Analysis How were our current players drafted/recruited

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cmndstab

cmndstab

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It's bye week for us, so for something a bit fun to pass the time I thought I'd look at our current playing squad and what their draft/trade route was here to the Crows. Some players were bargains, some were fair value, some cost way too much. Often the players we've taken with trade knives from more elaborate trades have turned out to be better than the actual trade targets.

I'm intending to focus primarily on best 30 players or those close to selection, so obviously the most egregiously bad selections won't get covered - no McAsey's or Gallucci's here. I've loosely listed our current best 22 is as follows:

B: Butts, Murray, Worrell
HB: Smith, Michalanney, Jones
C: Milera, Dawson, Hinge
HF: Pedlar, Walker, Rachele
F: Thilthorpe, Fogarty, Rankine
RR: Keays, Murphy, Sloane, Sholl, (McHenry sub)

EMG: McAdam, Gollant, Schoenberg, Hamill, Berry, Cook, Parnell (I know there are only three emergencies normally but whatever)
INJ: Doedee
Whoops, I forgot: O'Brien


I'll drag this out for a few days:

Day 1 - Straight-up draft selections taken with picks we were awarded just from our ladder position
Day 2 - Free hits and rookie selections
Day 3 - Simple trades
Day 4 - Elaborate trades
Day 5 - The 2017-2020 trade saga


For today, the draft picks taken directly from our ladder position without any kind of trade or bid matching etc involved. Unsurprisingly, almost all of these who remain on our list are first-round selections, both because they should be good enough to stick around, and also because we seem to have a pathological need to horse trade anything from the second round onwards.

Rory Sloane - 2008 draft pick 44 (finished 5th)
Brodie Smith - 2010 draft pick 14 (finished 11th)
Tom Doedee - 2015 draft pick 17 (finished 7th)
Chayce Jones - 2018 draft pick 9 (finished 12th)
Riley Thilthorpe - 2020 draft pick 2 (finished 18th)
Josh Rachele - 2021 draft pick 6 (finished 15th)

With Jones finally coming good this year, there don't seem to be any egregiously poor selections here. The obvious value-for-money pick on this list is Sloane, the only one taken outside of the first round, but his time has pretty much come and gone. Smith and Doedee have both been quality players for the Crows but it's not clear how much longer either of them will be playing for us, with Smith now 31 years old and Doedee's ACL injury rudely interrupting his refusal to extend his contract.

It is clear by now that we could have done better than Jones in 2018, but at least that pick looks like producing a player who can stay in the best 22. Not quite the return you'd hope for from pick 9, but then again if he continues improving like he has this year, who knows?

Obviously it's still early days for Thilthorpe and Rachele, but both appear to be players with very high ceilings who have come in early and have produced some high-quality (albeit incosistent) footy. Both seem to have bought into the club, and both fill very important roles for us.


Interested in your thoughts. I'll be back tomorrow to discuss the rookie selections and free hits we've been able to take!
 
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cmndstab said:
It's bye week for us, so for something a bit fun to pass the time I thought I'd look at our current playing squad and what their draft/trade route was here to the Crows. Some players were bargains, some were fair value, some cost way too much. Often the players we've taken with trade knives from more elaborate trades have turned out to be better than the actual trade targets.

I'm intending to focus primarily on best 30 players or those close to selection, so obviously the most egregiously bad selections won't get covered - no McAsey's or Gallucci's here. I've loosely listed our current best 22 is as follows:

B: Butts, Murray, Worrell
HB: Smith, Michalanney, Jones
C: Milera, Dawson, Hinge
HF: Pedlar, Walker, Rachele
F: Thilthorpe, Fogarty, Rankine
RR: Keays, Murphy, Sloane, Sholl, (McHenry sub)

EMG: McAdam, Gollant, Schoenberg, Hamill, Berry, Cook (I know there are only three emergencies normally but whatever)
INJ: Doedee


I'll drag this out for a few days:

Day 1 - Straight-up draft selections taken with picks we were awarded just from our ladder position
Day 2 - Free hits and rookie selections
Day 3 - Simple trades
Day 4 - Elaborate trades
Day 5 - The 2017-2020 trade saga


For today, the draft picks taken directly from our ladder position without any kind of trade or bid matching etc involved. Unsurprisingly, almost all of these who remain on our list are first-round selections, both because they should be good enough to stick around, and also because we seem to have a pathological need to horse trade anything from the second round onwards.

