Twomey never mentioned anything other than a straight up swap, he may have been remiss by including those details but the impression was given of that (a straight swap).
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The Blair "Which?" Project
- Thread starter Tony Braxton-Hicks
- Start date
It can be argued that both Hopper and Taranto if they were still at GWS would both be depth players . You don't sell the farm for someone else's mature age depth players. What's more galling of course is that they are now contending plus have the benefit of all that quality youth courtesy of our draft picks, whilst we are not contending and are in fact rebuilding.
If you can't find learnings from this episode you're not trying very hard (although having watched Hawthorn go down a similar path post dynasty I had hoped we could have learnt from their mistakes rather than our own).
Anyhow the decisions made in the trade period of 2022 will have ramifications for many years to come. Expect it to be bought up repeatedly in the future and rightly so. Especially if it looks like we are toying with the idea of doing something similar again.
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If you look back at the time 90 percent of posters on PRE were happy with this approach. We have no idea who we would have picked if we had of gone down the draft path and if they were successful or still languishing in the VFL. So we can point the finger all we like but it won’t change anything. I would be very surprised if the club doesn’t focus on the draft for the next couple of years. We need to get as many low picks as we can and hope the next Cotch, Dusty, Riewoldt is amongst them.
For the record I was one of at least 10 percent that weren't happy. Back then I thought we misjudged where our list was, that selling the farm for these two players, especially considering the age and injury history of Hopper, was problematic to say the least. But yes pointing fingers won't change anything, but we are stuck with the consequences irrespective and it's fair enough to discuss them.
And as for where those players selected would have been if we had gone down the draft path, who knows? But at least we'd be two further years into the rebuild, as opposed to starting it this year in earnest with Tasmania lurking just over the horizon. There are no guarantees in football, but I'd rather be in that place than where we are now....
You are right we can certainly discuss what happened over and over again but the bottom line remains, it is what it is and we move forward with what we have got, the rest is just useless speculation at the end of the day.
Learning from mistakes made requires honest discussion which is not useless speculation.
I hope the club is having the same discussions as the supporters are about failing to manage the list better with recent recruiting.
The useless speculation I am talking about is who we would have picked. None of us know that so we have no idea if that would have been the right way to go. It is still to early to make a decisive call, Taranto did win the best and fairest, hardly a disaster. I would rather focus on what is coming up.
Ignoring the past is not the best way to move forward. Hardwick and those that agreed with his recruiting requirements post 2020 were not thinking that well about the future. Hardwick jumped ship. Tiger supporters don’t.
The club has been down this road before. The club has brought in players and gave up a lot for short term gain before without the gain.
I just hope the next flag is not 37 years away. If so I won’t be around to see it.
Call me crazy but I would go after Andy McGrath as a free agent.
Kid can play but is going nowhere fast at the Bombers.
Kid can play but is going nowhere fast at the Bombers.
There was a lit on Insta the other day that showed the highest rated players by Champion Data by age group. Of the 26 year olds McGrath was rated 2nd and Shai was 4th which shows how much of a joke the ratings are.
I don't mind McGrath and maybe he's not been pushed hard enough to become a midfielder, but he's the typical Bomber, doesn't do much with the ball, but gets a lot of touches, similar to Dudsma that they brought in from Port. Watching them last night was like watching paint dry, stat padders the lot of them.
McGrath though has pace and BWA so potentially at another club and another system could be good, but it would come down to price. If reasonable, I can see the lure of bringing him in.
The reason why I mentioned McGrath is based on his ability to break the lines off half back and is generally a good user of the footy. He has been stuck in a system that well is just hopeless.
We can’t just rebuild through the draft. We need to utilise free agency etc. McGrath the perfect player to try this on.
Remember the outcry when we got Grigg and to an extent Houli. One couldn’t kick the other soft as butter.
Fast forward and they became premiership players.
I think if we were interested in McGrath it would need to be that we think he can make it further up the ground, either wing or mid rotation but its a risk as he hasn't shown he can take the step to those roles at the Bombers but that could be the club and the coach.
He's a dud. You'd have to pay him too much. And he won't leave that dud club.
Come on Streak. I do my best work when smoking the Dimma Tobacco.
