Opinion We need a rebuild, shortly

[dajesmac]

You could probably add Sheppard to the delist candidates list if he has a year similar to 2013.
Admittedly, he was poorly used but even still his being on the list probably won't be justified going into next year. He also would have almost no trade bait.

 

[Shupe]

The Cox/NN tandem is one of our biggest weapons. It gives us options in the middle and up forward and forces opposition sides to think defensively. Replace Cox with Sinclair or Lycett and we become like any other team with a good ruckman and another guy filling in 1/3 of the time. It doesn't turn us into wooden spoon candidates, but it brings us back to the field - and we don't have the midfield quality of other sides.

RE: Glass his presence in the defensive 50 is invaluable. It's easy to say 'oh he just takes the 3rd tall now, we can cover that' but when Pavlich or Buddy or whoever start dominating Mitch Brown (because he's average) Schofield or Wilson or whoever aren't going to come to the rescue. We've currently got a multiple AA full back playing a sweeper role. It's a huge luxury.

I don't necessarily disagree with anything you have said. Absolutely Cox/NN is one of our big weapons. And our ruck division will still remain superior to most teams when Cox retires. Huge loss? Nah.

I said Glass' role is easily replaced, and deliberately put the 'role' in italics because I knew somebody would speak up and use words like 'presence' and 'leadership' etc etc. That's irreplaceable and goes without saying.

Look, teams are always going to have to replace greats of the club at some point and it is my opinion that we are well situated to do so with little effect to performance.

 

[Arthaus]

i coud be wrong of course, but i think we'll find by seasons end, or before, that we already have some top end talent in our midst- it will have evolved by then, a few players should have gone up a notch by then (shuey, masten, wellingham, yeo, ellis?) with others to do so next season (Sheed, Gaff?)...and at next draft/trade we could add another gun or solid depth midfielder..

agree we seem top heavy with backs, with excellent depth in a couple, and spares to trade.

i think cox is being underrated as unnecessary, still provides excellent link up and skills unlike anyone else. i dont think NN has surpassed cox yet as all rounder. he presence is felt, he is noticible, he gets more PR, he's obviously great at tap downs and second/follow up touches, and occasional speccies. but i dont think his marking, kicking, scoring, reading play is up to cox's standards yet. let alone his tank. if he gets a full season in, then he'll probably earn new ruck crown? having said that cox has been a great coach and mentor, and the ruck division will no doubt carry on seamlessly without him.

re 'rebuild' ??...its early days re new coach, plays and players - but it seems we now have a solid platform/blueprint to add to, with depth in place to cover the exit of seniors. its just adding more cream/depth going forward, a win-win situation for our windows which just may surprise some and be wide open later this season, certainly into 2015-16.
(its hard not to conclude by end of next draft/trade we'll have a starstudded team with great depth)
fine print clause - keep up those offerings to the injury gods!

 

[ThePuma #9]

I still think we can improve our 22 in the years to come and add depth but i don't think a rebuild is needed.

We have a pretty young side now, just need to keep adding pieces.

One thing has to be said, the last few years recruiting have been sublime, especially 2012 when you look at what we were working with.

Pick 45 Brant Colledge
Pick 59 Adam Carter
Pick 60 Mark Hutchings

Rookie draft

Pick 12 Callum Sinclair
Pick 26 Jamie Bennell

Darn impressive looking back now considering all are considered valuable parts of our club moving forward.

Add to that bringing in Wellingham and Cripps and 2012 was a brilliant year at the trade/draft table.

The boys seem to have carried it on in 2013 as well with Shred, Yeoy and X.

Can't wait to see what they have up their sleeve for next year now.

 

[Shupe]

We have a pretty young side now, just need to keep adding pieces.

We were younger than the Bulldogs, who are considered to be a rebuilding side. Whilst that doesn't necessarily bode well for Muzza, it does bode well for our future.

 

[SpaceClef]

The boys seem to have carried it on in 2013 as well with Maginness, Shred, Yeoy and X.

Can't wait to see what they have up their sleeve for next year now.

EFA

 

[Ian Dargie]

I suppose it comes down to what your interpretation of a "rebuild" is.

Id say we cut pretty hard at the bone last year. New coach and a total of 9 new senior listed players or close to a quarter of our senior list. Same number as Port Adelaide with only Melbourne turning over more. We've got the sixth youngest list in the competition and it will get younger in the short term.

