Our veteran quandary

[qldmagpie67]

Our issue is for too long we’ve traded our future draft picks (namely 1st round picks) and haven’t gone to the draft and restocked on decent youth
Look at Geelong each year for the past 15 years they’ve managed to play in 22 finals games which is basically one and a half finals per year.
Conversely they’ve managed to also bring in top end free agents (Dangerfield Cameron) as well as protecting there draft hand to keep bringing in some future stars (Holmes Neale Dempsey Bruhn Henry Clark Humpries Mannagh all since 2020)
They’re the standard bearer for good planning and management
Right now we are entering a phase of compromised drafts ahead so we need to restock our shelves now with players who are going to be our next crop of 200+ gamers
Maybe this means some short term pain and some tough decisions

Hyperthetically if we can bring in a player like Peatling and maybe Hobbs do we explore trading JDG (not advocating it just throwing out a option)
As much as I admire him as a match winner he’s becoming injury prone but he still has great currency if we decided to do so.
Maybe it’s players like IQ or Hill we look to move on to bring in draft picks
I just think we need to start the process now and not wait another year based on the fact we will have at least 5 veterans going at the end of 2025 and we need players in now getting ready to be able to fill some voids come 2026
I understand the romance of fairytale endings and record setting but this shouldn’t be the priority of the club moving forward if needs to be about assembling the team to challenge for our next flag

[Pies4shaw]

^ Or, you know, we could keep the handful of good younger players we have, instead of trading them for magic beans.

[qldmagpie67]

^ Or, you know, we could keep the handful of good younger players we have, instead of trading them for magic beans.

I wasn’t advocating trading the names I used I was making the point we need to start our rebuild now and not wait another 12 months

[qldmagpie67]

I’m sitting patiently awaiting us to actually land a free agent
We’ve been linked to everyone in sundry and I’m guessing most are just media beat ups or our name thrown out by managers
But facts are right now we’ve chased McCluggage and missed appears we’ve missed Peatling (hasn’t re signed with GWS but all reports are he’s going to after they added a year and some dollars to there original offer) and Stringer won’t be coming either (which doesn’t upset me greatly)
Other than adding some young players with our poor draft hand our list won’t be changing dramatically it seems
I’ll wait until it’s over but right now we’ve messed up
Wright was adamant we needed to start our phase of the veterans at the end of 2023 but we bulked. The 2 reasons he walked away from the club was firstly they wanted him to take on a more shared role in list management which he didn’t want to do. It was basically decision by committee which honestly is a dumb idea when you have his level of experience and secondly the clubs reluctance to follow the original plan of phasing out veterans.
He worked hard fixing our cap mess (created by previous football department and Eddie namely the Grundy deal) whilst still assembling a list that won a premiership.
He had a forward thinking plan of a 3/4 year phase out of veterans which was originally agreed upon but for whatever reason now doesn’t exist.
We enter 2025 with the oldest list and the oldest starting 22.
History tells us lists needs refreshing each year to remain competitive but we won’t be adding anyone from the draft who would likely change our chances in 2025 given our draft capital at the moment.
Sooner or later we have a couple big pills to swallow in terms of veteran departures
Come the end of 2025 Cox Howe won’t go on for sure. It’s unlikely Sidey will go on and Mitchell is 1 serious injury from being done. Pendles is likely 50/50 to go on after 2025 as well
So we will likely lose 4 or possibly 6 veterans in one go.
Fingers crossed players like Dean TJ Allan Long Demattia really come on this year
The next 6/8 weeks will tell if we made a mistake by handing over our list management to a inexperienced team led by Leppa instead of trusting the experienced Wright

[RudeBoy]

Sadly, your analysis seems spot on QM67.

I still can't fathom how we managed to piss off and then lose Wright, who was so instrumental in turning our team's fortunes around and landing us a flag. One thing's for sure, Kelly had better get our house in order pronto, or we could very well enter a period of decline and mediocrity.

[piffdog]

Fun look back on the biggest draft/trade busts in history... Fortunately the Pies dont feature too heavily. There are also some live opportunities for us to rise up the "best" draft hands in history (currently we feature at #6 with our 2014 haul).

Note: I dont really agree with the methodology (average games played by the players drafted/traded) - but I think we can all agree that a 300 game journeyman is typically of more value over their career than a better player who manages 80 games...

https://www.draftguru.com.au/draft-seasons/worst

[LaurieHolden]

Our issue is for too long we’ve traded our future draft picks (namely 1st round picks) and haven’t gone to the draft and restocked on decent youth

@qldmagpie67 I'm calling bullshit on that one. You really need to re-visit some facts before another drive-by shooting on this well-worn path.
Visit https://www.draftguru.com.au/clubs/collingwood

How far back do we need to go?

