G'day all
To correct the record, it was always a possibility that the AFL was going to take away draft picks from carlton as early as mid October 2002, and before we traded for Sugar. If you google it you will find heaps of comments on bigfooty/footygoss about the possibility of the sanctions.
I remember thinking at the time the Sugar deal was announced that we had in effect traded pick 2 and not pick 4 because of the likely sanctions.
see:
http://www.footygoss.com/index.php/forums/viewthread/5840/#55920We traded away knowing that possibility.
Our fault not the AFL's fault.
What the AFL should have done though, is put back trade week that year to allow the carlton sanctions to be imposed first. Then clubs would have know exactly what number pick they were trading.
We took the gamble- did we lose - arguably yes cos Wells is still playing and Sugar is long retired. But Sugar lead us when we didnt have much cattle on the ground. Gerks might be right - Wells may have been delisted at the tigers cos of our lack of development of our young players in those days.