i agree brown was a quality player and the exact type we should be targeting with f/a. but imo for a club with a good recruiting dept which we dont have and havent had for so loooonnngggg, brown was the wrong man at the wrong time.
the rot started not in 04 but in spuds time at the end of 01.
we had just finished 4th on the ladder thanks to essendon laying down in the last home and away game. come the following week in the qualifying finals they spanked us by 70 points easing up.
the following week we fell in against carlton in a semi final and had to front up to brisbane. well brisbane did to us what essendon did, showed us up for the pretenders we were. the game was over at half time and they went thru the motions for the remainder of the game.
it was patently clear to anyone who opened their eyes that the list just was not good enough and there was some pain coming our way. some hard decisions had to be made and we failed to make em.
instead we went the top up route thinking we were close. this all sounds familiar doesnt it. in one of the strongest drafts ever 2001, we traded out of it, we traded daffy and pick 17 for the 28 yr old stafford, we traded our 3rd rounder for paul hudson. not one good player so few kids taken from that draft it was criminal.
so come 02 and the inevitable happens we finish 14th but what do we do??? we top up again. the number of duds on our list was staggering full on rebuild was the only way to go a blind man could see it yet we topped up.
we traded torney, 2, 18, 32 for johnson 12, 28, 41. to exacerbate this we then traded 28 for blumfield, and took mature players fleming, and nichols with nd picks. for 2 yrs solid we hardly participated in the nd.
so 03 comes along and of course a few mature players was never going to resurrect our club and the bleeding obvious happens again we finish 13th. so what do we do???. you guessed it we top up again with mature players. again trading away good picks. at least in brown who we paid 6 and 20 for we got a talented player. but we continue to target mature players with nd picks taking morrison, tuck and fletcher.
well 04 came and we get a spoon the club finally realise we have to invest in youth and rebuild but unfortunately for us we had fools in charge wallace wanted to give the mature players a chance at finals he clearly over estimated where the list was at. and wallace first two seasons coincided with two of the weakest drafts ever imo and boy how we stuffed those drafts up.
so yeah we need quality players as many as we can get but we need to balance out what we dowe need to target quality mature players and at the same time find ways to stay heavily involved in the early stages of drafts. imo f/a makes it much easy for us do this now.