Surely a rebuild takes longer than six months. Look at our 22 in R1. What part of that was 'rebuilt'? Yeo and Ellis?

When clubs talk about rebuilding, they are talking about a structural overhaul of their list. It's what happens when their core of players dissolves through retirements or simply not being good enough and they have to implement generational change from the bottom up. St Kilda are rebuilding – they've lost Goddard and Dal Santo and their best players are all 30-plus with not much coming through below them.

West Coast on the other hand, still have a core that is very much intact despite a disappointing last season.

Fast forward to October/ November and Simpson will have his first chance to really impose himself on our list. So id expect a healthy amount of turnover again. Perhaps five or as many as six players could go from our senior list at the end of the year.

Again, I don't accept that anyone could sensibly consider this 'rebuilding' if the vast majority of our best 22 remains the same.

Go through the 22 from R1 and tell me how much turnover there will be. Maybe Cox? Maybe Glass?

But sure, guys outside the best side may be in danger. But that's true at most clubs – it doesn't mean they're rebuilding.

All of these list changes puts pressure on your middle age players to perform. Now it's round one and we're all marveling at the potential selection dilemmas facing the match committee in the coming month. But if we lose a few players here and there, then we'll see how strong our list really is.

Again, this doesn't demonstrate rebuilding.

 

[Ian Dargie]

I'll elaborate. Teams have shown time and time again that you don't need a top-end ruckman to win a premiership and we already have a superstar in NN when he's fit. I think Cox is not essential to the team going forward. Easily replaced.

Darren Glass just keeps on keeping on. Rock solid in defence and nobody is denying that. But what does he actually do? He takes the other teams 3rd best forward when he's not playing as a loose man across the back line. Surely that role is also easily replaced.

Don't be too quick to discard champions.

 

[Ian Dargie]

Ssssshhhh! Don't spoil the moment. We're second on the ladder, so the rebuild's complete

The point is that we didn't actually rebuild. Some of you guys are just irrationally attached to that phrase.

There's this weird, unquestioned view that if a side finishes 13th there must, by definition, be a rebuild in order for them to improve. But it's not the case.

 

[Ian Dargie]

I still think we can improve our 22 in the years to come and add depth but i don't think a rebuild is needed.

We have a pretty young side now, just need to keep adding pieces.

One thing has to be said, the last few years recruiting have been sublime, especially 2012 when you look at what we were working with.

Pick 45 Brant Colledge
Pick 59 Adam Carter
Pick 60 Mark Hutchings

Rookie draft

Pick 12 Callum Sinclair
Pick 26 Jamie Bennell

Darn impressive looking back now considering all are considered valuable parts of our club moving forward.

Bit early to draw that conclusion, isn't it?

 

[Wosh]

The point is that we didn't actually rebuild. Some of you guys are just irrationally attached to that phrase.

There's this weird, unquestioned view that if a side finishes 13th there must, by definition, be a rebuild in order for them to improve. But it's not the case.

This, a very overused phrase..rebuild is when you knock something down and start from basically scratch. We haven't been anywhere near needing a 'rebuild' except of course from a coaching point of view but everyone knew that was going to happen eventually.

 

[Eastern Rangers]

You're taking those changes from middle of 2013? Because there are half a dozen players in our round one side that didn't play in the first half of 2013. Really you should be going back to 2012 when we put a competitive side together and look at the volume of change we've had since thenZ

These players have gone out of our best 22. Embley, Kerr, A.Selwood, Nicoksi.

Players considered important depth players like Hams, Butler and you've got a substantial proportion of your best 25 missing.

Throw in Smith who played 18 games in our most successful season of recent times. McGinnity who played through most of 2012 alongside another potential stop gap forward in Hill who played all of 12/13.

And then you have Glass, Cox and Waters who are best 22 and have uncertain futures.

Ellis, Yeo, Bennell, Cripps, Sinclair, Wellingham, Hutchings. Isn't really window dressing. Once you start making 5-7 changes then you begin to seriously change the fundamental makeup of your side.

The last point highlights the predicament we could have found ourself in if we didn't source a serious amount of experienced talent. Sourcing those players from other teams doesn't change the fact they came into our squad and into our 22 extremely quickly.

Not sure why you'd dismiss depth players. As they're generally an essential component of premiership success.

In the end you potentially replace half your "best 22" within three years.

