Hit the draft!!

[Saintmike65]

Now that this season is effectively shot, time to look at the future.
To me we need to focus on bringing in young players via the draft and stop trying these quick fix options via the trade period.
It’s about time our recruiting team brought in some young mids that hopefully will become important players for us.
I know people will say we’ve got Windhager and Owens but we got them given to us on a platter.
In addition to bringing in mids from other clubs, tall defenders tend to also be traded in.
Hopefully young Adams bucks the trend, as Clavarino didn’t work out.
Concerned about our talent identification, particularly our mid to later picks, where other clubs seem to be able to get some handy players.
I’d like to see us go after a gun head recruiter!

[Darth Vader]

Now that this season is effectively shot, time to look at the future.
To me we need to focus on bringing in young players via the draft and stop trying these quick fix options via the trade period.
It’s about time our recruiting team brought in some young mids that hopefully will become important players for us.
I know people will say we’ve got Windhager and Owens but we got them given to us on a platter.
In addition to bringing in mids from other clubs, tall defenders tend to also be traded in.
Hopefully young Adams bucks the trend, as Clavarino didn’t work out.
Concerned about our talent identification, particularly our mid to later picks, where other clubs seem to be able to get some handy players.
I’d like to see us go after a gun head recruiter!

No trading. Use the draft picks for actual drafting and free agency for top-up players stupid enough to want to come to us.

[evertonfc]

I'd love to say 'hit the draft' like it's some elixir for all our woes but the fact is, we're among the worst development clubs in the AFL.

We take absolute projects like Matthew Allison with our first pick in the 2020 draft, despite some clubs not rating in him the top 125 players in that year's draft pool. Why? Because we think we can develop him. But again, we can't, and we'd have been better off trading that pick.

Honestly, I don't think we have it in us to draft well. We've had almost 20 years of disastrous drafting. Any 'hits' have been lucky; or the player himself was just so motivated to succeed in spite of the surroundings.

So no, as much as I wish we could have another amazing draft period, I don't think we have the ability to develop talent, and we'd probably do better by trying to source talent from elsewhere. That absolutely kills me to say it, because I have always believed in the draft - but we have no mechanism for developing young talent.

Let's actually construct an architecture for player development before we draft mindlessly.