What about a FA bid for Suckling?
Elite kick from the successful Hawthorn program.
Why do people think we need an inside mid? We have Gray, Boak, Hartlett and Ebert all capable of running through the guts and Wines as the big bodied mid. Few teams play more than 4 inside mids and if they do they often lose outside pace. Then we have Young, Moore and Ah Chee as further inside options. Even if we lose Moore and Young, I'm not sure we need a dedicated inside mid. If we are going for a mid then one with some pace and class is what is required, inside work a bonus if there.
Because on evidence two things are very apparent .
1. The top teams are all through no coincidence the best clearance teams. Hawks , freo , Syd , west coast all have very good inside ball winning brigades
2. Port are prone to lapses in the centre. When we get out first we dominate teams with our attack but when other teams get on top they do so for long passages.
Also , Ebert is not an inside mid. Yes he can win one on ones , yes he can win some contested ball. But he is not a mid who can win the ball inside a stoppage and extract it cleanly.
Wines is the best we have. Then boak. Gray is very very good at stoppages but he is reliant on the ball spilling into space.
Ah chee and Moore are our hopes in this area but we really need to find a josh Carr / josh Francou guy who can shovel the ball out in a contest to the advantage of our players. With twice as many stoppages those inside mids are more important than ever.