Interesting spot in Marlions leaving speech, when he referenced Dan and Maurice taking over TO (I think thats what he said, not sure if thats something to do with training) and then said something like "for as long as you are here", which Dan laughed at. I couldn't quite figure out if Dan was laughing because of fake rumours, or was a bit embarassed by it, he did squirm a little.
This is the 1 I can't be sure about, Bolton going home, yeah I get it, but Dan to the Suns, not sure if I can believe it.
But lets say its true, 1 - he's contracted and 2 - I can't see Dan throwing his toys out of the pram if he doesn't get to go. I reckon it would be more like the Papley attempt to get to Carlton, has gone back and played just as well as he did before the request. So we hold the whip hand.
The Suns will have strategy 1 - Get a top kid with Pick 5, then trade 13 and 20 into next year (or a player) and get Lombard with junk picks.
They will come at us with 13 and 20 and we should hold our ground. At the same age Saad got Essendon Pick 8 with a couple of late junk picks being traded. We don't want 13 and 20, we will have picks in that range, we want (and need) top 10 picks.
The risk for GC is we bid on Lombard before their pick and then they are screwed. They need to come to the party and include a gentlemans agreement that we won't bid on Lombard early, but to do that they need to pay us appropriately, and I can't see that happening without Pick 5. They'd be best set to trade out all 3 of 5, 13 and 20 either to us or into next year, take Lombard as the only pick this year and kick the can down the road again with plenty of picks in next years draft.