This is how old some of our players will be during season 2015 if we dont decide to trade/delist at the end of this season.
15 guys at or a few years off retirement age. Most of which kept getting named in our best 22 atm.
We need to keep getting games into kids wherever possible
Chris Newman 33
Brett Deledio 28
Shaun Grigg 27
Ricky Petterd 27
Bachar Houli 27
Chris Knights 28
Shaun Hampson 27
Matt Thomas 28
Ivan Maric 29
Dan Jackson 29
Troy Chaplin 29
Aaron Edwards 31
Jake King 31
Orren Stephenson 33
Nathan Foley 30
The biggest problem about that list is there is only one player that is better than average.
gotta agree with you again tone give or take one or two.. its not just the age but the quality of these blokes. 8 or 9 of them should have been in the gun before the season even started. yet most are best 22 or best 25 anyway.in fact the number of unproven and ordinary inconsistent players on the list is staggering.
also i have argued that this season there was never a need to fix age gaps there was heaps on the list already who had progressed to the crucial 23 thru 28 plus age brackets. there was an adequate list of 100 plus gamers and growing yet we targeted mature players almost exclusively and ignored the the drafts when it comes to kids bar one player.
clearly the rebuild was incomplete, the greater need was to continue to build and continue to get games into the kids and target as many quality players as possible while fixing list holes with the mid to long term as the priority.
imo the club has got ahead of itself in regards to the quality and where the list is actually at. there was always the possibility that after 4 or 5 yrs hardwick and co were going to find it hard to cut players. making finals has certainly made them put on the rose coloureds.
have constanly said over the next 3 drafts we just have to turn over about half the list.
to me this is a list of players who are inconsistent , or mediocre, or unproven or just too old and past it.some unfortunately tick all 4. ive left a few off who are borderline.
arnot, banfield, batchelor, chaplin, darrou, dea, edwards, edwards, elton, foley, gordon, grigg, griffiths, hampson, helbig, houli, king, lennon, lloyd, knights, mcdonough, mcbean, mcintosh, miles, newman, ohanlon, petterd, stephenson, thomas, vickery, williams.
hopefully a lot of these blokes will go on to become good consistent players but it shows the number ofplayers who we have to do better than, and just how much development needs to go into this group.
anyway enough of a rant ive done it all before and only get howled at most of the time.