 

[Ian Dargie]

You're taking those changes from middle of 2013? Because there are half a dozen players in our round one side that didn't play in the first half of 2013. Really you should be going back to 2012 when we put a competitive side together and look at the volume of change we've had since thenZ

These players have gone out of our best 22. Embley, Kerr, A.Selwood, Nicoksi.

Players considered important depth players like Hams, Butler and you've got a substantial proportion of your best 25 missing.

Throw in Smith who played 18 games in our most successful season of recent times. McGinnity who played through most of 2012 alongside another potential stop gap forward in Hill who played all of 12/13.

And then you have Glass, Cox and Waters who are best 22 and have uncertain futures.

You can't include players who are still on the list. Unless your point is that we've rebuilt by keeping these players?

With that in mind, we've lost Embley, Kerr, Selwood, Nicoski and Hams. OK. Those departures vary in significance but are you suggesting that, taken collectively, they constitute rebuilding?

Ellis, Yeo, Bennell, Cripps, Sinclair, Wellingham, Hutchings. Isn't really window dressing. Once you start making 5-7 changes then you begin to seriously change the fundamental makeup of your side.

Wow, the "fundamental make-up of the side". That sounds dramatic.

Of course, it ignores that these changes have not had any impact on our spine at either end, the top tier of our midfield (Wellingham aside), our first-choice ruck division or the pointy part of our forward line. But sure, the "fundamental make-up of the side". Turn it up.

Bringing these guys in has been valuable, no doubt. Its effect has been to reinforce the second tier of our midfield and add run. So yes, we needed to do that but I still don't see that it constitutes rebuilding.

You start with a reasonable point but end up overstating it.

Not sure why you'd dismiss depth players. As they're generally an essential component of premiership success.

Who's dismissing them?

I've explicitly acknowledged that it was important for us to bring these guys in. I'm just stopping short of calling it a rebuild because I can point to a core of players that remains intact.

In the end you potentially replace half your "best 22" within three years.

Stop fudging it.

Glass, Brown, Hurn, Mackenzie, Gaff, Rosa, Priddis, Shuey, Selwood, Masten, Cox, Naitanui, Kennedy, Darling, LeCras.

That's 15 of the 22 who played on the weekend. All of them were on the list in 2011.

If you don't like my list, let's have a look at one of yours. In your ranking of our best/most important 25, 15 of the first 18 were on the list in 2011 – and I imagine you might want to upgrade Rosa from 25. How can you look at that and tell me that we've been rebuilding?

Again, people just get attached to that phrase. Maybe people have watched too many panel shows and had this frame so indelibly imposed on their thinking that they now cannot conceive of going from 4th/5th to 13th and back again without the corollary of rebuilding somewhere in the middle?

 

[Keys]

What we did last year and will conceivably do again this year wasn't so much a rebuild as a turnover of the list. Something we didn't really do in the 3 years or so prior to last year which meant we had/have a number of players who have been on the list for a few years who aren't really AFL standard and arent likely to get better

 

[Jack_the_Ninja]

I wasn't totally convinced we have turned the corner yet after Sunday, we seemed to have a leaking backline and I'm blaming Brown for some of it.

Here's who has to get traded to make way for our next winning team IMO

1. Brown
2. Smith
3. McGinnity
4. Gaff - Trade back to Victoria for a lower pick
5. Newman

Go hard after Omeara, Swallow, Bennell or Coniglio.

 

[Scotland]

Here's who has to get traded to make way for our next winning team IMO

1. Brown
2. Smith
3. McGinnity
4. Gaff - Trade back to Victoria for a lower pick
5. Newman

Go hard after Omeara, Swallow, Bennell or Coniglio.

3 out of 5 weren't in the team on Sunday so I'm not sure how getting rid of them is going to markedly improve our side.

We're never going to trade Gaff against our will, and the price of those guys above will include a NicNat/Kennedy/Shuey etc. unless we finish last.

 

[Eastern Rangers]

You can't include players who are still on the list. Unless your point is that we've rebuilt by keeping these players?

You can't include players who are still on the list? You can certainly consider them in the sum and total if they a dead weight on your list. And we've got a few of them. What clubs probably shouldn't be doing is turning over fifteen players in one off season. It's just not smart list management.

I had considered Dalziell as someone that required replacing for years prior to him finally being sacked. Bad players on a list are evidence of list stagnation, especially when they've been retained for far too long.

