we lack depth as much as anything.
We lack quality outside runners claw. Blease looks like a good fit to me.
Happy for us to pursue this young player.
Outside runners are easier to find and the game is won in winning collisons these days. Not that I know Blease from a piece of cheese, but if he is an outside runner, dont bother. We need more heavy collision based midfielders.
Look at how Geelong won this year, they hardly did the short kick kick to a free man, they kicked long to contests and won them. They have also for the last few years had bigger players who can stand up in a tackle, just think of how many times you've seen Ling standing in a tackle and getting a kick or hand ball away.
This is where strong bodied players like Dustin Martin are crucial to our future sucess. If he's an outside player we have lots of them already in Nason, White, Webberley we dont need any more. I agree none of them are A graders but its not where the game is won, we should focus elsewhere with our top picks.
i agree we lack for quality outside players but we lack for many types.
i ws making the point that blease cost melb pick 17 they used a very valuable pick to target possibly a quality outside player. do you think a pick somewhere between 19 and 35 more likely closer to 30 will get the deal done.
me id rather keep our pick and target a couple of players of a type we need who also may be quality. our compo pick will not get the deal done i cannot stress this enough.
what is more realistic is our compo pick and our third rounder. or god forbid pick 14.
i am dead set against trading out of early rounds in the draft. at least not until we establish a very good core group with structure also catered to. we are nowhere near that imo.
if we finish say 9th next yr which imo is unlikely its realistically more likely somewhere around 12th again, but 9th will do we will have picks 10, 28, the compo pick realistically 25 - 35 and 46.
those two picks so close to each other 28/cs pick opens up real possibilities for us.
i for one have at times wrongly insisted we utilise the nd at all costs. over the yrs i have come to learn there is times when it may be better to trade out of your picks for needs.
in 2004 we would have been better served keeping a quality player in ottens, as it was ottens was going to go no matter what because of the shoddy way we treated him. geelong offered us picks 12 and 16 but originally it was picks 12 and maloney.
geelong were smart. happy to trade out of a very shallow draft and yeah we can make that argument this yr. but geelong had just made finals and with stkilda looked good things for yrs to come.
they traded for a proven player people forget ottens was an aa in 2001 or 2002 and copped his fair share of injuries after it. they read the 2004 draft better than most but the thing is they targeted a proven player key to structure and they had already shown they were genuine finals contenders for yrs to come.
sam blease is an outside mid, yes very skilled but hes done nothing no more than any kid we may take in the draft totally unproven due to injury but he has been in melbournes system for 3 yrs taken in 08.hes not critical to structure and we should be able to find a player or two of his ilk without trading away very valuable picks. to top it off hes a contracted player he signed for two yrs in 2010 so if we chase him melbourne hold all the cards.
what would you ask for if you were melb. here they have a kid they have put 3 yrs into despite injuries a kid who was taken at pick 17. sheesh its more than likely they will ask for pick 14.
