Is 2011 a fair judgement on the list?

[mightytiges]

Big Punt on Y&B has gone to the huge effort of posting a breakdown of every club's list in terms of average age, games played, and percentage of 18-22, 23-27 and 28+ year olds in terms of their list overall and senior side.

http://www.yellowandblack.com.au/forum/showpost.php?p=205776&postcount=1

It shows we had the equal most 18-22 y.o. in our senior side (44%, along with Carlton, Collingwood and Melbourne) and the 2nd least 23-27 y.o. (36%, behind Melbourne).

Pretty much confirms that while other clubs claim they have younger lists (Richo and co. skew our average higher), we had one of the youngest sides running around each and every week this year. In 3-4 years time, our currently deep 18-22 age bracket will mature together into the important 23-27 range that top sides have.

The Hawks have a young list (even younger on average now with Crawf gone) but they still had over half of their senior side in this peak age bracket which won them the flag.

[Stripes]

Carlton and Hawthorn will be the biggest threat in the next 3/4 years to our success. Can not stand either team but both seem to have a multitude of young talent and some standout stars mixed in.

We need some stars to emerge from our potentials

Stripes

[mightytiges]

Carlton and Hawthorn will be the biggest threat in the next 3/4 years to our success. Can not stand either team but both seem to have a multitude of young talent and some standout stars mixed in.

We need some stars to emerge from our potentials

Stripes

Yep we need to add more class. Carlton's top 6 are strong but they fall away in talent pretty quickly. For them to make the next jump into the Eight they need their next tier to step up consistently and they need to find other options at the bookends. They're too reliant on Fev and their defence is light on.

[tdy]

Ramps, the Brown theory is a sensible option. If we want to be brutal we should really do this with all our older players with the exception of Simmonds, who we can't replace currently, and maybe Richo. Brown, Bowden and Johnson will not be around in 2-3 years so we should be thinking about shoring up our list for the future now.

Stripes

Stripes im no expert, I just come in here to give my opinion and thats it, in the end, it wont make one iota of difference, but If I had a say then Brown would be going up for trade and Johnson would have retired this year. Richo, Bowden and Simmonds will retire at Richmond. Brown is the only player of our senior group that is now tradeable. If we were a ruthless club we would do it and indeed Id suggest we need to do it- for all the reasons mentioned earlier ie. Age of Brown, where we are in the cycle, how far we are away from a proper tilt ... someone at Richmond needs to show some balls and make a hard decision.

Im not so sure we have to make hard decisions on our older players.  The hard decisions are with the players under 23 that may or may not make it.  They are the ones that matter, let the older players retire gracefully, the hard decisions on older players were made with gaspar and kellaway already.

[Judge Roughneck]

25: Foley (70), Jackson (47), Meyer (17), Pattison (53), Polo (31), Raines (53), Thursfield (40)
24: Casserly (-), Deledio (84), Graham (2), Hughes (16), McGuane (32), Morton (29), Tambling (75), White (38)

This is clearly the core of the side for the future.

The like of McGaune, Thursfield, Pattison / White, Foley, Tambling, Morton, Polo, Raines etc. is going to be the backbone of the side.

Not all of them will make and we need more A-grade star quality but a decent enough and good sized core to build around when you add the Cotchin/Jack group 2-3 years younger. Also shows the importance of the next 2-3 drafts as the second wave needs to complete our list deficiencies - rucks, big key forward and another gun ballwinner or two.

Vickery / Browne
Post
Cousins / Thomson / Hislop

[mightytiges]

25: Foley (70), Jackson (47), Meyer (17), Pattison (53), Polo (31), Raines (53), Thursfield (40)
24: Casserly (-), Deledio (84), Graham (2), Hughes (16), McGuane (32), Morton (29), Tambling (75), White (38)

This is clearly the core of the side for the future.

The like of McGaune, Thursfield, Pattison / White, Foley, Tambling, Morton, Polo, Raines etc. is going to be the backbone of the side.

Not all of them will make and we need more A-grade star quality but a decent enough and good sized core to build around when you add the Cotchin/Jack group 2-3 years younger. Also shows the importance of the next 2-3 drafts as the second wave needs to complete our list deficiencies - rucks, big key forward and another gun ballwinner or two.

Vickery / Browne
Post
Cousins / Thomson / Hislop

Yes we did target our needs  (thanks for bumping this up Bents ) but it's still yet to be seen whether we've fully solved our deficiencies. Ruckwise I would say yes we have picking up Vickery and then Browne as a rookie. I'm willing to give Postie a chance as we're hoping he'll become a key forward who can play at both ends. The issue though is we're "hoping" for a few young forward KPPs to eventually step up. No one yet has cemented their spot that you can say our forward is settled. That of course could all change next year as we were saying the same thing about our defence this time last year and Moore, Thursty and Lukey with Rance in the wings solved that concern. In terms of A-grade potential mids Thomson and Hislop aren't another Lids, Cotch or Cogs aka 2003 version. Hislop would have the most talent of the two so hopefully he rewards the Club that has given him a second and final chance. Cousins is an unknown and even so best case scenario is a 3-4 year option at the most. We'd need to win the flag within the next 2 years to gain the most onfield from Cuz. I still think in next year's draft we will be targetting a key forward and another gun mid for our list. The job isn't done yet but we're looking good.