With that in mind, we've lost Embley, Kerr, Selwood, Nicoski and Hams. OK. Those departures vary in significance but are you suggesting that, taken collectively, they constitute rebuilding?

Exclusively they probably don't.

Wow, the "fundamental make-up of the side". That sounds dramatic.

Of course, it ignores that these changes have not had any impact on our spine at either end, the top tier of our midfield (Wellingham aside), our first-choice ruck division or the pointy part of our forward line. But sure, the "fundamental make-up of the side". Good luck selling those magic beans.

The best way to change the way you play is too change the personnel you play with. So it might sound dramatic but when you've got just 22 players to count on individual players do matter.

It's round one. At this stage Wellingham has had no more impact at this club than most of the others i've mentioned. Certainly not as a top tier midfielder either, we really only have one top line mid of which all the others are really rather homogenous in terms of their absolute quality.

Given your own advocacy for a brigade of hard working, hard running midfielders i'd have thought you'd appreciate the need for these players. Which i see as true peers to the players we already had within our midfield unit.

Bringing these guys in has been valuable, no doubt. Its effect has been to reinforce the second tier of our midfield and add run. So yes, we needed to do that but I still don't see that it constitutes rebuilding.

You start with a reasonable point but end up overstating it.

I'm not sure how replacing three small to mid size defenders in one season can be overstated. Perhaps you should consider the players that would be getting game time if they weren't on the list. Don't exactly look like window dressing then.

I know i've got higher expectation when it comes to the impacts that we can expect the likes of Hutchings and Tunbridge to have within the side this year and how they'll gel with the other additions we've made to the side.

Who's dismissing them?

I've explicitly acknowledged that it was important for us to bring these guys in. I'm just stopping short of calling it a rebuild because I can point to a core of players that remains intact.

Stop fudging it.

Glass, Brown, Hurn, Mackenzie, Gaff, Rosa, Priddis, Shuey, Selwood, Masten, Cox, Naitanui, Kennedy, Darling, LeCras.

That's 15 of the 22 who played on the weekend. All of them were on the list in 2011.

I'm answering your statement about who might leave at the end of this year. So the three years from the end 2011 to the end of 2014.

Which leaves me with a core group of.
Hurn, Mackenzie, Gaff, Rosa, Priddis, Selwood, Masten, Naitanui, Darling, Schofield and LeCras.

I won't include Waters as he can't be trusted to hold his body together and i'll only include one of Brown and Schofield.

Or if you reverse it these are players that played substantive roles in 11/12 that could have left our side in that period.

Kerr, Cox, Butler, Glass, Embley, Nicoski, Lynch, Hams, McGinnity, Smith.

If you don't like my list, let's have a look at one of yours. In your ranking of our best/most important 25, 15 of the first 18 were on the list in 2011 – and I imagine you might want to upgrade Rosa from 25. How can you look at that and tell me that we've been rebuilding?

Again, people just get attached to that phrase. Maybe people have watched too many panel shows and had this frame so indelibly imposed on their thinking that they now cannot conceive of going from 4th/5th to 13th and back again without the corollary of rebuilding somewhere in the middle?

I'm not sure why you highlight that list. It's utterly irrelevant, it's about ones own personal projected value at the beginning of the 2014 season. Yeah Rosa should probably be higher. But one swallow does not a summer make.

End of 12/2013 season isn't all that different to the end of 2006/2007 in terms of the number of mature players moving on. Rather it's the quality of them. By going for mature talent we've probably managed to avert a few years of heart ache trying blood at least a dozen kids over two years.

 

[Matera92]

I wasn't totally convinced we have turned the corner yet after Sunday, we seemed to have a leaking backline and I'm blaming Brown for some of it.

Here's who has to get traded to make way for our next winning team IMO

1. Brown
2. Smith
3. McGinnity
4. Gaff - Trade back to Victoria for a lower pick
5. Newman

Go hard after Omeara, Swallow, Bennell or Coniglio.

In this fantasy land of yours do pigs fly and leprechauns shit golden bricks?

 

[Ian Dargie]

You can't include players who are still on the list? You can certainly consider them in the sum and total if they a dead weight on your list. And we've got a few of them. What clubs probably shouldn't be doing is turning over fifteen players in one off season. It's just not smart list management..

Again, every club is going to have these kinds of players. That doesn't mean every team is rebuilding.

Do you really think that simply having some dead weight on our list, some of which will get cleared out at year's end, shows we are rebuilding?

