Agree Inf, Polak was good today but he'll be 27 by the half way mark next year. He'll probably stay on the list, factors being others to go before him and we have KP deficiencies.
Youth isn't the word or category we should be focusing on when looking at our list. It's currency.
Rance and Tambling are both youngish in terms of the average football age. But you'd be trading Tambling for youth. Same with Rance.
Tambling and Rance are 15th-20th picked in the side. If you could replace them with a pick 15 and pick 30 your chance to pick up a Rioli, Melksham, Bastinac type player.
List Management is the key IMO. No gameplan or messiah player or coach will fix our club. the next 2 years list decisions will make or break us.
Upgrade currency.
A trade of Deledio to Gold Coast for Picks 2 and 3.
Trade Newman and Moore for pick 18 to Brisbane.
Trade Foley and pick 29 for pick 10 to Essendon.
Trade Tambling to Sydney for pick 22
We finish last and we have picks 2, 3, 4, 10, 18, 22. Minus Deledio, Newman, Moore, Foley and Tambling.
Its hypothetical but all of a sudden you start to get the idea of the formula that can turn the list around. Finish bottom 4 again next year and you can start to look at trading a Rance or Post plus a 4th rounder pick for a high 2nd rounder etc..
It not about youth or potential its about currency. Keep your currency and you can sustain success. Hold onto playes for too long and you lose currency. There is no reason to hold onto players that wont be in your next premiership.
I realise that you are working on hypotheticals Popelord, but we are unlikely to get great deals for our players. They are more valuable to us than other clubs. The Gold Coast are unlikely to give up top draft picks for players from struggling clubs. A number of clubs are hoping they will, but it is unlikely. The whole point of having the draft up there is so they can generate hype over their new kids. Other clubs will look to us for bargains rather than give us fair value.
What we need to get better at is player development and talent identification. Who would have thought that the Dockers would suddenly look like recruiting geniuses
We need to find our own Broughtons and Barlows, as well as nailing the number four draft pick. Lids should be part of our core going forward as we would never get fair value for him. We can't hope that GC or GWS will be profligate with their draft picks as with the kids coming through and their salary cap concessions they don't need to be.
It's going to be tough, but we just need to hang in there