Rory Sloane - 2008 draft pick 44 (finished 5th)
Brodie Smith - 2010 draft pick 14 (finished 11th)
Tom Doedee - 2015 draft pick 17 (finished 7th)
Chayce Jones - 2018 draft pick 9 (finished 12th)
Riley Thilthorpe - 2020 draft pick 2 (finished 18th)
Josh Rachele - 2021 draft pick 6 (finished 15th)

With Jones finally coming good this year, there don't seem to be any egregiously poor selections here. The obvious value-for-money pick on this list is Sloane, the only one taken outside of the first round, but his time has pretty much come and gone. Smith and Doedee have both been quality players for the Crows but it's not clear how much longer either of them will be playing for us, with Smith now 31 years old and Doedee's ACL injury rudely interrupting his refusal to extend his contract.

It is clear by now that we could have done better than Jones in 2018, but at least that pick looks like producing a player who can stay in the best 22. Not quite the return you'd hope for from pick 9, but then again if he continues improving like he has this year, who knows?

Obviously it's still early days for Thilthorpe and Rachele, but both appear to be players with very high ceilings who have come in early and have produced some high-quality (albeit incosistent) footy. Both seem to have bought into the club, and both fill very important roles for us.


Interested in your thoughts. I'll be back tomorrow to discuss the rookie selections and free hits we've been able to take!
Click to expand...
Need to add the rucks...

Also, swap Milera & Jones... & Michalanney & Worrell.
 
Kane McGoodwin said:
Need to add the rucks...

Also, swap Milera & Jones... & Michalanney & Worrell.
Click to expand...

Haha, s**t - I knew I'd forgotten something! O'Brien in.

Honestly I don't even pretend to understand the positions these days and the best 22 doesn't really matter for this exercise. It's more an excuse to pick 30 or so players to look at :)
 

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Today I'm looking at the players we got as rookie selections, or other free hits that cost nothing more than a list spot.

First up, our rookie selections who have graduated onto the senior list and found a spot in our best 30-ish players.

Rory Laird - 2012 rookie pick 5
Reilly O'Brien - 2015 rookie pick 5
Lachlan Murphy - 2017 rookie pick 38
Jordon Butts - 2018 rookie pick 39
Ben Keays - 2020 rookie pick 7

Unsurprisingly, some of the more maligned/marginal players in our squad come from the rookie draft. Laird has been a fantastic player and remains one of our best midfielders, for all that he's a bit workmanlike. Despite it all, it's fair to say that all of the above players other than Murphy have become important players in our side, and even Murphy has had his moments.

We have also benefitted from a small number of free hits:

Taylor Walker - 2007 final list spot (NSW Scholarship Program)
Mitch Hinge - 2020 delisted free agency
Nick Murray - 2021 pre-season supplementary selection
Patrick Parnell - 2021 mid-season rookie draft

There are a couple of gems in here, given we paid essentially nothing to get them. Murray has emerged this year as a very valuable key defender, while Walker has been one of the competition's premier forwards for over a decade and even now is only a couple of goals away from leading the Coleman medal leaderboard. He's also one of the only decent players to come from the short-lived NSW Scholarship Program, with Craig Bird probably the only other one that was any good.

Hinge has copped some criticism from certain posters here, but I think he's been very useful, and is part of a new-look Crows back/wing lineup that possesses genuine foot skills. The jury is still out on whether Parnell will make it, but he hasn't looked to far out of place at AFL level and certainly has a nice kick.

I'll come back tomorrow to talk about the players we've got from fairly simple trades.
 
Taylor Walker as Mr Irrelevant had a better career than the #1 overall draft pick.
 