Again, go and look at a club who is actually rebuilding and compare their list to our relatively settled group where the structural core remains intact.

The best way to change the way you play is too change the personnel you play with. So it might sound dramatic but when you've got just 22 players to count on individual players do matter.

It's round one. At this stage Wellingham has had no more impact at this club than most of the others i've mentioned. Certainly not as a top tier midfielder either, we really only have one top line mid of which all the others are really rather homogenous in terms of their absolute quality.

Given your own advocacy for a brigade of hard working, hard running midfielders i'd have thought you'd appreciate the need for these players. Which i see as true peers to the players we already had within our midfield unit.

I've repeatedly acknowledged the importance of bringing in those extra runners to reinforce the second tier of the midfield. Not sure why you keep suggesting otherwise.

However, it's too long a bow to suggest we have "fundamentally changed the make-up of our side" when so much of it remains unchanged.

I'm not sure how replacing three small to mid size defenders in one season can be overstated. Perhaps you should consider the players that would be getting game time if they weren't on the list. Don't exactly look like window dressing then.

I know i've got higher expectation when it comes to the impacts that we can expect the likes of Hutchings and Tunbridge to have within the side this year and how they'll gel with the other additions we've made to the side.

Let's be clear. Do you think this constitutes rebuilding?

Yeo, Ellis, Bennell come in. Tunbridge and Hutchings on the fringes.

To call that rebuilding vastly overstates it.

I'm answering your statement about who might leave at the end of this year. So the three years from the end 2011 to the end of 2014.

Which leaves me with a core group of.
Hurn, Mackenzie, Gaff, Rosa, Priddis, Selwood, Masten, Naitanui, Darling, Schofield and LeCras.

I won't include Waters as he can't be trusted to hold his body together and i'll only include one of Brown and Schofield.

Or if you reverse it these are players that played substantive roles in 11/12 that could have left our side in that period.

Kerr, Cox, Butler, Glass, Embley, Nicoski, Lynch, Hams, McGinnity, Smith.

Firstly, if you're leaving out Glass then surely it's reasonable to include both Brown and Schofield.

Secondly, how about Hill?

Thirdly, Kerr, Cox and Glass are the big outs. The rest I see as a natural attrition rather than a designated 'rebuilding'.

Of those three, Cox and Glass are still in the side and could play next year. When they retire, they will need to be replaced. But the fact they will retire relatively soon doesn't show that we are currently rebuilding. Instead, it shows that we need to have some kind of succession plan figured out and, without downplaying the value of these guys, I think we've done a decent job in having ready-made players earmarked to assume those roles. Naitanui obviously. And while I'm not saying Brown will be as good as Glass, we're not going to be left with a gaping hole in the key defensive posts.

I'm not sure why you highlight that list. It's utterly irrelevant, it's about ones own personal projected value at the beginning of the 2014 season.

You're suggesting we're rebuilding, even though 15 of our top 18 - in your view, even without Rosa - were on the list on 2011. That's not what a rebuilding side looks like.

I suggest you reconsider what rebuilding actually entails. What we've done stops well short.

 

[ThePuma #9]

Bit early to draw that conclusion, isn't it?

What conclusion?

That they are valuable players for our list moving forward?

While none have played large stints of AFL footy to confirm they will be 5+ year players, there is enough to suggest that they will be.

Hutchings has shown incredible talent to win and hunt the ball, a lot seem to think he will be one of our successors to the Priddis role.

Carter has shown a bit of grunt in his handful of games last year and considering how little depth we have in small defenders at the very worst he will be kept as depth for a few more years.

Sinclair would be the second ruckman at quite a few clubs, you could even argue he could hold down the number one spot at clubs with weak ruck stocks.
As it stands he is 3/4th in line at West Coast. At worst, very, very good depth.

Colledge is a bid bodied midfielder/utility, something we sorely lack stocks in, sadly never got the chance to get going last year but his pre season and WAFL game on the weekend suggest he has talent and could become another option for our on ball brigade.

Bennell coming back from a knee reco was always a risk, especially considering one of his biggest attributes was his speed. His pre season form was good enough to grab a small defender role for the first game for the season. His dash and aggression were most welcome and it's now his spot to lose.

I'm not calling any of the above players 200 game, AA or HOF players, however i do think in relation to our list and with what we had to work with the recruiting department did a bang up job.

