call that a good deal.

Caddy for 24-27 I am not happy about. But once again if we have some sort of plan for this or a particular player we are eyeing off at that stage of the draft, I will hold my breathe and wait and see.

I have a lot of confidence and faith in the man who is in charge of the draft in wells. If wells believes he can get a great kid or a great local Falcons product at that pick ( if indeed caddy is going), then I will hold judgement with a bit of disgruntlement on its initial face value as looking unders.

What we have to remember and keep in mind about wells trading out and in draft picks, is that he has spent all his working hours studying and analysing the talent available( hundreds and hundreds of hours and reports of players). This is information nobody here has to dispute or argue against, as to what he believes that pick is worth at that point or time and what he believes he can snap up. This is a point I am willing to wait and see backing him in on his call. At the end of the day it doesn't matter if it's a round 1 or 2 pick, a great player is a great player.

 

[Seeds]

#wellstostudfarm

 

[Tristan34]

It could be genius what Geelong is doing, or someone could find a pic of Santa Clause and put him in Geelong gear...

 

[geelong_crazy26]

#wellstostudfarm

Wells to stud farm? You mean we are going to select wells Jnr under the father son system to be head recruiter?

 

[Seeds]

Wells to stud farm? You mean we are going to select wells Jnr under the father son system to be head recruiter?

Yep. He had it. Now he doesn't. Time to pass on the recruiting genes.

 

[Sttew]

We are rifling through the whipping boys though with all of Kersten, Vardy and Smedts moved on.

Mackie is still there!

 

[supahoops]

Blokes like Kersten, Mitch Brown, Hamling, Gillies etc should be kept in contract, given a good run at it and then we either back them in or piss them off while they still have currency. Comes down to coaching and the entire planning process of the footy department and the club as a whole as much as list management.

Seems to be something of an ad hoc approach at present.

Having said that I'm keeping my powder dry until 2pm and beyond..

 

[MC Extra Dollop]

As far as I'm concerned, trading a player that is still in his mid-20s (or younger) for less than the equivalent pick that they were originally taken for is essentially an admission that you stuffed up, either by selecting him in the first place, or in your development of him and that you're cutting your losses. Actively shopping both of the players that were our Gary Ablett compensation haul and who were supposed to be 200 game players at the club is depressing. It's the club saying that their underwhelming form is as good as it can ever see them getting.

If we'd selected more genuine best 22 players in the 2008-15 drafts, we would have more chance for long-term success. But we've only selected a handful of locked-in best 22 senior players from that period and precisely zero stars, by my count. And our short-term future of building via the draft doesn't look promising. We've had one pick in the top 14 in ten years an we're continuing to treat the first round of the draft (and future drafts) like an appointment to the dentist: can't be bothered this year, maybe they'll get around to it next year.

I think it's time to say "enough is enough" with the stopgaps. We need to rebuild aggressively through the draft from 2017-20 and I don't think we'll have much of a choice, given the way our post-Harry Taylor draft picks are tracking. They're not spring chickens anymore. Chris Scott continues to cop a lot of scrutiny for the club's performance post-2011 (with a lot of justification, in my opinion), but I think others, such as Stephen Wells, should also be held to account for the past five years. The list doesn't look like one that is built to win "now and five years from now" to me and it doesn't look like that has been the strategy for some time.

 

[BlakeyNoFlakey]

Our position this year in the trade period and draft is pretty much a result of what we did last year to get Dangerfield, Smith, Scooter, & Henderson. You can't monster every trade period, and to think you can/should shows a poor understanding of football.

 

[vicpride]

Wells needs to go asap

Sent from my SM-A300Y using Tapatalk

 

[Cursed Cat]

As far as I'm concerned, trading a player that is still in his mid-20s (or younger) for less than the equivalent pick that they were originally taken for, is essentially an admission that you stuffed up, either by selecting him in the first place, or in your development of him and that you're cutting your losses. Actively shopping both of the players that were our Gary Ablett compensation haul and who were supposed to be 200 game players at the club is depressing. It's the club saying that their underwhelming form is as good as it can ever see them getting.

If we'd selected more genuine best 22 players in the 2008-15 drafts, we would have more chance for long-term success. But we've only selected a handful of locked-in best 22 senior players from that period and precisely zero stars, by my count. And our short-term future of building via the draft doesn't look promising. We've had one pick in the top 14 in ten years an we're continuing to treat the first round of the draft (and future drafts) like an appointment to the dentist: can't be bothered this year, maybe they'll get around to it next year.

I think it's time to say "enough is enough" with the stopgaps. We need to rebuild aggressively through the draft from 2017-20 and I don't think we'll have much of a choice, given the way our post-Harry Taylor draft picks are tracking. They're not spring chickens anymore.

Agree with all of that, particularly the first paragraph, astutely put.

As to 'rebuilding' through the draft from 2017-20, so much depends upon where the club finishes next year.

If we win a flag or make the GF (and I think both scenarios are a bit of a stretch, tbh), then most of the club's list management decisions are suddenly validated, and it wouldn't surprise to see the club continue to try to further exploit it's recent status as a 'destination club'.

If we bomb out of the finals with one win or less next year though, then questions in relation to our list management approach need to be asked.

Now; I for one don't take finals as a given by any means.
But if we're not genuine flag contenders, and the approach we've taken is getting us nowhere, then surely the list management strategy would need to be revised.
They have put their faith in augmenting the thin core of the playing group with bits and pieces from around the comp rather than taking the long-game approach that netted us three flags in five years. Nothing wrong with that if it works.

Unfortunately rebuilding through the draft will be stymied somewhat by the club's eagerness to trade away it's future selections.
If the club can't seriously challenge for the flag in 2017, then imo it's time for a list management team overhaul and a revised approach to building a list capable of challenging for the club's next premiership. That could mean a change of coach and even the end of Stephen Wells.

 

[Mad_Hatter]

It isn't even the list management team but everyone from cook down.
The cats lack any ruthlessness, on and off the field.
We've gone back to being a soft club.

 

[GHS33]

It isn't even the list management team but everyone from cook down.
The cats lack any ruthlessness, on and off the field.
We've gone back to being a soft club.

Heeeere we go.

 

[Mad_Hatter]

Heeeere we go.

No melts mate, I've said it all year.

 

[SJ]

I don't even know where to start with Caddy and Kersten today.

Are we having a crack at the flag or are we rebuilding? I have no idea.

 

[catempire]

Horrific trade period. We deserve some answers.

 

[SJ]

Horrific trade period. We deserve some answers.

And completely inconsistent with last year's push.