I'm not criticising SOS at all. I have no problem with his strategy. My point is it's impossible to say how going the more traditional rout to aquiring talent would have worked out .
The upshot of what was a fairly long analysis - a summary of what we COULD have instead (assuming we could have actually GOT the players we wanted). Take the current list and:
ADD: Jake Carlisle, Dion Prestia, Zach Touhy, Josh Green, Jake Lever, Bryce Gibbs,
SUBTRACT: (compared to current list): Jacob Weitering, Sam Kerridge, Caleb Marchbank, Jarrod Pickett, Sam Petrevski-Seton, Harrison Macreadie, Paddy Dow, Lochie O'Brien as well as our 2018 first round pick and the Bulldogs 2018 second round pick.
Assuming the same injuries (ie; Docherty knee) the team that played last saturday would be:
B: Plowman, Carlisle, Touhy
Hb: Cuningham, Lever, Simpson
C: Fisher, Cripps, Thomas
Hf: Prestia, C. Curnow, Wright
F: JSOS, Casboult, Josh Green
Foll: Kreuzer, Gibbs, E Curnow
Bench: Kennedy, Jones, JSOS, Graham
My reflection afterwards - that team is certainly more competitive, particularly in defence. But that forward line isn't good enough (and the depth not listed there is worse than our current depth) and the team probably finishes 10-15th. Plus we'd be a lot worse off for the future (although that would be a much better team to add T Lynch to as a FA than the current team).