Today I'm going to look at players we received as part of relatively simple trades, ie trades that were completed in a single draft year, as opposed to ones which pushed picks into future years which were then on-traded, etc. There's actually not many of these, since most of our trades seem to get very complicated!

Wayne Milera - was drafted in 2015 using the best pick we got from the Patrick Dangerfield trade. That trade, along with a related one, is worth looking at more closely to tease it all out. However, without even looking too close, it's safe to say that we didn't get close to full value from this one.

The original trade was:

Crows gain: Dean Gore, Picks 9, 28
Crows lose: Patrick Dangerfield, Pick 50

This was followed up by a second trade:

Crows gain: Troy Menzel
Crows lose: Sam Kerridge, Pick 28

The net result? We lost Dangerfield, Kerridge and Pick 50, and we gained pick 9, Menzel and Gore. Clearly Menzel and Gore were busts. With Sydney (Mills) and GWS (Hopper) matching academy bids early in the draft, pick 9 ended up moving out to pick 11 on draft night, and we spent that on Wayne Milera. Until a few weeks ago I would have said a total bust, having barely played a good match since his injuries, but he has finally started to look pretty handy again in recent weeks. Fingers crossed he stays good so we can salvage something out of this otherwise disastrous trade.





Darcy Fogarty - Very simple trade this time. In 2017, we agreed to the following trade:

Crows gain: Pick 12
Crows lose: Charlie Cameron

The net result? We lost Cameron, we gained Fogarty. Simple and easy. At the time pick 12 was seen as pretty good compensation for Cameron, but of course he has since gone on to become probably the best small forward in the game. For once, pick 12 actually stayed as pick 12 on the night, and we gladly selected Darcy Fogarty. Fogarty has taken a few years to find his feet, but from the half-way mark last year he has stepped up to become a very reliable key forward. This trade feels like fair value.






Sam Berry and Brayden Cook - Although the picks used to draft these two players were technically unrelated, I'm going to bundle them together here anyway. Berry and Cook found their way to the Crows after Brad Crouch decided to leave. After a tense trade week in which the Crows were holding out for a first-round selection, they ended up allowing Crouch to leave via free agency and received a 2nd round pick as compensation. However, since the Crows had finished bottom in 2020, this meant they had two picks at the start of the second round. Unfortunately, due to Covid, the draft was held remotely on a single night, so we didn't get the usual benefit of having the "starting" pick of the second night.

On the night, after various academy bids etc, our two picks in the second round ballooned all the way out to picks 27 and 28. We did the following live trade with Collingwood on the night:

Crows gain: Pick 25
Crows lose: Pick 27, 2021 3rd round pick (Adelaide)

With pick 25 we picked up Cook, while pick 28 was spent on Berry. Essentially then, Brad Crouch was turned into Sam Berry, while our second-round pick and the 2021 3rd round pick was turned into Brayden Cook. Berry was looking like great value last year, having established himself as a valuable inside midfielder and the league's best tackler, but has fallen away significantly in 2023 for reasons which aren't clear. Cook has enormous X-factor, but was always going to be a few years away and has yet to really fire a shot at AFL level. Technically Cook is a first-round selection, despite being out at pick 25. The jury is still out.

For the record, our 2021 3rd round pick ended up being pick 41, which was passed from Collingwood to Geelong as part of the Nathan Kreuger trade, and then to Brisbane as part of the Darcy Fort trade, who used it to draft James Tunstill. Which is my way of saying, the pick was worth a bunch of nothing.
 
Alright, let's get our hands dirty and look at some of our more elaborate trades! I was planning on covering two of these today, but after writing one up it's long enough already, so I'll stretch this out an extra day.

We'll start with a real trash for treasure situation. Around trade period each year, Bigfooty posters love to float trades where they give away a bunch of crap picks, and somehow end up with something worthwhile. Outside of cases where you get to match father-son/academy bids it rarely happens in reality... but not never!

Jordan Dawson, Jake Soligo and Lachlan Gollant

Two very important players, and one useful player currently finding it hard to break into our stacked forward line. You'd have to give up a fair bit to get them, right? Well, in fact, the Crows managed to recruit them by moving out Alex Keath and no less than eight(!) draft picks over three years. Were they good draft picks? Well, one was in the 20s... the rest were in the 40s - 60s. It all sounds too good to be true! How did they do it? Well, let's start at the beginning.

