I totally agree a dominant big man in his prime is crucial to long-term success Darth. However in saying that your two examples support what I was getting get at. The clubs that originally drafted both Ottens and Jolly as 18 year olds never got the benefit of their prime years. They were both poached away in their 20s and won flags at their second and in Jolly's case third club as well. Free agency will only make poaching a ruckman about to hit his prime easier. Clubs will start to ask why do the hard yards investing time and development over potentially 5-6-7 years into a young ruckman who won't peak until he is 25+ when you can just go out and have a private unoffical word to a mature ruckman's manager whose client is looking for more opportunity as No.1 ruck at another club or a new challenge to revitalise his career.
i think what is overloked here is the rewards you get for placing a ruckman on your list and having them develop and improve no matter how little.
jolly was a rookie pick hadnt really done anything at melb other than show promise and he bought to melb pick 15. at age 28/29 hes then traded to collingwood for picks 14, and 46, jolley is one expensive footballer.
so we wait 3 yrs to chase a quality ruckman and at the end of the day it costs us a crack at a gun mid down the track.
personally i dont care what type we take with top 10 picks as long as they are quality, grundy is quality. i for one would much rather we go down the path of having 4 or 5 ruckmen on the list and developing our own. keeping the ones we want and trading out the ones we dont for very good draft picks.
the simple fact with ottens is he was a #2 draft pick and we would have been crazy to not take him where we did. unfortunately for us we were poorly run and we as good as forced him out. still we gained picks 12 and 16 which were used poorly. he cost geelong 12,16 and moloney. id prefer we grow our own if possible i prefer we pay to actually ensure we have a quality one in our system long term.
you are not going to take a mid whos a foot soldier at 9. you are not going to take a kpp whos a foot soldier at 9 and you certainly are not going to take a ruckman whos a footsoldier at 9. no you are going to target quality. grundy is quality he is very much a worthy top 10 pick bloody hell hes a worthy top 3 pick.
this risk thing on taking ruckmen is a furphy, possibly the only ruckman to be taken top 10 to have failed in the entire history of the draft is lounder in 87 and meeson in 04. the vast majority taken top 10 and its not a lot have been in the main good picks imo.
the vast majority of ruckmen have been taken later thus a large percentage of ruckmen coming from here. they range from very good to hacks just like any other type taken.
thing is most of those taken early have been good pick ups especially in later yrs as we become more and more proficient at judging them.
how many long term quality ruckmen have changed clubs its very few and when they do they are expensive. lets develop them and be the ones getting good picks for the excess ones we have.
down the track we are going to ask our ruckmen to compete with the likes of natinui/lycett leuenberger/longer, smith/gorringe, etc lets throw real quality back at them.
carlton let jacobs go what did they lose they had 3 very good ruckmen still and they gained pick 34 and 67, they allowed jacobs to go home to adelaide otherwise im sure they would have got more.
we got pick 43 for bloody angus graham surely the incentive is to grow our own and use the excess for valuable picks or needs these big buggers are expensive regardless of how good they are.
