MacStradbroke
Norm Smith Medallist
- Jul 19, 2015
- 6,874
- 20,255
- AFL Club
- Geelong
Agree. These free agents aren’t taking the places of any early draft picks, they’re taking list spots of the round 4 plus draftees.Bringing in 30+ year old free agents actually doesn't hurt the long term at all. You pick one less kid now and one more when they retire in 1-2 years, when those players are in their mid 20s the difference between them is negligible. There's a big risk in the medium term when we stand to lose the majority of the current best 22 over a couple of years but free agency mitigates that because we apparently aren't finding it hard to attract players. Where I'm actually concerned is the short term believe it or not - obviously you bring in these guys for the next two seasons but are they going to give you their early career output? My worry is that we'll actually shoot ourselves in the foot by forcing guys like Smith and Higgins in when the freshness of young players might be what the team needs.
Time will tell. But if this strategy works in the short term it works full stop because everything else will average out over the longer term.