In 2019, Alex Keath requested a trade to the Western Bulldogs. A useful player in his own right despite coming from the 2016 rookie draft, Keath was considered to be roughly worth a middle or late second-round pick. Instead, however, the Crows worked out the following trade.

Crows gain: Pick 45, 2020 2nd round pick (Bulldogs)
Crows lose: Alex Keath, 2020 3rd round pick (Adelaide)

That 2020 3rd round pick (Adelaide) ended up being pick 43, so essentially the Crows agreed to take a 2nd round pick in 2020, and in return got to take their 2020 3rd round pick a year early. That pick 45 moved out to pick 48 in the 2019 draft, where we used it to recruit Gollant. Meanwhile, the 2020 2nd round pick (Bulldogs) ended up being pick 33.

Moving onto 2020, the Crows had a glut of early selections, including the #1 pick in the draft, and so decided to try to move their late picks into the 2021 draft. In addition to other trades which don't impact on this current equation, the Crows engaged in three trades which, on the surface, were very much small fry. In fact, the biggest pick traded out was that pick 33 they got from the Bulldogs in the Keath trade.

Crows gain: 2021 2nd round pick (Melbourne), 2021 4th round pick (Melbourne)
Crows lose: Picks 33, 50

Crows gain: 2021 4th round pick (Fremantle)
Crows lose: Picks 56, 63

Crows gain: Pick 63
Crows lose: Pick 66, 2021 4th round pick (Melbourne)

That last trade in particular (which was with Brisbane) was a bit baffling. At the time it was rumoured that the Crows were doing Brisbane a favour in return for them allowing Mitch Hinge to leave as a DFA. If so, price well paid. The Crows never used pick 63, but of course gave a spot to Hinge instead. Brisbane used pick 66 to move into the 2021 draft.

Out of those three trades, the Crows got two selections in the 2021 draft, which ended up being picks 37 and 66. After the 2021 season, Jordan Dawson requested a trade back home, and Sydney demanded a first-round selection. Rather than cough up our precious pick 4, the Crows put together the ultimate Bigfooty trade:

Crows gain: Picks 33, 75, 2022 1st round pick (Melbourne)
Crows lose: Picks 23, 37, 44, 62, 66, 2022 4th round pick (Adelaide)

Picks 23, 44 and 62 were our 2nd, 3rd and 4th round picks for 2021, while picks 37 and 66 came from the trades in 2020. This was then followed up with a simple swap:

Crows gain: Jordan Dawson
Crows lose: 2022 1st round pick (Melbourne)

Pick 33 became pick 36 on draft night and was used on Jake Soligo. Pick 75 went unused, while the 2022 4th round pick we traded out ended up being pick 55. So the final tally ended up begin:

Crows gain: Jordan Dawson, Jake Soligo, Lachlan Gollant
Crows lose: Alex Keath, 2020 picks 43, 50, 56, 66, 2021 picks 23, 44, 62, 2022 pick 55.

For posterity's sake, that 2022 1st round pick tied to Melbourne ended up being pick 18. On draft night, Sydney decided to trade it away, giving it to Hawthorn in return for pick 27, as well as 2nd and 3rd round picks in 2023. With pick 27, Sydney took Hawthorn academy player Cooper Vickery; the 2023 selections remain to be used. For their part, Hawthorn selected Josh Weddle who has played seven games so far this year.



I'm sure you don't need my opinion to recognise that scoring Dawson, Soligo and Gollant for, essentially, Alex Keath and pick 23 plus a whole bunch of chump change is a fantastic boon for the club, especially as it didn't come from any kind of father son/academy bid matching shenanigans or anything along those lines. Just shrewd trading and quality drafting.
 
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Another complicated web of trades today, although probably less complex than the ones yesterday. I've left the most complex one for tomorrow!


