Why trade away so many picks?

[saintspremiers]

I think the club has got ahead of itself. We look like a club topping up for a premiership window when we are anything but that. We are a bottom tier club. And there are no shortcuts.

But we have decided to take some shortcuts in the time honoured manner of trading draft picks.

Shouldn't the club be looking at kids in the draft, and not giving away future draft picks on 1 player. Where is the critical thinking?

I am not thrilled by what has just gone on.

Yes, the players coming in are good players.
Yes, the Saints will move up the ladder with a few more wins.
Yes, there is excitement with a good quality coach.
Yes, membership and sponsorship will be easier to sell on the back of all this.
No, we are not likely to win the flag this year or next.

I am worried the club has taken a short term view. Just because you can trade a lot of picks does not mean you should. I'd be happier to see improvement through proper identification of talent through the draft.

And those who say this is not a strong draft year are the people who really know nothing about football. There are good players out there not in the AFL system such as the Richmond Grand Final debutant. But is much more exciting to be trading picks and in the cut and thrust of the trade period. Well done.

You miss the point here.

We’ve got tonnes of kids or young players on our list - what we are topping up for is to make the eight.

If we somehow finish 7th or 8th in 2020 - likely crash and burn in the elimination final - that’s all good.

It sends a signal out that trading in the Fab 5 has meant we can play finals - that should entice others to come.

[Jacks Back]

Our "successful" period from 2004 until 20011 was due to hitting the draft hard for 4 years and then doing some trades. This rebuild we have butchered most of our draft picks yet we are acting as though we are a top 4 side and topping up. It's not going to work. You must build that core group through the draft first. We haven't done that.

That's a pretty damn long success period you're predicting. I hope you're right for the future as the last 8 years hasn't been so good.

[Nick_BlueNRG]

Our "successful" period from 2004 until 20011 was due to hitting the draft hard for 4 years and then doing some trades. This rebuild we have butchered most of our draft picks yet we are acting as though we are a top 4 side and topping up. It's not going to work. You must build that core group through the draft first. We haven't done that.

Really don’t care what trolls think. Or even if they have the ability to think.

You can't handle the truth can you saintspremiers? As a result you lash out and call me a troll.

[Raph Goat Clarke]

I think people overrate the draft. With a stronger team this should help develop the younger players.

[skeptic]

Our "successful" period from 2004 until 20011 was due to hitting the draft hard for 4 years and then doing some trades. This rebuild we have butchered most of our draft picks yet we are acting as though we are a top 4 side and topping up. It's not going to work. You must build that core group through the draft first. We haven't done that.

That's a pretty damn long success period you're predicting. I hope you're right for the future as the last 8 years hasn't been so good.

Gehrig, Hamil, Black, Voss (PSD), Penny, Dempster, Schneider, Gram, Fiora, Acland, King, Gardiner, Ray... off the top of my head

Some handy trades there

Whoops... quoted the wrong person

[goods]

I view it as jack bytel is essentialy our 2019 first round pick, just been on ice a year. trading our actual first round this year we have turned pick 6 into an experienced spine and an elite wing. Bytel coukd have gone as low as pick 6. King and Bytel will be a beautiful icing on this cake

[skeptic]

I view it as jack bytel is essentialy our 2019 first round pick, just been on ice a year. trading our actual first round this year we have turned pick 6 into an experienced spine and an elite wing. Bytel coukd have gone as low as pick 6. King and Bytel will be a beautiful icing on this cake

Get what you’re saying but there’s a lot of hype in this kid and King as unproven guys to overcome injury clouds.

You’re correct however in that before injury the wraps on him were huge

[Secret Kiel]

Why trade away so many picks?

1/ When your list is bad as ours had become just trying to improve from kids in the draft is a huge task, and will most likely take so long that you will never get there.

2/ GWS had vast numbers of quality picks, way more than we will ever had, and had the advantage of seeing what GC did wrong and it has still taken them a lengthy time to make their first GF. Though they now look for a contender for a while.

3/ Meanwhile picks are being thrown at GC to give them another crack at getting past us. But even with this they are not just taking youth.

4/ Football has changed. Less and less players will stay at clubs their full careers and as we have just seen players like Bruce /Lynch will swap clubs to play finals. So with any player you get assuming that you have them for long durations is not is not good planning. So for example we could could keeping picking good youth and then may just leave us after 2 or 4 years anyway.

5/ St Kilda are not actually topping up

Most of our traded in players are young to youngish. Gaining Ryder is an outlier as we only had one ruck on our list entering the draft. So he meets short-term need. The others gained this year so far are all of benefit both immediately and long-term.

We are yes looking to be better in 2020, and a real threat in 2022.

If you look at our list that will enter 2020, all bar 2 (If Brown goes) or 3 players that will be remaining on our list can play 4 or more years.

The vast majority of players can now play considerably more seasons. There is now a real bulge in the 21 to 26 age bracket (see graphic) who can now push forward together, and be added to each season improve quality.

This is why it is not topping up and is rather providing the foundation that we can continue to improve from.