• We ''traded" #14 in 2002 for Shane Woewodin
  We ''traded" #14 in 2007 Cameron Wood
  We ''traded" #14 in 2009 for Jolly

They're well out of the current list build timeline.

• We traded 2015#7 + 2016#R1 for Adam Treloar (show me where you were on record bemoaning that one)
  We traded 2018#18 + 2019#R1 for Dayne Beams (given your post history on Beams, you weren't doing that)

So that's 4 in the last decade.

Then those that can't be part of your subjective 'history'' are as follows ~

• Traded up to #4 to match National Draft pick 2021#4 Nick Daicos
  Traded #2024R1 for Lachie Schultz

"restock on decent youth"

The reality is over past 22 years that delivered 2 flags and 4 runners-up, we haven't had sufficient 1st round picks to even allow this to be debated.
We missed 7 finals campaigns over that period so our ability to organically via the draft has been heavily diluted.
If the discussion then moves into what are nothing more than speculative R2 picks and beyond, well you'd need to go back to that ^table to see how many drafted players actually make 100 games / a career.

[piffdog]

We’ve also made a prelim 10 times in about 20 years.

I’m not so sold on some of Geelong’s picks (Bruhn, Bose??)

Anyway. We’ll see.

[qldmagpie67]

Laurie I think your misunderstanding what I mean
Firstly I wasn’t talking about going back 2 decades I was talking recent past
The Treloar trade whilst I wasn’t critical I did comment I hope he’s worth it. Playing him out of position nearly his entire career here I doubt we saw the best of him looking at his form line the past season or 2
The second Beams trade in hindsight was a mistake. But at the time Beams was coming off 2 seasons (2017/18) of averaging nearly 30 touches and a goal a game. He gained 35 Brownlow votes (had top 10 finishes both years) a 5th place finish in the coaches votes and 2 top 2 finishes in the Lions B&F. He was playing good footy
In his 9 games before injury in 2019 he was still averaging 25 touches
So the justification for trading 2 x 1st round picks given the trade value of other players moving wasnt overs really at the time (remember the Lions also ate a big chunk of his salary for 2019 & 2020 so that’s a factor)
The Nick D trade up was always going to happen. Not only was his the son of a favourite player he was also extremely highly touted.
Pick 14 for Schulz looks overs right now but his career here is still young

Now the point I maybe missed I should have added was we are entering a period of compromised drafts so stocking up now so we aren’t having a bare cupboard come the entry of the Tassie team makes perfect sense.
Time will tell as I said but mark my words if we fall down the table now (due to the veterans falling off a cliff or all retiring at the same time leaving a massive gulf) and there is no bounce and we enter the compromised draft period without young players (in the 30-70 game range) coming through the supporters on these pages will burn the place down
Let’s see what the next 6/8 weeks bring us then revisit where we are

[LaurieHolden]

^@qldmagpie67 all you're doing is projecting well picked over aspects of our list and backing over old ground.
Just because a group of players is about to leave doesn't automatically equal a performance cliff.
Yes we need youth, but we need balance more. At the moment it's tilted to age, two years out it'll look different again.
The 2027 Tassie Draft haul issue is well flagged.
You haven't offered a viable solution. Put that into one concise paragraph.

First thing is to concede we haven't had and don't have multi-year 1st round / top 10 currency to have shaped a list from the ground up. (Carlton, Hawthorn, North, St.Kilda)

If you summarise, you apparently want to trade to get draft capital.
But without bottoming out or trading out players in order to do that we simply haven't had the ability to get top 10 picks and reset the list with 'youth'.

Every year, the Draft is a speculative venture of x18 'informed' list management decisions across the competition. With the extra teams it's been getting harder each decade.
There's been some great names put forward in the Trade thread, but it'll involve letting go our F1 or good quality surplus position player in order to land one. And I suspect the same will happen next year to plug the holes our veterans will leave.

What we've been able to do with the list via trade has been remarkable. Not perfect, but it'll evolve again, let it breath. But if we're ever to get multiple top10 picks, it'll be a period where we'll have 3 or more years in the doldrums.
We might then be able to end this Premiership drought...

[Charlie Oneeye]

There is always a need consider the constraints/priorities we had in any draft year when assessing any draft decision. What was the salary cap, the state of the list, and the future projection at the time?

And no doubt we screw up, but I reckon it comes with the territory.. all clubs seem to have the same story.

There is no place in the world where it all goes without mistakes. are we making more mistakes than the average club?

Do we measure our finals appearances as the true measure of drafting performance over a 10 or 20 year period ?