Izak Rankine and Max Michalanney (plus two 2023 2nd round picks, and Dowling + Bond)

Two pieces of good fortune occurred simultaneously at the end of the 2021 season. First, Izak Rankine requested a trade to the Crows. Second, Max Michalanney became available as a father/son selection. This presented an interesting dilemma. Gold Coast wanted our first round selection for Rankine, so we had a choice between either giving it up, or trying to get a different first-round pick. Meanwhile Michalanney could be matched with late selections if we had no earlier ones available when the bid came, making it advantageous for us to trade our early picks out of the draft. This was a delicate situation that required some tricky maneuvering.

The Crows' plan of attack ended up being as follows. They decided to give up pick 5 for Rankine, but in the process try to bring in as many late picks as possible, while trading out their second round selection. Then, on draft night, once the bid came and they had matched it, they would try to trade back into the draft again.

The ball got rolling with the Rankine trade itself.

Crows gain: Izak Rankine, Pick 46, 2023 4th round pick (Fremantle)
Crows lose: Pick 5, 2023 3rd round pick (Adelaide), 2023 4th round pick (Adelaide)

They then quickly took that 2023 4th round pick tied to Fremantle and send it to Brisbane in order to trade back into the arse end of the 2022 draft.

Crows gain: Pick 56
Crows lose: 2023 4th round pick (Fremantle)

Then they enacted the next part of their plan, trading their 2nd round pick into 2023 with likely bottom-four side North Melbourne, and gaining an extra late selection along the way as a bonus.

Crows gain: Pick 59, 2023 2nd round pick (North)
Crows lose: Pick 23

Finally, prior to the draft, they traded out Billy Frampton to Collingwood to bring in a bit more future draft capital, to increase their flexibility on draft night for trading back into the draft.

Crows gain: 2023 3rd (Collingwood)
Crows lose: Billy Frampton

This then brought us to draft night, where the Crows held a paltry draft hand of picks 46, 56, 59, and 79. Sydney placed a bid on Michalanney at pick 17, which the Crows were able to match using picks 46, 56 and 59, leaving pick 79 intact. In return, the AFL gave us back pick 69, which we didn't use.

With Michalanney now in hand, we set about getting back into the draft, with the following two trades:

Crows gain: Pick 43, 2023 2nd round pick (Gold Coast), 2023 3rd round pick (Geelong)
Crows lose: Pick 79, 2023 2nd round pick (Adelaide), 2023 3rd round pick (Collingwood)

Crows gain: Pick 50
Crows lose: 2023 3rd round pick (Geelong)

At this stage of the 2023 season, that first trade is a clear win, with Adelaide ahead of Gold Coast on the ladder, and Collingwood ahead of Geelong. Meanwhile, we got to move pick 79 (which went unused) up to pick 43, which we used to select Billy Dowling. Pick 50 was spent on Hugh Bond.

So what is the final tally? It's still in the air since it involves some picks from 2023, but here is the score so far:

Crows gain: Izak Rankine, Max Michalanney, 2023 2nd round pick (North), 2023 2nd round pick (Gold Coast), as well as Dowling and Bond
Crows lose: Picks 5, 23, 79, 2023 2nd round pick (Adelaide), 2023 3rd round pick (Adelaide), 2023 4th round pick (Adelaide)

So how does this set of trades look overall? Rankine is already a vital part of our side, and at the age of 23 looks set to become a superstar of the game. Is he worth pick 5? I think so. Could we have gotten away with keeping pick 5 and still got him? Maybe we could have traded for a later first-round pick, but in the process we would have lost much of the leverage that allowed us to turn some straw into gold on draft night. Just looking at the 2023 picks, we've turned 2nd, 3rd and 4th round picks into two 2nd round picks, both of which are currently better than our original one. That's a win by itself. Ignoring pick 79 (considering we didn't even use pick 69), that leaves us with giving up pick 23 to get back Michalanney, Dowling and Bond. Even if the latter two players never play an AFL game, we're already well ahead just based on what Michalanney has shown so far.

If you view pick 5 as fair but not exceptional for Rankine, which I do, then we're well ahead overall. If you view pick 5 as paying too much, then probably it's a wash overall.


