The easiest thing to do is burry the head in the sand and bring in all the possible negatives no matter how far fetched they are. For starters people have been talking about 2 year bans for 3 years now. You can bookmark it now, no player from Essendon will get a 2 year ban. This is a political game more so than people take it on the face value. There is no way in hell AFL allows it! No way! At worst players will get a slap on the wrist but none of this fanciful 2 year bans that I keep hearing about. If the case was so straight forward they would have copped that penalty with the first ruling.
Secondly, Port's picks we later than our so this Lever and Wigg argument is absolute rubbish so let's deal with facts as they stand now:
Ryder is a gun player. Port got him for a 1st and 2nd round pick. That is a fair deal for a gun player. Forget Ryder the name but think of purely talent, I would trade pick 17 and whatever their 2nd round pick for a tall player in his prime that has the talent of Ryder.
Now on to Dixon. A supremely talented key forward that has had trouble staying on the park but if you search through my post history from earlier in the year, this is the guy I wanted us to go after. He is a gun when he is on the park. I suspect the trade will be similar to Ryder trade but that's me speculating but I would do that trade all day every day for a talented key forward that you can build a forward line around.
Then there is Polec. When up and running, wouldn't he be a bloody nice to have on the wing in our side? People will bag him for being injury prone but in the same breath talk about how great a player Brad Crouch is and how he is our replacement for Dangerfield. Bit of hypocrisy going on there.
Fact is for 2 years in a row, we are seeing 2 guns nominating Port Adelaide as their club of choice, meanwhile we are having a pissing contest with Geelong about what Dangerfield is worth. When was the last time that Port Adelaide lost a key player from their side that they did not want to lose? Nick Stevens? Meanwhile we manage to lose a whole ******* spine (Davis-Bock-Dangerfield-Gunston-Tippett). That shit has to stop! Draw a line in the sand and make a strong stance one and for all.
Bottom line is that Port managed to attract guns without losing guns. We've attracted some guns, Eddie being the most recent one but we also lost guns. At the end of the day, we lost more than we got while Port got more than they lost. That is a major difference!