I would say GC,Brisbane and GWS are ahead of us in lost players interesting they are all non victorian aswell, there is no doubt a trend that a non victorian club will lose more, how do we counter that, the AFL have assisted the northern states with Cola and the Acadamys. No doubt the drafting sees more from victoria that is a purely population driven. Realistically we should be given SA as an acadamy to be shared with Port but whilst the Victorian clubs can control the AFL commission that will never happen
We arent losing 50% of our players as our tope end picks arent 50% of the squad but it doesnt need to be, if you look at the quality of top end pick we are losing it certainly needs to be considered what we are doing
We just need to be mindfull how close the SA talent is to that of the pick we want to use
Looking at the last 2 years it was Galluci/Hayward or Doedee/Burton
So if we had taken the next best available South Aussie instead of who we chose over the last decade, you'd get the following.
2007: Danger - Ebert (but now have Milera)
2008: Davis (we got Kerridge with our priority pick)
2009: Talia - Christian Howard
2010: Smith
2011: Kerridge - Alex Forster (but now have Menzel)
2012:
2013: M. Crouch - Sean Lemmens
2014: Lever - Sam Durdin
2015: Doedee - Ryan Burton
2016: Gallucci - Will Hayward
So essentially the question is would we rather have
1. Ebert, Howard, Forster, Lemmens, Durdin, Burton, Hayward or
2. Milera, Talia, Menzel, M. Crouch, Lever, Doedee and Gallucci
Though the last couple of years might be questionable - though that is debatable - surely you still just have to go for what you think is the best available talent at the time. I think that Option 2 is the better one.