I'll be back tomorrow with the curliest series of trades spanning a full four years!
 
Time to finish this little mini-series off with a ludicrously complex web of trades involving giving up two players and nine draft picks over four separate draft periods!


Luke Pedlar, Josh Worrell, Shane McAdam, Lachlan Sholl, Ned McHenry, Will Hamill

Ironically, the key trades in this final entry weren't really about the six players above at all. If anything, they were the steak knives that resulted from some quite clever drafting after the fact. No, the most serious trades here involved us giving up big commodities in Jake Lever, Mitch McGovern, and two first-round draft picks, while unfortunately receiving back Bryce Gibbs and Fischer McAsey. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you what a waste of resources that was. At least the Gibbs trade was done with an eye towards going one better in 2018, an admirable gambit which was ultimately unsuccessful. The drafting of McAsey at pick 6, on the other hand, proved an unmitigated disaster. But hey, this isn't about that... it's about all the juicy little side deals that resulted in a significant part of our current squad over a four year period! So let's get started.

With our 2017 season having ended in disappointment, we were dealt an extra blow when Jake Lever requested a trade to Melbourne. We were adamant that we wanted two first-round picks for him, which we did ultimately get, albeit while giving up a second-round pick of our own. Meanwhile, Bryce Gibbs was finally lured back home, unfortunately also costing us two first-round picks (including the better of the two we got from Melbourne), with a swap of 2nd-round picks coming back our way this time. On the surface, this essentially looked like the Lever and Gibbs trades had mostly cancelled out, but it would turn out not to be the case.

Crows gain: Pick 10, 2018 1st round pick (Melbourne), 2018 4th round pick (Melbourne)
Crows lose: Jake Lever, Pick 35, 2018 3rd round pick (Adelaide)

Crows gain: Bryce Gibbs, Pick 77, 2018 2nd round pick (Carlton), 2018 3rd round pick (Carlton)
Crows lose: Picks 10, 16, 73, 2018 2nd round pick (Adelaide)

Outside of Gibbs himself, let's look at what we gained here. We never used pick 77, so that can be ignored. We got pick 10 but then traded it away, so disregard that too. That leaves us with the four future picks we brought in. After father son/academy bids in the 2018 draft, the Melbourne 1st and 4th rounders ended up becoming picks 19 and 67 respectively, while the Carlton 2nd and 3rd rounders ended up becoming picks 24 and 44 respectively. Meanwhile, our own 2nd and 3rd round picks that we had traded out ended up as picks 33 and 47.

At the end of the 2018 season, another of our players requested a trade in Mitch McGovern. This time, the trade worked out to our advantage, scoring us a first round pick as well as Shane McAdam.

Crows gain: Shane McAdam, Pick 13, 2019 5th round pick (Carlton)
Crows lose: Mitch McGovern, Pick 40, 2019 3rd round pick (Adelaide)

That pick 40 we gave up in the trade was actually the 3rd round pick we'd gained in the Gibbs trade - it moved out to pick 44 in the draft. Meanwhile, the pick 13 we brought in moved out to pick 16 where we selected Ned McHenry.

Now here is where things start getting interesting. Having traded away Carlton's third-round pick, we went into the draft with our own first round pick (which ended up being Chayce Jones as I mentioned a few days back), and a bunch of picks from Carlton and Melbourne which ultimately became picks 19, 24, and 67. We ended up trading out all three of them on draft night, including one very interesting trade.

Crows gain: 2019 1st round pick (Carlton)
Crows lose: Pick 19, 2019 1st round pick (Adelaide)

Crows gain: Pick 28, 2019 2nd round pick (Carlton)
Crows lose: Pick 24, 2019 5th round pick (Adelaide)

Crows gain: Pick 64
Crows lose: Pick 67, 2019 5th round pick (Carlton)

There's a lot going on here. The trade where we gave up Pick 19 in order to swap first-round picks with Carlton was absolutely fascinating at the time. Carlton seemed a reasonable chance to get the wooden spoon in 2019, while the Crows were hoping to get back into the finals. I'll come back to that soon. The trade that moved pick 24 out to pick 28 was actually with GWS, who happened to be holding Carlton's 2019 2nd round pick after the Will Setterfield trade. Moving back four places in order to get a high-quality 2nd round pick was a shrewd move, although a couple of bids pushed that pick out further to pick 30, where we selected Will Hamill. Finally, we used the steak knife thrown in with the McGovern trade to push pick 67 up a few places in order to snag Lachlan Sholl ahead of Geelong, who were reportedly keen.

