They may not give up Shiel, although it has been widely reported over the past couple of years that Shiel wants/wanted out of GWS, so if they were to for arguments sake trade him, it may be because they believe he will walk at the end of next year and that they won't have as much say in what they get in return if that happens, so they'd rather get on the front foot and do it now.
I wrote this next bit on our board earlier today, so I'll just copy it here as well:
O'Rourke or Jaksch and 4 for pick 1 isn't going to get it done. They are simply not good enough and/or "sure bets" (especially with concerns over O'Rourke's body and durability) enough to warrant trading down from who we consider to be the best in the draft to pick 4, which is now looking like a slight "no-mans land", with Peter Wright's poor end to the season (unless he was badly hampered by injury- which he may have been, hence missing the GF) and that next group looking like they may be so even, with possibly none of them "demanding" to be taken top 4 or 5 and with many of them looking like "KPD"s", who you don't usually look to take with a top 4 pick.
GWS would not have done that sort of deal when they had pick one this past couple of years, IMO and as such I don't believe they'll expect us to this year, now that we have pick 1. They'll know what sort of price they'll have to pay and if they are as keen on Petracca as we keep on hearing then I expect they will pay that price, which they can afford (due to their outrageously strong list).
As for Shiel v Petracca, it looks like Petracca will be able to do most if not all the things that Shiel does in the midfield, and in a similar way and to a similar level, but that he will be much more of a potent weapon up forward than Shiel (or any/most of the rest of their midfield brigade) will be, due to his ridiculously strong contested marking (like a Jack Ziebell) and his history of dominating games up forward and kicking lots of goals. That I believe would be why they are so keen on Petracca, if what we've been hearing for months now and are now hearing in the media is correct. Especially if they believe Shiel is a strong chance to walk in 12 months time, which they might.
Petracca looks like Shiel, but with extra strings to his bow and more "weapons", especially matchwinning weapons. Doesn't mean that Shiel is a hack, because he's far from it, but there are reasons Petracca dominates games of footy, is likely to tear up the combine and is widely tipped to go no.1 in his draft (even though the team with pick 1 would ideally prefer a "KPF" and there are one or two tipped to go top 4).
