Who would be our one untouchable player?

[eliminator]

Just hope Gold Coast have crap administrators then it is possible that they will be suckered into recruiting a dud. Remember Collingwood in the 1990s did recruit Brad Smith from us

[Mr Magic]

we only have 2 untouchables

cotchin and martin

the rest are all tradeable or delistable

Add Deledio to that list.

[HD]

A lot of people have said Cotch, Lids and Martin are our only untouchables, but just imagine what would happen right now if we lost Jackson, McGuane, Newman, Foley, Tambling, Morton, Nahas or any number of other players!!

You can say that they are no good or that we would be better off without them but actually think that statement through and think about the kind of line-up we could put forward WITHOUT the above mentioned players, what's our best 22 then?

Connors, Collins, Nason, Vickery, Post, Thursfield, Riewoldt, Polak, Simmonds, Taylor, Astbury, Cotch, Lids and Martin would be the main ones. You can't include Griffiths in that, he hasn't even played in an AFL side yet - he could be a dud, could break a leg and never be the same again (a la N Brown). Gee, lot of game time experience in that line-up isn't there, especially compared to say.....Geelong.

The above would be our main core, so does anyone think we can win, be competitive or (as we are supposed to be doing this year) transform into a developed, confident side capable of taking on the leagues best with that as our main core? Who are the leaders then because Simmonds can't lead, Polak can't get a game at the moment and Lids and Cotch are too young to be leading the side by themselves, leadership group yes, but not the sole leaders of our side.

EDIT: Probably throw King into our main core above too, at least he has game time and a hard head.

[mightytiges]

Simmo and Polak are gone as players. King is just VFL standard. All 3 shouldn't be at Punt Rd when next preseason starts.

Our "best" 22 at the moment isn't a best 22. Hardwick is still sifting through who can play and who can't while playing the kids to accelerate their development. If GC17 offered a top pick for a Jacko, McGuane, ..., Nahas  we'd be stupid not to consider it. They have flaws and definitely aren't irreplaceable or untouchable. I wouldn't have a problem upgrading on them. We need more classier and skilled footballers on our list.

[HD]

Simmo and Polak are gone as players. King is just VFL standard. All 3 shouldn't be at Punt Rd when next preseason starts.

Our "best" 22 at the moment isn't a best 22. Hardwick is still sifting through who can play and who can't while playing the kids to accelerate their development. If GC17 offered a top pick for a Jacko, McGuane, ..., Nahas  we'd be stupid not to consider it. They have flaws and definitely aren't irreplaceable or untouchable. I wouldn't have a problem upgrading on them. We need more classier and skilled footballers on our list.

The point I was trying to make wasn't that our current "best" 22 is great but given our tendancy toward poor draft selections in recent years, and inability to develop players I don't think singling out 2 youngsters (Cotch and Martin) as untouchable is sensible. We still need to maintain some of the experience and bigger bodies of our more senior guys or next year, when we have 17-18 of our list with no body, no experience and no stamina we will get FUBAR in every game we play. You may ask what is different this year, and I think the difference is we've been as competitive as possible in our current situation and stripping the list again and ditching all of our experienced players will set us back next year, not take us forward.

It's almost like because we've failed horribly at developing players in recent years, everyone would prefer they be delisted and replaced with youngsters instead of learning to develop players properly for long-term gain. Very few of our players (except the obvious Simmo, Cuz and Co.) are too old or so un-skilled that they can't be trained and developed to a standard that at least makes us competitive at which point we can recruit 'gun' players when we are in a position to make a play for a Premiership.

I think we need to look at consolidating the list, and developing that list into a competitive side before we go looking for another 14-player chop fest.

[mightytiges]

The point I was trying to make wasn't that our current "best" 22 is great but given our tendancy toward poor draft selections in recent years, and inability to develop players I don't think singling out 2 youngsters (Cotch and Martin) as untouchable is sensible. We still need to maintain some of the experience and bigger bodies of our more senior guys or next year, when we have 17-18 of our list with no body, no experience and no stamina we will get FUBAR in every game we play. You may ask what is different this year, and I think the difference is we've been as competitive as possible in our current situation and stripping the list again and ditching all of our experienced players will set us back next year, not take us forward.

It's almost like because we've failed horribly at developing players in recent years, everyone would prefer they be delisted and replaced with youngsters instead of learning to develop players properly for long-term gain. Very few of our players (except the obvious Simmo, Cuz and Co.) are too old or so un-skilled that they can't be trained and developed to a standard that at least makes us competitive at which point we can recruit 'gun' players when we are in a position to make a play for a Premiership.

I think we need to look at consolidating the list, and developing that list into a competitive side before we go looking for another 14-player chop fest.

I understand what you're saying hadynd and I'm not saying get rid of a whole swag of those in our current 22 who have been around for 5-7 years just because they aren't A-graders. We won't need to in any case as there's plenty of others who now spend most of their career at Coburg who will go first on top of the two retirements - Simmonds (ret.), Cousins (ret.), Polak, McMahon, King, Hislop, Thomson and White. That's 8 just there without blinking and apart from the retirees who add some experience and size despite being past their best none of the others will leave an experience hole in our list or our side on matchday when they are cut. The likes of rookies like Gourdis who have been around a couple of years without playing an AFL game would also come under the gun at the end of the year but equally could be kept another season. Our list IMO still needs another clean-out even if we don't reach the 14 cut of last year. It could still reach 10 say quite easily come the end of the season. We are nowhere near consolidating our list IMO. Even the Club admitted last year we only had 10-12 players campable of playing in our next premiership. We still need to add far more class and skill. Next year won't be pretty either because of it sadly as we'll still be a team of mostly inexperienced youth .

What I'm saying as far as our current regular 22ers such as a Jacko, McGuane, etc is if we were offered a top pick for one of them from GC or whoever we'd be silly not to consider it just because they have now 6-7 years experience behind them and we're afraid of being too young. We can't get any worse than we are now and you need to offer someone with trade value up at the trade table to get other club's interested in handing over a decent pick. Losing one player who is a dodgy kick or who lacks footy smarts isn't going to harm us if he is upgraded with a classier more skilled smarter footballer in his position from early in the draft. We need IMO to continue to seek ways to improve our list whether that be clever trades/drafting and yes also proper development of those already on our list. Smart clubs do both.