The issue is how we get out of the current problems. This years draft is considered fairly weak in some quarters, I am a fan of chasing the 17yo picks from GWS as a starting point and then taking what we can from the draft. The 2012 draft is considered strong and we the compensation pick so our position is relatively strong. Anyway, from a redevelopment and development point of view how do you see us going about improving our stocks?
no the issue is how long will it take to get out of our current problems.
if we are expecting 17 yr old 18 yrold kids from this yrs draft to magically take us up the ladder we are in the wrong caper. any kid we take this yr will not have a significant impact for 3 seasons and depending on type and size and overall skill set of each longer.
we have two ways of growing the list one of them is obviouly quicker than the other. you want a quick fix we can trade our picks for mature players we can also target older players in trades psd etc but we have been there and done that for 25 yrs and it has not worked.
we must continue to utilise our early picks in the nd, we have to become the best we possibly can at selecting kids out of this pool.trouble is to get 4 or 5 draft pools to develop you are looking at a 6 7 8 yr period.
first things first we need to build a decent core of kids when we have achieved that we can trasde for needs and the cream on top.
to build a core of kids say 20 24 players we are looking at 5 yrs plus. this does not take into account the up to standard young players we currently have if say we have 10 we are still looking at another 3 drafts of basic list building.
why this long well take a look at all clubs in all drafts you are doing well to find 4 or 5 players each draft/trade period. with lists around 45, and with a 10 yr life span of each player if your lucky you need to find 4 or 5 players just to tread water.
in our case if we found 8 afl standard players over the next 2 drafts we would improve dramatically imo. as we have so many who are below standard. but we wont get any real benefit from those 8 players for 3 or 4 seasons because this is how long it takes to get them up to speed if you get it right.
we need to understand just how long it is going to take and just perhaps a lot of the wrist slashing that goes on will disappear.