Strategy Trade and List Management Thread Part 8 (opposition supporters - READ posting rules before posting)

[_Mike_]

Opposition supporters coming to troll , you have been warned

 

[threenewpadlocks]

What are the chances Port doesn’t match the bid on butters do we think? Or is it basically a certainty they do

If they finish so poorly for the rest of the season that they would get a top 5ish compensation pick, combined with their belief that we may be good in two years time so our future 1sts are worth all that much.

 

[TheScriptorWL]

Port would laugh at us if that’s all we offered.

And do what? The only card Port can play is backing themselves in that they can convince him to re-sign before the real circus starts. Otherwise the chosen club will present their best offer, and they’ll have to eat it happily.

 

[Dogs Rule]

There is an important consideration to have that Butters' supposed infatuation with the club may not be enough if we miss finals. He is one of the competition's best, in his prime - why move to a team that can't deliver?

Unless he is sold the vision that he is THE difference. The one to help deliver us to the promised land. Everyone has an ego.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

Unless he is sold the vision that he is THE difference. The one to help deliver us to the promised land. Everyone has an ego.

Butters can be reasonable in understanding that our injuries are the difference in whether we do or don't make finals.

Butters is perfectly capable of understanding that touch wood Sam Darcy is not fit for the majority of 2026, but will likely be for the team he's joining in 2027, for example.

 

[BomToydd]

There is an important consideration to have that Butters' supposed infatuation with the club may not be enough if we miss finals. He is one of the competition's best, in his prime - why move to a team that can't deliver?

This why I don't understand how ITKs can be so confident he's coming here.

 

[Snarls Barkley]

Butters can be reasonable in understanding that our injuries are the difference in whether we do or don't make finals.

Butters is perfectly capable of understanding that touch wood Sam Darcy is not fit for the majority of 2026, but will likely be for the team he's joining in 2027, for example.

I just hope he doesn't think too reasonably and work out we've had the best player in the comp and our history and haven't been able to win a final for the last four years

 

[threenewpadlocks]

I just hope he doesn't think too reasonably and work out we've had the best player in the comp and our history and haven't been able to win a final for the last four years

What's the point of having a reasonable discussion about anything that represents how good we may or may not be when it simply gets hijacked with "we haven't won a final lol we must suck".

Butters will clearly and obviously understand that we've been a better team over the last 4 years, and will likely be so into the future, than some teams that have won fi Al's over the last 4 years. What's the point of even participating on this board and having a discussion over if Butters' willingness to come to us if people like yourself want to hijack every discussion with a simple "no finals in 4 years LOL" as if that achieves something.

Just about sick of it.

 

[BomToydd]

Power and Bevo have set us up more in 7 year's time, for the 2033 flag, where they might not even be at the club at that stage.

This is a wild take. Apart from Darcy, Freijah, Sanders and Jones I'm not convinced any of our current young players will be good players and still on a list in 2033

We had a really solid run with Dalrymple then Sam Power bursting on to the scene with some incredible moves - it’s hard to understate the impact he had when he quickly brought in Treloar, Bruce, Martin, Keath and Duryea.

I think Power has been living off this for a while. The reality is he's been at the club since 2018 and built a list with so many holes that's only won finals in one season since then.

 

[BomToydd]

What's the point of having a reasonable discussion about anything that represents how good we may or may not be when it simply gets hijacked with "we haven't won a final lol we must suck".

I think winning finals and beating teams above you is a pretty fair measure of whether a team is good or not. You could maybe use injuries or an unfair fixture as an excuse but then being more likely to get injured here and play in front of poor crowds would be something else he has to consider

 

[threenewpadlocks]

This is a wild take. Apart from Darcy, Freijah, Sanders and Jones I'm not convinced any of our current young players will be good players and still on a list in 2033

We are far more set up to win the 2029 flag, now, than we were in 2022 by virtue of having the 8th oldest list now and the 2nd oldest list in 2022.

Before we added Sanders, Freijah, Dolan, Emmett etc. and the like, I was unsure where our 2029 flag would come from. The theoretical success that we should have had via an older list in 2022-23 (where we all agree we were coached poorly in those 2 years) would result in bad draft picks right at the time we have older players coming off our list, necessitating the need to turnover over the list with bad draft assets for players who hold little value.

We ran into a similar problem when Eade left in 2011, and our need to fill out the bottom of the list with very low draft picks as older players retired in the 2010-2012 period was the reason we were crap until 2014, and expected to be crap until Bevo proved himself as the best coach in the league in 2015-16. Over the 5 off-seasons from 2010 to 2014, we lost Brad Johnson, Barry Hall, Jason Akermanis, Nathan Eagleton, Ben Hudson, Mitch Hahn, Lindsay Gilbee, Ryan Hargrave, Brian Lake, Daniel Giansiracusa, Daniel Cross, Tom Williams, Adam Cooney, Ryan Griffen, Dylan Addison, Sam Reid, Callan Ward, Josh Hill, Andrejs Everitt, Liam Jones and Jason Tutt, who all wanted to either retire or play for another club. Our 2010 list also invested in mature-aged recruits in Tim Callan, Patrick Rose and Brodie Moles.