That brings us to 2019, where we enjoyed the death ride to end all death rides that at one point saw Carlton sitting in bottom spot while we were embedded in the top 8. Unfortunately, once Brendon Bolton was sacked, Carlton enjoyed a mini-revival, while the Crows fell away towards the end of the season. In the end, we got Carlton's pick 4 while they got our pick 9, although pick 9 did move out to pick 11 after a couple of academy bids. But even then, we wouldn't end up using pick 4, as we got another fascinating offer.

Crows gain: Pick 6, 2020 1st round pick (GWS)
Crows lose: Pick 4

For those keeping score at home, the extra first-round pick we asked for back in 2017 for Level had been in 2018, where we'd traded out to get a good one in 2019, which we were now trading out again to get another first round pick in 2020!
On the face of it, moving pick 4 out to pick 6 in order to get an extra first round pick is probably a win. Spending that pick 6 on Fischer McAsey? Not so much, especially when the likes of Pickett and Day were available. Ouch. Still, we had the 2020 1st round selection to look forward to! Then, on the 2019 draft night, we made another interesting trade.

Crows gain: Pick 27, 2020 3rd round pick (Fremantle)
Crows lose: Pick 25, 2020 4th round pick (Adelaide)

This trade was with Sydney, who were keen to get an early bid on Jackson Mead, of all players. That bid pushed pick 27 out to pick 28, where we selected Josh Worrell, who has started to show his value over the last twelve months. Our prize for moving back a few spots was the third round pick from Fremantle, but try as I might, I can't find any record of what happened to that pick. As far as I can tell, we never used it, as our final selection in 2020 was Jimmy Rowe in the second round, and I don't believe we traded it. I'm happy to be corrected, if anyone can figure out the loose end there! After some additional trades, our 2020 4th round pick ended up in West Coast's hands where it was ironically used to pick up Luke Edwards out at pick 52.

That takes us to the final chapter in this little saga, the 2020 draft where we held GWS's first round pick. With GWS having finished 10th in 2020, that gave us pick 9, which ultimately moved out to pick 11 on draft night, scoring us Luke Pedlar who has had a breakout year in 2023.

So what is the final tally? Obviously it's going to look a bit problematic given that the biggest prizes were Gibbs and McAsey, but let's look at the leaderboard anyway!

Crows gain: Pedlar, Worrell, McAdam, Sholl, McHenry, Hamill (and Gibbs + McAsey)
Crows lose: Lever, McGovern, 2017 Picks 16, 35, 73, 2018 Picks 33, 47, 2019 Picks 11, 51, 66, 2020 Pick 52

Given their subsequent form, Lever was worth a 1st round pick, while McGovern maybe a 2nd round pick. So in the end we gave up the equivalent of three first-round picks (Lever, 11, 16), three second round picks (McGovern, 33, 35) and some chump change. Ignoring the negligible contributions of Gibbs and McAsey, we got six players in return. The three best of those seem likely to be Pedlar, Worrell and McAdam - are they worth Lever, Pick 11 and Pick 16? Close call. And are Sholl, McHenry and Hamill worth McGovern, Pick 33 and Pick 35? Again, close call. We're probably a tiny bit behind... but not too much.

The fact that it's even close is a testament to us making the best out of a bad situation. Gibbs and McAsey are two draft/trade blunders that had the potential to set us back two years. Thankfully, we were able to use the various steak knives to reasonable effect and mitigate the damage. Pedlar in particular has the potential to be a genuine gun, and Worrell looks likely to be an important part of our side going forward.


That's the end of this little side-series, just in time to get upset at selection tomorrow night :p
 
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