^^Wahh that is a big post
Claw 
Pity that it is misguided claptrap!
Actually I shouldn't say claptrap - that would be a bit rude, but then again Claw is mainly that. Unfortunately he thinks that being abusive means his opinion carries more weight. That's the misguided part.
It isn't beyond me to see that having higher picks gives you a statistically slightly higher chance of picking a good player. But I challenge you to go back through every single draft and really analyse whether that is true. No, wait, I'll save you the time and just say that unless you have a pick in the top 3, then this is plainly NOT true.
We were NEVER going to have a pick in the top 3 this year. FACT. Wouldn't have mattered if we'd lost 22 games straight.
We are rebuilding not only a list, but a game plan, an attitude and an entire club. The tanking advocates say that as early as possible we should assess whether or not we are going to make finals, and if that assessment is 'no', then we should lose as many games as is necessary to secure the highest pick possible in the draft. Let's not forget also that there are no high priority picks any more.
So, here we have a new coach with a largely new bunch of players busting his gut to implement a new game plan that may take 3 years or more to get right. It was pretty clear before the season started that we weren't going to make finals, and confirmed at about round 5 that finals were completely out of our reach. So, according to the tankers, we should have been manipulating results from that point on to ensure that we moved from pick 6 to pick 4 in the draft, and perhaps picked up another pick somewhere in the 20s. Forget about ruthlessly implementing a game plan to the best of our ability, forget about teaching these young players what is required to win football games, forget about implementing a win at all costs mentality around our loser-mentality football club, no, let's make sure we lose enough games to move a couple of places up a draft order so that we might be able to grab a quick fix.
It is useless comparing us to other clubs that have had the advantage of priority pick. You aren't comparing apples with apples. And, there are just as many examples of clubs that haven't "tanked" that have been successful. None of the tankers like to look at Geelong because their huge sustained success over many years flies in the face of the tanking argument.
The tanking argument (especially in the post priority pick era) is such a minor part of what makes a club successful that it is virtually not worth talking about. It is a red herring.
The club needs to focus on building a club around principles, standards, structures and goals. Not around distracting side issues like losing as many games as possible when finals are out of reach.
Someone mentioned something about Pendlebury being the difference for Collingwood. What utter piffle! Sure, he's a terrific player, but the difference for Collingwood this year was the bottom six players, and the break-out years of players like Thomas, Wellingham, O'Brien, Blair, Goldsack etc into genuine role-players, plus the addition of Jolly and to a lesser extent Ball. Their success owes a very small almost undetectable percentage to tanking.