From 2010 We then topped up with players who were not on our list by 2015, recruiting Ed Barlow, Justin Sherman, Patrick Veszpremi, and Nathan Djerrkura. We did the same thing the following year by recruiting Mark Austin, and mature agers Jack Redpath and Tory Dickson (the latter two worked out, but still didn't have 200+ game careers), then by recruiting Nick Lower, Tom Young and Brett Goodes. We then went after Matt Fuller and Sam Darley. (both failures), but then got Biggs, Hamling and Kelly the following year. We struck out 1.5/3 - Hamling is still on an AFL list, Biggs was very good but only played 57 games for us, Kelly did not play a game.


All of this is to say that all of these decisions in the aggregate opened up a list hole that by 2014-15, we had to recruit an exceptionally large number of teenagers - Boyd, McLean, Webb, Hamilton, Dale, Daniel, Cordy, R. Smith in 2014. Most teams do not recruit 8 teenagers in one year. We then recruited another 5 the following year - Dunkley, Collins, Williams, Lynch, Goetz.

Subsequently - although some of those players would go on to have better careers by their mid-late 20s, following the usual aging curve - part of the reason we were so poor in 2017-2018 was the fact that we were forced to take 13 teenagers in that two-year spurt, and they weren't good enough players until 2019. The fact that Bevo took us to two finals players speaks to his ability to get more out of existing old players as a good coach (Wood, Murphy and Boyd all being AA half-backs in 2015 for instance) rather than any sort of unique ability to get output from teenagers.

We were able to find "success" in 2021 eventually, after 5-6 years, some of those players contributed - Bont and Macrae teenagers drafted in 2013-14, but the players from the 14-15 spurt - Dale, Dunkley, Daniel, Williams, R. Smith, Cordy were all key parts for most of the season playing better football older in 2021 than they were in 17-18.

What's not to say that Freijah, Sanders, Dolan, Emmett etc. are 2032's Dale, Dunkley, Daniel etc.?

 

[threenewpadlocks]

I think winning finals and beating teams above you is a pretty fair measure of whether a team is good or not. You could maybe use injuries or an unfair fixture as an excuse but then being more likely to get injured here and play in front of poor crowds would be something else he has to consider

I think Zak Butters is far more capable of critical thinking skills and considering motivating factors of which team is desirable or not to go to in 2027 for reasons other than the fact that Freo beat Western Bulldogs in a close final in 2022 rather than Western Bulldogs beating Fremantle in a close final in 2022 and I think it's patently ridiculous to suggest that it would have a significant impact upon Butters one way or another.

 

[BigFloppa]

I don’t condone tanking, but if there’s ever a year to finish lower on the ladder, it’s this year. Getting both El Souki and Butters will be impossible unless we finish bottom 10.

I condone unintentional tanking where we try to win but still lose

 

[Bald]

For anyone concerned about the clubs current ladder position and it's ambitition to acquire Butters.

Didn't Chris Judd join Carlton who had just finished 15th (out of 16)?

 

[flipper83]

Surely the Bulldogs and Port can come to some sort of agreement where they don't match the Butters bid and get a top 10 pick as compensation and then in a completely unrelated trade we swap our first rounder and some combination of future picks for Ports Second rounder and some combination of future picks.
We can make it as lop sided as it needs to be and justify it by saying that we believe Ports future second rounders will only be one pick after our first rounders.

 

[BomToydd]

Maybe we should just fold the club.

No good players, no good crowds, not a good coach. Why would anyone want to come here? What’s the point.

Bit dramatic. Not really possible to have reasonable discussion when some people refuse to see that the club isn't all sunshine and rainbows.

 

[Snarls Barkley]

I think Zak Butters is far more capable of critical thinking skills and considering motivating factors of which team is desirable or not to go to in 2027 for reasons other than the fact that Freo beat Western Bulldogs in a close final in 2022 rather than Western Bulldogs beating Fremantle in a close final in 2022 and I think it's patently ridiculous to suggest that it would have a significant impact upon Butters one way or another.

I think Barrass has shown and all the recruits with Geelong and Brisbane that teams would choose to go to winning teams when situations are similar

Zaks management is going to come to us and say we want to play for a team that knows how to win and we'll say we would have won this year if not for injuries. They'll ask how come you didn't win before that to which we'll say don't worry about the past, just know that we are primed for the 2033 flag

He might still come to us regardless but I'd feel 10 times more confident if we win anything this year, and I still don't think that's impossible, tis a long season and we'll get most back reasonably soon. If it does spiral down and he has the choice between us, Geelong and Hawthorn, it would be a brave man to choose us

 

[threenewpadlocks]

Bit dramatic. Not really possible to have reasonable discussion when some people refuse to see that the club isn't all sunshine and rainbows.

I think inferring that whether or not we had beaten Fremantle in a final in 2022 would be notable factor into Zak Butters' decision making more than four years on is not a reasonable discussion at all either mate

 

[BomToydd]

For anyone concerned about the clubs current ladder position and it's ambitition to acquire Butters.

Didn't Chris Judd join Carlton who had just finished 15th (out of 16)?

Carlton are a bigger club and Visy kinda helped. And he'd already won a premiership
Can't see Port winning a flag before or leaves. Maybe he really likes tortillas though and Mission can put him in a sombrero and make him a tortilla ambassador