 

[Ian Dargie]

What conclusion?

That they are valuable players for our list moving forward?

While none have played large stints of AFL footy to confirm they will be 5+ year players, there is enough to suggest that they will be.

Hutchings has shown incredible talent to win and hunt the ball, a lot seem to think he will be one of our successors to the Priddis role.

Carter has shown a bit of grunt in his handful of games last year and considering how little depth we have in small defenders at the very worst he will be kept as depth for a few more years.

Sinclair would be the second ruckman at quite a few clubs, you could even argue he could hold down the number one spot at clubs with weak ruck stocks.
As it stands he is 3/4th in line at West Coast. At worst, very, very good depth.

Colledge is a bid bodied midfielder/utility, something we sorely lack stocks in, sadly never got the chance to get going last year but his pre season and WAFL game on the weekend suggest he has talent and could become another option for our on ball brigade.

Bennell coming back from a knee reco was always a risk, especially considering one of his biggest attributes was his speed. His pre season form was good enough to grab a small defender role for the first game for the season. His dash and aggression were most welcome and it's now his spot to lose.

The glass isn't just half-full. It's overflowing.

If they're to be "valuable players moving forward", they need to do more than just hang out on the fringes for five years. I mean, would you say Ash Smith has been valuable?

All of these guys still have work to do to show they are best 22.

 

[tesseract]

Yes our back six is good but my point is we have too many non KP defenders on our list - butler, Wilson, mcginnity, smith, carter, Brennan and waters are outside the team ATM and that's too many of that type of player. You could arguably add Shepard to that list and also schofield although he is more a third tall.

It's from this group of mostly mediocre medium/small defenders is where I see WC mainly culling from come the postseason. It's also why I believe an investment or two in reasonably early picks needs to be used in this department over the coming 2-3 years. My issue is not only with the lack of quality in this group, but how injury prone are the one's that do have a semblance of quality about them. Waters, Ellis and Butler can't be relied upon to be consistently on the park. Hence the need to be searching for quality replacements rather than 3rd or latter round scraps which resemble the quality of the others. These 3 aren't getting any younger either, hence the need to invest soon in their future replacements and give them time to develop.

If we look at where in the draft the quality players among WC's medium/small backs were picked compared to the mediocre, it shows that early picks is where the quality is found. It points to WC getting what they paid for.

 

[Ian Dargie]

It's from this group of mostly mediocre medium/small defenders is where I see WC mainly culling from come the postseason. It's also why I believe an investment or two in reasonably early picks needs to be used in this department over the coming 2-3 years. My issue is not only with the lack of quality in this group, but how injury prone are the one's that do have a semblance of quality about them. Waters, Ellis and Butler can't be relied upon to be consistently on the park. Hence the need to be searching for quality replacements rather than 3rd or latter round scraps which resemble the quality of the others. These 3 aren't getting any younger either, hence the need to invest soon in their future replacements and give them time to develop.

Even if we cull the guys currently outside the team and Waters never recovers, we've still got Hurn, Yeo, Carter and Bennell. How many small/medium defenders do we need?

I also think that post-Glass, Schofield or perhaps Colledge could play as a mobile third tall. They're taller than medium, obviously, but would still give us some run.

Have we given up on Blayne Wilson?

 

[i am a logo]

I think that's overreacting. We have virtually the exact same team that got us pretty close to the grand final for two years in a row. Sure some older players are gonna retire in the near future (embley, kerr, glass etc.) but they can be replaced and none of them are exactly in "career best form". Hawthorn spent 2 years near the top of the table in 07-08 then missed the top 8 in 2009, before quickly climbing up the ladder again. I think the same thing will happen with us.

When we finish near the top 4 this year my old theory that last year was merely an aberration will be proven right

 

[tesseract]

If we use our first pick on Waterman at year's end, I wonder if we will consider packaging up our second pick with a player and trying to either a) get another readymade mid from another club or b) get another live pick in the first round to use on another young mid.

Aside from Waterman being the additional IM that WC will acquire, another young mid that should be brought in should be the eventual replacement for Rosa. A zippy line-breaking wingman, in Stephen Hill/Isaac Smith mould, would nicely compliment Gaff's hard-running accumulative style on the other wing. As Rosa ages and this younger wingman steps up to consistent AFL level, I'd like to see Rosa's role change into more of a HBF with the occasional chop-out on the wing as a rotation.