A "connector" Darcy is not, I'll go on record now that he will never have the tank to come close to replicating Tom Lynch's role. I would think he'll eventually be Tex's replacement in our Forward line.
Thats fair. I think we will be needing Fog to take over from Tex sooner rather than later anyway. Play him as a true CHF in the SANFL next year and give him the odd game for Tex or JJ.
But I still think we needed to trade Lynch. I don't want to under-value him as a player because I think he is fantastic. He is not anywhere near done either. I am also really glad that we managed to re-sign a non-SA player and keep him here for the remainder of his career. But take emotion out of it, he was really the player that we could have taken out of our forward line and replaced with a quicker player and given us another good draft pick. Darcy doesn't need to play AFL next year for that to be a good decision. Lynch is our connector and we function really well when he is on song. But every team knows this about the crows and the good teams have shut him down and shut us down. Its now a weakness that we take into every game that if the opposition shuts down Sloane or Lynch, then they have gone a long way to beating us.
We also have options to take Lynch's position, even if they dont play his role. McGovern, even Smith now that Milera provides that down back. When Brad Crouch comes I would like to see Sloane pushed out of the inside midfield rotations. Still love Sloane and think he can be one of our best players even with a new role.
The other thing is that Lynch may have got us another pick around end of first round. We might have been able to package that up and get Luko who replaces Lynch either in 2019, or more likely 2020.