Each year we can keep adding players. Both draftees and trades to improve that bulge of players. We now have very few old players that we will lose over the next 4-6 seasons, and so this means that we will instead mainly be losing our worst players each year.

Graphic Courtesy of Saint believer from BigFooty



For a while now we have been chasing our tail and losing good players at a faster rater than gaining them.

This year's trading gives is a chance to reverse that an establish a period of continue improvement.

It also provides the benefit of making us more competitive in the immediate term. This in turn should help in attracting other players going forward.

6/ The 2020 draft is supposedly a) a weaker draft and b) heavily compromise with almost 20 Academy and F/S players likely to go in the first 3 rounds.

b) It is great if you are a club with these players (ie Dogs look to have 3 good players coming to them in 2020), but St Kilda is not and so this actually devalued our second and third round picks in particular and possibly (depending on where we finish), though to a lesser, extent our first round pick.

So it actually made sense to trade out our 2020 2nd and 3rd rounders and to get more talent in this year, and in our case this was by trading for players and not 2019 draft picks.

Good points you make however I just think calling our list "bad" doesn't truly describe where it's been at up until this trade period, and that is delicately balanced. This list build has been in progress since 2014 and really it's been mostly trending in the right direction but it really needed to address the imbalance you allude to. And address it we surely have, had we not it is possible the rebuild could have stalled and possible gone backwards with some of our good players like Billings losing faith and leaving. This trade period was either going to make us or break us.

However I still think we are still one A grade midfielder short. It's very possible one of our home grown products could have a break out year and turn into an A grade but even then I think we are still one A grade midfielder short. You need a midfield that runs deep if you want to become a flag contender. Our spine/structural key players are well stocked so we are in a great position to capitalise at next years trade time for a read made A grader.

[goods]

I view it as jack bytel is essentialy our 2019 first round pick, just been on ice a year. trading our actual first round this year we have turned pick 6 into an experienced spine and an elite wing. Bytel coukd have gone as low as pick 6. King and Bytel will be a beautiful icing on this cake

Get what you’re saying but there’s a lot of hype in this kid and King as unproven guys to overcome injury clouds.

You’re correct however in that before injury the wraps on him were huge

Correct. They are our injection of youth and they could be elite. Unproven but at junior level they lived up to their hype

[saintsRrising]

5 of our 9 youngest players are:

King, Bytel, Coffield, Clark and Battle. All but Battle are under 21 and Battle is only 1 month older.


So that is an excellent group of very young talent.

The others are Langlands, Mayo, Calvarino and Paton.

[ace]

To answer the question - because our recruiters have proved to be cr@p at using the picks wisely in a draft.
When you know you are cr@p at something, find something else to do.

[ace]

21 to 23 looks like total cr@p, 24 to 26 not much better
Recruiting was less than incompetent.
The best players have been imports or mature age recruits.

[saintsRrising]

NOTE saintsRrisng did not actually write this sentence!!!!
21 to 23 looks like total cr@p, 24 to 26 not much better
Recruiting was less than incompetent.
The best players have been imports or mature age recruits.

You do need to learn how to quote as you keep quoting YOUR comments as made by me.

I certainly do not regard Billings, Howard, Gresham and Battle as crap.

[ace]

Most of our quality players have been traded in or taken as mature age recruits.
Drafting 18 year olds has proven too hard for our recruiters, despite having early picks compared to other clubs.

Recruited in first draft
30+ J Geary
27-29 -
24-26 R Marshall, S Ross, J Billings, J Webster, L Dunstan, J Sinclair, J Newnes
21-23 J Gresham, J Battle, J. Lonie, B Paton, E Phillips, D McKenzie, D Joyce, P McCartin, S Alabakis
18-20 M King, H Clark, N Coffield, J Bytel, O Clavarino, D Langlands,

Traded in
30+ N Brown, P Ryder,
27-29 J Carlisle, D Hannebery, D Roberton, S Savage,
24-26 B Hill, Z Jones, T Membrey, J Steele, L Austin, D Kent,
21-23 D Howard, D Butler,

Mature Age ,
30+ -
27-29 -
24-26 N Hind, J Marsh
21-23 C Wilke, B Long, M Parker
18-20 J Mayo

[oboe]

It's got to be remembered that this years and next years are supposedly shallow.

How many picks in the top 10 have we had since 2014?

The ones that come to mind are McCartin (bust), Billings (O.K.to good), Clarke and Coffield (upward trends for both of them), and M King (jury still out, but I have great confidence).

Add to that Bytel (and if fit and injury free) could be the midfielder we desperately have. been crying out for.

Dunstan and Acres if I remember correctly were picks 19 and 20, and they performed about where they were drafted.

Gresham, and Lonie were well down the list, and yet, comparing them to their draft picks have performed way overs.

Won't even speak about Marshall, and Battle.

The important thing is that the draft can be a lottery - one year can be much stronger than others, and in some years, the quality drops off from the first four or five players.
2019, and 2020 drafts are supposedly weak draft years - the club has made the right decision in trading away for those picks.

We need to develop the players we have to be the best they can be, and have luck with injuries. I'm bullish about next year - we'll make the top eight, with improvement in our younger players, and a couple of more top midfielders to take us further.