An assessment of Carltoon's trade period (LOL SOS)
http://www.theroar.com.au/2015/10/22/carlton-had-a-good-trade-period-spare-me/
Carlton have the worst list in the AFL, of that there is no doubt.
When I
had a look at their playing stocks in June, what I found was a capped-out, old, strikingly mediocre bunch of bench scrubs, depth players and good-not-great stars,
The re-arrival of Stephen Silvagni, the supposed architect of Greater Western Sydney’s list build, and departure of much of the previous football administration which plied their trade in the Mick Malthouse era, bought with it the promise of a new direction. The fawning over his return was a white stallion short of a medieval fairytale.
(Just quietly, I reckon a 12-year-old with a box of crayons could have built a decent list out of 12 underage pre-listed players and 11 top 15 picks in a pretty deep draft.)
Well, that lasted all of four months. Make no mistake, Carlton have had an absolutely dreadful trade period, and done almost exactly the opposite of what they should have done as far as recalibrating their list goes.
The simplest way to go about this is to split out their activity into player movements and draft pick movements. This is what the trade period has yielded the Navy Blues in net player terms, including pre-October retirements and delistings.
Out
Matthew Watson, Blaine Johnson, Cameron Giles, Fraser Russell, Chris Judd, Andrew Carrazzo, David Ellard, Lachie Henderson, Tom Bell, Menzel.
In
Sam Kerridge, Lachie Plowman, Jed Lamb, Andrew Phillips, Liam Sumner.
You can probably add Chris Yarran to that list of outs before the end of today, too.
Carlton have lost two of their best young players in Tom Bell (in large part for reasons outside of football) and Menzel, and two above average, prime-age players in Yarran and Lachie Henderson.
The losses of Chris Judd and Andrew Carrazzo were at worst neutral propositions as far as list building goes, given both were 32 and a near zero chance of being AFL standard players by the time the Blues are next contending. The delisted deadwood is nothing more than that.
In their place come Sam Kerridge from Adelaide, and a pu-pu platter of Greater Western Sydney players that couldn’t make the team on a regular basis.
The fact that the Giants gave Carlton their 2015 first round pick as part of this deal, and that these four players are moving to the same place that the guy who recruited them just moved to, should send a shiver down the spine of every Carlton fan.
But wait! It’s all about the draft picks, right? Their draft position looks a little like this:
Before trade: 1, 20, 39, 57, 75, 93, 113
After trade: 1, 8, 20, 21, 59, 60, 113