I guess that is what spDrake is arguing, Geelong will trade for players to keep them competitive but still fall short when it comes to the final step of winning a flag. This may continue until they go down the path of drafting and developing a team of superstars like 2007. There is a reason why players like Higgins and Dahlhaus are free agents.
With the void left by Richmond, they have the best opportunity this year to go all the way however. The clubs around the mark don’t have huge finals experience apart from the Bulldogs. Geelong are very well balanced, and have few injuries, and a lot of experienced hardened players.
My concern, and I have said it all year, is the risk of injury to older players through fatigue injuries. Danger, Selwood, in a cut throat final pulling a hamstring could be a disaster. Mind you, every time the Bulldogs play them we end up with the injuries, going right back to 2016, when we lost Libba and McCrae, so that theory has holes.
But until there is proof that drafting is going to get you that superstar that makes the difference the jury is out and to be honest there probably never will be. Even the dogs in 2016, ok you can easily mount an argument about them dropping off after their 3 prelim losses and then rebuilding and winning. But it’s not like they won on the back of a superstar - it’s not like you take one of those players out and replace him with a current version of Higgins and suddenly they don’t win the flag etc
Especially when you consider that without Dangerfield in particular but to a lesser extent tuohy and Henderson in recent seasons, we probably don’t get as far as we have in the first place. It’s not just a question of saying ‘ok if you remove journeymen like Higgins and Stanley and replace them with quality younger players acquired through the draft we suddenly have an extra 1-2 flags. Because under that theory you then have to also postulate that we needed to have drafted players that would be as impactful as Danger and Tuohy, and more recently Cameron
